Miyazaki Toten had long known that by choosing to join the People's Party, he would become a so-called "Japanese traitor." In fact, he didn't even need to imagine it himself; Chen Ke had explicitly explained this to him much earlier. However, Miyazaki Toten didn't care. In his view, joining the People's Party was the only way to save Japan, so the infamy didn't cause him any anxiety or fear.

Chen Ke, on the other hand, made a request of the Japanese members of the People's Party, hoping these comrades would use their social connections in Japan to do their utmost to prevent Japan from intervening in the Chinese Civil War. Miyazaki Toten and other Japanese members first got involved in the propaganda work directed at the captured Japanese soldiers. Not only that, but they also suggested to Chen Ke that they contact the remaining socialists and socialist sympathizers within Japan, to influence the direction of Japanese politics as much as possible through them.

Miyazaki Toten volunteered to write letters to some "upper-class progressive figures" in Japan, attempting to influence Japanese politics through them. What surprised Miyazaki Toten was that Chen Ke wasn't very enthusiastic about this, and even asked Miyazaki Toten and other Japanese comrades to cooperate with the People's Internal Security Commission on this matter. The People's Internal Security Commission was responsible for suppressing counter-revolutionaries. Miyazaki Toten couldn't quite accept this arrangement; he felt that even though they were letters of persuasion, they contained many personal matters. The intervention of the People's Internal Security Commission felt like a questioning of the Japanese comrades' trustworthiness to some extent.

The Japanese liked to play dirty, while the People's Party's organizational discipline strictly opposed such petty maneuvers. Since the People's Internal Security Commission's intervention was completely open, Miyazaki Toten and the others couldn't really say much. After the Party meeting, Miyazaki Toten simply held a meeting with the Japanese comrades involved in the matter.

After listening to Miyazaki Toten's doubts, Heidao Ren bluntly expressed his opposition. "Comrade Miyazaki, I actually firmly support the intervention of the People's Internal Security Commission. Having a clear conscience needs to be proven with facts; just saying it with your mouth is too easy. With the comrades from the People's Internal Security Commission involved, we get that proof. Chairman Chen often seems unreasonable in his actions, but he is actually the one who pays the most attention to reducing trouble for everyone."

Miyazaki Toten didn't quite agree. "Comrade Heidao, do you mean there are comrades within the People's Party who don't approve of us?"

Before Heidao Ren could speak, Meichuan Shangyi burst out laughing. "Comrade Miyazaki, our People's Party's policies are effective and highly targeted. Logically, the masses should firmly support us, right? In reality, the masses do follow us for their own interests, but as for this evaluation and approval...! We can only say we've done our best."

After Meichuan Shangyi finished, Heidao Ren took over. "Comrade Miyazaki, it's not that Chairman Chen doesn't trust us. I actually think Chairman Chen trusts us implicitly. It's precisely because he trusts us that he wants to do his utmost to avoid trouble for us. Let me just ask you one question: how much use do you think these letters will actually be?"

Miyazaki Toten answered quite honestly, "The usefulness should be very limited."

Heidao Ren laughed. "Then isn't that it? Since writing letters is unlikely to have immediate results, but Japan attacking us is extremely likely to happen immediately... If there were no comrades from the People's Internal Security Commission involved in this, and someone insisted on linking these two things together, how would you explain it then? Whether we have a clear conscience is one thing; whether we can make everyone believe us is another. This has to be guaranteed by the system."

These words implied that the People's Party would never lightly trust anyone, which made Miyazaki Toten feel uncomfortable the more he thought about it. However, Miyazaki Toten had also been in the underworld and had been cheated many times, so he naturally wasn't naive enough to believe that human hearts were extremely simple. So, since Heidao Ren had emphasized that this was Chen Ke's concern for the comrades, and the other Japanese comrades also expressed they didn't mind, Miyazaki Toten didn't raise any further objections.

After writing the letters, Miyazaki Toten thought he would get some response. The result disappointed him. The People's Party naturally wouldn't risk having comrades arrested to contact a few big shots. And those previously unknown socialists had all left their hometowns and couldn't be contacted for a while. Miyazaki Toten wasn't one to give up easily; he immediately applied to Chen Ke to go to Korea to contact Korean patriots. This time, Chen Ke bluntly expressed his opposition. "Comrade Miyazaki, the war is about to start immediately. We need to throw all our strength into the war, so we cannot accept any side issues for the time being."

"Does Chairman Chen not have any plans to liberate Korea?" Miyazaki Toten asked.

"Of course I have that plan, so precisely in the near future, we cannot give the Japanese authorities any provocation," Chen Ke replied.

"Then what does Chairman Chen plan to do in the near future?" Miyazaki Toten was quite puzzled by Chen Ke's choice.

"In the near future, we are going to kick the British out of the Yangtze River." Chen Ke gave Miyazaki Toten a straightforward answer. Hearing this goal, Miyazaki Toten's eyes lit up immediately. The People's Party had been shouting for months about kicking the British out of China's Yangtze River. Shouting was one thing, but there had been absolutely no actual action. Miyazaki Toten hadn't expected the People's Party to start acting now.

Chen Ke continued, "We need to put all the Japanese in Wuhan under supervision. This requires Comrade Miyazaki's participation."

"I resolutely obey orders!" Miyazaki Toten replied immediately.

On June 4th, the People's Party Navy sent a certain number of small boats onto the river starting early in the morning. Each boat was piled with a heap of mine-shaped objects. The soldiers on the boats threw the mines into the water. These black, hedgehog-like objects, covered with dozens of trigger rods, began to drift with the river current. To demonstrate their power, the British fleet sailed to the vicinity of Wuhan. On June 2nd, they had received a notification from the People's Party stating that the People's Party was going to conduct a military exercise and required British warships to leave the Yangtze. The People's Party had been shouting these kinds of demands for a while, and the British really hadn't taken it seriously. It wasn't until the lookouts discovered a group of suspected mines drifting vaguely down the slightly misty river in the early morning that ear-piercing alarms immediately sounded on the British warships.

Although the Yangtze waterway was wide, it was not the open sea where British warships could sail at will, and the British had no way to utilize the advantage of their artillery range. The People's Party's defect was that they didn't have large-caliber artillery capable of destroying British warships, which was the reason the British warships dared to ignore the People's Party's warnings and insist on staying in Wuhan. Once an artillery battle started, the People's Party's largest caliber 75mm guns could not penetrate the armor of the British warships no matter what.

But this was just an artillery battle; mines were different. A single mine could be packed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives. If a warship hit one, it could lose its combat effectiveness or even sink. The People's Party had indeed notified the British that they were going to "act," and it wasn't as if the People's Party hadn't performed mine-laying shows on the river before. It was just that the British Navy was indeed plucking up its courage to tough it out; they believed that before the civil war started, the People's Party wouldn't have the guts to make the first move against the British.

No matter how sure they were of their warship armor, no matter how sure they were that the People's Party wouldn't dare to use force against the British Empire without authorization, British naval personnel would never feel comfortable seeing suspected mine objects in their hearts. The fleet commander also refused to be frightened away for nothing here. Since the People's Party had issued a challenge to the British, the British Navy bravely accepted this challenge. Using the main guns was naturally out of the question, so the fleet commander immediately issued the order, "Use the rapid-fire secondary guns to shoot at the mines on the river surface!"

The signalman threw himself at the voice tube and began relaying orders to the secondary gun positions. Moments later, the British Navy displayed their refined military skills. Amidst a series of cannon fire, white waves thrown high by exploding shells erupted near the mines on the river surface. Not only the flagship, but the secondary guns on other warships in the fleet also quickly joined the shooting chorus.

The British Navy was experienced. After the mines were hit by shells, they sank quickly, and no large amount of wood debris floated up in the river water. This allowed the British Navy to quickly discover that these simulated mines were not made of wood. However, the quantity of the People's Party's mines was huge, coming down continuously with the river current. But the quantity of the British Navy's shells was limited. Even though the caliber of the secondary gun shells wasn't large, the quantity carried on a warship wouldn't be too many. At the beginning, every time a "mine" was sunk, the British naval gunners would cheer, but after firing for a while, the cheers gradually disappeared.

"Stop shelling. Warships are to maneuver to avoid the mines." The British fleet commander issued a new order. Since it was impossible to solve all the mines with shelling, they would show off the British Navy's ship-handling skills. In the initial stage, because they had sunk quite a few "mines," the British warships' avoidance was still easy. However, after the next wave of minefields arrived, the British Navy's Yangtze Fleet finally heard the "clang-clang" sounds of "mines" hitting the warship hulls. The sound wasn't loud, but it meant that if the "mines" were real, the British warship hulls would have been accompanied by violent explosions and gaping holes.

The impact sounds became more and more frequent. Finally, the British warships faced a problem: should they counterattack or not? If they didn't counterattack, it meant the People's Party's provocation had achieved its goal. They had already "sunk" the British warships in this "exercise." If they counterattacked, then the flames of war would definitely expand rapidly. In the end, the fleet commander could only remain silent.

The next day, Miyazaki Toten was leading troops into the concession to "invite Japanese merchants." In the consecutive four or five days, People's Party troops entered the concession for large-scale activities. The first thing they did was seal the gates of all the police stations in the concession, and the People's Party troops immediately took over all public security patrol work in the concession.

The only real resistance appeared when the People's Party ordered the police to disarm. At the beginning, the courage of the foreign police was limited to shouting. Facing the dark muzzles of guns, these guys who dared to shout at first quickly lowered their voices. However, when ordered to disarm, there were actually a few guys with backbone who resolutely objected.