Chapter 50 of 100

Chapter 50

16 min read4,113 words

Xu Feng knew from the priest's expression that something serious must have happened in the church. He vaguely guessed that this major event must be related to Xiaotao Hong. The priest ordered his subordinates to bring out Xiaowu Zi and Liu Dazhuang and hand them over to Xu Feng. Afraid that the priest might change his mind, Xu Feng quickly took them away. After they came out, they saw the church's main door tightly shut, with a cacophony of noise inside, as if a pot of boiling water had been set on fire.

What happened in the church? This story begins with Xiaotao Hong.

Xiaotao Hong's real name is Sakurai Wakami. She was born into a military family in Japan and grew up listening to stories of Japanese historical heroes. Her favorite story was the Imjin War, known in Chinese history as the War to Aid Korea against Japan. She hoped to be like the heroes of the war, such as Konishi Yukinaga and Kuki Yoshitaka, commanding the battlefield and expanding the territory of the Great Japanese Empire.

In Japan, there is a three-tiered officer training system: the Army Cadet School, the Army Officer School, and the Army University. To become an officer, one generally has to follow this path. All the staff officers who later initiated the invasion of China were members of the Army University's saber group. The saber group refers to the top six graduates of the Army University, who receive a sword bestowed by the Emperor.

However, Sakurai Wakami was a girl, so she could not apply to a military academy. According to the typical life trajectory of a Japanese girl, she would marry after her coming-of-age ceremony at twenty and then focus on being a wife and mother for the rest of her life. But she refused to live such a life. With the help of her family, she entered the military's intelligence organization and became a spy.

At the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan learned that the Russians were secretly mining gold in Jingling Mountain. They sent a survey team led by Sakurai Wakami to secretly enter Northeast China to investigate the situation in Jingling Mountain. The heavy boxes they carried contained sampling equipment.

Unexpectedly, Sakurai Wakami encountered Xu Feng on the way. His strange appearance and the sharp instincts honed by her long-term spy training made her realize that Xu Feng likely held a significant secret. She decided to kidnap him and take him back to Japan. The innkeeper, a Japanese spy hiding in Northeast China, told Sakurai Wakami that she needed more help, so he found some strong, martial arts-trained Japanese ronin from elsewhere that night.

However, these Japanese ronin were not cut out for spy work. As soon as they entered the county, they got into a conflict with Xu Feng and his group over a low-level joke by a poor performer. The leader was injured by Xu Feng's gun. This incident infuriated Sakurai Wakami. Seeing that Xu Feng was revered by the locals, she knew it would be difficult to make a move. Since the main purpose of her trip to Northeast China was the gold, she abandoned the idea of kidnapping.

Under the innkeeper's arrangement, they entered the mountain and discovered that the gold content in Jingling Mountain was very low, far from being a rich mine. The gold in Jingling Mountain existed in the form of copper-gold compounds, so extracting the gold required specific chemical methods. The chemical process required a lot of equipment, and the Russians had been operating there for a long time. The church was actually a small gold extraction factory. For the Japanese to intervene, it would be as difficult as climbing to heaven.

Sakurai Wakami, unwilling to give up, decided to give the Russians a taste of her power.

She secretly approached a young soldier in the church. No man could keep a secret from a beautiful woman, especially one as alluring and skilled in seduction as Sakurai Wakami. The soldier told her everything about the factory in the church.

The soldier said, "Every noon, the factory goes on a lunch break, and everyone in the factory goes to rest, except for a few key positions that are manned." Sakurai Wakami smiled knowingly, and an evil plan formed in her mind.

The person accompanying Sakurai Wakami was a British man whose father had been killed by the Russians during the Crimean War. His deep-seated hatred for the Russians made him follow Sakurai Wakami's plan.

So the two of them came to the church, chatted with the priest for a while, and then, during the lunch break, approached the wall. This is what Xu Feng saw.

Sakurai Wakami leaped over the wall. The factory was protected by the church, and the Russians, enjoying extraterritorial rights in China, did not dare to interfere with their actions. The security at the factory was extremely lax, and Sakurai Wakami easily overpowered the guard and infiltrated the factory.

Following the route provided by the soldier, Sakurai Wakami bypassed a series of workshops and arrived at a large house at the back of the factory.

This large house overlooked a major river, which flowed downstream to several villages. The lock on the door was no match for a nimble spy, and Sakurai Wakami easily opened it. Inside the house were several large barrels, each about the height of a person. The contents of these barrels were the core of her plan.

Gold is chemically stable, and one of the main methods to extract it from its compounds is to use cyanide for reduction. These large barrels contained a large amount of cyanide-laden gold refining waste liquid. Cyanide is highly toxic and can transform into the even more toxic hydrogen cyanide in acidic conditions. The waste liquid containing cyanide must be chemically treated before being discharged into the environment. Although people of that era had little environmental awareness, they knew that this waste liquid could not be directly discharged into local rivers.

One method to treat cyanide is to use chlorinated oxides to convert it into non-toxic substances. China could not produce these chemicals, so the Russians had to temporarily store the waste liquid.

Sakurai Wakami took out several timed bombs from under her skirt. These bombs did not use electronic timers like those in later times; instead, they used acid as a timing mechanism. By pulling out the piston, the acid would flow onto a metal plate, which covered the fuse. After a certain period, the acid would corrode the metal plate, and the acid would drip onto the fuse, detonating the explosive.

After setting the bombs, Sakurai Wakami quickly left the factory, completing the process efficiently.

By the time Sakurai Wakami left the church and Xu Feng entered to speak with the priest, the bombs exploded. The initial muffled sound did not attract much attention, but a large amount of cyanide leaked out and flowed into the river below the house.

The Russians had designed the building with malicious intent. To avoid harming themselves in case of an accident, the building was tilted towards the river below, allowing the cyanide-laden waste liquid to quickly flow into the river.

When the Russians realized what had happened, they panicked and did nothing to mitigate the damage. Instead, they threw the undamaged barrels down the cliff. The thin walls of the barrels shattered on impact with the rocks, spilling the highly toxic substances into the river.

In September in Northeast China, most rivers are in their low-water season. The meager flow of the river was insufficient to dilute the cyanide. Thus, the colorless cyanide, like a demon released from a cage, flowed downstream, heading towards the villages below.

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