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

"Boom boom boom!"

"Boom boom boom!"

The sky was filled with high-explosive bombs, like thunderbolts from the heavens, turning the entire Japanese position into dust.

Yoshida stared at the severed limbs around him, his face filled with despair.

But just when he was in the most despair, he suddenly realized that the fighter jets that had been circling overhead had flown away.

Yoshida was taken aback for a moment, then burst into laughter.

The laughter sounded particularly jarring on the silent battlefield.

"Hahaha...hahahaha..."

He is still alive!

Unbelievable, unbelievable, but he's still alive!

The plane has left! It's actually gone!

He clearly saw that there were at least two-thirds of the high-explosive bombs in the hangars of those planes, but he flew south without looking back.

"They flew away!!"

"Thank God! They flew away, and we survived!"

Yoshida shouted in a hoarse voice, venting all the despair in his heart.

He didn't think about why the planes left after bombing once.

Perhaps they had other missions, or perhaps the Northeast Army's air force felt that this round of bombing was enough to wipe the 12th Regiment off the map.

Regardless of the reason, the result is the same.

He's still alive! His regiment still has over a thousand men left! They're still alive!

"Assemble! Assemble!"

Yoshida waved his arms and shouted to the soldiers, covered in dust and grime, who were crawling out of the shell craters, "All troops assemble! Prepare to continue the fight..."

His words suddenly caught in his throat.

Because behind him came an even more deafening buzzing sound.

Yoshida slowly turned around.

At the edge of his vision, on the horizon, sunlight pierced through the clouds, illuminating a moving steel forest.

T-34 tank.

Hundreds of T-34 tanks.

They were arranged in a wedge-shaped assault formation, rolling in from the horizon.

A torrent of steel.

This is a true torrent of steel.

Colonel Yoshida's legs began to tremble.

He glanced down at his position.

Those unfinished fortifications reduced to ruins by bombs, those crooked foxholes, those overturned heavy machine guns, those wounded soldiers lying on the edge of the bomb craters, still groaning.

Then he glanced at the torrent of steel directly in front of him.

The distance is less than one kilometer.

Based on the off-road speed of the T-34 tank, it would only take less than two minutes to cross this kilometer distance.

Two minutes.

Yoshida took a deep breath, his lungs throbbing with pain from the gunpowder smoke.

He drew his military knife, pointing the tip at the oncoming torrent of steel, and with all his might let out a roar:

"Prepare for the enemy!!"

No one responded.

The soldiers crawled out of the shell craters and saw the steel forest rapidly approaching them from directly in front of them.

Their eyes held not fighting spirit, but undisguised fear.

The fortifications were all blown to rubble. Encountering a torrent of armored vehicles in a field without anti-tank fortifications, even God might not be able to withstand more than a few shots.

"gun!"

Some people started to retreat, some dropped their rifles and ran away, and some slumped down in the shell crater, clasped their hands together, and muttered something under their breath.

"No retreat! No retreat!"

Yoshida rushed forward and slashed down a fleeing soldier with a single blow.

The soldier's back was slashed open, and he screamed as he fell to the ground.

But this did nothing.

More people began to flee.

"Boom boom boom!"

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

A 76mm high-explosive shell spewed from the muzzle with a deep roar, traveled a distance of 100 meters, and crashed directly into the center of the position.

"Boom boom boom!"

The blast wave sent more than a dozen soldiers flying at the same time.

Immediately afterwards, hundreds of T-34 tanks spat out scorching flames almost simultaneously, and shells rained down on the 12th Regiment's position.

The battlefield, which had just experienced an air raid, was once again covered by explosions.

Shrapnel flew everywhere, flames soared into the sky, and human remains danced in the blast wave.

This is no longer a war, this is slaughter.

The tank formation charged into the position.

A T-34 ran over Yoshida less than ten meters away.

The tracks ran over a wounded soldier who couldn't dodge in time. The soldier's body exploded like a crushed tomato, splattering blood and fragments of internal organs all over Yoshida's face.

The tracks slipped in the mud, then gripped the ground again and continued to roll forward.

The steel torrent swept across the 12th Regiment's position like a red-hot knife cutting into butter.

There was no resistance whatsoever, and the speed didn't even decrease in the slightest.

Those foxholes, makeshift bunkers, and trucks abandoned by the roadside were like paper in front of the T-34 tanks, easily crushed into pieces.

Huo Quji sat in the command tank, watching the massacre unfolding ahead through the periscope.

His face was expressionless.

"Pass down the order."

He pressed the communication button, his voice icy cold.

"Do not stop! Maintain the advance speed, target Lushun."

"Leave the routed soldiers to the infantry behind us. We must catch up with the main force of the 4th Brigade as quickly as possible and not give them time to enter the Lushun Fortress."

"Once we take Port Arthur, the Kwantung Army will be completely finished in Manchuria."

"clear!"

The radio crackled with the responses of the battalion commanders.

Huo Quji put down the communicator, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

The tank continued to advance at high speed.

The 12th Regiment's position had been cut into countless isolated pieces by the steel torrent.

The surviving soldiers scattered like headless flies; some raised their hands and knelt by the roadside to surrender, while others tried to stab the tanks with their bayonets.

The bayonet pierced the sloping armor, leaving only a faint white dot, before the soldier was riddled with machine gun fire.

No one stopped to take in the prisoners.

The tank formation continued its high-speed advance, its tracks crushing corpses, wounded soldiers, and weapons and flags scattered on the ground.

A Hinomaru flag was blown up by the wind, floated in the air for two seconds, and then fell to the ground, where it was crushed into the mud by the tracks of the thirty-seventh tank.

Colonel Yoshida knelt at the edge of the shell crater, watching the tank formation rumble past him, one after another, endlessly.

He still held his military knife in his hand, but he no longer had the strength to lift it.

His eyes stared blankly ahead, his lips trembling slightly.

A regiment of three thousand men.

No more than one hundred are still alive.

No more than twenty minutes have passed since the first bomb was dropped.

Twenty minutes, two thousand nine hundred lives lost.

This level of intensity in the war was something he had never imagined.

He used to think that the Imperial Japanese Army was invincible, but today he thinks the Imperial Japanese Army is nothing but a pile of shit.

Two thousand nine hundred lives were lost, but not a single enemy was killed or wounded, a kill ratio of zero to two thousand nine hundred.

Is this a battle?

No, this is the slaughter of braised chicken!

"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"

Several machine gun bullets shattered Yoshida into pieces. Yoshida flew up, his eyes wide open, looking at the sky, before falling heavily to the ground.

He's dead! He died with his eyes wide open in disbelief!

The armored torrent continued its advance.

It passed through the 12th Regiment's positions, through the still-burning wreckage of trucks, through cornfields littered with corpses, and headed straight south.

Ahead of it was the main force of the 4th Brigade, led by Major General Takeshita.

Less than half an hour earlier, those soldiers had broken away from the main force and turned back, thinking that leaving behind the rearguard would allow them to withdraw safely.

They didn't know that the so-called rearguard force hadn't stopped the steel torrent for even a minute.

Little did they know that a torrent of steel was closing in on them at an unprecedented speed.

Huo Quji opened his eyes, picked up the telescope, and looked ahead through the observation hole.

On the horizon, the outlines of buildings in the direction of Haicheng are faintly visible.

"Notify Li Changkong."

Huo Quji spoke into the radio.

"At all costs, prevent the main force of the 4th Brigade from retreating, and do everything possible to intercept the enemy in the Haicheng area."