Chapter 41: The Wind Rises in Ji Nan (4)

  Sun Li put down the phone and immediately notified the troops of the 1st and 2nd battalions to prepare for attack; ordered the machine gun company on the small high ground to indicate the target direction for the mortar company of the 2nd battalion below the mountain. At 6:30, the artillery fire began, and the chief of staff unified command of the mortar companies of the 1st and 2nd battalions from the small high ground.

  The bandits of Zengjia Village have suffered a lot in the past few months. Although they had a constant supply of rice, flour, wine and meat, their daily life was much better than when they were bandits before, but Liu Yuru not only organized them according to the regular army's system, but also trained them strictly according to the regular army's standards, and it was three times a day. These bandits had been idle for a long time, especially the former leaders and some of the smaller heads, who had never suffered such hardships before. Whenever they complained to Liu Yuru, they were scolded severely by him. Every time during training, Liu Yuru would wield his whip and rush around, those who didn't train seriously would be whipped; if it was serious, they would be taken out and beaten with a military stick. There were also several former leaders who didn't want to suffer this punishment, secretly planning to take their men down the mountain to operate on their own, but when Liu Yuru discovered them, he had them killed.

  Yesterday was the fifteenth day of the first month, and the bandits ate meat, drank wine, and gambled until midnight. They thought there would be no drill today. But unexpectedly, the morning drill was still held. The bandits who participated in the drill secretly cursed, but no one dared to disobey.

  The bandits who were on the move suddenly heard many sharp whistling sounds coming from afar and getting closer. The bandits who followed Liu Yuru, originally from Sun Dianying's unit, immediately dropped to the ground upon hearing the whistling sound, while others rushed towards nearby shelters for cover. Only those newly recruited bandits were still staring blankly at people fleeing in disarray, unsure of what to do.

  "Boom, boom, boom..." Nearly a hundred mortar shells exploded, filling the air with smoke and dust, instantly covering the bandits who were exercising in the large drill ground inside the first wall. Before the smoke had cleared, two more rounds of continuous fire came, all exploding within the smoke-filled area. The massive cloud of smoke and dust rose high into the air, and rocks shattered by the explosions fell from the sky, some even landing inside the second wall.

  Liu Yuru, who was standing on the second wall of the stockade inspecting the situation, was startled by the first round of artillery fire. Such intense firepower, he had only seen during the Second Northern Expedition, when the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army and the Central Army clashed with the Northeastern Army. But that was a large-scale battle between several divisions! He believed that no one would send out several divisions to deal with his small mountain stronghold, even if they sent just one division, it would be an honor for him. However, who could have such powerful firepower if it were just one division? Liu Yuru thought that the only possibility was the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army's artillery regiment. But his Zeng Family Stockade was located within Hebei Province! Was the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army after that batch of treasure? How did they know about it?

  Liu Yuru is Sun Dianying's confidant, and he was his subordinate when Sun Dianying was a bandit. Due to the tight investigation of tomb raiding, Sun Dianying did not dare to bring the treasure with him, nor did he dare to bury it, unless he could guarantee that those involved in the burial would never speak again. After some thought, he decided to entrust his trusted confidant and secretly take this batch of treasures back to continue being a bandit, and no one would think that a large amount of treasure was hidden in the bandit's den.

  Liu Yuru is Sun Dianying's trusted confidant, and he secretly escorted this batch of treasures to Zengjiayao under Sun Dianying's orders. The fact that he had resumed his old business and become a bandit again was known only to his few trusted subordinates and Sun Dianying. Shi You San should have known something about it, as the two had interacted before, and Sun Dianying had once helped him in times of difficulty. This time, at Sun Dianying's request, he dispatched the 26th Brigade to southern Henan, which was a promise that Sun Dianying would give him 200,000 yuan every month; moreover, there have been foreigners coming to Zengjiayao frequently over the past six months, and the 26th Brigade should have noticed. Sun Dianying had a rule for selling this batch of treasures: only sell to foreigners, never to Chinese people. This was because he feared that the looted treasures would appear domestically and attract criticism. Sun Dianying was not worried that Shi You San would be tempted by the wealth, as if it were something else, he would still be uneasy. However, this batch of treasures was something that Shi You San would absolutely not have any malicious intentions towards. Because currently, in Beiping, under Nanjing's orders, a military tribunal led by Shang Zhen was trying the tomb robbery case, and only because they had received large amounts of treasure from the looters, but those people were unwilling to hand over the national treasures, so no one dared to move against them. There was another reason: at present, in the Central First Army sequence, Nanjing was sharpening its knives and preparing to take action against the Guangxi clique, and naturally did not want internal conflicts to arise. Sun Dianying's newly formed 10th Division had nearly 20,000 people. If Shi You San dared to take action and rob this batch of treasures, it would immediately allow the bigwigs in Nanjing who were under public opinion pressure to rejoice, using Shi You San as a scapegoat to placate public opinion was the best outcome.

  At this time, the smoke and dust in the mountain school grounds had dissipated. The troops that were training here were mainly composed of bandits who had been recruited after arriving at Zengjiashan, over 1,000 people were caught in a barrage of nearly three hundred shells on the grounds that was less than 300 meters long and only about 60 meters wide, the tragic scene can be imagined. At this moment, it was simply a hell on earth. More than 200 shells accurately landed within the school grounds, each shell could cause people near the impact point to lose their lives, especially the 82mm mortar had enormous power, almost everyone near its impact point was blown to pieces, limbs and bodies were scattered all over the grounds, even a severed hand flew straight to under the second wall. The team of over 1,000 people now only had about 400 people left, almost everyone was injured, like headless flies, they cried out in despair and frantically ran around looking for a place to hide. Among the bandits who were shocked by the brutal shelling, someone suddenly shouted, the bandits immediately went crazy and rushed towards the second gate along the mountain road.

  At this time, the 92 heavy machine guns on the small high ground began to fire at the fleeing bandits. Although the range of the 92 heavy machine gun far exceeded 1000 meters, it was still too far away, and accurate shooting was out of the question. The bullet impact area was as large as 30-40 meters at such a distance. However, the 8 92 heavy machine guns swallowed up the rain of bullets that took lives, and continued to sweep the bandits who were fleeing like madmen off the mountain road. The mortars below had stopped firing, using hundreds of shells to attack three or four hundred bandits was indeed too wasteful, without others saying it, they themselves felt embarrassed. Only the 12 82mm mortars on the small high ground continued to shell the crowd of fleeing bandits at a steady pace. In the end, less than 100 bandits were able to escape into the second gate, and more than 300 bodies of bandits lay on the long mountain road.

  As the bandits fled up the mountain, Liu Yuru loudly called out the remaining two battalion commanders, who were also the two regimental commanders he had brought with him, ordering them to immediately organize the bandits into defensive positions and prevent the enemy from taking advantage of the situation to attack the mountain. He ordered his guard company to set up a supervisory team behind the stockade wall: "Kill anyone who retreats one step!"

  Then. Liu Yuru himself took the guards and ran back up the mountain. He wasn't afraid of death. He asked for reinforcements. He knew that with just these few thousand bandits, they wouldn't be enough to withstand the cannon fire.

  After the mountain bandits had been in chaos for a while, they gradually stabilized their footing. More than a dozen 60mm mortars also began to counterattack towards the small high ground. Just after firing a few rounds, they were covered by dozens of shells whizzing from the mountain and the small high ground. More than a dozen mortars were blown away, and most of the shooters died in battle. The remaining ones fled far away, and no one dared to fire again.

  At this time, the first and second battalions had already occupied the first wall of the fort. The 82mm mortars on the small high ground no longer fired randomly, but instead accurately targeted the areas where the bandits were concentrated behind the second wall of the fort, as well as the bunkers and shelters, inflicting maximum casualties on the bandit forces and destroying their fortifications to prepare for the general assault.

  Hiding behind the first layer of fortifications, a long and wealthy Huang Da Fu. With a jealous face, he looked at the small high ground where the machine gun company was still continuously firing. He said with a sense of resentment: "Damn it! These rabbit bastards in the machine gun company are like they don't care about the cost of bullets. If they keep bombing like this, we won't have any battles to fight when we go up there. We can only collect corpses for the bandits." The deputy battalion commander smiled and said: "Bullets still cost money, but it's not them who pay. It's all paid by the commander. And it doesn't cost them a dime. They won't stop until they're satisfied."

  The deputy company commander's words brought a burst of laughter from the surrounding soldiers.