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

Outside Fengtian City, smoke and fire filled the air.

The vanguard of the 4th Regiment had already crossed the Hun River. The morning light peeked through the gaps in the clouds in the east, shining on the river and turning it into a dark red ribbon of blood.

Colonel Kenji Suzuki, the regimental commander, stood on a high ground on the north bank of the Hun River, holding up his binoculars with both hands, the outline of Fengtian City reflected in the lenses.

The city appeared particularly majestic in the morning light. The gray-blue city walls were about ten meters high, and behind the battlements, there were many shadowy heads. Gun barrels protruded from the crenellations, densely packed like the spines of a hedgehog.

"Colonel!"

Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Minoru Onodera ran up from the foot of the mountain, his military boots making a rapid clattering sound on the gravel, clutching a telegram in his hand.

"Urgent telegram from headquarters! His Excellency Itagaki has ordered my unit to launch an immediate general offensive against Fengtian!"

"The 29th Regiment has departed from Liaoyang and is expected to arrive in two hours!"

Kenji Suzuki put down his binoculars, his face expressionless.

two hours.

He couldn't wait two hours.

News of the Beidaying incident had spread throughout the entire Kwantung Army.

Captain Kawashima's 4th Company, a total of 180 men, was completely wiped out in the sorghum field; not a single one escaped.

The face of the Imperial Army and the Kwantung Army was trampled and crushed overnight by the Northeast Army.

This shame must be washed away with blood.

"Pass on the order."

Kenji Suzuki snapped his binoculars shut and tucked them into his leather pouch. "Artillery battalion, deploy immediately. Target: East Gate of Fengtian City."

"The 1st Infantry Battalion will attack from the front, the 2nd Battalion will flank from the right, and the 3rd Battalion will serve as a reserve."

He paused, turned around, and his gaze swept across the chief of staff's face, then over the several battalion commanders standing behind him, finally settling on the dark mass of soldiers at the foot of the mountain.

Three thousand eight hundred imperial soldiers stood silently on the frozen ground on the north bank of the Hun River, their bayonets gleaming coldly in the morning light.

"Tell them."

Kenji Suzuki's voice was impassioned: "Fengtian City must be taken today."

"yes!"

After the order was passed down, the entire 4th Regiment began to operate at high speed, like a sophisticated killing machine.

The twelve Type 92 infantry guns of the artillery battalion were lined up on the north bank of the Hun River, their muzzles slowly raised and aimed at the east gate of Fengtian City.

The gunners knelt on the frozen ground, using the rangefinder to make a final range check, their fingers on the breech handle, waiting for the order to fire.

The infantrymen lay prone behind the ridges at the edge of the sorghum field, pried open the wooden planks of the ammunition boxes with their bayonets, and stuffed rows of Type 38 rifle bullets with brass casings into the magazine.

A sense of oppressive tension permeated the air.

On the city wall of Fengtian, Liu Duoquan was looking out of the city through binoculars.

His lips were pressed into a thin line, and his brows were furrowed into a deep frown.

Through the telescope lens, on the edge of the sorghum field on the north bank of the Hun River, the Japanese soldiers were setting up their formation, and the barrels of the twelve infantry guns reflected a cold, eerie blue light in the morning light.

"Brothers."

Liu Duoquan put down his binoculars, turned around and looked at the soldiers lying behind the battlements. "The Beidaying camp took down 180 Japanese soldiers last night. Well done."

"Now it's our turn. If we can't hold out, Fengtian will be gone, and the whole of Northeast China will be gone."

"Behind us are the graves of our parents, our wife and children, and our ancestors!"

He took a deep breath, drew his pistol from his waist with his right hand, pointed the muzzle to the sky, and his voice suddenly rose eight octaves:

"Even if we die today, we cannot retreat a single step! Kill!!"

"kill!"

A deafening roar, like a mountain collapsing and a tsunami crashing down, erupted from the city wall.

At that very moment, the first cannon shot rang out from the north bank of the Hun River.

"boom!"

A Type 92 infantry gun shell, trailing a sharp whistle, crashed onto the East Gate tower, sending flames shooting into the sky.

Broken bricks and wood chips were thrown into the air by the shockwave. Two soldiers were thrown from behind the crenellations by the blast wave and crashed onto the stone pavement below the city wall, their flesh mangled.

Immediately afterwards, eleven shells landed simultaneously.

"Boom boom boom!"

The orange-red flames of the explosion stretched across the city wall, and plumes of smoke rose one after another, completely obscuring the morning light.

The city wall trembled, and the mortar between the bricks was shaken so badly that mortar and debris fell down.

The soldiers lying behind the battlements were so shocked that their ears were filled with a buzzing sound. Some had half of their heads shattered by shrapnel, and others were bleeding from all seven orifices from the shockwave.

But no one backed down.

"Fire!" Liu Duoquan's roar exploded amidst the gunfire.

The twelve Krupp field guns mounted on the city wall simultaneously spewed fire, their shells hurtling towards the Japanese artillery positions on the north bank of the Hun River.

The machine gunner pulled the trigger, and the muzzle of the Maxim heavy machine gun spewed out a tongue of fire half a foot long. Casings flew out of the ejection port like a rainstorm, clanging and clattering against the city bricks.

Below the city wall, three thousand policemen and militiamen from the Public Security Bureau lay prone behind barricades made of sandbags, firing rifles and pistols at the same time, bullets weaving a dense net of fire in the air.

"Give me a duck!"

The Japanese infantry began their charge.

The 1,200 soldiers of the 1st Battalion leaped up from behind the paddy field ridges, bayonets fixed, and charged towards the city wall.

They spread out in skirmish lines, each person spaced four or five meters apart, their steps neat and rapid, their military boots crunching on the sorghum stalks.

"Da da da!"

"Da da da!"

The machine guns on the city wall immediately swept across.

Maxim's bullets were like an invisible scythe, sweeping across the charging troops from left to right. Seven or eight Japanese soldiers simultaneously exploded in blood mist on their chests, falling backward to the ground.

But the people behind them didn't even glance at the corpses, stepping over them and continuing their charge.

Liu Duoquan lay prone behind the barricade, his eyes fixed on the approaching, tan-colored figures.

Five hundred meters, four hundred meters, three hundred meters away from the city wall...

"Bang bang bang!"

The Japanese soldiers began to raise their guns and fire.

The Type 38 rifle's accuracy was on full display at this distance, and people on the city wall were constantly being hit by bullets.

A machine gunner was shot through the forehead and fell backward from behind the machine gun, his blood and brains splattering all over the face of the assistant gunner next to him.

The assistant gunner didn't even wipe his face. He pushed the corpse aside, took over the machine gun position, and continued to pull the trigger.

"Grenade launcher!"

When Liu Duoquan saw someone squatting down on the Japanese position and putting down thin tubes, his face changed drastically, and he shouted at the top of his lungs.

"hidden!"

Before he could finish speaking, more than a dozen grenade launchers slammed into the city wall.

"Knock knock knock!"

The sound of explosions was frequent.

Although the kill radius of grenade launchers was not large, the accuracy of the Japanese grenadiers was appalling.

A grenade landed directly in the machine gun bunker on the city wall. After the flash of the explosion, the Maxim heavy machine gun, along with the machine gunner's limbs, was blown away.

Another grenade struck less than ten meters to Liu Duoquan's left, severing the neck of a platoon leader from the Public Security Bureau.

He collapsed silently to the ground, his head drooping at an odd angle on his shoulder.

In less than twenty minutes, nearly a hundred people fell on the city wall.

But not a single soldier retreated.

The wounded soldiers were dragged to the foot of the city wall, and new soldiers filled in the crenellations. The sound of rifles and machine guns never stopped.

Liu Duoquan's forehead was cut by shrapnel, and blood flowed down his eyebrows, covering half of his face.

He wiped his hand with his sleeve and continued firing his pistol down towards the city wall.

"Hold on for me!"

His voice was hoarse from shouting, "Anyone who dares to back down, I'll kill him!"

A deafening explosion suddenly erupted from inside the city gate.

"Boom!"

A Japanese demolition team, carrying explosives, rushed to the city gate, attached the explosives to the gate, and lit the fuse.

The thick wooden city gate, covered with iron sheets, was blasted open with a large hole, and pieces of wood and iron sheets flew more than ten meters away.

"The city gate has been breached!" someone cried out in alarm.

"Don't panic, hold on!"

Behind the barricades in the archway, a platoon of Northeast Army soldiers were waiting there early in the morning.

When the first batch of Japanese soldiers crawled in through the hole, three light machine guns opened fire simultaneously, riddling them with bullets.

Subsequently, more and more Japanese soldiers crawled in, and the Northeast Army troops in the front row immediately pressed forward.

"kill!"

The bayonet plunged into the Japanese soldier's stomach, and intestines and blood gushed out of the wound. The Japanese soldier clutched the bayonet, screaming as he fell backward, tripping the Japanese soldiers behind him as well.

But the Japanese soldiers kept coming, and more and more of them rushed into the city gate.

"Grenade!" the platoon leader roared.

Seven or eight grenades flew out from behind the barricade at the same time and exploded in the city gate. Shrapnel bounced back and forth in the narrow space, blowing the Japanese soldiers inside to pieces.

The battle lasted for a full hour.

The 4th Regiment's first attack was finally repelled.

The Japanese left more than 300 corpses at the foot of the city wall, scattered haphazardly on the open ground between the city wall and the Hun River.

Blood seeped from the pile of corpses, flowing along cracks in the frozen ground and forming dark red streams.

However, Liu Duoquan's side also suffered heavy casualties.

Nearly five hundred defenders on the city wall fell. The seriously wounded were carried to the field hospital inside the city, while the lightly wounded were given simple bandages and continued to lie behind the crenellations.

Most of the bullets were used up, and less than thirty shells remained.

But the Japanese launched their second attack.