On the eve of the fall of Liaodong, he led his troops in a remonstrance against the young marshal.

"Order the 37th Brigade to launch a full-scale assault, breaking directly into Fengcheng through the breach! Take Fengcheng at all costs!"

The messenger mounted his horse and charged out of the observation post.

In less than five minutes, four infantry regiments of the 37th Brigade began to thrust out their bayonets from behind the low wall piled with the corpses of the fallen soldiers, slowly advancing towards the south gate of Fengcheng like a brown and yellow steel forest.

But just as their bayonets crossed the enemy lines, the south gate of Fengcheng burst open with a roar.

The heavy gate creaked open with a dull thud, and the two doors slowly opened inward, revealing a pitch-black space inside the city gate.

The Japanese soldiers who were charging forward paused for a moment and involuntarily slowed down.

They had never seen the garrison open the city gates on their own initiative.

Could it be surrender? But surrendering would involve raising a white flag.

Since it's not a surrender, then it's an offensive. But how can eight thousand defenders launch an offensive against forty thousand attacking troops? What's the difference between that and courting death?

The battlefield suddenly fell silent, and everyone stared at the city gate.

Suddenly, the distinctive roar of a diesel engine echoed from the dark space at the city gate.

The sound echoed through the city gate, amplified by the reflections from the brick walls on both sides, gradually turning into a chilling roar, as if some enormous beast was emerging from a burrow.

Then, a cannon barrel emerged from the darkness.

It was a thick cannon barrel, and the muzzle brake still had the anti-rust grease applied at the factory, reflecting a shiny sheen in the morning light.

Behind the gun barrel is the turret, whose sloped armor on the front is so thick it's almost despairing, and its curved cast surface is as smooth as the shell of some giant reptile.

Below the turret is a wide hull, with sloped armor on the front of the hull extending rearward at a large angle of sixty degrees.

The tracks rolled over the stone slabs of the city gate, making a screeching sound, and the steel teeth of the tracks plowed white scratches into the stone slabs.

T34!

The steel torrent that Zhang Xueming had exchanged finally made its appearance at the city gate.

Then, a second cannon barrel emerged from the darkness, followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth…

One after another, T-34s slowly drove out of the city gate, like steel beasts crawling up from the depths of the earth.

The combined roar of their diesel engines caused the blue bricks on the city wall to tremble slightly.

On top of the turret of each tank stood a Northeast Army soldier dressed in a gray-blue uniform.

These were all tank soldiers given to them by the system. Their faces were cold and expressionless as they looked down at the charging Japanese soldiers as if they were looking at a group of dead men.

Fifty T-34 tanks rushed out of the city gate and formed an iron defensive line at the foot of the city wall.

The first ten tanks were lined up in a single file, their cannons pointed directly at the yellowish-brown infantry formation ahead.

The tanks behind them split into two columns, emerged from the alleys on both sides, and deployed into a wedge-shaped charging formation under the city wall.

The roar of diesel engines rose and fell, black smoke billowing from their exhaust pipes, gathering into a thick cloud of smoke below the city wall.

Blown by the morning breeze, it drifted southward, like a giant black battle flag fluttering above the tank formation.

Inoue stood in the observation post, his face turning deathly pale in an instant.

He stared intently through his binoculars at the steel behemoths that were streaming out of the city gate, his fingers twisting the focusing wheel of the binoculars several times, his expression as if he had seen a ghost.

The sloping armor, the thick cannon barrel, and the wide tracks were not modern inventions at all.

Even the Empire didn't have such powerful tanks. Where did the Northeast Army get these weapons from?

What's even more terrifying is that the Northeast Army didn't just have one or two vehicles, but a full fifty. When these things charged, they were like an iron torrent; who could stop them?

Inoue's whole body began to tremble.

"Baka...yarou!"

"tank?"

Inoue roared:

"How could the Northeast Army...have tanks?"

No one answered him.

Everyone in the observation post was looking in the same direction through binoculars, their faces deathly pale, as if all the blood in their bodies had been drained in an instant.

Inoue whirled around, snatched the telephone receiver from the chief of staff's hand, frantically cranked the magneto generator, and then roared hoarsely into the receiver:

"Bring the division commander to me! Immediately! Right now!"

A hissing electrical noise came from the other end of the phone line, followed by a calm operator's voice:

"Please wait a moment, we are connecting you to the Baoshan Town Command."

Inoue's hand holding the receiver trembled violently, his knuckles cracking from the force.

His gaze was fixed on the ever-expanding torrent of steel outside the window, and only one thought remained in his mind, repeatedly striking every nerve.

That's impossible.

That's absolutely impossible.

How could the Northeast Army have tanks? It wasn't mentioned in the intelligence, Lord Mori Hisashi didn't say anything, and the Kwantung Army Headquarters didn't report it. Nobody knew, and nobody expected it.

Fengcheng is not an undefended city at all, but a trap, a bottomless trap that was dug long ago.

Finally, Mori Hisashi's voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Hey? Inoue-kun? Has Fengcheng been captured yet? I'm waiting for your good news..."

"Your Excellency, Division Commander!"

Inoue's voice had completely spiraled out of control, and he roared:

"The Northeast Army has tanks! Dozens of them!"

"They're coming out of Fengcheng! Our army has no anti-tank guns, the artillery battalion has been wiped out, and the infantry have no cover in the open..."

There was a silence of about two seconds on the other end of the phone.

Then, Mori Hisashi asked Inoue a question in an extremely calm tone that sent chills down his spine.