Chapter 1259 - The Fall of Anping
The sounds from behind the curtain grew louder—Xue Ziliang could hear labored breathing. He pressed the rifle stock firmly against his shoulder. There were no VIPs here requiring capture alive. When facing a potential threat, he preferred to ask questions with bullets.
The Minnan translator shouted again, adding, "If you don't come out, we'll shoot!"
At last, a woman's trembling voice emerged: "Don't shoot!" She stepped from behind the curtain—about thirty years old, dressed like a servant. She must have been cowering in the room, paralyzed by the sound of gunfire.
The moment she saw Xue Ziliang's group, she dropped to her knees and began begging piteously. Xue Ziliang couldn't understand her, but the translator exchanged a few words before turning to him. "She says she's a servant who was hiding. She's begging the soldiers not to kill her."
"Take her out and hand her over to the prisoner team," Xue Ziliang said. But as the woman was led away, he caught a sidelong glance from her that didn't sit right. He signaled the team to search further.
A member pulled back the curtain. Behind it stood a couch—empty. But when they lifted the bed frame, they found a child huddled underneath.
"There's a boy!"
Xue Ziliang examined the child brought before him. About six or seven years old, with delicate features and expensive clothing. Despite the sudden catastrophe, he maintained a composure remarkable for his age—no tears, no fussing. Clearly not an ordinary family's child.
Xue Ziliang studied him for a moment, then called out in Japanese: "Fusong!"
The boy flinched. His eyes widened, and he answered before he could stop himself.
"Report to headquarters immediately. I've captured Zheng Sen." As a "banana"—a Westernized Chinese—Xue Ziliang knew nothing of the historical significance this boy held in the old timeline's late Ming dynasty. But he was well aware of the Senate's emphasis on "Zheng Sen." The identification manual for key Zheng organization figures distributed before the operation included data on this child, though the photograph was missing.
"Send a few men to escort him to the ship. Guard him well." Xue Ziliang understood that this was Zheng Zhilong's eldest son—his importance went without saying. Pointing to the woman from earlier, he added, "Send her along too."
Soon, reports arrived from every quarter: the entire residence had been cleared. Squad leaders came to deliver their findings. The mansion had sustained moderate damage—destruction in many places, but much remained intact. They had also located the estate's account room and silver vault, now sealed. A large granary held enormous stocks of grain, wine, oil, salt, and preserved meat and fish—enough to feed several hundred people for a year. An armory housed an impressive arsenal ranging from traditional swords to Japanese arquebuses and European muskets, including several rare specimens.
"We found this at the entrance." A corporal handed over a peculiar pistol. It resembled a revolver but was ornately decorated and exquisitely crafted. Xue Ziliang knew enough about antique weapons to recognize it as a European-made wheellock revolver—a high-technology marvel of its day, requiring skilled artisans and considerable time to manufacture.
"I didn't expect Zheng Zhilong to hide such fine pieces." Xue Ziliang aimed the weapon, dry-fired it once, and found it hard to put down. But he handed the pistol back to the corporal.
"Return it to the storeroom and wait for the Planning Agency to receive it."
Ying Yu entered the residence. He had come to assess the bombardment's effectiveness. Seeing Xue Ziliang smoking a cigar and lost in thought, he asked, "Old Xue, security is in place. I've dispatched units toward Nan'an and Jinjiang—I don't expect the Ming troops on either side to react. Anything else we need to do?"
"Now we wait."
"Wait for what?"
"For the Planning Agency people to arrive," Xue Ziliang said.
"We need to set up a command post," Ying Yu said. "This place isn't suitable."
Xue Ziliang agreed. The layout was too deep, making entry and exit inconvenient. Besides, clearing the residence was the business of the Planning Agency and the Intelligence Bureau—there was no point lingering. He led his men to the city gate tower to establish their command post.
Under Intelligence Bureau direction, Army and Navy soldiers conducted a comprehensive search of the Zheng manor. Every corpse in the residence was identified and registered by captives led by Intelligence Bureau personnel in the open square. Important figures were photographed and fingerprinted.
All prisoners were dispatched to Kinmen Island for detention—a temporary camp had been established there. The Planning Agency Special Search Team and Intelligence Bureau Action Team led soldiers through the city, searching and sealing the homes of key Zheng organization personnel one by one.
A grim atmosphere hung over the city. Soldiers with fixed bayonets guarded all four gates. Machine guns were mounted on the gate towers, with strict orders forbidding all movement in or out. The only people on the streets besides soldiers were laborers conscripted through the baojia system to fight fires, clear debris, and haul away corpses and wounded. Squads from the White Horse Unit and Teishin-tai—speaking incomprehensible languages and wielding thick clubs and Japanese swords—ran through the streets at naturalized officers' commands, conducting raids and arrests. For ordinary Anping residents, though they had lived in terror since the morning's shelling, most families had escaped unscathed, save for a few unlucky souls killed by stray rounds. The Australians did not slaughter indiscriminately or loot freely; they focused exclusively on raiding and arresting the wealthy households.
The bold ones peeked through window cracks and door gaps, watching. The grandes familles connected to the Zheng clan—the city's powerful local tyrants, the "upper class," the "nouveaux riches," relatives of so-and-so who strutted about in luxury—were now being dragged away one by one. The dead were thrown onto carts and hauled to an open square to be exposed; the living were bound by the neck with ropes and led away like rats by the "Vagabond bandits." Precious wives and concubines, young masters and young ladies, walked barefoot and disheveled through the streets like common servants—anyone moving too slowly received a club to the face from the escorting soldiers. Such a gratifying spectacle was something the common people, long accustomed to servility, had never witnessed. Those who had been slapped by the powerful, whose wives and daughters had been bullied, whose wages had been exploited or property seized—they wept and laughed in their hearts, thinking: At last, your day has come!
Then there were those who had lived off the scraps of the mighty, who had bullied others by invoking their masters' names, who took pride in being "a retainer of so-and-so" or "a slave of who-and-who," and who habitually sneered, "Are you worthy of the surname Zheng?" They were now sick with grief and terror—fearful that the Vagabonds would uproot the Zheng family entirely and leave them without scraps to eat, and equally fearful that the Vagabonds would settle accounts for their own petty abuses. Their hearts fried in oil.
Xue Ziliang and Ying Yu remained oblivious to the citizens' thoughts. They were more concerned with how much plunder could be extracted—after all, that was the campaign's primary objective. The Elder dispatched by the Planning Agency to oversee operations had brought a massive Special Search Team.
Each squad was equipped with two Minnan-speaking translators familiar with Anping's layout. Some were naturalized citizens; others were "guides"—recent defectors who, as soon as order was restored, volunteered to "lead the way to wealthy households," seeking revenge or fortune.
The Special Search Team worked from maps and rosters—the product of more than half a year's effort by the Foreign Intelligence Bureau. The guides merely accelerated and refined the process. However, the Search Team had strict orders: arrest and confiscate only according to the list and map. They were not permitted to act on guides' accusations alone. All such claims had to be compiled into reports and reviewed by the Elder before any action could be taken.
The results were impressive. Anping held many residences belonging to middle- and upper-level Zheng figures. Though most of the principals had fled, their families were captured in one sweep.
Zheng Zhiwan, the Anping defender who should have protected them, had escaped alone. The moment the shelling ceased, he loaded his family, servants, and treasure onto carts and fled the city under his personal guard's escort, running straight to Jinjiang County seat.
The families of generals, shopkeepers, and stewards were nearly all captured, their property falling into Senate hands. Zheng Zhilong's own residence was stripped clean—not only were all assets seized, but his wife Lady Yan, eldest son Zheng Sen, Zheng Sen's birth mother Lady Tagawa, and other family members in Anping were all taken prisoner.
These captives were sent to the POW camp for screening. Informers and vengeful guides were everywhere. Attempts to conceal identity rarely succeeded—many tried to pass as servants or commoners, only to be swiftly exposed.
Public and private property from large households and warehouses piled up like mountains, counted item by item, packed, and shipped out. Preliminary tallies: over 800,000 taels of silver and more than 10,000 taels of gold were seized in Anping City alone. The Zheng manor yielded over 400,000 taels of silver—and this without digging three feet into the ground. By traditional Chinese treasure-hiding practices, the great households almost certainly concealed even more gold, silver, and valuables underground or within double walls.
As operational commanders in the Anping sector, Xue Ziliang and Ying Yu bore no responsibility for the specific looting. Their mission in Operation Overlord was straightforward: occupy Anping and hold it until headquarters issued the withdrawal order. To that end, they dispatched multiple alert detachments toward Jinjiang and Nan'an counties and sent an Army reconnaissance platoon to harass the outskirts of both county seats, testing the Ming garrisons' response.
The result: both county gates remained tightly shut, their garrisons immobile. The two groups of personal guards sent from Xiamen to evacuate families were both defeated in brief firefights.
(End of Chapter)