The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression Begins in Songhu

Chapter 658 Code Name: Overlord (Part Two) (Seeking Monthly Tickets)

At 2:42 p.m., on a highway with more than ten centimeters of snow.

"Baka Yalu! I want to kill them, no, I want them to have no hope of dying a quick death, they will suffer endless torment before they can leave."

Looking at the severely deformed and broken corpses by the roadside, Colonel Ikeda roared madly.

Because he was too angry, his desire to kill Hu Biao and the others to gain merit faded considerably.

Behind him, two large battalions of Japanese infantry, totaling about two thousand men, remained silent, but their expressions and eyes revealed a mixture of anger and undisguised fear.

Fear! That's because the current state of Sasaki Squadron and its members looks just too terrible.

Originally, the most terrifying way for the Japanese soldiers to die was to have their heads chopped off by their opponents, because they believed that this would disrupt the reincarnation of their souls.

But after seeing the scene before them, they clearly didn't think that way anymore.

All that can be said is that what is unfolding before their eyes is a scene reminiscent of the eighteen cruel tortures used by Northeast bandits to deal with traitors.

The specific methods used were too cruel to describe.

Anyway, that scene, which resembled the eighteenth level of hell, made the Japanese soldiers' scalps tingle.

Anger! It was because those weaklings who, in their eyes, could only hide like rats, dared to do such a thing to the warriors of the empire.

How dare they? Aren't they afraid of retaliation?

For a moment, they had only one thought in their minds, just like Colonel Ikeda: catch up with them and make sure to use the most cruel methods to make it impossible for these thugs to even die a quick death.

With these thoughts in mind, they left a small squad to clean up the battlefield and collect the bodies of Sasaki's squad.

Colonel Ikeda, leading nearly 2000 Japanese soldiers, chased after them across the wilderness, following a dense trail of footprints left on the ground.

Perhaps their opponents had already exhausted too much energy in their previous actions and battles.

This resulted in a significant decrease in speed during the escape.

As Colonel Ikeda and his men pursued them, the footprints on the ground became increasingly encroaching, and the distance between the two sides grew closer and closer; to the point that they could vaguely see the running figures without binoculars.

Even if it's not entirely certain, Hu Biao's most important goal has now been lost on horseback.

Such a discovery undoubtedly boosted the morale of Colonel Ikeda and his entourage.

That's why, so focused on revenge, they didn't even notice that they were now heading towards a mountainous area.

Or perhaps some people noticed but didn't care, instead thinking it was perfectly reasonable; they assumed these rat-like creatures, after taking advantage, were planning to flee back into the woods and hide.

Amidst the shouts of officers at all levels, the Japanese soldiers ran even faster...

At the same time, Iwasa Rokuro was in the Xinjing Government Office of the puppet Manchukuo regime on the southeast side of Datong Square in Changchun City, which is also the location of tonight's victory celebration.

Finally, we received a report from the 246th Infantry Regiment, which was deliberately delayed by half an hour.

After quickly reading through the report in his hand, Iwasa Rokuro had many doubts in his mind.

For example: Did Hu Biao and his companions realize that with the city's tight security, their limited manpower would only be courting death if they acted rashly?

So they chickened out! They abandoned their plan to disrupt the victory celebration and retrieve General Zhao's head and his comrade's body?
Having thus ambushed and annihilated one of their squadrons, they managed to save face somewhat and then prepared to withdraw.

Instinctively, he felt that the truth was not like that; given the personalities of Hu Biao and his ilk, it was absolutely impossible for them to give up so easily.

However, it was impossible to explain in the short term where Hu Biao and his men could find more troops besides the three or four hundred who had already been exposed, to continue their attack on the city.

It's impossible to replicate the Jiamusi City operation in the new Beijing with just a few dozen people, right?
If that's the case, then Hu Biao and his gang are just a bunch of brutes, and their reputations are undeserved. They would never have been able to build such a big name over the years.

At that very moment, his deputy, a colonel, whispered a question:
"Lord Iwasa, now that Hu Biao and his men are being hunted down by the 246th Regiment, they shouldn't have time to cause trouble in the city. Should we relax our alert level?"

Should the Warriors be divided into two or three shifts for rotation?

After all, the weather has been exceptionally cold these past few days, and the Empire's warriors have been enduring considerable hardship on their long missions, leading to significant complaints.

"No! The alert level absolutely cannot be lowered; the warriors must overcome the difficulties and stay at their posts."

Upon hearing this suggestion, Iwasa Rokuro roared.

Even at this point, he considered issuing an order to urgently mobilize more troops from surrounding areas; however, after hesitating for a moment, he abandoned the idea.

After all, he wasn't sure if Hu Biao and his group were among the people being chased by the Ikeda team.

Little did he know that this decision would later make him regret it to the core...

At 3:29, the wizard, who had been climbing up a steep hillside for a while and had now reached the mountainside, saw a large, uniquely shaped rock a few meters ahead.

After glancing back at the Japanese soldiers who had chased him for over 400 meters, he knew he had arrived at his destination.

This is the place where I must stop, and where my journey through time is about to end.

That said! Because of the limited total strength, the force that Hu Biao and his men could give to Mo Shuiyan and the wizard to lead in dealing with the Japanese 246th Infantry Regiment consisted of more than 300 men, including the 120-odd cavalrymen.

How can we severely damage an elite Japanese infantry regiment with such limited forces?
In any case, a direct confrontation was definitely not going to work. After discussing for a while, the group of transmigrators came up with a very constructive suggestion:

Lure the main force of the Japanese troops to a suitable environment, create an avalanche, and bury them with the power of nature.

Therefore, the exposure of the small team of several dozen people, the ambush of Japanese companies one by one, the extremely cruel treatment of those Japanese soldiers, and the deliberate slowing down of their more than two hundred infantrymen as they fled.

Everything was done so that Colonel Ikeda and his large group of Japanese soldiers could follow them all the way to the trap they had set up in advance.

However, even so, it doesn't mean everything is perfect.

After several days of searching, they found a mountain with a relatively steep terrain and whose name they did not yet know, but it was not considered a very high mountain in the vicinity of Changchun.

This hill is only about 500 meters high.

This means that the Japanese soldiers must be lured extremely close, to a place where they have no time to escape, and then an avalanche must be created to have a chance to bury enough Japanese soldiers.

How to seduce the Japanese? Of course, it wasn't just the wizard and Mo Shuiyan who could handle it by dancing a suggestive dance.

Instead, they revealed their identities as senior members of Hu Biao's team.

Sure enough! The wizard turned his head and saw Mo Shuiyan not far away. This teammate was also looking in his direction, his eyes full of determination.

Based on the tacit understanding developed from their long-term teamwork, they didn't need to say much to know what the other was thinking.

So the wizard pretended to be exhausted from the fighting and fleeing, and that he was now too tired to run, and was prepared to fight to the death to cover the retreat and buy a way out for the others.

He shouted, his voice trembling with breathlessness:

“You little devils, Lieutenant Colonel Wu Shi, deputy director of the Ordnance Department of the Subei Independent Regiment, is here. Come up here if you dare.”

Mo Shuiyan, also feeling weak, quickly followed up with a shout: "Grandpa is Mo Shuiyan, the lieutenant colonel and section chief of the Northern Jiangsu Independent Regiment. Little devils, come up here quickly, Grandpa will reward you with some good things."

After shouting, the two men each picked up a captured Japanese Type 96 light machine gun, lay on the ground, and opened fire from their elevated position.

Besides the two, there were also about ten KL soldiers and more than thirty bearded brothers, who also lay on the ground and opened fire on the Japanese.

They were just like Mo Shuiyan and the wizard, voluntarily staying behind as bait, brothers who had no intention of surviving.

There's no way! The two of them, the wizard and the sorcerer, alone are probably not enough to put the pressure on the Japanese side to commit all their forces and charge forward recklessly.

The combined firepower of the fifty or so men quickly felled twenty or thirty of the Japanese soldiers charging at the front.

However, Colonel Ikeda, who was currently at the foot of the mountain, was filled with immense joy.

So many years have passed, and the Japanese had such intelligence capabilities, while the Nationalist government had such excellent secrecy.

How could they not have discovered that Chaozi, Uncle Bo, Wizard, Mo Shuiyan, Old K, Shizi, and others were key figures in Hu Biao's team in terms of equipment technology?

The guerrilla forces in northwestern Shanxi and the Eighth Route Army contributed many of the equipment manufacturing technologies.

They even figured out that it was these very people who provided the secret technologies that allowed China to exchange equipment for five infantry divisions each from Russia and the United States, causing them considerable trouble.

He was someone the Japanese hated to the bone and tried every means to get rid of.

Therefore, Colonel Ikeda discovered that among the people who had retreated from the mountainside, although Hu Biao, the biggest fish, was not among them, there were two big fish: Mo Shuiyan and the Wizard.

The thought that eliminating these two men would at least earn him a promotion to major general filled him with delight.

He immediately started yelling at the top of his lungs, "Charge! Charge up and take them down first, then keep chasing the others and take down even more!"

"Warriors of the 246th Regiment, if we wipe out Hu Biao's gang today, we will be heroes of the Empire, and our bravery will be praised and revered by all the people."

Amid Colonel Ikeda's roar, the Japanese soldiers became even more excited.

When they first charged toward the mountainside, they were somewhat organized, strictly following the requirements of the Infantry Drill Manual, and began their wave-by-wave attack.

After two consecutive attacks, they found themselves forced back after advancing more than a hundred meters.

They grew increasingly anxious, but at Colonel Ikeda's command, the remaining 1,800-plus Japanese soldiers, except for the wounded, rallied.

They were carrying rifles with bayonets fixed, forming the legendary "boar charge" formation, and charged like wild boars.

They charged forward despite the bullets and heavy casualties, relentlessly closing in on the sniper position on the hillside. Soon after, the vanguard of the Japanese soldiers was less than thirty meters away from the desperately firing wizard and Mo Shuiyan.

Once they get close, the dense array of bayonets will overwhelm them in the blink of an eye.

The key issue is that Mo Shuiyan and the wizard are holding their ground not because they really want to hold off the Japanese for a long time, but to buy time for the others to evacuate.

When I saw these Japanese soldiers actually forming the legendary "pig charge" formation, I almost burst out laughing like a pig.

When the Japanese soldiers were less than twenty paces away, Mo Shuiyan knew it was time to really make a move.

He pulled a signal gun from under his coat and fired it into the air; instantly, a blood-red signal flare rose a hundred meters into the air and exploded violently.

This signal flare was, of course, the signal to take action.

To create an avalanche, they buried 50 kilograms of TNT and 300 kilograms of gunpowder at a distance of 50 to 60 meters from the summit.

They also had two brothers lying in ambush, ready to pull the fuse of one of the explosive charges and cause an avalanche after receiving the signal.

Even if they knew that once the signal was given, the Japanese soldiers who were about to rush up to them were doomed.

After Mo Shuiyan and the wizard exchanged a smile, the surviving brothers on the battlefield, still wielding broadswords and rifles, went to meet the Japanese soldiers.

Don't ask why. The answer is that they prefer the feeling of personally cutting off the necks of Japanese soldiers and smashing their skulls.

When Colonel Ikeda saw the blood-red signal flare rise and explode in the air, the Japanese regimental commander shuddered instantly.

In his previously feverish mind, he finally realized a fatal threat that he had been ignoring but which posed a serious threat to his main force.

At that moment, Colonel Ikeda showed a rare display of bravery. Instead of turning and running away alone, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Run! Run! An avalanche is about to happen!"

Unfortunately, Colonel Ikeda's heroic actions had no effect whatsoever.

He shouted it three times in a row, and the Japanese soldiers who were charging wildly heard it, but their minds hadn't even had time to process it, let alone do anything about it.

A deafening explosion occurred a short distance below the hilltop.

Then, the snow that had accumulated over almost the entire winter poured down the steep mountainside with a whoosh, carrying with it even more snow, amounting to tens of thousands of tons.

That astonishing display of power sent shivers down the spines of every Japanese soldier who saw it.

Driven by their survival instincts, the Japanese soldiers had only run about twenty steps when the overwhelming snow quickly buried them completely.

Finally, after everything calmed down...

Of the people who were originally fighting to the death, only twenty or thirty of the more fortunate Japanese wounded soldiers who were in more remote locations at the foot of the mountain survived.

Everything else vanished without a trace, completely buried by the heavy snow, a pristine expanse of white.

Human beings, so self-righteous, appear so small and powerless in the face of the terrifying power of nature.

After being stunned for at least a minute or two, the surviving Japanese soldiers finally came to their senses, crying out the names of familiar faces.

They frantically dug through the snow, trying to rescue their colleagues who were being buried by the avalanche.

However, their meager strength seemed utterly laughable at this moment.

Finally, the three clever Japanese soldiers, after regaining some of their senses from their blank minds, turned around and stumbled towards the corpse-collecting team a little behind them.

There was a radio station there, which could be used to request assistance from the regimental headquarters or even the Kwantung Army headquarters.

After the three Japanese soldiers ran about a mile away, the wounded Japanese soldiers who were still digging through the snow remained in the same spot.

Dejected and exhausted, it stopped moving and collapsed into the thick snow, bringing peace to the world.

******
At 4:23 PM, in the 246th Regiment of the 112th Division of the Kwantung Army, Lieutenant Colonel Sakaike Tsugio, the battalion commander of the Sakaike Battalion stationed at the regimental headquarters, received devastating news:
Their own regimental commander, along with two infantry battalions, were almost entirely buried by a massive avalanche.

Of the more than two thousand soldiers who set out, only seventy or eighty have survived.

Now that the avalanche has occurred, there has been some time left before they arrive at the avalanche site to begin rescue operations.

Lieutenant Colonel Jiuchi didn't know how many people could be rescued, or even if any could be saved at all.

However, he knew that he had to set off immediately to rescue them, and he would take the remaining troops from the regimental headquarters with him to rescue as many people as possible.

Otherwise, their 246th Regiment would not only have suffered heavy losses, but would also have become a huge joke in the Kwantung Army.

As for Iwasa Rokuro, the military police commander, they were previously ordered to stay here as a reserve force? Never mind.

It should be understood that throughout history and across the world, combat troops have never had a good relationship with these military police units; the same was true in the Japanese army.

In the past, Colonel Sakachi would have had to cooperate with and obey Iwasa Rokuro's orders because he was mindful of military orders.

Given the current special circumstances, who cares about Iwasa Rokuro's orders? Does he really not understand what 'overthrowing one's superior' means?

Before long, not only had one of his infantry battalions assembled, but also a group of logistics personnel from other regimental headquarters had taken various tools and were ready to rescue people.

Just before leaving, Lieutenant Colonel Sakachi suddenly seemed to remember something and issued an order:
"Someone! Quickly make a phone call and send a telegram to report this matter to the division commander and Iwasa Rokuro."

After saying that, a large group of people took off running towards the area where the avalanche had occurred.

Even though many Japanese soldiers knew in their hearts that after being buried in snow for so long, probably not many of them were still alive...

Five minutes later, after hanging up the phone, Nakamura Tsukizo, the commander of the 112th Division of the Kwantung Army, felt a wave of dizziness and almost fainted.

His 112th Division was indeed an elite unit of the Kwantung Army.

He commanded three infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, one supply regiment, plus engineers, medical personnel, and other units, totaling no less than 20,000 men.

However, the loss of more than two thousand people, especially the blow of losing them all in an avalanche, was still quite overwhelming for Nakamura Tsujizo.

After grabbing the table with one hand, he steadied himself from almost falling.

Like Captain Sakachi, he also had the same thought in his mind: they must immediately send people to rescue Colonel Ikeda and the other buried people, and save as many as they could.

The difference is that the commanders of Japanese infantry divisions were basically lieutenant generals.

This gave Division Commander Nakamura Tsukizo much more confidence to disobey orders issued by Major General Iwasa Rokuro, the military police commander.

Without the slightest hesitation, the order was issued directly:

"Order the 247th Regiment to set off immediately, splitting into two groups. One group will search for and hunt down Hu Biao and his men. They must catch up with them and kill them."

Another group participated in the rescue of those affected by the avalanche, striving to bring as many people back as possible.

The 247th Regiment was another unit that had been used as a reserve force in recent days under the orders of Iwasa Rokuro.

In other words, the reserve team that Iwasa Rokuro had originally arranged for tonight's "tiger-killing" plan was disbanded with the order issued by Division Commander Nakamura Tsukizo.

Now only a single infantry regiment of the puppet Manchukuo Z country's Iron Stone Army remains, less than two thousand men...

Three minutes later, Iwasa Rokuro answered the phone and was furious to hear the above information from a staff officer of the 112th Division.

He roared, "Your Nakamura Tsujiki is the head of the corps! Let him answer the phone!"

"The division commander has personally led a team to rescue the troops trapped under the avalanche," the staff officer on the other end replied indifferently.

Upon hearing this, Iwasa Rokuro became even more furious and roared:
"Tell him to bring his troops back as soon as possible. To ensure the execution of the 'Tiger Killing' plan, Commander Umezu has given me the authority to mobilize all troops."

"If he disobeys orders, I will go to the Kwantung Army headquarters and complain to Commander-in-Chief Umezu."

Faced with such a threat, the other side merely replied with a calm remark, effectively silencing all of Iwasa Rokuro's roars:

"Our division commander said, are you planning to have Commander Umezu issue an order for us to stop the rescue and let the Imperial warriors buried by the avalanche just wait to die?"

He's already being very lenient by not transferring the troops currently on missions in the city along with them.

Upon hearing this statement, Iwasa Rokuro was instantly speechless.

Because some things can be done silently, but absolutely cannot be spoken of.

For example: If we really succeed in killing Hu Biao and his comrades, what if the two brigades buried by the avalanche are all dead?
Even at the cost of wiping out an entire brigade, as long as the above targets can be eliminated.

Commander Umezu would probably be very happy, and the Empire would also find it very worthwhile.

However, such a price can only be paid within the normal battle losses. Avalanches like this must be saved, otherwise what will the soldiers of other units of the Kwantung Army think?
Wasn't his act of going to Commander Umezu to complain also making things difficult for him and creating trouble for him?

In modern terms, it means: If you make your boss unhappy, will you still be able to advance in your career?
After hanging up the phone, Iwasa Rokuro abandoned his attempt to file a complaint and issued a series of orders to salvage the situation. The main focus of these orders was to urgently mobilize troops from the surrounding areas to serve as reserves.

Among them, the two elite infantry battalions, which were urgently transported by train from the neighboring city of L, were the most anticipated.

After all, the distance between the two places is only a mere 130 kilometers.

As long as the train travels at top speed, it can still arrive on time, giving him enough backup.

What Iwasa Rokuro didn't know was that these reinforcements he had urgently mobilized wouldn't be able to reach Changchun City in time...

(End of this chapter)