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

On the city wall of Lushun, Kojiro and Miyamoto Shin stood side by side behind the crenellations of the North Gate tower.

From their vantage point, the entire northern plains of Lushun stretched out before them.

The view was so good it made me nervous.

More than three hundred tanks were scattered across the plain like locusts, their cannons reflecting a cold light in the sunlight, the muzzle flashes rising and falling like a series of silent thunderclaps.

Behind the tanks were densely packed infantry skirmish lines, their helmets forming a gray-blue wave in the morning light, stretching from the horizon to less than a kilometer from the base of the city wall.

A torrent of steel.

Kojiro had only seen this word in the General Staff's battle reports before, and had never known what it actually looked like.

Now he knows, he knows in his most desperate moment.

"No wonder the warriors of the Second Division were so easily annihilated."

Miyamoto Shin's voice came from beside him, hoarse, as if he were talking to himself, "If we had encountered these things on the plains, we would probably be two piles of minced meat by now."

Kojiro didn't answer, but his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

He couldn't help but imagine a scene in his mind.

Three hundred tanks rolled across the flat Liaohe Plain, leaving scattered human remains beneath their tracks.

The image was so clear that he could almost smell the charred corpse.

He shook his head violently, trying to banish the image from his mind.

"Fortunately, we have city walls."

Miyamoto Shin patted the concrete stack in front of him, his palm rubbing against the rough cement surface with a dry, muffled sound.

He turned around, leaning against the crenellation, completely blocking his body from the thick concrete wall, and then let out a long breath.

The anxiety that had been hanging over me finally subsided.

He watched with his own eyes as the tanks below fired no less than a hundred shots at the city wall.

A 76mm shell hit the rampart, blasting a shallow crater the size of a washbasin. Concrete fragments flew everywhere, but the wall remained completely still.

When the shell hit the bunker, it was like shooting an elephant with a slingshot. The 76mm shell couldn't even crack the meter-thick reinforced concrete, leaving only a black soot mark on the surface.

The anti-tank trench is five meters wide and five meters deep, making it impossible for tanks to cross; they can only be parked outside as fixed gun emplacements.

"Don't worry, they won't be able to break through."

Miyamoto Shin turned his head and looked at Kojiro's profile.

Kojiro stared intently at the futile tanks below the city wall, his expression slightly relaxed.

He nodded slowly. "Fortunately, Commander Honjo had foresight and did his best to fortify Lushun City. That was the last right thing he did."

His voice carried a hint of respect; the cement and steel bars that the Kwantung Army had poured into Lushun over the past few decades were finally paying off.

"Has the telegram requesting assistance been sent?"

"It was sent out a long time ago."

Miyamoto Shin straightened up. "They replied from Tianjin."

"The North China Garrison Army will dispatch reinforcements by boat as soon as possible to provide support." In addition, the General Staff has ordered the 19th and 20th Divisions to expedite the end of the fighting at Fengcheng and return to Lushun immediately.

He held up two fingers and showed them to Kojiro.

"Two days. If we can hold on for two days, we can turn the tide and win."

Kojiro's brow unfurrowed.

He looked down at the city wall beneath his feet, then looked up at the tanks in the distance that were still firing in vain, and made a rough calculation in his mind.

Although the enemy's attack on the city is fierce, they have not yet truly breached any section of the city wall.

At this rate, they could hold out for a week, let alone two days.

"Capture prisoners."

He suddenly spoke, the relief in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold ruthlessness.

"Keep capturing them, the more the better. Let those Chinese line up in front of the city wall, and let's see how the Northeast Army fires their cannons."

"Hai!" Miyamoto Shin turned around and was about to go down the city wall.

"Remember, capture as many pregnant women and children as possible. I'll be waiting at the city wall..."

Kojiro's words were interrupted by a series of thunderclaps.

"Boom boom boom!"

Ten thunderclaps suddenly exploded in his ears at the same time.

Thunder rumbled from the north of the city, one sound after another, continuous and unending, like divine thunder descending from the heavens.

Immediately following was an extremely piercing explosion.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!"

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Whoosh whoosh whoosh!"

The sound was so loud that it felt like someone had pierced Kojiro's eardrums from both sides at the same time. With a buzzing sound, all the surrounding sounds disappeared, leaving only a sharp ringing.

Miyamoto Shinya was also shaken and staggered, only managing to regain his balance by grabbing the edge of the stack.

He opened his mouth wide and shouted something at Kojiro, but Kojiro couldn't hear anything, he could only see his lips moving.

The sound came from the north of the city, getting closer and louder until the Japanese soldiers on the city wall could feel the air vibrating.

A young expatriate who was lying behind the barricade suddenly raised his head. His mouth opened, his eyes rolled upward, and a black dot that was rapidly enlarging was reflected in his pupils.

That black dot was too big; it shouldn't have appeared in the sky.

Its outline is clearly visible in the sunlight.

It is short and stubby cylindrical with a blunt, rounded warhead and a stabilizing fin at the tail. Its flight is rapid and unstoppable, like a meteorite falling into the atmosphere from outer space.

"A meteorite... a meteorite!"

The voice of the expatriate soldier became sharp and piercing due to fear, piercing through the buzzing in everyone's eardrums.

Miyamoto Shin suddenly looked up.

Then he witnessed a scene he would never forget.

Ten giant cannonballs are flying in the sky.

They fly so fast that they are almost invisible to the naked eye.

But because they are so large, the laws of physics seem to break down for them.

Each shell was thicker than an adult. The shells tumbled slowly in the air, and the shockwaves generated when they exceeded the speed of sound created a layer of white mist on their surface, enveloping them in a hazy halo.

The ten shells flew in a scattered fan shape, with an astonishingly high trajectory. They rose into the air from the north of the city, drawing an almost parabolic arc before accelerating downwards.

The speed of descent is increasing dramatically.

The sound of air being torn apart changed from a low growl to a shrill whistle, and from a whistle to a roar that tore through the air.

Ten shells were launched simultaneously at supersonic speeds toward the north gate of Lushun. The high temperature generated by the friction between the shells and the air turned the warheads dark red, leaving ten faint trails of smoke in the sky.

"Fire! Take cover!!"

Miyamoto Shin's voice changed tone. He shouted those four words with all his might, then lunged at Kojiro and pinned him against the base of the breastwork under the crenellations.

His knee slammed into the bluestone floor, and a sharp pain shot up his patella.

He braced himself on his elbows, pressed his body tightly against Kojiro, buried his head between his arms, and gritted his teeth.

The image from just now was still lingering on his retina.

Ten cannonballs, like ten meteorites thrown from the hands of the gods, were hurtling toward the city wall with unstoppable force.

"boom!"

The first shell landed and struck the anti-tank ditch about twenty meters in front of the city wall.

A concrete-piercing projectile weighing over two tons struck the ground at supersonic speeds, its kinetic energy so great that the ground could not deflect it but could only penetrate it.

The warhead pierced through the surface soil, penetrated the inner wall of the anti-tank ditch, and exploded deep in the soil after a fuse delay of a fraction of a second.

"Boom!"

This is an earthquake.

The shockwave from the explosion spread upwards from underground. The ground seemed to have been punched from below by an invisible giant hand, then bulged upwards, forming a hemispherical mound, before exploding.

Soil, gravel, and the remains of anti-tank mines were thrown forty or fifty meters into the air, forming a gray-black mushroom cloud.

The shockwave spread along the ground, blowing everything within a 50-meter radius away.

The wooden stakes in the barbed wire snapped like matchsticks, and the sandbags in the foxholes flew out like pillows.

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

Other shells followed closely behind, landing on the left side of the city gate tower directly above the city gate.

The moment the heavy concrete-piercing projectile struck the top of the city wall, the one-meter-thick reinforced concrete crenellations shattered like biscuits.

The bullet penetrated the crenellations, then the breast wall behind them, and crashed into the arched gate tower structure below the breast wall, penetrating all the way to the load-bearing columns inside the gate tower.

"Bang!"

The left half of the gate tower looks as if it has been cleaved in two by a giant axe, with bluestone and concrete blocks flying in all directions.

A load-bearing beam weighing several tons was thrown into the air by the shockwave, spun twice in the air, and then crashed into the barracks inside the city wall, smashing through the roof of an entire row of bungalows.

The Hinomaru flag on the city tower was blown off along with its flagpole. The flag burned in the air and fell, only to be torn to shreds by the blast wave of the next shell before it even hit the ground.

Cannonballs also hit the front of the city wall. The entire section of the wall shook the moment the shell struck it.

A shell weighing over two tons and flying at supersonic speeds carries an astronomical amount of kinetic energy.

This number is enough to allow the shell to penetrate a 2.5-meter-long concrete wall before it explodes.

The fuse was triggered inside the wall, and the explosion tore a hole several meters in diameter in the very center of the wall.

Large sections of the bluestone cladding on the outside of the city wall have peeled off, revealing the cracked concrete core underneath.

Cracks spread outwards from the point of explosion, spreading across the wall like a spider web, all the way to the foundation.

"Boom boom boom!"

"Boom boom boom!"

The remaining shells fell one after another, the explosions overlapping to create a deafening roar.

The entire north gate city wall was shaking violently, so violently that soldiers standing on the wall were thrown up and then crashed to the ground, then thrown up again and crashed down again, like beans on a sieve.