Chapter 97: Retreat, Safe House

"They're closing in. We need to find a chance to get out." After changing magazines, Chen Wenqi said softly.

Li Wensheng cast a sidelong glance to the right and murmured, "You hold them down. I'll break a path for us. We go right."

Chen Wenqi gave a slight nod, stepped forward half a pace, took over Li Wensheng's task, and fired at the men who kept popping out into view.

She was clever, able to calculate Li Wensheng's every move, but her marksmanship was truly ordinary.

If those men had not already been dealt with by Li Wensheng—more than a dozen of them—and if Li Wensheng had not kept turning back to help, she would have been shot long ago.

Crack, crack, crack... Gunfire rang out without pause. With only one hand, Li Wensheng kept firing, still using a pistol, yet he made it feel like a submachine gun, instantly knocking down a large swath of the surrounding Japanese agents.

At the brink of life and death, he could not care about anything else. The magazine emptied, and he immediately stowed the pistol back into the system storage, then drew out another at once.

Putting the gun away and taking another out happened in a flash. And with everyone on edge, no one noticed that Li Wensheng's pistol had changed.

After moving several dozen meters, Chen Wenqi's own pistol ran dry. Only then did she notice something was wrong with Li Wensheng's gun. His arm was injured, so he could not reload quickly, yet his shots had never stopped.

Though puzzled, she had no time to think. While Li Wensheng kept the Japanese agents on this side pinned down, she reloaded at speed.

In less than two minutes, Li Wensheng and Chen Wenqi had fired as they moved, covering several hundred meters and reaching a side junction ahead.

"Move." Li Wensheng turned slightly, firing to suppress the Japanese agents following behind the cover of the pillars.

Chen Wenqi immediately fell back, rounded the corner, then leaned out from it and fired, helping Li Wensheng keep the Japanese agents down.

With two more Japanese agents dealt with, Li Wensheng's pistol magazine emptied again. This time he did not rely on the system to change weapons. He backed away quickly, turned the corner, and said, "Fall back!"

Chen Wenqi turned at once and followed him.

The firefight had been going on for several minutes, yet the street beyond the corner was empty.

Li Wensheng led Chen Wenqi along the street to the right. In less than a minute, they slipped into a narrow lane on that side.

By the time a group of Japanese spies reached the mouth of the lane, Li Wensheng and Chen Wenqi had already vanished.

They did not continue the chase. Instead, they ran back to the blood-soaked street lined with corpses and found Kawano Kayo slumped behind a pillar, his whole body drenched in blood.

"Captain, they've escaped," said a long-faced man as he stepped forward.

"Go after them. Do not come back until Li Wensheng is dead," Kawano Kayo roared in fury.

"Captain, you need to be sent to the hospital at once, and the French Concession police will be here any moment. We should withdraw first," the man urged quietly.

Kawano Kayo was skilled and had a strong sense of danger.

Earlier, when he had stepped out from behind the pillar to open fire, Li Wensheng had been too fast and shot first.

With Li Wensheng's marksmanship, even though he dodged in a hurry, he was still hit in the shoulder.

A shoulder wound by itself was not much, but Kawano Kayo refused to give up. Even after being shot, he still wanted to come out and kill Li Wensheng, only for Li Wensheng to beat him to the trigger again.

Three times back and forth, Kawano Kayo took three bullets. None had struck a vital point, but he was bleeding heavily all the same.

When Li Wensheng and Chen Wenqi fled, he had even charged ahead in pursuit. But the excessive blood loss had made him dizzy, and in his distraction he tripped over a corpse.

With a heavy thud, he slammed his head against the wall beside him, and the dizziness only worsened, leaving him unable to continue the chase.

Still, he did not want to give up so easily. When his men tried to send him to the hospital, he barked them down and ordered everyone to pursue Li Wensheng.

He would not listen to the man's advice at all. Gnashing his teeth, he said, "Endo, I order you to take everyone and chase Li Wensheng. You must kill him."

Endo sighed inwardly. The captain loses all composure whenever he faces Li Wensheng.

"Captain, since Li Wensheng has come to Shanghai, he won't be leaving anytime soon. How about this: I'll take half the men to pursue him, and the other half will take you and the wounded to the hospital. What do you think?"

Kawano Kayo hesitated for a moment, then gave a slight nod.

Endo finally let out a breath and quickly instructed the others to send Kawano Kayo and the injured men back.

Although Endo led men after them, the delay had been too long. Besides, on the way, Li Wensheng and Chen Wenqi took two pieces of clothing from a drying rack outside a house and wrapped their wounds. With no blood trail to follow, Endo lost their track after only two alleys in the maze-like lanes.

In the cramped side streets, Li Wensheng led Chen Wenqi left and right through a twisting path.

After a short while, they turned a corner and arrived at the rear half of Fengqing Lane on Guangyuan Road.

In the back half of the lane, the light was blocked by the tall buildings standing not far away on both sides, making the place exceedingly dim.

It was also very quiet. In broad daylight, there was not a single person in sight.

Stranger still, all the houses in the back half of the lane were locked, and every lock was covered in a thick layer of dust.

When they reached the innermost house, Li Wensheng took out a key from his chest and unlocked the door.

The lane was so peculiar that once Chen Wenqi stepped inside, she could not help asking, "What kind of place is this? Why is there not a soul around?"

"Almost all the houses in this lane are rented out. The light is poor, the conditions are bad, and the rent is cheap. The people living up front are mostly rickshaw pullers or dockworkers. To make money, they stay out during the day unless the weather turns bad.

"And most of them live alone, so the lane is empty in daytime," Li Wensheng replied softly as he turned to close the door.

"What about this house? And I just noticed that in the back half of the lane, every lock on every house is covered in thick dust. It's obvious no one has lived here for a long time," Chen Wenqi pressed.

"This house is my safe house. As for why no one lives in the back half of the lane, it's because all of it belongs to me.

"After graduating from the Military Intelligence Bureau training camp, I was assigned to the Shanghai station. Less than two months later, I made a small fortune and bought this half of the lane.

"As for why I bought half a lane, you'll understand in a moment."

To think that half the lane belonged entirely to Li Wensheng left Chen Wenqi stunned into silence.

"You've kept half a lane empty all this time, and you never worried it might arouse suspicion?" Chen Wenqi asked, recovering herself as she hurried after Li Wensheng, who had crossed the small courtyard and was heading toward the house.

"This isn't a war zone, and it isn't enemy-occupied territory. This is the French Concession.

"The Green Gang, foreign agents, and people involved in all kinds of smuggling are tangled together here. Every day someone dies, and even more people are shot.

"So what if it arouses suspicion? No one even knows which faction owns the house. No one can possibly keep men stationed here forever."

As he spoke, Li Wensheng reached out and pushed open the door.

The main room held nothing but a table and chairs, and dust.

A glint flashed in Chen Wenqi's eyes. "If all you were worried about was having nowhere to hide when you got shot, you didn't need to buy half a lane. What exactly did you buy it for?"

Li Wensheng stopped, clutching the wound at his waist, which had already soaked through the bandage, and turned back helplessly. "Miss, I just told you: why I bought half a lane, you'll know in a minute.

"And in our current state, shouldn't you be thinking about how to treat the wounds instead of asking so many irrelevant questions?"

Chen Wenqi froze, then gave an awkward smile. "Um... do you have a first-aid kit here? I know how to bandage wounds."

"No first-aid kit, and no need to bandage anything. Since you're so curious about why I bought half a lane, you'll find out next."

With that, Li Wensheng walked toward the wall on the right.

On the right wall there was only an old washstand and a long wooden table covered in dust. Li Wensheng moved the washstand aside and pressed a brick in the wall behind it.