Bright Sword: Starting from Obtaining the Equipment Slot

"The Japanese devils are catching up!" Ma Feng's expression changed.

Wei Dayong looked back and saw a group of Japanese soldiers chasing after them, about twenty or so, running very fast.

"Ma Feng! Zheng Dali!" Wei Dayong said decisively, "You take your sister-in-law and the children and go first! Head west, we'll meet up in the village!"

"Battalion Commander, what are you going to do?" Ma Feng asked anxiously.

"I'll draw them away!" Wei Dayong pulled out a Mauser pistol from his pocket. "Stop talking nonsense, let's get going!"

"Yes!" Ma Feng and Zheng Dali exchanged a glance, then led Su Wanqing and Zhou Nian and quickly ran westward.

Duan Peng looked at Wei Dayong, a hint of admiration flashing in his eyes: "Brother Wei, I'll go with you!"

"No need." Wei Dayong patted him on the shoulder. "Go back and take care of your mother. If you're interested, you can always come to Black Cloud Village for a get-together."

Duan Peng paused for a moment when he heard the words "Black Cloud Stronghold." He had certainly heard of Black Cloud Stronghold; it was a notorious bandit stronghold in the area.

He didn't say much, just nodded: "Okay! Brother Wei, see you later!"

After saying that, Duan Peng turned and ran in another direction.

Wei Dayong took a deep breath, turned around, and ran towards the northwest.

As he ran, he pulled out his pistol and fired a shot behind him.

"Bang!!!"

Upon hearing the gunfire, the Japanese soldiers indeed changed direction and pursued the enemy to the northwest.

Wei Dayong runs very fast. The 20% increase in physical attributes brought by the two pieces of equipment makes him much faster than ordinary people.

Taking advantage of his familiarity with the terrain, he moved through the mountains and forests, quickly leaving the Japanese army far behind.

After running for about half an hour, Wei Dayong confirmed that the Japanese army could no longer catch up, so he slowed down and headed towards Black Cloud Village.

As soon as he entered the mountain village, he saw Zhou Wenxu and his family waiting for him at the door.

Upon seeing Wei Dayong, Zhou Wenxu rushed forward and said gratefully, "Battalion Commander, thank you! Thank you for saving my family!"

Su Wanqing and Zhou Nian followed, Su Wanqing's eyes slightly red: "Battalion Commander Wei, our whole family will never forget your great kindness!"

"Don't mention it," Wei Dayong smiled. "It's good that the family is reunited."

Zhou Nian hid behind her mother, secretly watching Wei Dayong with curiosity in her eyes.

Just then, Wang Xiao walked over, his face beaming with excitement: "Battalion Commander, you're finally back! The brothers have all missed you!"

"How is the troop training going?" Wei Dayong asked.

"Great training!" Wang Xiao said. "The brothers are in high spirits, all clamoring to take on ten men each!"

Wei Dayong frowned slightly: "High morale is a good thing, but we can't be blindly optimistic. The Japanese aren't that easy to defeat."

Wang Xiao was taken aback: "Battalion Commander, what do you mean by that? We've won several battles; the Japanese aren't all that great!"

Wei Dayong shook his head: "That's because we've only been fighting small groups of Japanese soldiers, and all of them were ambushes. We haven't encountered the real main force yet. No, we need to gather everyone and hold a general meeting!"

Although Wang Xiao was somewhat puzzled, he still followed Wei Dayong's instructions and went to gather the troops.

Soon, all the officers and soldiers of the assault battalion, as well as the captured bandits, gathered in the square of Black Cloud Village.

Standing on the stage, Wei Dayong looked at the hundreds of people below and cleared his throat: "I've gathered everyone here today to have a good talk with you all about just how strong our enemy—the Japanese devils—is!"

The audience immediately fell silent, everyone pricked up their ears, and listened attentively.

"Some people might think that because we've won a few battles, the Japanese are no match for us," Wei Dayong's voice rose higher and higher. "I'm telling you, that's a huge mistake! The Japanese are far stronger than you can imagine!"

He paused, his gaze sweeping over everyone in the audience: "Do you know how long the Japanese recruits train? Six months! And us? Three months is considered long! The Japanese recruits fire over 2000 rounds of live ammunition during their training!"

One of these new recruits could achieve an 80% hit rate when firing at a moving target within 300 meters! What does that mean? It means that on the battlefield, before you can even see where the enemy is, the bullets are already coming!

The audience fell silent immediately; everyone was stunned by the data.

"Furthermore, the Japanese are adept at using terrain for ambushes and infiltrations. They can appear in places you never expect and deliver a fatal blow! They're not so easy to deal with!"

Wei Dayong continued, "Secondly, the Japanese had a very high literacy rate. Japan began promoting education in 1907, and it's been more than 30 years now!"

Their soldiers are almost all literate and can effectively understand tactical instructions. Many of our soldiers can't match that!

Many of our soldiers can't even write their own names, and they can't understand tactical orders. How are they supposed to fight the Japanese?

"Third, the Japanese squads had a very reasonable firepower configuration. Each of their platoons was equipped with a light machine gun and a grenade launcher. In particular, the Type 90 grenade launcher had a range of 600 meters and was very accurate, capable of firing artillery shells directly into our trenches!"

It can effectively suppress our machine gun positions, forming a unique indirect fire network! Without this weapon, we're at a disadvantage in terms of firepower!

Fourth, the Japanese soldiers were very skilled in bayonet fighting. They were brainwashed by militarism, and their bayonet training was extremely rigorous. From the moment they enlisted, they had to practice bayonet fighting every day until their hands bled!

The Type 38 rifle with bayonet is over 1.6 meters long, longer than our Type 24 rifle!

Combined with the triangular formation tactic, it has a significant advantage in close combat! Many of our soldiers simply can't win a bayonet fight against the Japanese!

Fifth, the Japanese soldiers had a very stubborn fighting spirit. Controlled by the Bushido spirit, they rarely surrendered, often launching suicidal charges or holding their positions to the death!

They would rather die than surrender! To capture their positions, we must suffer heavy casualties! Sometimes, to take a single hilltop, we have to sacrifice dozens or even hundreds of our brothers!

Last year, in the great victory at Pingxingguan, the Eighth Route Army successfully ambushed the Japanese logistics force, annihilating over 1000 enemy soldiers. But how many were captured? Zero! Brothers, not a single Japanese soldier wanted to be captured. This is the enemy we are facing!

"Sixth, the Japanese had a clear advantage in weaponry and firepower. They were well-equipped with rifles, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, and artillery, and had ample ammunition, giving them sustained firepower!"

What about us? Many soldiers don't even have guns; they have to go to battle with broadswords and spears! How are we supposed to fight like that?

"Seventh, the Japanese also have air superiority. Their air force is very powerful, capable of aerial reconnaissance, bombing, and support, posing a huge threat to our ground forces!"

The Japanese planes can bomb wherever they want; we can't defend against them at all!

After Wei Dayong finished speaking, the audience fell into complete silence.

This was the first time the officers and soldiers of the assault battalion had heard someone analyze the Japanese army in such detail, and they gained a clear understanding of the strength of the Japanese army.

"Then... what should we do?" a soldier couldn't help but ask.

"What to do?" Wei Dayong sneered. "It's simple! To defeat them, you must train even harder and have a stronger fighting spirit than them!"

We must leverage our advantages of timing, location, and popular support to wage guerrilla warfare against them, launching ambushes, attacking their logistics, and disrupting their supply lines!

"As long as we are united and unafraid of sacrifice, we will surely defeat the Japanese invaders!"

The officers and soldiers below the stage finally realized the reality they had to face, and many of them even felt a little scared.

Worried that he might frighten the soldiers and cause them to lose their will to fight, Wei Dayong quickly said, "Now everyone has to tell us what bad things the Japanese devils did in your hometown and how they persecuted our relatives!"

We will transform this hatred into the driving force for our fight!

The Black Cloud Village version of the "complaint movement" has begun.

One by one, the soldiers went up on the stage and recounted the atrocities committed by the Japanese invaders.

"On the day the Japanese devils entered the village, they arrested all the men in the village and killed them one by one with bayonets!"

I saw with my own eyes my father being stabbed through the chest by a Japanese soldier's bayonet, blood splattering everywhere! Even as he died, he was calling my name, telling me to run! I...I..."

The soldier who was speaking choked up and couldn't continue, and the soldiers below the stage also wiped away their tears.

Another soldier stepped onto the stage and said through gritted teeth, "The Japanese devils captured all the women in our village and took them to the ancestral hall to rape them in turn!"

My mother was beaten to death by the Japanese soldiers while protecting my younger sister! They even used bayonets to cut open my sister's stomach and ripped out her intestines! She was only eight years old! Eight years old!

An angry roar came from the audience.

"Beasts! These beasts!"

"Kill all the Japanese devils! Avenge our fellow villagers!"

An old soldier stepped onto the stage, his voice trembling as he said, "The Japanese devils killed 300,000 people in Nanjing! 300,000 people! They cut open the bellies of pregnant women, impaled their babies on bayonets, and stabbed them to death right in front of their mothers!"

They buried living people in the ground, leaving only their heads exposed, and then ran them over with tanks! They tied people to trees and practiced stabbing them with bayonets, one stab after another, until they died!

"They captured women to be forced into sexual slavery as comfort women, where they were raped by dozens of Japanese soldiers every day! Some women couldn't bear it and committed suicide! The Japanese soldiers even threw their bodies into the river, turning the water red!"

"They also waged bacteriological warfare, throwing infected rats and fleas into our villages, causing countless people to contract the plague and die painfully! They experimented on living people, injecting poison into their bodies and observing how they died!"

Each tearful accusation brought tears to everyone's eyes. A fire of anger burned in everyone's heart; they wished they could rush out and fight the Japanese devils right then and there.

The captured bandits were deeply moved by these accusations. Although they had been bandits, they were also Chinese, and their relatives had been persecuted by the Japanese.

"Sir! We want to join the anti-Japanese forces too!" a bandit stepped forward and exclaimed excitedly. "We want to fight the Japanese devils too!"

"Yes! We should fight the Japanese too!" The other bandits echoed.

Wei Dayong watched this scene and nodded in satisfaction: "Good! Welcome to the assault battalion!"

The bandits cheered.

"Next, we're going to conduct intensive training!" Wei Dayong said. "The training will be even more rigorous and demanding than before!"

We must fight with the determination to die in order to achieve victory when the enemy is strong and we are weak!

Everyone shouted in unison, "Yes, Commander!"

Wei Dayong took a deep breath, clenched his fist, suddenly raised his right hand, and shouted to the entire team:

"Let's fight to the death!"

The next second, the entire square exploded like a lit firecracker—

Hundreds of throats erupted in a deafening response almost simultaneously:

"To save the nation from peril!!"

The soldiers raised their guns and clenched their fists, their eyes burning with the same resolute light.

Wei Dayong shouted again with all his might:

"Save us!!!"

Immediately afterwards, as if they had rehearsed this a thousand times, everyone roared in unison, each shout louder than the last:

"Save us!!!"

"Save us!!!!"

"Save us!!!!!"

After the meeting, Wei Dayong had just returned to the command room, which had been converted from the Juyi Hall, when a sentry ran in and reported, "Battalion Commander, there are Jin-Sui Army soldiers visiting outside the stockade!"

Wei Dayong was stunned. Could it be that the robbery of their military supplies had been discovered?