Espionage: Taking the Place of a Japanese Aristocrat, the Secret Police Bureau’s Tyrant

In 1939, Shanghai has become an isolated island. Lu Yuan is nothing but a low-ranking agent at a Military Statistics Bureau training school, always ready to risk his life as cannon fodder. Because he looks almost exactly like Fujiwara Ryuichi, a high-ranking Japanese aristocrat about to take up a post in Shanghai, the bureau’s leadership selects him for a “decoy double” operation that is all but certain to end in death. Their true aim is to have him deliver false intelligence, then let the Japanese brutally execute him, using his death to complete their scheme.

Yet on a bloody, rain-soaked night of ambush, Lu Yuan’s fingertips brush against a corpse that is still warm. In that instant, he acquires all of Fujiwara Ryuichi’s memories, his impeccable Tokyo aristocratic accent, and his mastery of Iaido.

From that day on, the Military Statistics Bureau loses a disposable agent sent to die, while the Special Higher Police gains a violent, tyrannical aristocratic officer. In the name of “purging the Empire’s parasites,” he openly executes the collaborator ringleaders at 76; under the pretext of investigating a case, he brazenly commits the Mei Agency’s top-secret cipher book to memory. As the bureau’s leadership waits with a sneer for news that Lu Chen has been exposed and killed, they discover to their horror that the pawn they once cast aside has become the “Tyrant of the Spy World” of Shanghai, a man even Japanese generals must greet with their heads bowed.