Chapter 154: I'm Arresting You Specifically

Seeing the Special Service Section agents surge into the grocery store and recalling the look Bai Zeshao had given him just moments ago, Liu Xiaobing’s heart skipped a beat. He immediately cursed aloud, "Are you all blind? Can't you see the few of us standing right here? What the hell are you searching for? Get the hell out of here, all of you!"

"Hold on, Xiaobing, you can't say it like that," Bai Zeshao said, walking directly up to Gao Fei as he spoke. "Since the boss here has ties to the Wen family, we should search the place all the more thoroughly to avoid any gossip. Don't you agree?"

At that moment, Gao Fei’s face instantly turned pale. "What exactly does this brother mean?"

"No particular meaning at all. Just what you see before you, Boss," Bai Zeshao replied with a casual shrug.

As he spoke, he flashed a smiling glance at the clerk standing nearby. If this fellow hadn't blurted out the name Qi Zhengyi, Bai Zeshao might not have been so certain that this was a Japanese stronghold.

Gao Fei exchanged a swift glance with the clerk, then put on a tough front. "You can search if you must, but don't break my things. Surely none of you want to face the wrath of the Wen family, do you?"

"Rest assured, Boss," Bai Zeshao nodded. "Men, tear this place apart and search everywhere!"

The Special Service Section agents quickly began rummaging through boxes and cabinets.

"What on earth are you looking for?" Gao Fei demanded, noticing that the agents were getting closer and closer to the hidden back room where Tian Yaopeng was concealed.

Bai Zeshao gave Gao Fei a profound, meaningful look and said in an inscrutable tone, "What are we searching for? You know that better than anyone, Boss."

"What do you mean?" Gao Fei pressed on.

"Nothing much. I was just thinking that while the Wen family's influence is indeed boundless, they probably still can't shoulder the crime of harboring Japanese spies," Bai Zeshao said, his eyes locked onto Gao Fei.

How could Gao Fei fail to understand now? Bai Zeshao had already discovered their true identities. Though he didn't know where they had slipped up, escaping right now was clearly the most prudent course of action.

At that moment, the clerk, who had been ready all along, tossed a grenade directly into the middle of the crowd. With a deafening roar, it exploded.

Utilizing the chaos of the explosion, Gao Fei sprinted toward the back of the grocery store.

Neither Bai Zeshao nor his men had expected the Japanese to be so ruthless, resorting to throwing a grenade at the slightest provocation.

Ren Qiang took the brunt of the blast and was injured. Bai Zeshao and the others were relatively unscathed, suffering at most a few minor scrapes, but the ordinary Special Service Section agents fared far worse.

Two were severely wounded, and six sustained minor injuries.

Picking themselves up, the agents watched with frustration as Gao Fei and the others made good their escape.

"Xiao Bai, hurry up and chase them!" Ren Qiang yelled, clutching the wall as he sat heavily on a chair.

"No need to rush. They won't get away," Bai Zeshao said calmly.

"Well? My cooperation wasn't bad, was it? How was my acting?" Qin Shuai asked, looking at Bai Zeshao with a smug expression.

"I really have to thank you for reacting so quickly, kid," Bai Zeshao remarked with a trace of emotion.

"Besides, Xiaobing played his part right on cue."

"What on earth are you guys talking about?" Ren Qiang asked, bewildered as he watched Bai Zeshao and the others standing around chatting instead of pursuing Gao Fei and his cohorts.

"Everything you saw just now was nothing more than an act put on by Boss Bai. Did you really think I'd fly into a rage over a few packs of cheap cigarettes?" Qin Shuai curled his lip and replied casually.

"I knew it! But what's really going on here? Could these people actually be the Japanese we've been looking for?" Ren Qiang asked again.

This time, however, Qin Shuai remained silent. All eyes turned toward Bai Zeshao, waiting for his explanation.

"To be honest, I didn't expect the Japanese to be hiding inside this grocery store either, but the moment I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong," Bai Zeshao said with a smile.

"What was wrong?" Qin Shuai looked around, noticing nothing unusual.

"In a regular grocery store, the shelves wouldn't be covered in a thick layer of dust." With that, Bai Zeshao lightly swept his hand across a shelf, and his fingertips emerged coated in grime.

"That doesn't necessarily prove there's a problem. Maybe business is bad and the boss is just lazy," Liu Xiaobing interjected.

"Even so, the owner of a shop wouldn't have trouble finding his own merchandise. When the boss here went to get us cigarettes earlier, he rummaged through seven or eight shelves before finally finding them. But look over here."

Following Bai Zeshao's gesture, the others looked at the spot he was pointing to and discovered a large pile of cigarettes neatly arranged right out in the open—there had been no need to search the shelves at all.

"Now, look at this. These account books are completely blank, and the abacus hasn't even been touched. Does that make any sense?"

All these signs pointed to one conclusion: the owner was not running a genuine business.

"And finally, when an ordinary person has a gun pointed at their head, they don't stay completely unfazed. Even after old Qin fired his weapon, the boss didn't show any drastic emotional fluctuation."

"This..."

Listening to Bai Zeshao's methodical breakdown, all the suspicious clues came together, making it impossible not to harbor doubts.

Even so, the others still felt that Bai Zeshao's definitive conclusion that these people were Japanese was a bit of a stretch.

"See it now?" Bai Zeshao smiled as he looked around at them.

"Still, those were just your deductions. How could you be so certain beforehand that this was a Japanese nest?"

"Of course I wasn't entirely certain. Remember what I said earlier—that even the Wen family couldn't protect the Japanese?" Bai Zeshao explained. "I said that just to scare them, but the clerk's expression changed instantly, and I caught it right in the nick of time."

"So that's how it was," Ren Qiang nodded.

In truth, Bai Zeshao left out one detail: all those analytical reasons he had just given were completely fabricated on the spot. The real reason he knew they were Japanese was because the clerk had inadvertently blurted out Qi Zhengyi's name.

He refused to believe in such a coincidence—that the Japanese person communicating with Qi Zhengyi happened to be on Yihe Central Road, and that the owner of this very grocery store happened to be Qi Zhengyi's cousin.

However, because this matter touched upon the Red Party, Bai Zeshao kept that part to himself.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go after them!" Ren Qiang urged anxiously.

"They won't run far."

Just as Bai Zeshao finished speaking, the crackle of gunfire erupted outside, though it died down almost as quickly as it had begun.

Roughly five minutes later, Sun Yanjie walked in leading a group of men, followed by Gao Fei and the clerk.

Both captives looked utterly wretched; not only were their mouths gagged, but they had also been shot in all four limbs.

"I didn't expect these two bastards to be such fast runners, and their marksmanship wasn't bad either. They managed to take down seven or eight of my brothers and almost gave us the slip," Sun Yanjie said with a hint of lingering shock.

"Brother Sun, sorry for the trouble," Bai Zeshao said gratefully.

"It's mostly thanks to your meticulous planning, kid. You stationed gunmen on the rooftops and even placed men down in the sewers and septic tanks. Serves these bastards right—running and running straight into your ironclad net," Sun Yanjie said with genuine admiration.

Only then did Ren Qiang and the others finally understand why Bai Zeshao hadn't been in a hurry to chase after the fugitives earlier.

In reality, these were all escape routes Bai Zeshao had mapped out the previous night, spending nearly the entire night awake studying the map he had drawn himself to anticipate their likely paths.

Regrettably, the others knew nothing of this; they could only look at Bai Zeshao with awe.