Espionage: You're tasked with spying, but you'll blow up the Special Higher Police?

180. Provocative provocation

“Hua La~~Hua La~~”

The prisoners were chained in pairs, their hands shackled, and their movements made a constant, annoying noise. But they seemed to have long been accustomed to this noise, and in a lazy formation, they passed through a small door on the side of the prison, and under the watchful eyes of fully armed Japanese soldiers, they arrived at the adjacent military camp construction site.

Construction was in full swing, leaving the ground a mess of piles of dirt, bricks, and stones. Zhou Hongyi saw that some prisoners were already digging with hoes, while others were filling baskets with the excavated soil and carrying them to another location to dump it. Many more prisoners were hammering and breaking larger stones, putting them in baskets, and carrying them elsewhere.

"What a waste of time. Why not just use a truck to unload these stones right next to the construction site? Wouldn't that save the trouble of transporting them? Why dig this pit? What's the point of digging this pit to fill that pit? Are you digging your own grave?"

Zhou Hongyi couldn't help but mentally complain that they were doing useless things. Upon hearing this, Monkey hurriedly reminded him, "Boss Zhou, you absolutely mustn't say things like that. Those pits they dug could actually be graves, used to bury dead prisoners."

"What? It really is a burial?"

Zhou Hongyi was about to ask more questions when he heard a shout in Japanese. Two Japanese soldiers dragged a prisoner out through a separate side door. The prisoner was handcuffed and shackled, with a large iron ball attached to the shackles. His clothes were torn to shreds, stuck to his flesh and blood, making him indistinguishable from his body. His head was drooping, his body limp like a noodle, and he was dragged along by the two soldiers, leaving a gruesome trail of blood on the ground.

“Boss Zhou, look, those are the prisoners in the hardened criminal ward. Another one who couldn’t take the torture and died.”

Zhou Hongyi's face was grave as he watched the two Japanese soldiers casually toss the lifeless prisoner into the pit like trash. Then, two other prisoners, seemingly prepared, shook out lime from their bamboo baskets, covered the body with a layer of lime, and then buried it with more soil. Judging by the look of it, more bodies would be thrown in soon.

Zhou Hongyi's face was extremely grim at this moment, because he had just activated his Eye of Insight and seen the information entry for the deceased. This was a patriotic hero who was captured by the Japanese for helping and hiding underground personnel. After being severely tortured, he died directly on the torture table. Such a vibrant life was probably worth less than cattle or sheep in the eyes of the Japanese. They simply covered him with a layer of lime and threw him into a pit to be buried.

It was only then that Zhou Hongyi realized that the Japanese had ordered them to dig pits in the open space not to build a reservoir or dig a foundation, but clearly to bury people.

"Damn guy!"

Zhou Hongyi cursed inwardly and quietly memorized the location of the small side door. Just then, several supervisors and prison guards came over shouting and gave him a push from behind, signaling him to go to the designated spot to start working.

Zhou Hongyi and Monkey were chained together. Their task for the day was to dig and chisel stones. Each of them was given a pickaxe and a chisel. They had to break the larger stones into smaller pieces, put them into bamboo baskets, and then have the other prisoners haul them away in a cart.

Zhou Hongyi weighed the pickaxe in his hand, then swung it and slammed it onto the stone with a loud "bang." The recoil made his hands go numb.

"This is my first time doing this job, and I didn't expect it to be so difficult."

Seeing that Zhou Hongyi's pickaxe strike was sending sparks flying, Monkey quickly advised from the side, "Boss Zhou, you can't just smash the rock like that. We need to loosen it a bit with a chisel first, and then use the pickaxe to dig down into the cracks. That will save a lot of effort. If you swing it directly upwards like that, you'll easily break the pickaxe. It's not a big deal if it breaks, but if flying rocks or a broken piece of the pickaxe injure your eyes, that would be terrible."

Zhou Hongyi nodded thoughtfully and began to tap the stone intermittently with a small chisel.

Just then, more and more prisoners were driven to the construction site. They knocked stones, moved stones, dug soil, transported soil, and carried bricks. They did whatever the Japanese soldiers told them to do, like mindless robots.

Suddenly, Zhou Hongyi, who was swinging his pickaxe to smash the stone, was bumped from behind. He staggered forward, and the pickaxe slipped from his hand and almost cut his face.

"Damn it, who is it?"

Zhou Hongyi turned around angrily and saw two prisoners, also chained together, pass by behind him. One of them, a bald, burly man, gave a provocative smile and winked.

"You bastard, you're asking for trouble!"

Zhou Hongyi was about to retaliate when he suddenly stopped, realizing that he was still tied to the monkey.

“Boss Zhou, don’t be impulsive. That person is Diao Zhen, whom I told you about before. He’s a formidable figure in prison, an absolute prison bully.”

"So this is Diao Zhen? Okay, I'll remember him. I'll definitely find a chance to have a good meeting with him."

Upon hearing Zhou Hongyi's words, Monkey was so anxious he almost cried: "Boss Zhou, please don't! He has more than twenty men in prison, and he used to be a soldier. He's very good at fighting, and I heard he has at least ten lives on his hands. Although you are the police chief outside, it's best to keep a low profile here. I believe that with your status, as long as you don't provoke him, he will be wary of you."

Zhou Hongyi thought to himself, "I'm going to provoke him. In this prison, the best and most direct way to create chaos is to break the balance." Immediately, he activated his Eye of Insight and looked towards Diao Zhen.

"Oh, this bald guy actually participated in a major battle before? The entire company was wiped out, and he was the only one who survived. But he was traumatized by the brutality of war, so he pretended to be dead to escape. Sure enough, the more ruthless a guy appears on the surface, the more vulnerable he is that he doesn't want others to expose."

Zhou Hongyi easily deduced the bald man's background from his biographical information. The guy was relatively simple-minded, with no particularly complicated identity; his biggest secret was that he had deserted and faked his death on the battlefield.

But when he shifted his gaze to the other prisoners, his eyes suddenly froze. Not far away, there was a man with a buzz cut, a rectangular face, who looked to be in his thirties, with eyes as sharp as a wild dog's. He was staring at Diao Zhen from afar, and Diao Zhen felt his gaze and glared back. There seemed to be a considerable conflict between the two.

From the lean man's biography, Zhou Hongyi was startled to see the word "spy." Was this guy a former spy, or perhaps a spy planted in prison as an undercover agent? Regardless, he had to keep an eye on this man. This man was Zhu Qingfeng, another prison bully who was evenly matched with Diao Zhen.

Zhou Hongyi searched the construction site while tapping on the stones. He saw all sorts of prisoners: petty thieves, women traffickers, and brawlers. But none of them were his target—Song Guotao, the Kuomintang special envoy; the patriotic media figure; or the underground Communist Party member who, according to the reports, might be imprisoned there. Were they being held in the high-crime area?