The Shanghai Concession in 1939 was full of undercurrents.
When Shen Yan, the backbone of modern criminal investigation, opened his eyes, he turned out to be a fringe archivist of Wang Puppet's No. 76 Detective Division - an unlucky guy who was about to be executed for "incompetence in doing things."
In order to protect himself, he relied on his "detail recall" ability to uncover the mole from the ink traces of an encrypted telegram, and unexpectedly gained the attention of Wang Manchun, the director of Section 76.
From then on, Shen Yan put on the cloak of "mediocre" and worked step by step on No. 76 Surrounded by wolves:
He used fibers from the dead man's fingernails to target Japanese spies, used file tampering to stir up internal strife among the Japanese and puppets, relied on false intelligence to defraud the Kwantung Army's defense plans, and secretly converted smuggling profits into underground party funds.
He dealt with the killers of the military command, the Japanese Special High School, and the underground party. He was not only the "right-hand assistant" in Wang Manchun's eyes, but also the "ghost" that the Japanese army feared, and the "hidden blade" that guarded the country in the dark.
When his identity is about to be exposed, and when his comrades sacrifice heroically, Shen Yan finally understands: the so-called agents are just fireflies burning themselves out in the darkness to pave the way for dawn.
And his battlefield is never just a hail of bullets, but also a game of hearts and minds.
