The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 264 Extremely Dangerous

Teng Yuzhao's line of sight passed over the parapet on one side of the city and he could vaguely see that under the parapet on the outer side of the city wall, there were densely packed vanguard soldiers in iron-gray uniforms.

Due to the angle, Teng Yuzhao did not see any vanguard officers and soldiers on the city wall.

When searching the city, Teng Yuzhao soon discovered that many soldiers holding rifles and Teng's grenades were lying on the houses on both sides of the main street.

On the main street, about three or four hundred meters away from the city gate, there were three strange sandbag shelters that were closely spaced and ran across the entire street.

Moreover, Teng Yuzhao did not see any soldiers from the Third Mixed Brigade appearing behind those bunkers.

The reason why these bunkers are a bit strange is that the height of the frontmost bunker is not a prone shooting bunker. Its height is a little higher than a prone shooting bunker. If it is a kneeling shooting bunker, the height is just right.

The cover in the middle is also a bit strange. If you are shooting from a standing position, the cover is still a bit high, unless there is something to prop you up behind it.

The last one was obviously too high, almost two meters high. For such a high shelter, there was not a single soldier in the vanguard army who was two meters tall.

In Teng Yuzhao's opinion, these three sandbag walls of such height should not be called shelters. It would be more appropriate to call them sandbag walls, or even just obstacles.

Moreover, such a high sandbag wall was not enough to stop the charging Japanese army.

Because if the sandbag wall was used as a barrier to block the Japanese army, the height of the first two walls was too low, and even the Japanese soldiers, whose height was generally below 1.6 meters, would not have difficulty climbing over them.

Although the height of the third sandbag wall was sufficient, a sandbag wall of this height had to be stacked with at least four layers. If it was only double-layered, it would not be strong enough and would be quickly pushed down by the Japanese army. It would be ridiculous for the Japanese army to want to use it to block the attack.

Although Teng Yuzao felt a little strange and puzzled about these sandbag walls, he did not pay too much attention to them, because Hu Dianjia's other arrangements involving ambushes were not out of the ordinary.

Not only in the ambush area, but also in the houses on both sides of the main street, there were large numbers of soldiers lying in ambush. From Teng Yuzhao's position, he could also see many soldiers from the Third Mixed Brigade lying in ambush in the courtyards of several alleys leading to the main street.

Together with these soldiers, there were some young and strong men wearing Boxer, Green Camp and training army uniforms, holding swords and rifles in their hands. There seemed to be a white cloth strip wrapped around their left arms. These should be the new recruits just organized by Wang Decheng.

Teng Yuzhao knew that this must be Hu Dianjia's attempt to lure the Japanese army into launching a large-scale attack on the city.

"Onboard!"

Outside the Qihua Gate, there was a sudden earth-shaking shout. Although it was still several hundred meters away from the Qihua Gate, Teng Yuzhao could still hear it very clearly. Such a loud sound could not be possible without thousands of people shouting at the same time.

From where Teng Yuzao was, he could only see half of the city gate.

Soon, shouts of "Onboard" were heard in the city wall, and then it was as if a large stream of black sewage was rushing out of the city wall's gate and into the city.

Then, this stream of black sewage quickly dispersed into several streams. Two of the Japanese troops went to seize the two horse paths on the left and right of the city. These short Japanese soldiers wearing black military uniforms shot at the defenders on the city with rifles with sharp bayonets that were obviously too long for them, while rushing madly towards the city along the horse paths.

The rest of the Japanese troops quickly climbed onto the roofs of houses near the city wall or entered the houses, and then began to shoot at the defenders on the city wall with their rifles, trying to suppress the Gansu troops resisting on the city wall and cover their companions to capture the city wall.

At this time, gunfire had already rang out inside and outside Qihua Gate, but Teng Yuzao could not hear the firing of the Maxim heavy machine guns or the explosions of grenades and explosive packs. Obviously, until this moment, Hu Dianjia was still unwilling to take action. He did not want to alert the Japanese army now, and he was still thinking about letting in more Japanese troops.

The most intense battle at this time was over the four horse paths inside and outside the city wall. Not only were the Japanese soldiers on the horse paths shooting and rushing towards the city, but the Japanese soldiers below the city were also launching intensive shooting at the top of the city wall.

Although there were sandbag shelters at the top of the horse trail, the defenders behind the sandbags could not even raise their heads under the intensive shooting of the Japanese army. Even the sandbags were broken into pieces by the intensive rain of bullets from the Japanese army, and the sand inside some of the sandbags began to flow out.

Fortunately, a lot of rolling logs were prepared on the city wall. This ancient city defense equipment came in handy at this time. After the Gansu army threw several heavy rolling logs onto the horse path under the rain of Japanese bullets, they immediately knocked the Japanese soldiers on the horse path into a rolling gourd. The rolling logs bounced and rolled down along the horse path, knocking down a group of Japanese soldiers who were rushing towards the city wall, and barely prevented the Japanese soldiers from rushing to the top of the city wall.

However, these short Japanese soldiers with bloody heads were very fierce. After getting up from the ground, many of them who were still able to move would continue to charge upwards. Those who were injured or had broken legs and had difficulty moving would even struggle to get up, leaning against the parapet of the horse path to stabilize their bodies, and use their rifles to shoot at the city in the hail of bullets.

In just a short while, the number of Japanese troops rushing out of the city wall was no less than five or six thousand. If we count the Japanese troops who stayed in the city wall and were fighting with the Gansu troops on the city wall for the horse road, as well as the Japanese troops who were responsible for cover inside, Teng Yuzhao conservatively estimated that the number of Japanese troops rushing into Qihuamen, even if there were not ten thousand, was still at least eight or nine thousand.

"Onboard!"

At this moment, the crazy and excited shouts of the Japanese soldiers were heard again outside the city, and this time there seemed to be more people shouting.

It was obvious that the Japanese commander saw that so many troops had already rushed into the city and thought that the city was about to be captured, so he simply pushed all the troops outside the city forward.

According to the plan, Liu Changfa's artillery brigade should open fire now, and Hu Dianjia's men should also launch an ambush.

Otherwise, if the Japanese army really rushed in with more than 10,000 troops, it would be questionable whether the ambush could still be successful.

As more and more Japanese troops rushed out of the city wall, they finally stopped limiting themselves to just fighting for the city wall, because they had already crowded the large street in front of the city wall, which had somewhat blocked the way for the Japanese troops who continued to rush out of the city wall.

It seemed that the Japanese commander saw the sandbag walls facing the main street, and a large number of Japanese troops began to run frantically along the main street and pounce on the sandbag shelters.

But even in such a tense situation, the direction of Liu Changfa's artillery position remained calm and there was no movement.

Seeing more and more Japanese soldiers rushing out of the city wall, Teng Yuzhao saw that the area from the city gate to the main street was almost completely covered by the black muddy current, and that muddy current was still surging forward madly and rapidly, like a ferocious flood beast, swiftly rushing towards the three sandbag bunkers less than a few hundred meters away.

Those three bunkers were undoubtedly the bottom of Hu Dianjia's ambush pocket. Once the bottom of this pocket was exposed by the Japanese army, this ambush would be completely counterproductive.

Even if the city gate could stop the Japanese army's follow-up troops from rushing into the city, how could they deal with the more than 10,000 Japanese soldiers who had escaped from the ambush circle!

He was afraid that the defense of the capital would be breached today, and Teng Yuzhao would not even have time to clean up the piece of meat that was already in his bowl. The remnants of the British and American troops in the outer city would have to withdraw from the capital in a hurry.

Teng Yuzhao believed that this was because Hu Dianjia was obsessed with achieving a major victory, so much so that he ignored his orders and let in far more than 10,000 Japanese troops. This made him extremely anxious, and he even swore in anger.

Angry and anxious, Teng Yuzhao grabbed the phone beside him and was about to call Wei Jinghai immediately. He wanted Wei Jinghai to order Hu Dianjia to take action immediately.

Teng Yuzao was even thinking about how he would punish Hu Dianjia if he was still alive after withdrawing from the capital.
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(End of this chapter)