Southern guerrilla warfare: I led the Red Seventh Army Corps to amassed a million troops.

Chief of Staff Ruan Yongqi couldn't help but ask, "Commander, have you figured out something?"

Li Yutang walked to the map and traced a few roads next to Houlong Mountain with his finger:

"It's too early to say; we'll have to see what Xu Yongxiang says. I suspect his main force is just a small unit. The enemy has used at least half of their forces for the infiltration. Their goal is to wipe out the Eighth Brigade."

"What?!" Hu Qisan and Ruan Yongqi were both shocked.

The two looked at each other and saw shock in each other's eyes.

This style of play is truly extremely bold.

The main force is not used for frontal breakthroughs, but for penetrating and dividing the enemy, gradually eroding their manpower.

If things go wrong, the infiltration troops could easily get surrounded by the enemy and end up being annihilated.

Anyway, they don't have the courage to use this kind of risky, life-or-death fighting style.

But then again, if the opponent were Xun Huaizhou, then it would be perfectly normal.

If he can do something as crazy as raiding Fuzhou, what else wouldn't he dare to do?

Outside the south gate, gunfire erupted in chaos.

This sudden siege was extremely lively, yet it also seemed rather inexplicable.

On and below the city walls, soldiers from both sides exchanged fire, but no one could be seen charging forward.

Throughout history, siege warfare has always involved either breaching doors or scaling walls.

However, the Red Army only fired indiscriminately, without direct artillery bombardment or suicide squads carrying explosive charges to detonate the weapons.

At first glance, it looked like a fierce fight, but in reality, it was just a layer of plaster being scraped off.

Occasionally, a few mortar shells would whistle and smash onto the city walls, blasting up a pile of broken bricks and tiles, and taking out one or two exposed machine gun nests in the process.

The new recruits in the team gradually adapted to the atmosphere of the battlefield under the one-on-one guidance of the veterans.

But killing the enemy is out of the question.

Visibility was already poor at night, and the two sides were pulled out to exchange fire at a distance of more than 100 meters. Hitting the target was entirely a matter of faith.

This is Zheng Sanjiang's style of commanding operations; he's calculating to the core.

Unless it's absolutely necessary to risk his life, he always prefers to fight cleverly, minimizing his own casualties as much as possible.

But as the saying goes, a kind heart cannot command an army; being accustomed to calculating small gains can sometimes lead to major mistakes.

In particular, Zhou Zeyuan would rarely put him in charge of carrying out such feint attacks.

However, Xun Huaizhou was new to the area and did not know anything about it.

Fortunately, his reputation is now strong enough to put enough pressure on the Nationalist army on the city walls.

The defenders lay prone behind the crenellations of the city wall and frantically pulled the triggers.

The machine gunner held Maxim down tightly, spitting fire towards the outside of the city.

However, the Red Army's machine gun positions were very slippery; they would fire a burst and then immediately move away, so most of the Nationalist Army's counterattacks landed in empty spaces.

Left with no other option, they could only blindly fire into areas of intense gunfire, wasting ammunition in vain.

After exchanging fire for more than ten minutes, the Nationalist officers on the city wall finally realized what was happening.

"These Red Army soldiers had no intention of attacking the city! They didn't even have a siege ladder; were they going to ram their heads against the city walls?"

Many veterans also noticed something amiss.

That's how it is; they're in a superior position and have all the advantages.

If we just rely on rifle fire, we won't be able to win even if we fight until next year.

Clearly, this wave of Red Army soldiers was just there to harass.

With the formidable city walls as their support, their mindset gradually stabilized, and their morale began to rise.

Outside the city, in a low-lying area.

A dozen or so gasoline drums were lined up in a row, with most of the drums buried deep in the ground, their openings pointing diagonally toward the south gate.

Even with the 75mm cannon, if we only consider siege warfare and the explosive capability against fortified targets, the Flying Thunder Cannon still holds the top spot.

Zheng Sanjiang squatted in the tunnel and glanced at his pocket watch by the faint starlight.

"Fifteen minutes have passed." He closed the watch, his brow slightly furrowed.

If Li Yutang inside the city intended to send troops out of the city to counterattack, or to mobilize a large force to support the South Gate, there should have been some activity by now.

However, the defending troops simply relied on the city walls to hold out, and the number of firing positions on the city walls was not increased.

"That old fox Li Yutang is really good at keeping his cool," Zheng Sanjiang thought to himself.

Based on the No. 1 operational order formulated by the corps commander, it is assumed that a battle-hardened general like Li Yutang would have kept a reserve force in hand.

By launching a sudden siege, the reserve forces were lured to the south gate, where a dozen or so flying thunder cannons fired simultaneously, annihilating all of them in one fell swoop.

Then they quickly breached the city, relentlessly pursued and killed the enemy, giving them no chance to regroup.

Then, the occupation of the county town could be completed without going through too much intense street fighting.

Only by doing this could the 6000-plus men of the 7th Red Army Division possibly wipe out the entire 3rd Division.

If that's not possible, then we can only execute Operation Order No. 2—attack where the enemy must defend, and besiege the point to intercept reinforcements.

Zheng Sanjiang put away his pocket watch, his eyes sharpening: "Bugman, sound the assembly call. Order the First Battalion to withdraw."

The crisp sound of bugles pierced the night sky.

Upon hearing the bugle call, the Red Army soldiers who were fighting the Nationalist army outside the city immediately ceased firing and retreated to their hiding places in shifts.

The gunfire from the city wall gradually subsided.

The Nationalist soldiers poked their heads out and looked at the figures disappearing into the darkness in the distance. They were stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"They've run away! The Red Army has run away!"

"What Red Army main force? They chickened out before even touching the city wall!"

"Don't run away if you dare! Grandpa's machine gun hasn't had its fill yet!"

Foul language drifted on the night breeze.

Just as they were venting their emotions, a dozen or so blinding flashes of light suddenly appeared in the low-lying area in the distance.

Immediately afterwards, a series of extremely muffled sounds tore through the night sky.

A dozen or so explosive charges, each the size of a millstone, tumbled through the air, tracing deadly parabolas, before crashing heavily onto the south gate.

boom!!!

The deafening explosion instantly silenced all the laughter.

The entire south city wall shook violently, as if an earthquake of magnitude 8 had occurred.

The massive shockwave hurled the blue bricks and sandbags on the city wall, along with severed limbs, into the air.

Several nearby Nationalist soldiers collapsed to the ground, their internal organs shattered and bleeding from all seven orifices, before they could even scream.

The terror of the Flying Thunder Cannon lies not in the shrapnel damage, but in the terrifying shockwaves that can shatter internal organs.

With just one volley of fire, the defense system of the south gate collapsed instantly.

The Nationalist army, which had been clamoring, was completely stunned by the attack.

The surviving soldiers threw down their weapons and fled into the city, crying and scrambling.

The defense line collapsed instantly.

The Third Regiment only deployed one battalion to attack the city.

However, the Nationalist army had been terrified by the flying thunder cannons and was unable to organize any effective resistance. The Red Army chased them all the way into the city.

The loud noise reached the command post inside the city.

Li Yutang abruptly stood up, his face ashen: "What's going on? Where did this heavy artillery come from?!"

He anticipated that small groups of lightly armed Red Army troops would make infiltrations and took precautions accordingly.

But he couldn't understand how the Red Army had managed to transport such large-caliber artillery to the city walls so quietly!

"Commander! The south gate has fallen!" A communications soldier stumbled in, "The enemy's firepower is too intense, the brothers couldn't hold out, and they've retreated into the city!"

Li Yutang's eye twitched, and he shouted sharply, "Push the special operations battalion forward! Block the street entrance at all costs, we absolutely cannot let the Red Army break into the core position!"