Although the Director's tone was calm, it greatly alarmed Huang Xianzheng. He knew very well how Xu Ancai had died. It was a task he had given to Wei Liangbi, who personally took action and eliminated him with ruthless methods. However, the case was handled flawlessly. So why did the Director suddenly bring it up today?
Huang Xianzheng said, "I've also heard about this matter, but didn't the Director ask Section Chief Bian to handle it? He drowned on his own. What does the Director mean by bringing this up again?"
The bureau chief then applied pressure, saying, "Zhongxin, you and I both know how Xu Ancai died. Changde is located on the only road from Changsha to Chongqing. This man was greedy and amassed wealth without restraint. Of course, he deserved to die."
It's just that Wei Liangbi was investigating a case of stolen military funds at the 57th Division nearby at the time. Isn't that a coincidence?
"It's just a coincidence! Director, you're overthinking it!" Huang Xianzheng naturally refused to admit it, as there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Wei Liangbi was behind it.
"Of course it's just a coincidence! Haha, Zhongxin, you're overthinking it!" The bureau chief laughed, then his expression turned serious. "I can pretend nothing happened. I don't care how big your smuggling network is, I won't ask for a single extra penny. As for how Xu Ancai died, I don't care either. He was just a good-for-nothing. All I want is for you, Zhongxin, to agree to let Zhiheng destroy these ten billion yuan. Everything will remain the same. What do you say?"
Huang Xianzheng felt a pang of bitterness in his heart. In the end, he was no match for this vicious wolf and was completely under its control.
"Director, it's not that I'm unwilling to agree, it's just that this mission is too dangerous. If something happens to Zhiheng, the Shanghai Intelligence Section will be in grave danger, and our losses will be enormous!" Huang Xianzheng tried one last time to change the director's mind.
"Don't worry, I've never seen anything that can stump Ning Zhiheng. I have complete confidence in him. Besides, this time it was out of necessity. I promise I will never let Zhiheng take such a risk again!"
Seeing that the situation was beyond repair, Huang Xianzheng finally said helplessly, "Alright, that's all we can do. We'll leave it to the Director to decide!"
Ning Zhiheng soon received a telegram from headquarters. The content was as he had expected: the task of destroying the legal tender had been assigned to him. Fortunately, he was prepared for this and was not surprised.
In fact, Ning Zhiheng had long had his own ideas about stopping the Japanese from printing legal tender. He felt that completing the mission did not necessarily require destroying the legal tender.
He only needs to delay the successful printing of the legal tender to thwart the Japanese plot.
The reason is simple: the legal tender circulating in the Nationalist-controlled areas was rapidly depreciating.
Two years earlier, on the eve of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the total amount of legal tender issued by the Nationalist government was only over 1.4 billion yuan, which was the period when the legal tender was at its strongest.
However, with the outbreak of war and Japan's full-scale invasion of China, in order to disrupt the rear economy of the Chinese Nationalist-controlled areas, the Japanese forcibly purchased legal tender with Japanese-issued military scrip in the Japanese-occupied areas, or smuggled goods to cash in legal tender, and then sent them to Shanghai to exchange for foreign exchange from Britain, the United States and other countries from banks established by the Chinese government.
This method of getting something for nothing caused the Chinese government to suffer a great loss. Finally, in 1940, just one year later, the Nationalist government abolished the unlimited foreign exchange trading, and the value of the legal tender began to plummet.
The value of the legal tender subsequently plummeted. By the time of the Liberation War, the amount of legal tender issued had reached over 600 trillion yuan, nearly 500,000 times that before the Anti-Japanese War. Prices rose 40 million times, and the legal tender system finally collapsed completely.
At that time, some paper mills profited by using low-denomination legal tender as raw materials for papermaking, which is the so-called "paper is worse than banknotes," and this was indeed true.
It is February 1939. The legal tender has already begun to depreciate sharply. For example, 100 yuan could buy two cows in 1937, but now it can only buy a pig at most. By next year, 1940, it will be worth at most a bag of flour. In 1942, it can barely buy a chicken. In 1945, it can buy two eggs. Finally, on the eve of liberation in 1949, it can't even buy a piece of paper.
The semi-finished legal tender seized by the Japanese this time consisted of ten-yuan denominations, which is still an astronomical sum by today's standards. It could barely be used to cripple the economy of the Nationalist-controlled areas. However, a year later, after the Chinese government issued large-denomination legal tender due to inflation, this billion yuan would at most be considered a huge sum, and its destructive power would be minimal.
Therefore, Ning Zhiheng's idea was not to take a big risk to destroy the legal tender. He only needed to postpone the printing time, preferably until next year. After the Chinese government abolished the foreign exchange trading system, even if the 1 billion legal tender was successfully printed, it would not have much effect when it was put into the Kuomintang-controlled areas.
There are many ways to postpone the printing of legal tender, and the simplest way is to destroy the engraving plates for the ten-yen legal tender denominations carved by the Japanese government.
It is important to know that making a woodblock is extremely difficult. It requires a master carver with extremely high carving skills to carve it bit by bit under a microscope. Any mistake can lead to irreparable damage to the entire woodblock, and the success rate is very low. Sometimes it takes nearly a year to complete a woodblock.
Therefore, Ning Zhiheng had his sights set on this woodblock from the very beginning. In ten days, He Siming would bring the Japanese master carver Kanda Tamayama to Shanghai, along with the woodblock that was almost finished.
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