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

Zhu Wudi was surrounded by four fighter jets and was about to deploy his parachute when a sharp roar came from behind him at the critical moment.

That was a French Bleuge 27, plus a British de Havilland, and a few German Junkers.

Fifty-six fighter planes from the Northeast Air Force, in a loose attack formation, attacked from the northeastern airspace.

Li Changkong was at the forefront, his Braga 27 had a Siberian tiger with its mouth wide open painted on the nose.

Looking through the windshield, he saw Zhu Wudi surrounded by four Japanese attack planes. He cursed under his breath and then pressed the radio button:

"Captain Zhu! Pull to the left! Hand these bastards over to me!"

Zhu Wudi's lips curved slightly, and he pulled the control lever sharply to turn to the left.

Four Japanese attack planes followed closely, turning to pursue them, but they had only turned halfway when Li Changkong's Blackie formation came crashing down from the side.

Fifty-six fighter planes opened fire simultaneously, bullets raining down on the four Japanese planes from the side.

The four Japanese attack planes had no time to evade and were completely covered by bullets.

The first aircraft had its fuel tank blown out on the spot, turning into a fireball. The second aircraft's vertical tail was destroyed, and it flew out of control, spinning and falling downwards.

The pilot of the third plane was shot through the chest, and the plane went out of control and crashed into the ground.

The fourth aircraft managed to make a sharp dive to escape the range of fire, but its left wing was riddled with more than a dozen bullet holes, and it fled in a sorry state, billowing black smoke.

"Captain Li, I owe you one." Zhu Wudi's voice came through the radio.

"Let's finish the fight first!"

Li Changkong grinned, then immediately resumed his fighting stance.

His gaze swept past the attack aircraft still engaged in fierce combat and landed on a formation of bombers that were turning around and fleeing high in the sky.

Onizuka's orders have been relayed to the bomber squadron.

In the past few minutes, all the bombers have jettisoned all their bombs, regardless of whether they reached their targets, and dropped them all in the wilderness outside Fengtian City.

At this moment, hundreds of black smoke columns rose from the fields to the west and north of Fengtian City. These were the smoke columns produced by the Japanese bombers dropping their bombs and causing them to explode on the ground.

The soldiers on the city wall of Fengtian could clearly see the flashes of explosions outside the city, but the bombs were still at least several miles away from the city wall.

The furthest bomb even hit the sorghum field on the opposite bank of the Hun River, blasting the corpses left behind by the Japanese soldiers the day before into pieces.

Fengtian City remained intact.

Li Changkong turned his gaze away from the smoke columns outside the city and focused again on the core of the Japanese attack aircraft formation.

That flagship aircraft had the image of Yamata no Orochi painted on its nose.

He recognized the plane.

Yesterday, during the pre-battle briefing, he saw the identification map of the Kwantung Army Air Force. This aircraft belonged to Ichiro Onizuka, the highest-ranking commander of the Japanese naval air force in Manchuria.

After fighting in the air for so long, Li Changkong had been searching for this aircraft.

Even if we shoot down a hundred Japanese planes, it won't be a complete victory if we can't cut off the head of this venomous snake today.

"Captain Zhu, the bomber is yours, and the snake is mine."

Without waiting for Zhu Wudi's response, Li Changkong pushed the throttle to the maximum. The engine of the Bragg 27 emitted a sharp screech, and the nose of the plane shot straight toward Onizuka Ichiro's aircraft.

As Ichiro Onizuka was directing the remaining attack aircraft to regroup, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a Blackgay 27 in his peripheral vision, which was approaching him at an unusual speed.

He was very familiar with the Blackgay 27 aircraft.

Made in France, the biplane design was changed to a monoplane, with a maximum speed of about 350 kilometers per hour. It was equipped with two 7.62 mm machine guns, so its firepower was not strong and its maneuverability was average.

On the East Asian battlefield, this aircraft could barely hold its own against the Empire's Type 89 attack aircraft.

But the Blackgay 27 in front of him gave him a completely different feeling.

Its speed was abnormally fast, and its flight posture was exceptionally fierce.

"court death."

Onizuka Ichiro sneered, pulled the control stick sharply, and the aircraft made a sharp right turn, trying to shake off Li Changkong's pursuit.

But before he could even complete half of his turn, Li Changkong had already anticipated his evasive maneuver and cut inside the circle ahead of time.

The Blague 27 has a smaller turning radius than the Type 89 attack aircraft, giving it a slight advantage in low-speed dogfights.

The two planes began a life-or-death dogfight in the sky.

Onizuka Ichiro was a veteran, having fought in air combat for over a decade, flying almost every type of aircraft from the Type 87 light bomber to the Type 93 heavy bomber, and possessing extremely rich dogfighting experience.

He pushed the control stick down to its lowest point, and the aircraft performed three consecutive rolls in the air, attempting to use the Type 89 attack aircraft's slight advantage in dive acceleration to widen the distance.

But Li Changkong held on tight. No matter how Onizuka rolled, dove, or turned sharply, Li Changkong's Blague 27 remained firmly within 200 meters of his tail fin.

The two machine guns fired intermittently, bullets hitting the horizontal tail and sides of the Onizuka's aircraft, sending up bursts of sparks.

Onizuka's forehead began to sweat.

He could sense that the pilot of this Blackbeard 27 was no ordinary opponent.

This man's every adjustment was extremely precise, every shot was extremely restrained, he never wasted bullets, and every shot hit the most fatal spot.

In all his years of air combat, he had only ever seen a handful of pilots with this kind of marksmanship.

Onizuka gritted his teeth and made a sharp climb at a high angle of attack, attempting to use the Type 89 attack aircraft's vertical power advantage to shake off his opponent.

This maneuver was a skill he learned in aerial combat during the Russo-Japanese War.

While the engine of the Type 89 attack aircraft was not as nimble as the Blackbeard's at low altitudes, it could output greater torque during vertical climbs.

If the opponent follows along on the ascent, they will lose speed midway through the ascent.

If his opponent doesn't follow, he can turn around at the top of the climb and gain a height advantage.

But Li Changkong did not respond in any of the ways he had expected.

The moment Onizuka began to ascend, Li Changkong discerned his intentions. He neither followed the ascent nor abandoned the pursuit, but instead did something Onizuka had never expected.

He piloted the Braga 27 from directly below Onizuka's aircraft, pulling up at an almost vertical angle, aiming the nose of the 27 at the belly of Onizuka's aircraft, and opened fire on both machine guns simultaneously.

The bullet struck the engine compartment of Onizuka's aircraft from directly below, piercing the oil lines and cooling system.

Dark brown lubricating oil gushed from the bullet holes, turning into a fine mist that covered Onizuka's windshield in the airflow.

Onizuka's vision was instantly obscured by a large portion of the oil mist, and he could barely see anything in front of him.

"Baka!"

Onizuka roared as he tried to wipe the oil fog off the windshield with his gloves, but the oil wouldn't come off.

That's hot lubricating oil sprayed from the engine; it will only make the glass stickier the more you wipe it.

His engine temperature gauge began to jump wildly upwards, the needle pointing to the end of the red zone.

The engine emitted a piercing metallic scraping sound, the speed dropped sharply, and the propeller began to spin erratically, sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

Onizuka knew his plane was finished. Without an engine, he was like a bird with broken wings, destined to fall from the sky sooner or later.

But he was not willing to give up.

He fought in air battles for over a decade, bombed countless places, and personally killed countless opponents. How could he die here? How could he die at the hands of an old French aircraft?

He used all his strength to pull the control stick towards his chest, trying to keep the plane at altitude, while simultaneously pressing the parachute pull ring with his left hand.

But the parachute pull ring was stuck in oil, and he couldn't get it to move after pressing it twice. The plane had already started to dive towards the ground at an increasingly steep angle.

The oil mist on the windshield was blown away by the airflow, and he could see ahead through the blurry glass. The silvery surface of the Hun River was rapidly approaching him.

His plane was reflected on the river, and the Rising Sun flag on the wing was clearly visible in the reflection.

Li Changkong followed behind him, his finger resting on the machine gun trigger.

He could see the figure still struggling desperately inside the cockpit of Onizuka's aircraft.

Without any mercy, he pressed the trigger, and the two machine guns fired a final salvo, the bullets piercing the canopy of Onizuka's aircraft.

Onizuka's plane plunged into the Hun River, creating a huge white splash on the surface.

After the water splashed down, only a few pieces of floating aluminum skin and a spreading oil stain remained on the river surface.

Lieutenant Colonel Onizuka Ichiro's plane and his body sank into the icy waters of the Hun River and never resurfaced.

Li Changkong pulled up the nose of his plane, circled once over the Hun River, confirmed that Guizuka's plane had completely sunk, then pressed the radio; his voice was calm.

"Captain Zhu, that snake is dead. The rest are yours."

Zhu Wudi was silent for a moment on the other end of the radio, then replied:

"Roger that! Well done, Captain Li."

The battle was drawing to a close.

The Japanese attack aircraft formation, having lost its commander, completely collapsed, and the remaining planes began to scatter and flee.

Some fled south towards Lushun, some fled east towards the Korean Peninsula, and some simply found a flat field nearby and made an emergency landing.

But the Mustang pilots didn't give them that chance.

Zhu Wudi ordered a pursuit, and the sixty Mustangs were divided into six pursuit groups, chasing the fleeing Japanese planes in different directions.

A Japanese attack plane flew low along the Hun River, trying to use the terrain to escape its pursuers, but the Mustang pilots chasing behind it did not engage in any low-altitude dogfighting.

They climbed directly to an altitude of 500 meters and then dove down to straf the enemy plane. The bullets hit the cockpit and engine of the Japanese plane from directly above, and the plane was blown up on the spot.

The wreckage was scattered in the reeds on the north bank of the Hun River, where a small fire broke out.

Another Japanese bomber escaped to the north side of Panshan Mountain, where it was overtaken by two Mustangs.

The bomber crew had thrown away everything they could, even the ammunition boxes for their defensive machine guns, but even with a light load, their speed was still far inferior to that of the Mustang.

Two Mustangs flanked it from the left and right, and six machine guns opened fire simultaneously. Both engines of the bomber were set ablaze, and the massive fuselage disintegrated in mid-air, with debris scattered on the north slope of the mountain.

After Zhang Wei shot down the last fleeing Japanese plane over Fuzhou Bay, the sky finally quieted down.

From Fengtian to Hunhe, from Hunhe to Panshan, from Panshan to Fuzhou Bay, within a radius of hundreds of kilometers, not a single Japanese flag plane can be seen flying in the sky anymore.

The smoke of battle over Fengtian City was dispersed by the north wind, and the sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone on the city walls, turning the blue bricks into a warm gold.

A few wisps of black smoke were still rising from the reeds on the north bank of the Hun River; those were the burning wreckage of Japanese planes.

More than a dozen Japanese pilots’ bodies floated on the surface of the Hun River, and the river slowly pushed their bodies toward Lushun, as if it were sending off guests to Fengtian City.