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

On the city wall, 1,134 people were escorted to the crenellations.

For a few seconds, an eerie silence fell over the battlefield.

The charging Japanese soldiers stopped in their tracks, their hands holding the ladders frozen in mid-air, their mouths, which were holding bayonets, involuntarily opened, and the bayonets slipped from their lips, the tips striking the frozen ground with a dull, crisp sound.

The machine gunner, who was lying on the edge of the field, released the trigger. The muzzle of the Type 96 machine gun was still emitting blue smoke, but the gunfire stopped.

The entire 29th Regiment's attack formation seemed to have been paused, with more than three thousand soldiers looking up and staring at the dark mass of people on the city wall.

Those were kimonos, furisode sleeves, and the Kyushu, Kanto, and Hokkaido accents they had heard since childhood.

From the city wall came the heart-wrenching cries of women, the shrill screams of children, and the hoarse pleas of the elderly.

A young woman in blue fur-sleeved shirt leaned out of the crenellation, waving her hands frantically down the city wall, her voice hoarse from crying.

"Taro! Taro! It's me! Stop hitting him! Please stop!"

Below the city wall, a young private first class stood frozen in place as if struck by lightning.

His face was ashen in the morning light. The Type 38 rifle slipped from his hand, the butt of which struck the instep of his foot, but he was oblivious.

His mouth was open, his lips trembled violently, and a syllable squeezed out of his throat:

"Ogasan!!"

That woman was his mother.

He received her letter three months ago from his hometown in Kumamoto. The letter said that her uncle, who ran a restaurant in Fengtian, was sick and she was going to Fengtian to take care of him for a while.

In his reply, he also wrote: "We have troops stationed in Fengtian, so it's very safe. You can go there with peace of mind."

His mother was standing on the city wall, with a group of soldiers dressed in strange, colorful clothes pointing guns at her back. Her hair was disheveled and her face was covered in tears.

"Ogasan!"

He roared and charged toward the city wall.

"Baka! Come back!"

The sergeant behind him grabbed his belt and yanked him back.

But the sergeant's own hands were trembling, because he also saw people he recognized on the city wall.

That was his fellow townsman. After retiring from the army last year, he opened a photo studio in Fengtian, married a woman from Hokkaido, and had a daughter.

At that moment, his fellow villager was kneeling behind the barricade, a gleaming bayonet against his neck, trembling like a leaf, his crotch already soaked.

From the east to the west section of the city wall, from the corner tower to the city gate tower, 1,134 prisoners were divided into more than a dozen groups and lined up along the city wall.

Behind each person stood a soldier holding a Type 95 automatic rifle.

Yuan Lang stood in the very center, his rifle pointed skyward, his face expressionless.

Yuan Lang led several soldiers to walk back and forth in front of the prisoner line, kicking those who cried the loudest to their knees in front of the barricade, making them stick out half their bodies so that the Japanese soldiers below could see them more clearly.

"Help! Help me! I don't want to die!"

A middle-aged man in a suit was leaning over the edge of the stack and shouting down, his face covered in snot and tears.

"I am from Kagoshima Prefecture! I am a law-abiding citizen of the Empire! Save me!"

"Daddy! Daddy!"

A seven or eight-year-old girl was clinging to her father's leg, crying her heart out. Her father was kneeling on the ground with his hands tied behind his back, his head down, and his lips were bleeding from being bitten.

On the Japanese positions below the city wall, unrest spread rapidly like a plague.

The soldiers put down their guns. Some shouted the names of their loved ones on the city wall, some turned away and dared not look anymore, and some squatted on the ground with their hands covering their heads.

A company commander drew his saber and brandished it toward the city wall, yelling orders for his soldiers to continue the attack, but his voice was drowned out by the cacophony of voices, and no one listened to him.

The Japanese attack formation was completely thrown into chaos.

On the high ground on the north bank of the Hun River, Colonel Kenji Suzuki, commander of the 4th Regiment, lowered his binoculars.

His fingers tightened on the telescope's barrel, and the muscles in his face twitched uncontrollably.

His chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Minoru Onodera, stood with his mouth agape, his lips moving for a long time before he finally managed to utter a broken sentence:

"Colonel...on the city wall...those are...their expatriates..."

"I saw it."

Kenji Suzuki's voice was as cold as ice.

He snapped the binoculars shut, shoved them into the leather case at his waist, and when he turned around, his face had turned a deep purplish-red.

"Despicable! Shameless! Vile!"

He cursed three times in a row, each word seemingly squeezed out from between his teeth, filled with gritted teeth and hatred.

He fought for twenty years, capturing countless cities and strongholds, and had seen all kinds of opponents.

But he had never seen such an opponent, who used civilians as shields on the city walls and held bayonets to the backs of women and children in front of the enemy.

This is not war, this is coercion, this is a disgrace to soldiers.

"Messenger!"

He turned around and roared at the messenger behind him, "Shout out to the city walls immediately! Shout it once in Chinese and once in Japanese!"

"Tell them that war is a matter between soldiers, and has nothing to do with civilians! Make them release the Imperial citizens immediately, and the Kwantung Army will give them a fair chance to fight!"

"If they dare to harm a single hair on the heads of the overseas Chinese, the Kwantung Army will leave not a single one alive after breaching the city!"

The messenger stumbled and ran toward the front of the position.

A few minutes later, a Japanese translator who could speak Chinese was pushed to the front. Holding a tin megaphone, he shouted at the top of his lungs towards the city wall:

"Attention, Northeast Army troops on the city walls! This is an order from Colonel Suzuki, Commander of the 4th Regiment of the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Empire!"

"War is a matter for soldiers, not for civilians! Please release the Imperial citizens immediately!"

"The Kwantung Army promises to provide a fair chance of fighting! If you harm our civilians..."

"Bang!"

A gunshot interrupted the interpreter's call.

The bullet hit the ground half a meter in front of his feet, kicking up a cloud of dirt.

The translator was so frightened that he fell to the ground, and the metal megaphone rolled a long way away.

Zhang Xueming stood behind the battlements, the muzzle of the Liaoning No. 13 rifle in his hand still emitting blue smoke.

He put down the gun and turned to look at Yuan Lang beside him:

"What about the translation?"

A young man dressed in the uniform of the Northeast Army was brought before him.

This man is Zhou Wenbin. He was originally a student in the Japanese Department of Northeastern University. Last night, he was temporarily recruited by Liu Duoquan to work as a translator.

His military uniform was clearly a size too big, with the cuffs rolled up twice. His face still had the naivety typical of a student, but his eyes were very calm.

"Tell the Japanese soldiers below."

Zhang Xueming said in a chilling tone, "From now on, if even one Japanese soldier dares to take a single step toward the city wall, I will kill one of our civilians."

"If one Japanese soldier fires a shot, I'll kill ten. If one cannonball lands on the city wall, I'll kill a hundred."

"Get them out of here right now! Fengtian is Chinese territory, not a place for Japanese devils to run rampant. Otherwise, I'll kill them all!"

Zhou Wenbin took a deep breath, translated Zhang Xueming's words word by word into Japanese, and shouted them down towards the city wall.

His voice echoed across the empty battlefield, reaching clearly into the ears of every Japanese soldier.

On the north bank of the Hun River, Suzuki Kenji froze for a full three seconds after hearing the news from the front lines.

Three seconds later, he suddenly turned around and kicked over the ammunition box behind him.

The ammunition box rolled down from the high ground and crashed onto the gravel below, scattering the bullets inside everywhere.

"This is outrageous! This is outrageous!"

He drew his military knife, its blade gleaming coldly in the morning light, the tip pointing towards the Fengtian city wall, and roared towards the artillery positions behind him:

"Artillery! Fire! Open fire!"

"Colonel!"

Chief of Staff Minoru Onodera rushed forward and grabbed his wrist, his face ashen. "Don't fire! There are over a thousand Imperial citizens on the city walls!"

"How many people would die if a single shell hit? None of us can bear that responsibility!"

"Get out of here!"

Kenji Suzuki flung his hand away, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Don't you understand yet?"

"They had no intention of releasing them! From the very beginning, these Chinese never intended for those expatriates to leave alive! They were stalling for time!"

"Zhang Tingshu from Jinzhou, Sun Dequan from Panshan, and Chang Jingwu from Changtu are all on their way!"

"Once their reinforcements arrive, our two regiments will be attacked from both sides! At that point, forget about capturing Fengtian; we'll all be wiped out here!"

He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving violently, and the expression on his face was so distorted it was almost unrecognizable.

"Fire now. Those expatriates might die, but we can take Fengtian City!"

"If we don't fire, the overseas Chinese will still die, and we still won't be able to take Fengtian!"

"Do you want the Imperial soldiers to die in vain? Do you want the 180 lives of the Kawashima Squadron to be lost for nothing?"

Minoru Onodera opened his mouth, unable to speak.

His hand was still clutching Kenji Suzuki's sleeve, but his fingers were already trembling.

Just then, Colonel Yukihiro Hirata, the commander of the 29th Regiment, ran up from the bottom of the hillside.

His uniform hem was torn by sorghum stalks, and his face was covered in dust, clearly from a long run.

He rushed up the high ground, grabbed Suzuki Kenji's shoulder, and used so much force that he turned Suzuki Kenji upside down.

"Suzuki-kun! Don't fire!"

Hirata Yukihiro's voice trembled, "My wife's older brother and his family of three are all on the city wall!"

"I just saw it through my binoculars! My niece is only six years old! She's only six! You want me to fire on my own family?"