Chapter 210: The Confession

This was a gloomy basement. Besides a heavy, leather-clad wooden door, the room had no windows, sealed as tight as a can. No sound from outside could penetrate, and the only thing the occupants could hear was the humming of the wind from the ventilation shaft. The lights were on day and night, making the room brilliantly white and blurring the distinction between day and night. This was the interrogation room of the Political Security General Bureau’s underground prison.

The walls and floor of the room were tiled for easy cleaning of blood and excrement. The room was empty except for the interrogator’s desk and, in the middle, a hardwood chair reinforced with iron bars and firmly fixed to the floor. Several of the Bureau’s professional thugs stood by, smoking cigarettes and watching the person in the chair.

A naked woman was strapped to the chair with handcuffs and leg irons. Her head was bowed to her chest, her long black hair hanging loose, and her body twitched as she sobbed. Her body was already covered in purple welts from a whip. Black electrodes were attached to her nipples and genitals, with wires running from her body to a hand-cranked telephone on the table.

Zhou Dongtian stood before her. He had taken off his jacket, and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up high.

“Have you really told us everything Hao Yuan said?”

“Really… really…” The woman couldn’t stop shaking her head and crying. “I’ve told you everything I know…”

“You are not being honest,” Zhou Dongtian said sternly. “You should know that you’re not the only one we’ve captured. There were others present at that meeting besides you.”

“Wuwuwu…” Jia Le broke down in tears. From her capture to her transfer to Lin’gao, she had lost all sense of time. Since being brought here for questioning after disembarking, she had felt as if she were living in hell every moment. The round-the-clock interrogations and torture had brought her to the brink of a mental breakdown.

In reality, she had no idea how much time had passed. She had fainted and been revived several times. Each time she woke up, it felt like crawling out of hell, thinking she had been reborn, but when she opened her eyes, it was still the same dim, oppressive place.

Her clothes had long been stripped off, but she had lost all sense of shame. She only felt a burning pain all over her body, especially where the electrodes were taped to her nipples and genitals. Except for her head, face, hands, and feet, almost every part of her was covered in wounds.

These men had been interrogating her about two things alternately: first, Hao Yuan’s organization—its structure, how many people it had, who the core members were, what their usual activities were, and what theories Hao Yuan had instilled in them. Second, Hao Yuan himself—what he often said, his daily behavior, whether he had ever spoken of his life, his parents, relatives, and friends…

These topics were questioned over and over again. Even when she told them everything she knew, it was no use. The thugs seemed to distrust her memory, and the repeated torture forced her to constantly “recall.” Any little detail would be pursued relentlessly.

The person in charge of this interrogation was Zhou Dongtian himself. Besides his own students, there were also several former yamen runners who had been retained.

“Director, you have a phone call,” someone reported just as Zhou Dongtian was pressing his questions.

Zhou Dongtian walked out of the interrogation room, picked up the phone, and glanced at his watch. It was just past seven in the morning.

The call was from Zhao Manxiong, asking if there was any new progress. Zhou Dongtian reported the latest interrogation situation.

“Very good. Press her a little more and see if you can get anything new. There’s an internal security meeting at nine this morning. This case will be discussed at the meeting, so the more detailed the material, the better.”

Zhou Dongtian hung up the phone, wiped the sweat from his forehead, drank a large glass of cold tea, and stuffed a few pastries into his mouth before returning to the interrogation room.

“Think carefully again. What else do you remember about that meeting Hao Yuan held?” Zhou Dongtian softened his tone, his gaze falling on the telephone on the table. A staff member approached the table.

“No, don’t, don’t,” Jia Le screamed, struggling and twisting her body. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything…”

The weekly “Internal Security Meeting” was held as usual in the confidential conference room of the Executive Committee compound. This was a joint working meeting of the Senate’s coercive departments, with representatives from the Political Security General Bureau, the Court of Arbitration’s Investigation and Execution Bureau, the Army, the Navy, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, the National Police, Customs, and the CHEKA. The main purpose was for each department to exchange intelligence from the previous week, share opinions and views on the current security situation, and report on the work to be carried out in the coming week. Any need for collaboration was also communicated during the meeting. When “major security issues” needed to be discussed, representatives from the Executive Committee and the Senate Standing Committee would also attend.

Today’s meeting was one such occasion, so there were an unusually large number of people leaving the conference room when it ended.

Jiang Shan walked quickly out of the meeting, mixed in with the crowd. Unlike the others who were whispering and discussing the meeting’s content, he didn’t greet anyone. He walked directly out of the crowd and strode towards Wu Mu, who was almost at the main gate.

“Comrade Wu Mu!” he called out in a low voice. “I’d like to have a word with you.”

Wu Mu blinked. The Foreign Intelligence Bureau and the Political Security General Bureau had some overlapping areas of business, but they had little contact with each other, let alone a direct request for a “talk.”

He immediately realized that Jiang Shan wanted to talk to him about the Hao Yuan case.

The matter had been listed as the number one case for the Political Security General Bureau to investigate. In today’s internal security meeting, the introduction and discussion of this case had taken up more than half of the meeting time.

“I need to go back to my office to take care of something. Why don’t you ride back with me?”

The distance between the Foreign Intelligence Bureau headquarters and the Political Security General Bureau headquarters was a fifteen-minute walk, but Jiang Shan thought the trip was worth it.

Jiang Shan nodded. After leaving the compound gate, he gave some instructions in a low voice to the security secretary who had accompanied him, sending them and his own carriage back first. The two of them then got into Wu Mu’s East Wind carriage.

The carriage traveled along the cinder road. For a time, neither of them spoke. Jiang Shan knew very well that the unassuming man beside him, with the demeanor of a clerk who had worked in an office for ten years, was the number two figure in the Political Security General Bureau and the highest-ranking official of the Bureau that most Elders could come into contact with.

“Don’t you have a feeling that Hao Yuan and He Er have some kind of connection?” Jiang Shan said slowly.

Wu Mu was silent for a moment before saying cautiously, “You mean, they both have certain characteristics that only a transmigrator would have?”

“Yes,” Jiang Shan nodded.

“But the autopsy report leans towards the conclusion that Hao Yuan was a native of this time.”

“It is precisely because Hao Yuan was a native physiologically, yet his thinking was that of a transmigrator, that I say He Er and Hao Yuan have some kind of connection.”

“You mean, Hao Yuan’s thinking comes from He Er?”

“Exactly. Unless you believe in soul transmigration in this time and space.”

“Your deduction is very reasonable, but even so, it doesn’t completely prove that Hao Yuan had direct contact with He Er. You know, He Er is in Manila, and Hao Yuan is a Chinese.”

“Hao Yuan is a Chinese, but he is not a native of Hangzhou. According to intelligence, he only appeared in Hangzhou after the summer of 1632.

According to information obtained from interrogating prisoners, He Er visited the coast of China several times during the negotiations with the Zheng clan in 1631. It was at this time that he could have obtained first-hand intelligence about the country. If he had learned about Zhao Yigong then, it would have been timely enough to either dispatch Hao Yuan from Manila or recruit him locally.”

“But there is no direct evidence.”

“Yes, there is no direct evidence for now. Hao Yuan is dead, but there are still prisoners,” Jiang Shan said. “Mr. Rando wrote a collection of He Er’s sayings. If we can collect enough of Hao Yuan’s sayings, we can compare the two to find out where Hao Yuan’s modern thinking came from, and whether there was a master-student relationship between them.”

Xihua, Jia Le, and several other captured Hangzhou natives had all been transported to Lin’gao and were currently being held and interrogated in the secret prisons of the Political Security General Bureau.

Wu Mu understood his meaning completely. “You want to get those interrogation records and secret reports.”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing this for Mr. Rando?”

“It’s for our operation in Manila. I’m very worried right now: our opponent may be an unprecedentedly difficult character,” Jiang Shan said seriously. “The appearance of Hao Yuan has shown me a dangerous signal.”

It wasn’t cannons, muskets, or reverberatory furnaces. From the snippets about He Er and Hao Yuan that had emerged from the submitted meeting reports, he realized that He Er was likely systematically teaching his ideas. In his view, these ideas were far more dangerous than any technological innovation He Er was implementing in Manila. To the Senate, any army, fleet, or empire of this time was insignificant. Even if He Er had three heads and six arms and could build a new cannon factory and produce a few cannons ahead of their time, what difference would it make? He would still be crushed. However, if that small spark was not extinguished in time, it would sooner or later become a great fire that would consume the Senate!

Therefore, he was eager to know if Hao Yuan was indeed his student, and to what extent He Er and Hao Yuan had spread these ideas.

“Alright,” Wu Mu said. “Let’s agree on this: we will give you a copy of the Hao Yuan case file… I promise that all future interrogation and report materials for this case will also be copied to the Intelligence Bureau. However, the specific amount and which materials to copy must be up to us. On the principle of reciprocity, you must also give us Rando’s materials from Manila.”

“OK.”