Chapter 53

  Li Bin in the command post was watching the enemy with binoculars and was greatly shocked by what he saw. He did not expect that after suffering such a loss at Gou Bang Zi, the enemy would make the same mistake again here?

  Of course, Li Bin did not know that the devils who attacked this time were not the Kwantung Army, but the Korean garrison. However, whether it was the Kwantung Army or the Korean garrison, they were all devils, and since they were devils, they should be beaten!

  The warriors in the second trench, under the hail of bullets from the devils' sharpshooters, threw row after row of hand grenades into the thirty-meter-wide trench, blasting the devils inside to wail and scream as blood and flesh flew everywhere.

  Machine gunners swept the outside of the trenches with firepower, snipers and god-guns accurately picked off the enemy one by one.

  These Korean troops had never experienced Li Bin's tactics before, and at the cost of heavy casualties, the devils who had managed to rush to the front trench were forced to leave behind more than 400 corpses and retreat back to the riverbank.

  In the headquarters of the 20th Division of the Japanese Army, Lieutenant General Shigenori Kuroda severely scolded Major General Yoshimura: "You fool! You're waiting for those Kwantung Army to laugh at us! Shameful! You've lost face for our army stationed in Korea!"

  Just then, a guard came to report: "Report to General Kanda, the commander of the Kanto Army has arrived!"

  Kwantung Army Commander-in-Chief Shigeru Honjō hastily stopped the rebuke, of course not wanting to lose face in front of the Kwantung Army.

  Honjō Shigeru entered with Sakaki Seishirō, Tadokoro Icaro and Ishihara Kanji, among others. As soon as he arrived, Honjō looked at Kajiwara and said to Konda: "Konda-san, Kajiwara-san's attack was weak, resulting in the death of many brave warriors. To reduce the loss of our great Japanese Empire's brave warriors, I have decided to let Ishihara-san take over the infantry attack mission, with the 33rd Brigade replacing the 39th Brigade for the attack."

  "What! You want a mere Commander to replace me!" Kaizuka jumped up on the spot.

  "Honjou Munetoshi let out a cold laugh and said, 'Kashimura-kun, this is for your own good! Otherwise, today marks the third day of the deadline! If you still haven't taken down that stronghold on the opposite side, you should know what to do yourself! In order not to make the Empire lose an excellent commander, I made this decision!"

  Kaga Shōshō still wanted to argue, but was persuaded by Kanda: "Kaga-kun, why don't you just watch how Ishihara commands?"

  After Ishiwara Kanji took over the command, he immediately changed tactics. He ordered the infantry on the riverbank to temporarily retreat and equipped each soldier with an iron shovel, letting them dig holes in place and hide under the cover of heavy artillery. At the same time, accelerate the speed of pontoon bridge construction, and transport infantry, field artillery, and tanks across the river as soon as possible. Let the logistics team transport stones across the river to build machine gun fortifications and mortar positions on the spot. Let the reconnaissance bombers in the sky guide the ground heavy artillery to attack targets while attacking.

  Li Bin inside the command center saw the devils change tactics through his binoculars, and he was secretly shocked: "Good guy! A worthy opponent has arrived!" He searched in his mind for who among the Kwantung Army could be so cunning. Suddenly, he thought of Ishiwara Kanji, who had orchestrated the 9/18 Incident! "Right! It's him! Must be this guy!"

  "Who is it?" Prince Hao couldn't help but ask when he saw Li Bin muttering to himself.

  "Ishihara Kanji! The so-called brains of the Kwantung Army, Ishihara Kanji! This man is full of tricks! We must be careful in dealing with him!" Li Bin replied.

  The trick of Ishihara Kanji was indeed effective, and originally most of the Righteous Brave Army soldiers were not good at shooting. After the devils had cover, it was even harder to hit the enemy. On the other hand, the devils' sharpshooters and grenade throwers caused significant casualties among the Righteous Brave Army soldiers in the second trench.

  Although Wu Congyu and Huang Hua, their snipers, and in fact the sharpshooter team led by Ma Liqiang cooperated with each other, they flexibly moved and used accurate shooting to kill more than 100 Japanese soldiers, but they could not fundamentally reverse the situation.

  The devils behind kept carrying thick wooden boards through the pontoon bridge, crossing the Da Ling River and rushing towards the riverbank. Seeing this situation, Li Bin was anxious and knew that he lacked heavy artillery, relying only on light weapons, it would be difficult to stop these devils who adopted new methods to cross the river.

  The devils took one step at a time, slowly pushing the battlefield towards the defending army's position. By 5 o'clock in the afternoon, these devils had already approached the first trench.

  However, Ishiwara Kanji did not immediately order the attack. He said to Honjō Shigeru: "Commander Honjō, the Chinese are very cunning! Our planes can't take off at night, as long as we hold our position firmly and wait for dawn tomorrow to launch an attack!"

  "Honjō nodded and said: 'Yes! This time we must strengthen our night vigilance! So as not to be defeated by the Chinese in a surprise attack at night like that time at Goubangzi.'"

  Before it got dark, under the cover of the planes, those Japanese troops calmly built machine gun emplacements in front of their positions using stones and sandbags, mounted Type 38 heavy machine guns and Type 96 light machine guns, placed grenade launchers behind the emplacements, and set up mortar and infantry artillery emplacements further back.

  Snipers and sharpshooters continuously fired at the devils, one devil after another was shot dead, and someone carried sandbags to crawl over, quickly forming a defensive line.

  After dark, the devils had set up a temporary fortification in front of their position.

  Looking at his masterpiece, Ishihara Kanji put down the telescope and turned to several high-ranking generals who were much higher than himself: "To be honest, our great Japanese nation was originally a student of the Chinese. It's just that this teacher didn't strive for progress and was surpassed by us! When we learned from the West, they were still stuck in their original thinking. Now, the opponent across from us has taught me another move - since he builds strong fortifications to defend, I will also build fortifications and advance step by step!"

  "Hahaha!" Hara Shigeru, Sakaki Seishirō and Tadokoro Izu burst out laughing. To be honest, although they were all much higher in rank than Ishihara, they had a great deal of respect for this China expert.

  "Damn it! This damn Stone Shin is too cunning!" Li Bin cursed loudly.

  However, scolding is one thing, and methods are another. It seems that using special forces to launch a night raid is also impossible, that cunning Ishihara must have already thought of this point.

  Even so, the devils cannot be allowed to rest at night! When it gets late, several flares suddenly burst into the air, illuminating the ground as bright as daylight, followed by a fierce barrage of gunfire.

  "Enemy attack! Enemy attack!" The devils hiding behind the temporary fortifications, who were taking a short rest, were awakened by the sound of gunfire and scrambled to their feet, grabbing their weapons and firing wildly forward.

  "Got you!" Taking advantage of the enemy's gunfire, Huang Hua lightly pulled the trigger, and an enemy's head was blown to pieces.

  After firing a shot, she rolled agilely and rolled into the trench. The bullets fired by the devil's god of gun came whizzing over her original position, followed by a string of machine gun bullets that also swept over her head.

  Wu Congyu fired a bullet from another position and killed a Japanese sniper, then rolled into the trench.

  Huang Hua dodged the devils' shooting, and at this time another flare rose into the air. She quickly crawled out from the other side, taking advantage of the light from the flare to aim at a devil's grenade soldier's head, and one bullet made that devil's grenade soldier's skull fly out like a broken bowl.

  Within half an hour, Huang Hua shot and killed three devils. Then she waved her hand to Wu Congyu who was over thirty meters away: "We'll go back to rest and let others harass them!" After that, they went back into the underground tunnel.

  Ma Liqiang and Jin Hu appeared again, harassing the enemy for half an hour, then replaced another batch of snipers and sharpshooters to shoot and kill the enemy.

  The intermittent gunfire lasted for a whole night, disturbing the devils and keeping them awake all night. On Li Bin's side, except for a few shift snipers, a platoon of observers, and a machine gun company responsible for harassment missions, all other soldiers had a good sleep in the trenches.

  The next morning, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, enemy bombers appeared in the sky, and a long queue of enemy planes made a dull roar, flying over the battlefield again to carry out a fierce bombing.

  The artillery of the ground ghost child roared, and the firepower moved deep, under the guidance of the aircraft, the heavy artillery directly jumped over the second and third lines of defense, and fiercely fired at the fourth and fifth lines of defense. This was because if they had bombed the second and third lines with confidence, they might have mistakenly injured their own side.

  A 240mm shell hit a carefully arranged large bunker, the whole ground shook violently, and the powerful explosive force blew the bunker into the air, leaving only a deep pit on the ground. Although there were no soldiers in the bunker, it still made Li Bin's heart ache and curse, after all, every fortification was built with the blood and sweat of unknown soldiers, and if this large bunker had not been destroyed, at least it could have annihilated a small team of devils.

  Behind the fortifications set up by the devils, infantry guns and field guns are all in place, ready to fire at exposed firepower points at any time.

  Under the cover of the airplane's big guns, the devils who had already charged to the first trench began to be busy. They used infantry to shoot forward, and the devilish engineers behind them started to push forward, preparing to fill in the trenches so that their tanks could pass through.

  Upon receiving the news of the devils' attack, the warriors rushed out of the trenches and ran to their respective positions. At this time, Japanese planes dived down one after another, frantically sweeping and bombing the ground.

  The ground fortifications that had been subjected to intense bombardment and cannon fire were in a state of utter devastation, the entire surface looking like the surface of the moon. The cold northeastern air was abnormally hot from the large fires, the pungent smell of gunpowder filling one's nostrils, the snow on the ground melted away, everywhere splattered with red flesh and blood, rags and flesh hanging from rocks and tree branches, making one feel waves of nausea.

  "First kill the devil engineer!" According to Li Bin's order, all grassroots officers gave orders to the soldiers.

  On the battlefield, scorching bullets whizzed out one after another, knocking down into the trenches those Japanese engineer soldiers who were about to work above the first trench. The enemy's retaliatory firepower came crashing down, and the tenaciously shooting warriors fell one by one at their posts.

  The warriors showed tenacious willpower, braving the enemy's artillery fire, making the Japanese engineer's work as slow as a snail. Despite this, the Japanese still used corpses to fill in a section of the trench, and the soldiers could already hear the sound of tank engines!