Chapter 3: The Fireworks in the Sky Above Xinhuang

  On the artillery position of the Gui Army, the mortars were still firing, and the newly transported mountain guns had just been set up. The gunners were adjusting their positions, the loaders were installing fuses on the shells, and the porters were busy unloading shells from the carts. The sounds of people and animals filled the air, making a lively scene.

  The commander of the Gui Army artillery battalion cursed as he inspected the gun position on the battlefield, with a messenger soldier following behind him silently, afraid to say anything wrong and be scolded by his superior. A porter carrying a box of shells ran past the commander's face, but accidentally stepped on a stone on the ground, slipped and fell, and the shell box fell to the ground with a loud crash, scattering shells all over the place. The Gui Army artillery battalion commander kicked the porter: "You damn thing, what are you panicking about? Be careful or I'll kill you."

  Looking at the porter eating, a Guilin soldier next to him laughed and shouted: "Xia Lao San, didn't you sneak out again last night to meet your lover? Won't it be that the woman sucked your legs soft?"

  The soldiers of the Gui army burst out laughing at once.

  That unlucky ammunition carrier got up from the ground, looked at the company commander with a frightened heart, saw that the company commander did not continue to kick him, picked up the scattered shells on the ground, and carefully ran back to his own position.

  "Brothers, hurry up! The red bandits on the mountain can't hold on much longer. As soon as our big guns fire, they'll be like the previous red bandits who guarded this place - flesh and blood flying everywhere, defeated and fleeing in disarray. When that happens, I'll ask the superior officer to reward you brothers with a big bonus of silver dollars. Whoever is lazy and doesn't do their job well, letting the red bandits escape and delaying your rewards, don't worry, my gun will speak to them!"

  "A Guizhou soldier shouted: 'Officer, can't we not have foreign currency, but instead reward us with a female Red Bandit? I heard that the female Red Bandits captured by the infantry brothers are all foreign students, very delicate and obedient.'"

  "Son of a dog, you're really something. You don't have four ounces of flesh on your body and yet you're thinking about good things. I still don't know what a female Red Bandit looks like, do you think it's your turn? Hurry up and work, after we eliminate the Red Bandits, we'll get our reward money, and then there will be no shortage of women."

  The soldiers responded with a loud shout. The artillery position on Mount Guiyang was busy again.

  Liu Yimin crouched in a forest 500 meters away from the Gui army's artillery camp, observing carefully. He found that the Gui army was indeed well-trained, with infantry protection camps in front of the artillery camp and sentries on all sides, with patrol teams passing by from time to time. It would be difficult to approach the artillery camp head-on, let alone launch a frontal attack. However, since the artillery camp was backed by a hill, the Gui army had only set up four sentries. Liu Yimin thought to himself that this was simply an invitation for a sneak attack. He turned his head and said to Wang Dahu: "You have the soldiers ambush here, I'll go blow up the cannons. When I come back later, if there are enemies chasing me, you cover me. If the cannonballs explode and I don't rush out, you immediately retreat."

  Wang Da Hu said: "No way, you are a new warrior and have culture, can't let you take risks, the Red Army doesn't have this rule. If anyone goes, it's me."

  Liu Yimin said: "You have a Fujian accent, one mouthful and you'll give yourself away. If something unexpected happens, the plan will be ruined. Don't argue, I'll go, you cover for me."

  Wang Dahai said, "You don't speak Guangxi dialect either." Liu Yimin opened his mouth and cursed, Wang Dahai thought for a moment and said, "Okay. You go, but you must come back, I'll be waiting here for you."

  "Don't worry, I'm wearing the Guangxi army uniform and I've learned their password from the captives. Nothing will happen." After saying that, he crouched down and ran forward, starting to crawl 300 meters away from the enemy artillery position. When he was only 100 meters away from the sentry, he stopped and observed for a moment, confirming that he hadn't been discovered. Then, using trees and terrain as cover, he crept another 50 meters forward before standing up straight and walking towards the Guangxi army sentry.

  "Halt!" The shout was accompanied by the sound of a rifle bolt being pulled back.

  "What's all the shouting about? Don't you recognize your old man?" Liu Yimin replied in a Guangxi accent as he walked forward.

  "Password?"

  "Exterminate the Communists. Return to order?"

  "Eliminate the bandits! Are you infantry brothers?!"

  It seems that the captives' statements were all true, and the Gui army's password was indeed "剿共灭匪" (Exterminate the Communists and Bandits). If the password is correct, then the opposing Gui army must be the 44th and 24th Divisions. These are the elite troops of the Gui army, with combat strength ranking among the top in the National Army during the Republican era. Recalling the memoirs of revolutionary veterans he had read later, which said "Guangxi monkeys are Gui army, fierce as tigers and ruthless as wolves", Liu Yimin couldn't help but feel a surge of heroic spirit in his chest. Since heaven has brought him here through time travel, these warlord troops that will eventually be swept into the dustbin of history are nothing to worry about! Thinking this way, Liu Yimin loudly rebuked the Gui army sentry:

  "What kind of infantry brother? Open your eyes and take a good look, I'm from the artillery regiment."

  As they spoke, Liu Yimin had already arrived in front of the sentry. He originally wanted to take out this sentry directly, but after scanning his eyes, he found that several other sentries were looking over here, so he could only continue walking forward. Who knew that this sentry was very vigilant? He saw Liu Yimin carrying a rifle on his back, with hand grenades hanging from his waist and holding a shotgun in his hands, feeling not like the heavy artillery camp's. The gun was held horizontally, blocking Liu Yimin's path.

  Liu Yimin pushed the sentry's gun aside, glared at him and shouted: "What are you doing? Want to get beaten up?" After that, he reached out to grab the sentry's collar and walked forward, "Let's go, find your superior!"

  "What's going on? What's going on?" The three nearby sentries, holding their guns, ran over. Liu Yimin thought to himself, good, this saves us from having to run into a blockade later. So he directly shouted: "Brothers, come and judge for yourselves! This damned guy dares to bully our artillery camp people, I'm going to catch him and take him to see the superior officer!"

  In the old army, the soldiers often fought in groups, and some troops even regarded soldierly brawls as a supplementary means of training. Even the relatively well-disciplined Guangxi Army couldn't avoid this bad habit. Liu Yimin, who was familiar with these bad habits from his later studies of military history, naturally understood them very well. The other three sentries were even clearer about it, thinking that their own brothers were being bullied, so they immediately surrounded him. Liu Yimin smiled and shouted, "You think you want to fight?" while his left hand directly grabbed one of the sentry's heads and slammed it into another head with great force, instantly settling the matter. The other two had just thought about intervening when Liu Yimin swung his rifle twice, smashing the heads of these two men so that blood spurted out, and they seemed to be dead. Liu Yimin used his rifle to prop up the bodies of the four sentries, not letting them fall to the ground. From a distance, the Guangxi Army saw this and thought the four sentries were gathered together smoking, so no one paid attention.

  Having settled the sentry, Liu Yimin swaggered towards the artillery position. The distance of several dozen meters was quickly covered. Liu Yimin took a look and saw that 18 mountain guns had all been set up, their muzzles pointing at the Red Army's position, preparing for test firing. Liu Yimin took a closer look and found that they were all old-fashioned Fobos mountain guns, exactly the same as those he had seen on military websites equipped by the Nationalist army during the Republican era.

  Although these cannons seem outdated and clumsy to Liu Yimin from the 21st century, with a short range and low power, they should have been retired long ago for people to visit and reminisce. However, Liu Yimin, who is familiar with military history, knows that at this time, these cannons are treasures and should be the mainstay of the Guangxi Army's artillery. It is worth noting that from the Beiyang government to the Nationalist government, the artillery equipment of the Chinese army has been declining year by year. In the early 1930s, many large-caliber guns used by the Nationalist Army were left over from the Beiyang period. Due to the lack of good steel and funding, factories that could produce large-caliber guns during the Beiyang government era had basically stopped production, and the Chinese army's artillery relied heavily on imports. After Chiang Kai-shek came to power, he was busy with internal wars, and the economy was never prosperous, so there was little use of large funds to purchase heavy equipment such as cannons, let alone develop military industry production on a large scale. Therefore, even the elite Central Army's artillery construction could not be compared with that of the Japanese army or other powerful troops. Many Nationalist Army units had artillery at the division level, and most had cancelled their artillery establishment at the regimental level; it was already good if they had some howitzers. It wasn't until two years before the full-scale outbreak of the war of resistance that Chiang Kai-shek's government finally woke up and began to cooperate with Germany on military matters, purchasing large quantities of weapons and equipment, and the Central Army's heavy firepower equipment improved significantly. What a pity these mountain cannons are! If only they could capture the Red Army's equipment, how great it would be!

  Liu Yimin knew that the opportunity was fleeting and he couldn't hesitate, the nearby mortar was still firing non-stop, the mountain gun was about to fire a test shot, and they had to blow it up immediately.

  Liu Yimin quickly ran to a cannon position, took out four hand grenades and tied them together with a string. He then threw the bundle onto the pile of shells loaded with fuses and turned around to run at a speed of 100 meters per second.

  The loader on the gun position saw the commander's flag waving, signaling a test shot, and quickly turned to load the shell. As he turned back, he saw a bundle of hand grenades on the pile smoking, his heart skipped a beat, and just as he was about to shout, the grenades exploded with a loud bang.

  The hand grenade detonated the shell on the gun position with a fuse, then all the shells on the gun position exploded, causing the shells to explode around the gun position, finally detonating all the shells on the position. The flying shells not only destroyed the mountain artillery position's cannons but also affected the nearby mortar position. The position was filled with flying shrapnel and the fragmented bodies of the Guangxi soldiers, a living hell on earth. The Guangxi army artillery battalion and infantry company protecting the artillery were both dealt a devastating blow, with very few people able to survive.

  The Red Army and the Guangxi Army, who were fiercely fighting on the opposite mountain, suddenly stopped their killings and looked at the big explosion in surprise. Wang Zanbin, the commander of the 44th Division of the Guangxi Army, who was holding a telescope to observe the attack situation in the command post, suddenly fell to the ground, while Chen Shuxiang, the commander of the Red 34th Division, shouted excitedly: "Great! Hurry up and check which unit destroyed the artillery of the White Dog's division, I want to ask for credit for them!"

  Liu Yimin ran back to the Red Army troops hiding in the woods, where the soldiers were crawling behind a boulder, watching the magnificent fireworks display of exploding shells above Xinwan. Wang Dahu excitedly hugged Liu Yimin, repeatedly saying "Great, great". Liu Yimin whispered: "Don't talk, form a single file line, and quickly retreat. Once the enemy reacts, we won't be able to leave." The group took advantage of the chaos caused by the explosions and quietly retreated towards the main peak, Guanyin Mountain.

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  I've made some changes and uploaded them ahead of schedule. I hope that after reading, everyone can give me some comments, thank you!