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

Outside Liaoyang City, on the plains.

The moment Miyake Mitsuji pulled back the curtains, something stung his eyes.

The light was overwhelming, surging in from all directions and engulfing the entire field like a tide.

Those beams of light were dazzlingly bright, their color temperature as cold as a knife's edge, shooting up obliquely from the ground and slicing the night into pieces.

His pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively raised his hand to block the light, but the beam of light seeped through his fingers, stinging his eyes and causing them to stream down his face.

"Baka yarou!"

"Wha...what happened?"

Mitsuji Miyake's voice changed tone, and the arrogance on his face was completely gone, replaced by endless fear.

"What on earth happened?!"

No one answered him.

"Boom boom boom!"

"Boom boom boom!"

Explosions were heard one after another outside the carriage, but in the intervals between the explosions, he seemed to hear the sound of an engine.

The deep, resonant roar of the diesel engine, as dense as the rumble of thunder before a storm, rolled in from the darkness behind the beam of light.

The entire train seemed to be encased in a giant sound system, with the roar of engines echoing from all sides.

Just then, the front door of the carriage was suddenly kicked open from the outside.

A figure stumbled in, practically crawling in on all fours.

The newcomer was Major Honnobu, the battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Regiment. His uniform was torn in several places, and the epaulettes on his right side were missing. His face was covered in a mixture of black ash and bloodstains.

His eyes were filled with fear and despair.

"Commander!"

Honda Nobuo's voice was hoarse. He crawled two steps, his knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground. "We're surrounded!"

"Enemies are everywhere! The fields are filled with tanks! Lights are everywhere! Our sentries are already..."

"Baka!"

"impossible!"

Honjo Shigeru slammed his hand on the table, his eyes bulging as if they were about to burst, bloodshot and the veins on his neck standing out.

"The Northeast Army's tanks are all in Fengcheng! Zhang Xueming's armored units were still confronting the 19th Division in Baoshan Town, south of Fengcheng, yesterday!"

"How could there still be tanks here?"

"Are you telling me their tanks fell from the sky?!"

"I have no idea!"

Honda Nobuo's voice trembled with tears, "I don't know! Commander! I really don't know!"

"All I could see were those lights... countless lights... and beneath each light was a war chariot!"

"Tanks bigger than all of ours! Their guns are turning towards us..."

Before he could finish speaking, a muffled "boom" came from outside.

That was the sound of a 76mm tank gun firing.

The shell was fired from the gun barrel of a T-34 main battle tank three kilometers away, slicing through the night sky at an initial velocity of 950 meters per second, and accurately hitting the sixth troop carrier at the rear of the train.

"Boom!"

The armor-piercing shell tore through the thin steel plates of the carriage and exploded inside. The shockwave, carrying metal fragments and human remains, gushed out from the windows and doors like a scarlet flower blooming in the night.

The entire train was shaking.

Miyake Mitsuharu's face was as white as a dead person.

His hands were still clutching the curtains, but his whole body was stiff, his shoulders were leaning against the carriage wall, and his legs were trembling uncontrollably.

A voice was screaming wildly in his head.

How could this happen? How could this happen?

Am I not the victor? Shouldn't we be waiting at the gates of Fengtian, for Zang Shiyi to open the gates and welcome us? Shouldn't he and Benzhuang Shigeru ride side by side into the city, receiving the kneeling worship of the citizens of Fengtian?

What went wrong?

Suddenly, a flash of insight crossed my mind.

He suddenly understood.

A telegram from Kanji Ishihara.

The telegram that said "everything is normal".

It's impossible for Ishihara Kanji to send such a telegram unless he himself had already fallen into the hands of the Northeast Army.

The purpose of that telegram was to convince them that Fengtian was secure, to lower their guard, and to allow them to dare to break away from the main force and head north with a mere three thousand men...

This is a trap.

From beginning to end, this was a trap.

He and Honjo Shigeru should have been sitting comfortably in the headquarters in Lushun, directing the Second Division to advance steadily, waiting for the two divisions in Fengcheng to successfully encircle the city, and waiting for the inside help in Fengtian to open the city gates.

They should stay behind the lines and strategize.

Instead of acting like two desperate gamblers, leading three thousand elite troops to rush towards Fengtian just to claim the credit for being the first to enter the city.

But Ishihara's telegram convinced them that Fengtian was within their grasp, that the three-pronged encirclement was foolproof, and that as long as they rode swiftly, they could plant their military flag on the walls of Fengtian before anyone else.

So when they set off from Haicheng, they left the main force behind, taking only the Third Battalion and the division's directly subordinate artillery company. They excitedly took the train all the way north, without even doing any serious reconnaissance along the railway line.

Three thousand people.

These three thousand men are enough to subdue a city already under the control of imperial spies.

But now, these three thousand people are trapped in a pocket that is surrounded on all sides, and outside the pocket are countless chariots and lights.

Miyake Mitsuharu turned his head and looked at Honjo Shigeru.

His lips trembled several times before he finally managed to squeeze out a complete sentence:

"Commander... what should we do now?"

Honjo Shigeru's condition is equally bad.

He was supporting himself on the table with both hands, his head down, his shoulders heaving violently, and a heavy, labored breathing sound coming from his chest, like a bellows leaking air.

The light from the kerosene lamp shone down on his face, making the wrinkles on his face look like knife-cut ravines, and his eye sockets were sunken in shadow, so his expression could not be seen.

He remained silent for five seconds.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and uttered two words.

"Hold on to the death."

His voice was terribly hoarse, and every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.

"Construct defensive fortifications on the spot, push down all the carriages to use as cover, and have all personnel disembark to set up defenses."

"Deploy the mountain guns on the spot, aim the muzzles at the lights, and execute immediately."

Miyake Miyake was stunned for a moment.

Hold out to the death? Here? In the dilapidated train station outside Liaoyang City?

"Your Excellency Commander,"

He spoke urgently, "We're surrounded by enemies, we're really going to die..."

"There are still nine thousand imperial warriors in Haicheng."

Honjo Shigeru interrupted him, his gaze like two burning embers, "Takeshita Taro's Fourth Brigade is on standby in Kaijo, only forty miles from here."

"Send a telegram immediately, ordering him to advance north."

"As long as we hold our ground, Takeshita will launch a pincer attack from the south against these enemies who dare to surround us."

He straightened up and pointed heavily at the map with his finger.

"The main force of the Northeast Army is in Fengcheng."

"The armored forces of the Northeast Army have been engaged by the 19th and 20th Divisions. With 60,000 against 10,000, they are in dire need of protection."

"The enemy that appeared here was at most a small harassment force. They deliberately turned on all their car lights to bluff and make us mistakenly believe that we were surrounded by a large force."

His voice grew louder and louder, as if he were trying to persuade Mitsuji Miyake, or perhaps he was trying to persuade himself.

"As long as we hold out until dawn, the two divisions in Fengcheng will take care of Chang Yuchun and turn west."

"Takeshita will also advance from the south. At that time, this army will be caught between us and Takeshita, and none of them will be able to escape."

He stared into Mitsuharu Miyake's eyes and said, word by word:

"Time is on our side; if we hold on, there is hope."

Miyake Mitsuji's eyes lit up again.

He struggled to his feet, his previous deathly dejection replaced by a glimmer of hope that he had narrowly escaped death.

He straightened his crooked collar, stood at attention, and bowed his head towards Honjo Shigeru:

"Understood, Your Excellency!"

He turned and walked towards the carriage door, his steps as fast as a jog.

As he reached the door, he turned back and yelled at the letter still lying on the floor:

"Useless trash, what are you standing there for! Set up defenses immediately!"

He opened the car door, and a cold wind rushed in, carrying with it the smell of gunpowder and burning.

He shouted to the communications soldier outside the carriage:

"Communications Department! Immediately send a telegram to the 4th Brigade! This unit has been surrounded by enemy armored forces south of Liaoyang. Your unit is ordered to proceed north at full speed to provide support. This is urgent! Repeat, this is urgent!"

"Everyone else, immediately set up defenses where you are and hold your ground until reinforcements arrive!"

"Hold on! The Empire's military fortunes are on our side; victory is assured!"

The communications soldier scrambled and crawled toward the communications carriage.

Mitsuharu Miyake stood at the train car door, watching the soldiers on the platform frantically moving sandbags, overturning carts, and setting up machine guns.

The soldiers of the mountain artillery company were unloading the Type 92 infantry guns from the flatbed wagons, hurriedly setting up the gun mounts, and pointing the muzzles at the lights to the north.

Everyone was moving in a panic, as if they were racing against death.

Just then...

On the northern plains, the densely packed lights suddenly moved simultaneously.

All the beams of light moved forward simultaneously, like a wall of light pressing towards the train station at an unstoppable speed.

Immediately afterwards, the earth began to shake.

With hundreds of diesel engines running at full speed simultaneously and hundreds of steel tracks rolling over the frozen ground, the resulting resonance is enough to make a standing person feel their internal organs being churned inside their abdomen.

The wall of light approached at an astonishing speed.

The bright beam of light cast long shadows of the Japanese soldiers on the platform, and the white light reflected on each of their faces, making their expressions clearly visible.

Miyake Mitsuji finally saw what was behind the beam of light.

Heavy tanks, none of the heavy tanks he had ever seen before.

Its towering size and menacing cannon muzzle made it seem like a massive, overwhelming torrent of steel.

Huo Quji stood on the command tower, his upper body leaning out of the hatch.

His face, barely in his early twenties, was expressionless, his lips pressed into a straight line, and his eyes fixed intently on the enemy formation ahead.

Behind him was a wedge-shaped attack formation of 450 T-34 main battle tanks.

The vehicles are arranged in a three-tiered, 50-meter-wide layout.

The first layer consists of 150 vehicles lined up in a row, the second layer consists of 150 vehicles filling the gaps, and the third layer consists of 150 vehicles as a mobile reserve force.

The lights of every tank were turned on, with both high beams and low beams illuminating simultaneously, creating a wall of light eight kilometers wide.

This was Huo Quji's habit.

He didn't like to hide when fighting.

His tactical philosophy was simple and brutal: to crush the enemy's will to resist head-on with absolute firepower and overwhelming force.

The lights weren't for illumination, but to signal to the enemy:

I'm here, I'm right here, you have nowhere to escape.

He raised his right hand, fingers together, palm facing forward.

Over the armored troops' dedicated shortwave radio, he coldly issued the final attack order:

"Attention all personnel! Enemy train position directly ahead! Armor-piercing rounds loaded, high-explosive rounds ready!"

"Open fire freely and crush them! Leave no one alive except for Honjo Shigeru!"

"kill!"