Catherine and Martin's foreign nationality played a role at this time, and the surveillance personnel assigned by the military commander followed Martin and their car all the way to Guangzhou Road, and saw the pair of foreign men and women driving into the courtyard in front of them. "Comptoirs in the United States? What is it doing? The identification reports of Catherine and Martin soon appeared in front of Dai Li, and to Dai Li's eyebrows, the two foreigners in the report were employees of the comptoir.

After learning that Catherine was an American and Martin was German, Dai Li felt a little relieved, as long as he was not a Soviet, because the Soviet Union meant the Chinese Communist Party in Dai Li's heart. The trading house was just a cover that Qin Feng thought of in order to cover up his arrangements, but the people in the military command checked the trading house thoroughly inside and out, but found nothing. "No, there must be something in this that we don't know." Relying on his own hunch and many years of experience in intelligence work, Dai Li asserted that this firm had a great background.

Unlike other foreign merchants' firms in China, almost all of the employees were foreigners, and in the courtyard where they were rented, military surveillance officers found three Chinese, two large and three small. Why are there three Chinese living with these foreigners, and the three Chinese found by the military command are strictly considered minors, and the little girl looks like she is four or five years old at most.

Dai Li's interest in this business house became more and more interesting, if it weren't for the American flag planted on the small western-style building in the courtyard, maybe Dai Li would have arranged his action team to break in and find out. The sneaky military commanders outside the courtyard did not escape Qin Feng's eyes, in Qin Feng's eyes, the military commanders of this era were not as powerful as the national security in later generations, and with Smith and them, Qin Feng believed that the people of the military commanders would not dare to rashly come to the door to find trouble.

The military unification directly traced down to the head of the trading bank, and all the clues were broken, but in all the reports of the military unification about the trading house, there was no clue that the trading house was related to those leaflets. Qin Feng, who was confident that he had not left a fatal flaw, simply nested in his residence and did not go out again, and the things that needed to be done were only handed over to Martin and them, and the military commander did not dare to come to the door to find trouble, and Qin Feng did not go out, so the progress of the military commander's investigation was put on hold.

On December 1, the Japanese army captured the Jiangyin fortress, and at the request of Matsui Ishine, the Japanese General Staff Headquarters issued the Continental Order No. 8: "The commander of the Central China Front must coordinate with the navy to capture Nanjing, the capital of the enemy country." Subsequently, the Japanese army occupied Zhenjiang, Jurong, Lishui and other places, and broke through the periphery of Nanjing and the defensive positions of Fukuo, and the troops approached the city wall of Nanjing, and Chiang Kai-shek immediately appointed Tang Shengzhi as the commander of the Nanjing garrison, commanding the 81,000 national army to resist the operation.

On December 4, 40 miles east of Jurong, a Japanese plainclothes reconnaissance team engaged in a brief exchange of fire with the outpost of the Nationalist army, and the peripheral battle of the Nanjing operation began. On December 5, the Japanese army engaged the 66th Army of the Nationalist Army, and on December 7, the Japanese army approached the city of Nanjing. Matsui Ishine sent a plane from the air to send a letter to Tang Shengzhi to persuade him to surrender. Tang Shengzhi ignored it and continued to order all troops to "do their best to hold on with the determination to live and die with the position, and never allow an inch of land to be abandoned." ”

The Japanese army's three-way offensive was like a bamboo, and the strategic points on the periphery of Nanjing fell one after another. Soon the Japanese broke through the first-line defensive positions on the outskirts of Nanjing. On December 9, the Japanese army entered the city of Nanjing, and used planes to throw an ultimatum from the commander of the Japanese "Central China Front" Matsui Ishine to the Chinese defenders to persuade them to surrender. Tang Shengzhi, commander of the Nanjing garrison, ignored Matsui's ultimatum and issued an order on the same day as "Wei Shen Zuo Zi No. 36" in reply. Trying to fight to the death in the spirit of "breaking the kettle and sinking the boat".

The purpose of the Japanese army's leaflets was to cause panic among the people in the city, and it was not only the defenders who saw these leaflets, but also the civilians who insisted on staying in the city. "Gentlemen, the Japanese army is about to storm the city, and out of humanitarianism, I think it's time." In the residence at No. 1 Little Pink Bridge, more than a dozen Westerners are gathering, and it is Martin who is speaking at this moment.

"Gentlemen, the war is cruel, but the Chinese civilians in the city are innocent. I would like to set up my current residence as a shelter for Chinese civilians who have been injured or lost their homes in the fighting. Martin's proposal was met with everyone's approval, and Smith, who was fishing in troubled waters, and Smith, who was beating the side drum, proposed to simply establish a safety zone on Canton Road and use the German flag as a warning to the Japanese army.

On December 10, seeing that the Chinese troops defending the city refused to surrender, the Japanese army immediately mobilized heavy troops to launch a full-scale attack on Yuhuatai, Tongjimen, Guanghuamen, and the third peak of Purple Mountain, and the battle was more fierce than on the 9th. In particular, in the southeast of Nanjing, the situation was particularly grim because the re-established positions had been basically lost and the Japanese army directly attacked the city walls. The garrison headquarters urgently ordered the 156th Division of the 83rd Army to reinforce the garrison of Guanghuamen and Tongjimen city walls, and hurriedly built preparatory fortifications for street battles at various points in the city.

The 103rd and 112th Divisions, which had just been withdrawn from Zhenjiang into Nanjing, were commanded by Gui Yongqing, the commander of the Teaching Corps, and were responsible for the garrison of the city wall near Zhongshan Gate and the Purple Mountain position. That night, the 156th Division sent a small detachment to fall down the city and annihilated all the few Japanese troops lurking in the city gate. On the Yuhuatai side, the main forces of the two divisions of the Japanese army coordinated with the infantry, artillery, tanks and aviation to attack, destroying all the first-line positions on the right flank of the 88th Division of the Nationalist Army, and the remnants could only retreat to the second-line positions.

That night, the Japanese 18th Division occupied Wuhu, and on the 11th, the Japanese 16th Division stormed the positions of the Chinese army north and south of the Purple Mountain. Purple Mountain and the area south of it, the teaching corps resolutely resisted. After a fierce battle, the Japanese army made no progress, but its right flank troops captured the positions of Yangfang Mountain and Yinkong Mountain defended by the 2nd Army Corps, and advanced to the vicinity of Yaohua Gate. In order to make it easy for the 16th Division to attack and cut off the defenders' eastward retreat in a timely manner, the "Shanghai Dispatch Army" transferred the Yamada detachment from the 13th Division, which was waiting for ships to cross the river in Zhenjiang, and joined the battle from the right flank of the 16th Division to attack the Wulongshan and Shogunate Mountain forts.

The main forces of the 114th Division and the 6th Division of the Japanese 10th Army continued to attack Yuhuatai. The second line of positions of the 88th Division was again destroyed, and the defenders were forced to hold on to the core positions. The right flank of the Japanese 114th Division began to attack the Zhonghua Gate, and the city gate was destroyed by artillery fire. A small number of Japanese troops once broke into the city, but were annihilated by the troops of the 88th Division defending the city walls. A part of the left flank of the Japanese 6th Division advanced north along the east bank of the Yangtze River, repelled a battalion of the 2nd Military Police Teaching Regiment at Shangxinhe, and occupied the cotton embankment position outside the Shuixi Gate. The Japanese Kunizaki detachment crossed the Yangtze River near Cihu Lake in Dangtu Bei, marched north along the west bank, and moved towards Pukou. The 18th Division of the Japanese Army, which occupied Wuhu, was no longer involved in the attack on Nanjing because it was transferred to Hangzhou.