NABC Chapter 27 Training Course Leader Wu Meng
Chapter 27 Training Course Leader Wu Meng
Wu Meng was a burly and robust man, as solid as a small mountain. He had a large, round head with thick, stiff hair that stood upright. He had thick eyebrows and large eyes, which, though not large, revealed a simple and honest nature. Beneath his bulbous nose, his thick lips were always slightly parted.
He often wore a dark-colored, coarse cloth Zhongshan suit, the clothes stretched taut by his robust physique, the cuffs and collar slightly frayed from daily wear. He wore a pair of black cloth shoes, and walked with a powerful stride.
At this moment, Wu Meng drove, and Yan Shuo sat in the back seat. The two arrived at the largest hidden warehouse in Ximei, Huajie Mountain Area. This was the place where Yan Shuo planned to train new agents. Yan Shuo brought Wu Meng to familiarize himself with the road and the entrance.
Wu Meng is simple-minded and not highly educated, but he is extremely loyal, similar to Xu Chu and Dian Wei from the Three Kingdoms period. Yan Shuo likes him very much and has given him several tasks, which he has completed quite well. Yan Shuo plans to take him in as his first direct subordinate and entrust him with the management of the training center, a secret place, to see what he can do.
This is a mountainous area, with dense forests, towering mountains, and small rivers. It is a place rarely visited by people. Every time a large vehicle enters this area, someone needs to patrol the road ahead and fill in any potholes. So Lucas chose this place as the largest warehouse and put the heaviest goods here. Not valuable, but extremely heavy: steel pipes, cannon barrels, vehicle bases, bearing steel, and all sorts of other miscellaneous things. Whatever is heavy, that's what's stored here.
The bandits and Liang Shangjun had also been here. Yan Shuo had found several traces of them and told Lucas. Lucas laughed and said, "Come on, let them see how much they can take. They're all worthless lumps of iron. Move them! You stupid bastards."
Well, Yan Shuo is impressed by Lucas's thought process and praises him!
For items weighing nearly a ton, such as iron parts, cars can't get in, and there's no specialized lifting equipment. Indeed, no one can easily steal the supplies here. As for the lifting equipment, Lucas keeps it in his warehouse in the French Concession. It's only moved out and transported to the warehouse when there's a need to unload or ship goods. Impressive!
It's basically like a modern forklift, capable of lifting a weight of about a ton. Looking at that equipment, it probably wouldn't even lift a ton, but in this day and age, it's a damn good thing.
"Boss! What are we doing here?" Wu Meng got out of the car, opened the car door for Yan Shuo, put his hand on the top of the door, and after Yan Shuo got out, he closed the door and stood next to Yan Shuo.
Yan Shuo didn't answer. He took out a pack of cigarettes, smoked one for himself, and gave the rest to Wu Meng. After lighting it, he started walking around. Along the way, he encountered several familiar workers, who were all guards left behind. They had no guns and no martial arts skills. To put it bluntly, they were the gatekeepers that Lucas had hired.
Yan Shuo greeted them as he continued his inspection. Once he was a safe distance from the workers, he stopped and surveyed the surrounding landscape. Only then did he speak to Wu Meng, saying, "Look at the terrain and environment here. Do you think it's safe to hide 100 people here?"
"Huh!... Tibetans? Here?" Wu Meng asked in surprise.
"Um!"
"This place could easily hide 1 people. If food and lodging aren't a problem, it could easily hide several hundred." Wu Meng looked around. The terrain was undulating, with forests and deep mountains everywhere. The path they had just taken had been winding and turning left and right. Goodness, this was a great place to hide people.
"Our Shanghai station has been wiped out several times, and it's difficult to replenish our manpower. I'm planning to set aside some space here and secretly arrange for our people to be stationed here. They'll all be new recruits from the local area, and all the paperwork will be ready, which will save us a lot of trouble. They can be trained in six months, and then we can put them to use directly. What do you think?" Yan Shuo asked.
"That's a good thing! But if it gets leaked, all our hard work will have been for nothing." Wu Meng was still a little worried and scratched his head as he spoke.
"There's no such thing as absolute safety, but all the new recruits I've found have been thoroughly vetted, and the probability of them becoming traitors is extremely low. Unless they're arrested and tortured, and they can't withstand the torture, then there's nothing we can do. But we'll train one batch, and then move the next batch to a different place."
"Then there's no problem." Upon hearing that only a group of people would be trained before the location was changed, Wu Meng immediately had no objections.
"From now on, this place will be under your responsibility. Zheng Fei, Li Gang, and Wang An from the Black Blade Team, along with Su Yan, Liu Yan, He Qiao, and Gu Han, will each be responsible for perimeter security and early warning. You will also train the trainees in professional skills: physical fitness, sniping, pistol shooting, throwing, demolition, tracking, relaying, communication, interpersonal skills, social etiquette, accounting, cryptography, combat, sentry duty, assassination, setting up covert operations, cleaning, logistics, and so on. Train them according to their strengths, specializing in different areas. I'll give you six months to train about 100 people. Can you do that?" Yan Shuo stared into Wu Meng's eyes, stating his thoughts and arrangements.
"More than 100 people? Just the food and lodging alone is a huge problem!" Wu Meng was simple-minded, but not stupid. A few people were fine, but more than 100 people would consume a huge amount of food in one meal. Just the meat and vegetables alone would be a lot, and there would definitely be a lot of garbage. Anyone could tell there was something wrong with the supplies coming in and out. How could they keep it a secret?
"Come on!" Yan Shuo led Wu Meng to a small water cave behind the foot of the mountain and went inside. He had wandered around here several times and discovered quite a few caves, including stalactite caves, with interior spaces of varying sizes and winding paths. The one Yan Shuo chose wasn't the largest, but it was the most convoluted, with several forks in the road. Yan Shuo showed Wu Meng the markings for identifying the route, which were all quite subtle, but as long as he knew how to identify them, finding the way wouldn't be difficult. Wu Meng quickly understood and memorized them.
Arriving at a large, hollowed-out area, the temperature was around -5 degrees Celsius. The river was barely audible, fish occasionally leaped, and the air was fresh with a hint of sweetness.
Wu Meng stared in amazement at the fish in the river. Despite the low temperature, the river hadn't frozen, and fish were still swimming around – it was truly a strange place.
"How's it going? The air here is cold, so we've put in a lot of vegetables and meat, and even live fish that we can eat. Can we guarantee our food supply? In such a cold place, vegetables won't spoil even after half a month to a month, and meat won't spoil even after a month; it'll just freeze. There's a hot spring under the river, which keeps the water temperature around 10 degrees Celsius. The fish live here and only swim out in the summer. So, you shouldn't have any problem with your daily meat supply, right? I'll come once or twice a month to replenish your food and vegetables, and that solves the supply problem." Yan Shuo introduced the place with a smile.
"Then there's no problem! The rest are supplies like ammunition, guns, and explosives. We still have some, but if we have a hundred or so people training, it will be noisy. In such deep mountains and forests, there are definitely hunters, woodcutters, fishermen, herb gatherers, and other people around. That's a problem."
"No problem. I'll procure enough training rounds for you. They won't hurt when they hit you, they won't cause any real damage, they'll only leave a mark, and the sound will be one-tenth the sound of real ammunition, similar to the sound of our conversation right now. Just try not to shout slogans during your daily running and training."