lerbook Chapter 46 The Confidence of the Fengtian Army!
Chapter 46 The Confidence of the Fengtian Army!
Changzhou.
The blood on the battlefield hadn't dried yet.
Zhang Jialiang stood on the metal steps of the armored train, put his hand to his forehead, and glanced ahead.
Then he laughed dismissively.
Although the ground was littered with scraps of flesh, the remains of three thousand warhorses lay scattered haphazardly on the field ridges, some reduced to skeletons by wild dogs. Three of the five Renault FT tanks were still belching black smoke, while the other two lay askew by the roadside, their turrets blown off.
But he saw something else!
"See that?"
Zhang Jialiang gestured with his chin toward the staff behind him, "That old Russian Ivanov is still a piece of trash! Three hundred thousand silver dollars is like feeding a dog!"
No one dared to speak.
Zhang Jialiang jumped off the ramp, his military boots sinking into a pool of blackened blood, splashing his trouser leg. He paid no heed, striding forward, kicking away broken swords and shards of armor as he went.
"But then again..."
He bent down, picked up a piece of Renault armor, and flicked it on his finger. "That Chen Zijun kid is nothing special. What did the intelligence the White Russian soldiers risked their lives for tell me? That his men ran away!"
He kicked the debris into the mud pit, then turned to look at the few grass-green sandbags and two empty ammunition boxes scattered along the edge of the position.
"Look at this... this is his position! A few broken trenches, a few piles of sandbags?" Zhang Jialiang sneered. "He didn't even have time to set up a heavy machine gun position before he ran away. What Chen Zijun of Shanghai, what overlord of Jiangsu and Zhejiang! In front of my 100,000 Fengtian Army soldiers, he's nothing but a stray dog!"
The accompanying adjutants and division commanders all nodded in agreement.
Only one person didn't laugh.
Yang Yuting squatted by a shell crater on the position, his brows furrowed in a deep knot.
His palm pressed into the mud, and his fingertips touched something hard.
He pried the thing out and looked at it in his palm for three seconds.
A spent cartridge case.
It's made of brass, with extremely precise workmanship. There's a grooved pattern around the base, and the case is long and slender with a diameter so large that you can fit your thumb inside.
This is not the 6.5mm cartridge of the Type 38 rifle, nor the 7.92mm cartridge of the Hanyang rifle, nor any rifle cartridge he has ever seen before.
These are artillery shells!
This is a 75mm caliber.
It wasn't even a Japanese infantry gun.
That should be a tank cannon!
Yang Yuting suddenly stood up.
He looked around; he had been looking at the corpses, but now he began to examine the bullet holes.
On a section of earthen embankment opposite the trench, countless bullet holes formed a continuous line. They weren't scattered like individual shots, but rather a continuous pattern, like the marks left by a sewing machine. The distance between the bullet holes was less than two centimeters.
What kind of gun can create bullet holes with this density?
He then looked at the three Renault tanks that were still smoking.
The bullet holes on the frontal armor are not dents; they are penetrations.
A clean, neat round hole with outward-curving edges; the metal has been twisted into a petal shape by high temperature and impact.
The 22mm riveted armor was penetrated as easily as piercing a windowpane.
What kind of cannon can achieve this armor-piercing effect?
"Young Marshal!"
Yang Yuting ran quickly to Zhang Jialiang and held the spent cartridge case up to him. "Take a look at this!"
Zhang Jialiang glanced at it. "A bullet casing. What's wrong with it?"
"75mm armor-piercing tank round!"
Yang Yuting's voice was somewhat strained. "This isn't an ordinary mountain artillery shell. The precision with which this type of shell casing is manufactured is beyond what domestic companies can achieve. It's an import. And..."
He pointed at the three Renaults that had been shot through.
"A single shot penetrated 22mm of armor, leaving almost identical entry and exit points. What does this mean? It means the firing range was over 1000 meters, and the bullet still maintained an extremely high initial velocity upon arrival. Young Marshal, this isn't something explosives can do. There are tanks on the other side!"
Zhang Jialiang looked at him and slowly narrowed his eyes.
Then he burst out laughing.
"Yu Ting, oh Yu Ting."
Zhang Jialiang patted him on the shoulder. "Were you scared out of your wits by Chen Zijun in Luoyan Valley?"
Yang Yuting's expression changed.
"Chen Zijun has tanks? Tell me where he bought them? Can those dilapidated shipyards in Shanghai build tanks? Did the British sell them to him? Did the French sell them to him?"
Zhang Jialiang counted on his fingers, "Last year, the entire Far East region only imported seven tanks, all of which were in the hands of my Fengtian Army! How could a Shanghai warlord afford to buy them?"
"But the cartridge cases..."
"The cartridge cases don't prove anything."
Zhang Jialiang waved his hand, interrupting Yang Yuting, "Maybe they're just White Russian shell casings mixed together. Look at all this mess on the ground—Russian, Japanese, German, you name it. What does that prove?"
Yang Yuting opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something.
But Zhang Jialiang had already turned around and walked towards a group of division commanders waiting for orders.
"I don't care what tricks he used before! He escaped! That's enough!" Zhang Jialiang's voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire position. "What can someone who can't even hold Changzhou do against my 100,000-strong army?"
He drew his officer's sword and slashed it heavily in mid-air.
"Order! All troops disembark! No need for a step-by-step advance, form a single column and march south at top speed! Target—the Taihu Plain! I want to reach the outskirts of Shanghai within three days!"
The division commanders readily accepted the order.
Yang Yuting stood still, still clutching the 75mm cartridge case in his hand.
He watched as 100,000 Fengtian Army soldiers cheered and surged off the train, watched as Type 38 field guns were dragged by horses over the field ridges littered with bits of flesh, and watched as the vast flow of people, like a black snake, surged toward the open Taihu Plain to the south.
A chill ran down his back.
Something's not right...
He muttered to himself, "There's no reason to run away after winning..."
The wind swept across the plains, stirring up a foul, bloody stench.
But nobody listened to him.
The footsteps of 100,000 people drowned out everything else.
Taihu Plain, with hills to the south.
at the same time.
Chen Zijun put down the binoculars.
Through the telescope, on the distant horizon, a dense, dark mass of people surged into the plain like ants. Vast and seemingly endless, they stretched as far as the eye could see.
The dense array of military caps and bayonets gleamed coldly in the afternoon sun.
One hundred thousand people.
They're all here.
Chen Zijun's lips curled up slightly.
He turned around and picked up the field phone.
"Attention, artillery regiments."
His voice was very soft.
It was said so lightly, as if it were something completely ordinary.
"Tear down the air-raid camouflage netting."
The barrels of forty-eight German-made heavy howitzers slowly rose, piercing the camouflage of the branches overhead. The cold gleam of steel flashed in the sunlight.
"The prey has crossed the line..."