On the eve of the fall of Liaodong, he led his troops in a remonstrance against the young marshal.

Luofengpo is not a mountain.

It is just a hilly area with slightly undulating terrain, with an elevation of only a few dozen meters, but because it is located in the middle of a plain, it appears particularly abrupt.

The highway winds through the hills, with open farmland and harvested cornfields on both sides, offering a wide view.

This terrain favors neither the attacker nor the defender, relying entirely on raw strength.

Chang Yuchun's vanguard, led by Li Wenzhong, consisted of a tank battalion with thirty T-34 tanks and an infantry regiment, and was advancing rapidly southward along the highway.

Tanks kicked up clouds of dust on the road, infantrymen ran alongside them, their bayonets gleaming coldly in the sunlight.

The advance scouts led the way on motorcycles, and everything seemed no different from usual.

Then, the scout at the front suddenly slammed on the brakes.

The motorcycle left a long skid mark on the dirt road and came to a stop at the bend in the highway.

The scout stared wide-eyed, and the signal flag in his hand fell to the ground.

Less than a kilometer ahead of him, a large swarm of gray military uniforms was surging northward across the gentle slopes of the hills.

The Japanese infantry at the front also stopped in their tracks. The two men, less than a kilometer apart, stared at each other, completely stunned.

Encounter.

Neither of them expected to meet the other at this time and place.

The Japanese army's marching column was too long, with the vanguard and the main force separated by several kilometers.

Kawagishi Bunzaburo was still in the middle of the column, and he had not yet received reports of encountering enemy troops ahead.

Li Wenzhong's vanguard consisted of only thirty tanks and an infantry regiment; the main force was still behind.

But Li Wenzhong reacted faster than anyone else.

When he heard the sound of a motorcycle screeching to a halt ahead and the scout's changed voice reporting, he made a judgment in just one second.

"Deploy into battle formation!"

He shouted into the shortwave radio:

"Tanks in front, infantry follow! Don't wait for the Japanese to deploy! Charge! Fight like mad!"

His judgment was extremely accurate.

The key to an encounter battle lies in who can deploy their battle formation first and who can launch the first attack.

The Japanese troops were on the march, their ranks stretched out in a long column, with the front and rear ranks separated by several kilometers, their flanks completely exposed.

If we don't fight now, when will we?

"clear!"

"BOOM BOOM BOOM!!"

The T-34 tank at the forefront opened fire first.

Orange-red flames spewed from the cannon muzzle, and the high-explosive shell traced a low trajectory, crashing into the very center of the Japanese marching column.

The explosion burst into flames amidst the gray crowd, and the shockwave blew away a dozen or so Japanese soldiers around them. Their bodies tumbled in the air before falling to the ground like rag dolls.

The once orderly marching column instantly erupted into chaos, with Japanese soldiers scattering in all directions. Officers frantically blew their whistles in an attempt to regroup, but the tanks had already surged forward.

Thirty T-34s were lined up in a wedge formation and rolled down the gentle slope.

The tracks kicked up clouds of mud and gravel, and the roar of the diesel engine made the ground tremble.

More than a thousand Northeast Army infantrymen followed behind the tank, carrying submachine guns and rifles, their bayonets gleaming coldly in the dust.

The vanguard of the Japanese troops was the 78th Regiment of the 20th Division. They were still in a long, single-file formation, and Li Wenzhong caught them off guard.

In the first three minutes after the skirmish began, they lost more than a third of their troops.

They didn't even have time to unfold it.

Although the effective range of the Type 38 rifle was not bad, when it hit the sloped armor of the T-34, it was like hitting a steel plate with a slingshot, leaving only a few shallow white spots.

The commander of the 78th Regiment, Kawada, was killed immediately.

He stood in the middle of the road, brandishing his saber, trying to organize a counterattack, when a 76mm high-explosive shell landed right at his feet, blowing him and the surrounding staff into pieces.

The regimental flag was torn into pieces by the shockwave and fell helplessly in the smoke.

But the Japanese did not collapse; the quality of Japanese soldiers at this time was very high.

After losing their commander, the remaining soldiers of the 78th Regiment quickly dispersed to the farmland on both sides of the road, where they stubbornly resisted by relying on the field ridges and irrigation canals.

They used light machine guns to strafe the Northeast Army infantry following behind the tanks and bombarded the tank tracks with grenade launchers. Although the effect was minimal, it at least slowed down the Northeast Army's advance.

Some desperate individuals even charged at the tanks with explosives, attempting to take them down with them.

Someone succeeded; the tracks of a T-34 were blown off, and it lay askew on the side of the road, unable to move.

But most of them were riddled with bullets by the coaxial machine gun or the rifles of the infantry behind them before they could even get close to the tank.

"Da da da da!"

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

The two sides engaged in a fierce battle at Luofengpo.

The sound of gunfire echoed over Luofengpo for a full five minutes before Kawagishi Bunzaburo received the report of an encounter with enemy troops at the front.

His command post was still in the middle of the formation, nearly five kilometers away from the point of engagement.

The communications soldier galloped up from the front on horseback, his hooves kicking up gravel from the roadside, his uniform covered in dust and mud, and his face flushed red.

"Commander! Enemy armored forces have been encountered ahead! The 78th Regiment is engaged in combat! Regiment Commander Kawada has... has already died for the Empire!"

Kawagishi Bunzaburo's pupils suddenly contracted.

He gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging, then he turned around and looked at the staff team behind him.

"Pass down the order! Full deployment! The 36th Brigade will flank from the right, and the 19th Division from the left! The sergeant will provide frontal support."

His voice was laced with suppressed anger. "Hold them off from the front, and flank them from the rear."

This was the Japanese army's most effective tactic: if they couldn't penetrate from the front, they would flank from the side.

The main force is used to tie down the enemy at the front, while the left and right flanks are used to outflank and encircle the enemy, penetrating deep into their rear to shake the morale of the frontline troops. Then, the enemy is surrounded from three sides and annihilated in one fell swoop.

This tactic proved effective time and again during the Russo-Japanese War.

The Japanese troops' flanks moved swiftly.

On the right flank, the 36th Brigade began to maneuver northeastward, attempting to bypass the hills of Luofengpo and penetrate Chang Yuchun's rear.

On the left flank, the 19th Division, under Mori Hisashi's command, also moved northwest, attempting to outflank the enemy from another direction.

But Chang Yuchun gave them no chance; he issued a death order to the troops on both flanks via radio:

"Hold on, no matter the cost, hold this position."

The left flank position was in a shallow ditch on the west side of Luofengpo.

The defense here is an infantry regiment, supported by twenty tanks.

The Japanese troops' first charge was repelled in front of this shallow ditch.

The Northeast Army's light and heavy machine guns swept the Japanese soldiers down in rows on the open ground, their bodies piling up less than fifty meters from the position.

But the Japanese soldiers did not retreat. After regrouping, they launched a second and a third attack.

They surged forward wave after wave, filling every inch of land in front of the ditch with their corpses.

The machine gunners of the Northeast Army were replaced batch after batch.

The gun barrel was fired until it was completely red-hot. The assistant gunner wrapped the barrel with a wet towel to cool it down, and the towel started hissing and emitting white smoke as soon as it touched the barrel.

The tanks kept firing, repelling wave after wave of the Japanese offensive.

The right-wing positions were located in a cornfield on the east side of Luofengpo.

The situation here is slightly better than on the left flank, as there are over thirty T-34 tanks defending the position, but the Japanese attack density is also higher.

The 20th Division's field artillery regiment finally set up its gun positions and began shelling the right flank positions.

The shells from the Type 92 infantry gun exploded in the cornfield, sending shrapnel flying everywhere and severing corn stalks into the air.

The foxholes of the Northeast Army were turned up one by one by artillery fire, and the wounded were dragged to the rear by stretcher teams, leaving long trails of blood on the ground.

On the main battlefield, Li Wenzhong's tank formation had already crippled the 78th Regiment.

The remaining Japanese infantry retreated to a small village on the south side of the highway, where they continued to resist from the houses.

Li Wenzhong was too lazy to fight them house by house, so he ordered the tanks to bombard them directly.

The vanguard, having received reinforcements, lined up 130 T-34s and fired a volley at the village.

The 76mm high-explosive bombs tore the mud-brick houses to rubble one by one, and the entire village was shrouded in smoke and dust from the explosion.

The battle lasted for more than an hour. Li Wenzhong made several breakthroughs, but the Japanese soldiers were like madmen, rushing forward recklessly with explosive packs and cluster grenades.

Even an iron torrent would find it difficult to advance against tens of thousands of fearless human bombs.

Within a radius of several kilometers of Luofengpo, smoke filled the air and corpses littered the ground.

Casualties on both sides are increasing rapidly.

Li Wenzhong had more than forty tanks, but they were destroyed by explosions or damaged and rendered ineffective.

But the Japanese suffered even greater casualties. The 78th Regiment was almost completely wiped out, the 77th Regiment lost more than half its strength, and the vanguard of the 19th Division also left behind mountains of corpses on the left flank.

Kawagishi Bunzaburo stood on a high ground at the rear, holding up binoculars to observe the battle situation ahead.

He gritted his teeth, staring intently at the smoke and fire that kept flashing muzzle flashes in front of him.

Although the casualties at the front were heavy, he dared not order a retreat.

Because he knew he was caught in the steel torrent.

In this situation, if an order to retreat is given, the formation will be disrupted, and tanks will catch up from behind and run over the enemy. That would not be a retreat, but a rout.

By then, all 80,000 people will have to perish here.

The only option now is to continue the offensive.

Flanking maneuvers are his trump card and his only tactic to turn the tide.

As long as one of the two flanks can break through the Northeast Army's defenses and penetrate into the rear, the situation on the main battlefield can be reversed.

He had already seen that the Northeast Army's left flank positions were shrinking and the forces on the right flank positions were becoming increasingly thin.

Give him two more hours, maybe just two hours, and he'll be able to tear a hole.

"Pass the order to Mori Hisashi!"

Without turning his head, he said to the communications soldier behind him, "Accelerate the attack on the left flank! Don't be afraid of casualties! This is the decisive moment..."

"Buzzing! Buzzing!"

Before he could finish speaking, a terrifying howl suddenly echoed from the sky.

Kawagishi Bunzaburo suddenly raised his head.

Fighter jets! A swarm of fighter jets!

Eighty-two P-51 Mustang fighter planes, arranged in three wedge formations, were the first to break through the clouds.

Following them were 120 bombers, their twin engines roaring like the bellows of ancient beasts, shaking the loose soil on the ground.

The bomb bay doors under the fuselage were all open, and rows of aerial bombs hung on the racks, their bodies reflecting a greasy sheen in the sunlight.

Zhu Wudi's Northeast Air Force finally arrived at the Fengcheng battlefield.