“Hi, hello there! Can’t you show a little gentlemanly courtesy and invite a lady to join you for breakfast?” Mu Lin, who was having breakfast, froze at the sound of this familiar voice.
“No way! So early in the morning? Isn’t this golden bird usually still asleep at this hour?” Mu Lin thought to himself. After all, they had chatted very late into last night, so he had assumed this golden bird might not even wake up this morning.
“Of course! I’m more than happy to welcome you!” Mu Lin replied, while signaling to a waiter and inviting Louise to order her own breakfast.
After breakfast, Mu Lin hired Louise to tour Xijing. He thought that having someone familiar with the area, yet possessing an outsider’s unique perspective, would help him become acquainted with the surroundings more quickly. Had he hired a local instead, they might have become suspicious of some of his questions from the previous day and reported him, thus exposing his whereabouts—an outcome he wanted to avoid.
With Louise, who knew the city inside out, as his guide, Mu Lin quickly became familiar with the city’s main streets and the areas one shouldn’t casually wander into. Moreover, having this golden-haired girl accompany him helped him blend in better in a city where the sex trade was quite common, making him, a foreigner, appear less conspicuous in hotels.
“Hello, may I enter the archives here and borrow some historical documents?” Mu Lin asked the librarian at Xijing’s largest national library.
“Oh, sorry, may I ask if you have any credentials that allow you access? Otherwise, I’m afraid it’s not possible,” the librarian replied.
“You see, I’m actually a Japanese citizen born and raised in the U.S. Recently, after returning home for a visit, I was inspired by the beautiful scenery here and wanted to learn more about my nation’s history. Here’s my passport. Please allow me this privilege!” Mu Lin said earnestly, handing over his passport. At this moment, he was still using his forged U.S. identity.
“Oh, I see. These days, few young people in our country are interested in learning about their own cultural heritage. And yet you, coming from overseas, still care so much. Alright then, I’ll grant your request!” the librarian said with a sigh.
Mu Lin immersed himself in the Xijing Library, doing the same thing for seven consecutive days. Even Louise, who had developed a fondness for him, couldn’t understand why he was so absorbed. When she asked him what he was doing, he told her he was researching his nation’s and family’s history. Eventually, after seeing him genuinely flipping through piles of old newspapers and documents, she believed him and stopped interrupting.
Indeed, Mu Lin was researching history, but not the kind most people would expect. He was pouring over old newspapers and major historical event records, focusing especially on social news. The library staff, seeing this overseas visitor so passionately studying his nation’s history in this day and age, were deeply moved. They even made exceptions to provide him with some research-only materials, enabling him to conduct a more comprehensive study. Mu Lin, understanding the importance of maintaining good relations, treated several staff members to meals, and his humble attitude further endeared him to them. To help him avoid unnecessary detours, they even issued him a certificate identifying him as a library researcher studying population migration history, granting him permission to access the Ministry of Justice’s household registration archives for further research.
When Mu Lin felt he had exhausted the library’s resources, he left with the provided credentials and headed to the Ministry of Justice’s household registration archives to continue his ethnic history research. After three days of study, he thanked the staff there, saying he had received the best assistance and finally obtained the information he most desired.
Back at the hotel, Mu Lin began organizing the fruits of his ten-day research. In reality, he was using historical records to study Japan’s economic development trajectory, as well as the history and distribution of the yakuza (gangsters) in Xijing and throughout Japan. Because Japan had not experienced any major wars in the past century, the records were relatively complete. By studying reports of gang conflicts and related events in newspaper archives, he was able to roughly trace how smaller gangs and families had evolved into powerful yakuza bosses and then gradually transitioned into business tycoons.
Thanks to his extraordinary memory, he could remember most of what he needed after just one reading, eliminating the need for notes. Precisely because of this, he didn’t raise suspicion among the staff, who believed him to be a sincere overseas visitor wanting to learn about his nation’s development history, thus allowing him to receive significant assistance.
After three days of staying indoors to organize his findings, Mu Lin had basically mapped out the relationships among various families in the region, although he still couldn’t initially assess their financial status. However, since most of these large enterprises were publicly listed companies, Mu Lin requested Krill to start gathering information for him in the U.S., preparing for his next move.
When Krill’s information finally arrived, Mu Lin couldn’t help but laugh at his own earlier naivety and felt relieved that his actions in Kyushu hadn’t exposed him. Through his more than ten days of investigation, he now understood that beneath the guise of “freedom” and “democracy,” Japan’s major yakuza families had already taken control of the entire country.
Initially, some large families colluded with yakuza to create new criminal organizations. After World War II, with the development of capitalist economies, they rapidly accumulated wealth through illegal means, quickly dominating the market. With these funds, they easily outpaced smaller businesses, monopolizing the market and becoming powerful economic families. Then, through bribery and the use of proxies, their businesses rapidly became market monopolies and political powerhouses. They used these funds to support smaller yakuza families below them, strengthening their own forces. One could say that the nation’s politics and economy were entirely controlled by these yakuza families and the financial oligarchs they had fostered.
Understanding this, Mu Lin now realized why they repeatedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine, continuously revised history textbooks, and repeatedly provoked anti-Chinese incidents.
The three families he had already confronted in Kyushu were merely frontmen placed in the open. Once they discovered his identity, he and his family would face relentless pursuit and attacks from this entire rogue nation. Therefore, it now made sense that when his clinic in the U.S. had been attacked by Japanese gangsters, they could dispatch a large team of medical experts—that was a state-sponsored operation.
Knowing the truth, Mu Lin was certainly unwilling to swallow this injustice quietly. However, merely retaliating against those visible pawns would only alert them and allow these rogues to retaliate openly against him again. He pondered various methods of revenge, thinking up one after another, only to reject them all in the end.
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