Espionage: You're tasked with spying, but you'll blow up the Special Higher Police?

June 1940, Shanghai.

As the War of Resistance against Japan entered a stalemate, the contradictions and struggles among various forces, including the Japanese Special Higher Police, the Mei Agency, the Wang Jingwei regime's No. 76, the Military Intelligence Bureau, the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, and the Red Army, intensified, and covert battles became frequent.

Today, as a newly appointed junior policeman in the Wang Jingwei regime's police station, Zhou Hongyi received his first task—to interrogate suspects and find out the real underground members of the Red Party.

......

"Da da da......"

Zhou Hongyi followed the third squad leader and two colleagues, walking up a narrow, dark stone staircase and into the police station's interrogation dungeon.

Zhou Hongyi swallowed hard and looked up. The dungeon was surrounded by cold, hard stone walls and dim, ghostly lights. The lights flickered, as if they might go out at any moment, barely outlining the surroundings.

Around the dungeon, various gruesome instruments of torture were laid out: rusty chains, sharp hooks, and heavy branding irons, all reflecting an eerie, chilling light in the dim light.

Three prisoners were tied to a wooden frame and had been beaten beyond recognition.

Their flesh was turned inside out, their blood had congealed into scabs, and their foul-smelling excrement was stuck in their crotches, the odor indescribable.

"Ugh~~~"

Upon seeing this scene and smelling the pungent odor, Zhou Hongyi almost instantly couldn't bear the churning in his stomach and vomited while leaning against the wall with one hand.

The three policemen walking in front of him turned around, exchanged glances, and all wore mocking smiles.

"What's wrong, you high achiever? You can't handle this already? The real show hasn't even started yet."

“Young Master Zhou is a scholar, so it’s understandable that he can’t stand this. Why don’t you talk to the bureau chief and ask him to transfer you to an administrative position? Working in the archives would be fine too.”

"I just don't understand why someone with Mr. Zhou's background would want to suffer in the police station. Look at him, what's the point?"

The three policemen offered a few sarcastic "concerns," but in unison muttered "useless" under their breath.

Zhou Hongyi heard their murmurs, but he didn't have time to care now; he had his reasons for coming here.

Seven days have passed since Zhou Hongyi transmigrated to this parallel world of Shanghai. As the brother-in-law of the notorious traitor Ding Mocun, Zhou Hongyi refused the bank job his brother-in-law found for him and insisted on becoming an ordinary police officer at the police station.

The reason was simple: Zhou Hongyi, a time traveler, had awakened a check-in system, and the system showed that the first check-in point was the police station dungeon.

However, shortly after he took office, he encountered a police mission. He rushed into a coffee shop with the crowd and arrested all the customers inside.

After two days of torture and forced confessions, those suspects with connections were taken away through interrogation, while those without connections were tortured into confessing and sent to regular prisons.

There are now only three people left in the cell. These three are all tough nuts to crack. They only say that they don't know anything, that they are not anti-Japanese elements, or that they refuse to confess.

Zhou Hongyi finally found an opportunity and begged the police chief to let him participate in the interrogation, which allowed him to enter the police station's dungeon.

[Ding~ Successfully cleared the police station dungeon, activating the skill "Eye of Insight".]

[Insightful Eye: Increases vision, insight, analytical ability, and judgment. "Insightful Mode" can be activated once every 24 hours to view related entries about the person being observed. The duration of this ability gradually increases with proficiency in use.]

"Here it comes, my transmigrator perks!"

Zhou Hongyi blinked, and suddenly, each of the police officers and prisoners around him had some different entries appear above their heads.

These entries can reflect the real-time mood, profession, abilities, and even secrets of the person being observed.

There were three people standing in front of him at that moment, and three others were tied to instruments of torture.

The three people standing all share the same keyword: "Police".

The leading police officer was named Xu Guodong, the captain of the third team of the police station. Before joining the police station, he was a hoodlum.

The other two were officers in the same group, Wang Shun and Ye Kaicheng.

Zhou Hongyi then turned his gaze to the three bound prisoners, but what he saw shocked him greatly – these three were not ordinary people at all.

The identity displayed on the entry for the prisoner closest to him was none other than the "Captain of the Military Intelligence Bureau's Special Operations Team."

The second person, with their head bowed even lower, was even more outrageous; their identity was a "Special Higher Police Major."

When he saw the last one, Zhou Hongyi almost cried out in surprise.

"A Red Party liaison?!"

Unexpectedly, the remaining three people were all highly capable, none of them ordinary! Moreover, this Red Party liaison officer also indicated that he had an important mission yet to be completed.

"Oh no... what do we do? He's going to inform the enemy of the location and time of their encirclement. This is a serious matter; I have to find a way to rescue him..."

Zhou Hongyi hardly hesitated. After all, he was a good young man of the new era, born under the red flag and raised in the spring breeze, and he had to be firm in his stance.

“Young Master Zhou, if you’re not used to the environment here, go outside for some fresh air. Top students should be sitting in offices, why bother coming to the police station to suffer?”

Wang Shun walked over to Zhou Hongyi and whispered a reminder with a smile.

However, Zhou Hongyi couldn't leave now. He looked at Xu Guodong, who was walking towards the prisoner with a long whip in his hand, and shouted, "Stop! You won't get any results from this questioning. Are the interrogation methods in the police station still so outdated?"

"What did you say?"

Xu Guodong craned his neck to look at Zhou Hongyi, wondering if this new policeman had gone mad.

"When did it become your turn to speak? I..."

Xu Guodong was about to swing the whip, but his hand stopped in mid-air.

Yes, the director just spoke with him and specifically instructed him to take care of this newcomer.

After all, Zhou Hongyi was no ordinary newcomer. He was the brother-in-law of Director Ding of the 76th Division, a top student who graduated from West Point Military Academy, and even Colonel Shimazu of the Special Higher Police praised him as "a rare talent".

Captain Xu assessed the other party's identity and slowly lowered his hand, which had been raised halfway.

"I almost forgot that Mr. Zhou is a top student from West Point... So, may I ask, if not this way of questioning, then how should we question him?"

Xu Guodong forced a smile, his fleshy cheeks twitching so hard that Zhou Hongyi felt he was about to suffer internal injuries from holding it in.

“Captain Xu, using torture to deal with ordinary people might work, but we’re dealing with professionals from the Red Party and the Nationalist Party. As far as I know, these people have received special training and won’t just confess after you whip them a few more times.”

"Oh?" Xu Guodong was displeased and threw down the whip, saying, "Then I'd like to see how our high-achieving students who have returned from abroad will conduct their inquiries. Please, Young Master Zhou, give us a demonstration."

"Hmph~ No problem. Actually, I already reviewed their files before I came, and I already know who the real Communist Party members are. Now I'm just giving them a chance to confess..."

As Zhou Hongyi spoke, he walked up to the three prisoners, lingering a little longer on the face of the Kuomintang officer.

"Young Master Zhou has already reviewed the files of these three people? How come I didn't know?"

Xu Guodong was taken aback, because the bureau chief had assigned him this interrogation task, and no one had asked him to borrow the materials.

Zhou Hongyi adopted a mysterious expression and smiled, "What, do I need Captain Xu's permission to look at their information?"

"Uh, this..."

Xu Guodong was choked with anger, his eyelids bulging, and he really wanted to give Zhou Hongyi a good whipping right now.

"I've reviewed their files and gleaned the answers I needed from subtle clues in their daily lives: the real communists are..."

Zhou Hongyi raised his right hand and slowly moved it across the faces of the three prisoners. Finally, he stopped in front of the Special Higher Police major and said decisively:

"You are the real communist party member! Major Yoshida..."

"what?"

"what?"

"Major?"

When Zhou Hongyi came to this conclusion, everyone present was stunned.

The three policemen were dumbfounded because he called the other man "Major Yoshida".

The three prisoners were dumbfounded because of Zhou Hongyi's extraordinary performance.

"What...what did you say? I don't understand...!"

The Special Higher Police spy, whose identity was exposed in one sentence, was stunned. He had come in today with a mission: to stage a "ruse" to get close to the Red Party members and try to extract the intelligence they wanted to pass on.

Yoshida's mission was highly secretive, known only to a very few high-ranking members of the Special Higher Police, precisely to prevent the mission from being exposed if too many people knew about it. But this policeman in front of him... how did he know?

"Hmph~ You think you can fool everyone by pretending to be a Special Higher Police Major? Let me tell you, dream on! You can fool others, but you can't fool me! Or should I call you... Comrade Yoshida?"

“Nani???”