A Girl Traveling Through Troubled Times

That day, everyone made a point of leaving work early and returning to the villa.

Dingxiang was naturally delighted and, before Gui'er could even give the order, asked Sister-in-law Aying to cook two more dishes.

Acheng quickly said, "No, no, that won't do."

Gui'er smiled and said, "It's alright. I see you've lost weight, and Dingxiang is naturally even more worried about you. Can you tell us about what you saw and heard on the road? Where did you go this time? Did you return to Jiangcheng? Did you see your brother and the others?"

Ah Cheng sat down and breathed a sigh of relief, saying, "We didn't go to Jiangcheng. We escorted the goods to Fengcheng. The journey was... a disaster. We found a chairman of a puppet regime to put our truck in his name. Although he is a traitor, he is afraid of being purged, so he doesn't want to offend either side. The truckloads of goods were said to be supplies for the security regiment. We had to pretend to be members of the puppet regime to get through smoothly."

"Oh, you didn't see them..." Gui'er said with some disappointment.

"However, I did meet Young Master Song, the richest man in Jiangcheng, and he greeted you."

"Really? Brother Song, is he alright?" Gui'er asked in surprise.

"He's doing quite well, looking energetic, though he's not dressed as smartly as before. He told me to focus on my studies and mentioned some things about his family. I used to think of this Mr. Song as just a shrewd businessman, but it turns out he has backbone; he held firm and didn't join the puppet regime, but because of that, he lost most of his fortune. Now he's in hiding, and they're looking for an opportunity to leave Jiangcheng. Our comrades suggested they come back with us, but he said it's better to split up and not implicate our comrades, so we didn't come back together."

"Why are you talking about comrades too?" Dingxiang said from the side. "Brother Cheng, you didn't join them, did you? That's very dangerous. You've only been on one trip and you've already been bewitched?"

"What do you mean by 'bewitched'? They're fighting the Japanese. We're all Chinese, what's wrong with contributing? Would you like to see the Japanese bullying and killing in our hometown?"

Gui'er felt very comforted, but she didn't want to say it out loud because she didn't know how others would feel. So she smiled and said, "We're much better off in Hong Kong than back home. Let's do whatever we can to help."

Everyone else nodded in agreement: "That's true."

Acheng asked, "I heard that Ouyang Bao has his eye on our family because of cotton and cotton cloth. I knew he wasn't a good person a long time ago. In fact, I knew it the first time I saw him. He must have had someone investigate our background when we first moved here. He's been eyeing Miss's property for a long time. It's just that this time we asked him to do this cotton business, which is like delivering ourselves to his doorstep."

Wu Mingqiang said, "I asked Rumeng to appease him, which temporarily calmed him down. However, according to Rumeng, he still has this idea. I also asked around and found out that although this bastard only married one wife to please the British, he has quite a few mistresses outside. If he sets his sights on the daughters of wealthy but powerless families, he will do everything he can to get his hands on them and then use them to extort money from the families. If they don't pay, he will beat the women, starve them, or lock them up and make them work as servants. It is said that someone was almost killed."

Ah Si sneered and said, "It seems we need to prepare for the worst. Starting tomorrow, Miss, carry your pocket pistol with you. If he dares to try anything, just shoot him dead and tell everyone he tried to rape you. Anyway, he's notorious, so people will definitely believe us more than him."

Wu Mingqiang waved his hand and said, "Are you crazy? Does that young lady even care about her reputation?"

Gui'er remained silent. She felt that A Si was at least half right; she did indeed need to take precautions to protect herself. However, she was most worried about her other comrades. Ouyang Bao wasn't stupid; he must know that with so many thugs around him, he wouldn't be so easily bullied. He would definitely use his comrades to put pressure on her.

"If only we could find out if Ouyang Bao has any weaknesses or flaws that we can exploit," Gui'er muttered to herself.

"There are too many of them. Which of these policemen doesn't collude with gangs to collect protection money? Some even run their own casinos and opium dens, which are strictly prohibited by the government. And many of them force women into prostitution. But so what? All crows under heaven are black. The colonial government of Hong Kong only cares about these people keeping an eye on Hong Kong. As long as they don't cause any major trouble, they don't care," Wu Mingqiang said sarcastically.

"Does he have any enemies?" Gui'er asked. "Could we use someone else to do his dirty work?" She thought that even gangsters fight and kill each other for territory. Are the police, who are like gangsters, similar in that way?

"Yes, Miss is so clever! We can find his enemies to go against him," Dingxiang said with delight.

"Shut up, do you know his enemies?" Acheng said irritably.

“However, this is not a bad idea. We’ve already been pushed to this point by him. If we can find out who he is, even if it’s a competitor, we might be able to find a way to deal with him. If we can get him removed from his post, he won’t have that official hat. I don’t think someone like him will live more than a week,” Wu Mingqiang said.

“Alright, starting tomorrow, let’s gather information on Ouyang Bao’s weaknesses, vulnerabilities, or even his rivals and enemies. We can’t just sit here and wait to die, but on the one hand, at this stage, we need to avoid direct conflict with him. If he wants money…” Gui’er sighed, “If it’s not too outrageous, try to satisfy him as much as possible. By the way, has the pawnshop received anything recently? Any slightly better items, or those that have been pawned but are no longer available, let’s use them to bribe him and buy him some time.”

Wu Mingqiang nodded and said, "Okay, I'll go back to the pawnshop tomorrow to take a look."

The next day, as soon as Gui'er returned to school, before she could even look for Lin Peishan, she heard other classmates whispering among themselves.

"Have you heard? Professor Xu Jing from the Faculty of Arts has been arrested by the police."

"I've also heard that he violated some kind of emergency ordinance, but that's all made up. It's just because he led the protests and he was a leader of the college movement."

Gui'er panicked upon hearing this and quickly asked her two classmates, "Really? Professor Xu Jing has been arrested. Who's going to rescue him now?"

"It seems that his family members and Professor Meng Haoliang from the school also went. The students have all been spreading the word that if Professor Xu Jing is not released after today, we will go to the police station to protest directly. Sha Guier, are you going? Let's go together."