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

"Buzzing! Buzzing!"

Everyone looked up at the same time.

Seventy bombers, arranged in three neat box formations, slowly flew over the Liao River.

They fly very low, less than 500 meters.

Li Changkong's indifferent voice rang out over the radio.

"Bomber formation, target: Liaohe Dashi Bridge."

"Blow it up."

"receive."

The bombardier pressed the release button with his thumb.

The aerial bomb detached from the rack.

"Whoosh! Whoosh whoosh whoosh!"

A veteran volunteer once said that what they feared most was not the American tanks, but the American planes.

The sound of planes dropping bombs, especially the sharp explosions, can drive a person to the brink of collapse.

The Japanese soldiers are now feeling even more desperate than the Chinese People's Volunteer Army did back then.

Dozens of bombers flew over the stone bridge, which was still crowded with people unable to move.

Amid Takeshita's despairing gaze, the bombers opened the hangar.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!"

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!"

The sharp, piercing sound cut through the air, shattering the eardrums of the Japanese soldiers.

Seventy bombers dropped their bombs simultaneously.

More than 800 bombs wove an impenetrable net of death in the air, covering the entire bridge and both ends of it.

Takeshita stood at the bridgehead, watching the increasingly larger black dots in the sky, his pupils dilating to their limit.

Tezuka, who was beside him, also looked up, his eyes reflecting the shadows of the falling bombs.

His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came out of his throat.

"Baka..."

Takeshita didn't finish his sentence.

The high-explosive bomb landed in the crowd at the north end of the bridge.

"Boom boom boom!"

The explosion sent flames shooting into the sky, and the shockwave spread outwards from the point of explosion.

The bomb landed right in the middle of the bridge.

One hundred kilograms of high explosives detonated on the stone bridge, sending fragments of bluestone and human remains flying into the air.

One of the arches of the bridge collapsed, and rubble and bodies fell into the river, splashing up a huge spray.

The soldiers, who were still crowded on the bridge, fell into the broken section like dumplings being dropped into boiling water, screaming as they disappeared into the murky river.

"Boom boom boom!"

"Boom boom boom!"

Bombs rained down on the bridge, at the bridgehead, and on both sides of the riverbank.

The century-old stone bridge trembled, cracked, and collapsed in the explosion.

A large piece of bluestone weighing several tons broke off from the bridge and crashed into the crowd, crushing more than a dozen soldiers into a bloody pulp.

The thirteen arches of the stone arch bridge collapsed one after another.

The bridge broke into several pieces, plunging into the waves of the Liao River along with hundreds of soldiers on it.

Takeshita was thrown into the air by the shockwave, his body tumbling twice before crashing heavily onto the pile of rubble at the bridgehead.

His left arm was broken, and the bone fragments were sticking out of the sleeve of his military uniform, white and with a few strands of muscle fibers still attached to them.

He saw the bridge at its last moment.

A bomb landed right on the central arch of the bridge, completely collapsing the sixty-year-old stone arch.

A section of the bridge, several tens of meters long, crashed into the river, the huge splash of water mixing with fragments of human bodies and rubble, forming a strange rainbow in the sunlight.

"Splash splash splash!"

The bridge has completely broken apart. There are still remnants of the stone bridge on both sides, but most of the bridge deck in the middle has disappeared.

Their retreat to Lushun was completely cut off.

Colonel Tezuka crawled to his side, his face studded with several pieces of stone and covered in blood.

He grabbed Zhuxia's arm and whispered in his ear in a hoarse voice:

"General! The bridge has collapsed!"

"What should we do?"

Takeshita remained silent.

He slumped onto the pile of rubble, his right eye fixed on the collapsing bridge.

He watched helplessly as hundreds of soldiers who were still on the bridge fell down with the broken bridge, filling the river below with corpses and turning the water red.

The stone bridge, which had withstood sixty years of wind and rain, was reduced to ruins in less than a minute of bombing.

It cannot be crossed, cannot be traversed, cannot be reached.

More than 600 Japanese soldiers' corpses lay scattered around the bridgehead.

Some were blown to pieces, some had their internal organs shattered by the shockwave, and some had their heads smashed by rubble.

The blood pooled in the soil, forming streams that flowed down the slope into the Liao River, spreading out dark red blood flowers on the surface of the water.

The survivors crawled out of the ruins, covered in blood, their eyes vacant.

Some people knelt by the river, looking at the opposite bank and crying loudly; some slumped on the ground, muttering to themselves; some hugged their severed arm and walked back and forth in the rubble, muttering something no one could understand.

Takeshita tried to stand up, but the excruciating pain from his broken left arm caused him to fall back to the ground.

He gritted his teeth, used his military knife to support himself on the ground, and forced himself to stand up.

He turned his head and looked north.

Dust billowed on the northern horizon.

That was the dust kicked up by the torrent of steel.

Huo Quji's tank formation has arrived.

From the north, east, and west, hundreds of T-34 tanks, like a tightening pocket, surrounded the remaining forces of the 4th Brigade.

Encirclement.

A perfect encirclement.

Zhu Xia looked around.

His men were crawling out of the ruins, covered in blood, their eyes blank.

Some people were looking for weapons, some were looking for their superiors, and some were just standing there blankly, not knowing what to do.

They were stunned by the bombs falling from the sky and before they could recover, they were surrounded on three sides by a torrent of steel.

"Charge!"

With a final, hoarse roar, Takeshita roared, "All troops, prepare to fight! The time has come to serve the Great Japanese Empire! Tennaku Black Card..."

He was interrupted by the roar of the tank before he could finish speaking.

"Boom boom boom!"

"Boom boom boom!"

Hundreds of 76mm main guns simultaneously spewed out scorching flames, and high-explosive and armor-piercing shells rained down on this narrow area on the north bank of the Liao River.

The explosion burst into flames amidst the crowd. The Japanese soldiers, stationed on the north bank of the Liao River, had nowhere to hide or escape.

Massacre! Utter massacre!

The T-34 tanks, arranged in a wedge formation, slowly advanced.

The Japanese soldiers were trapped in this narrow area on the riverbank, with nowhere to escape.

The tank only needs to advance steadily, using its main gun and machine gun to harvest lives, like a lawnmower mowing the grass, clearing away all life on every inch of land in front of it.

These Japanese soldiers had just suffered heavy losses in the air raid, and their morale had completely collapsed after the bridge was blown up. Now was the perfect opportunity to annihilate them in one fell swoop.

The massacre lasted from morning until afternoon.

For half a day, the sounds of gunfire never ceased on this land of less than five square kilometers on the north bank of the Liao River.

Takeshita leaned against a crumbling blue stone wall at the bridgehead, his right eye fixed on the battlefield ahead.

He was still holding his military knife, but the blade was bent and stained with someone's blood.

His left arm had completely lost sensation, and the bone fragments trembled slightly in the wind.

His military uniform was soaked with his own blood, clinging to his body, wet and cold.

The person lying next to him was Colonel Tezuka.

Tezuka's eyes were still open, one of his glasses was broken, and the eye behind the other lens stared blankly at the sky.

A piece of shrapnel pierced his left chest and exited through his back, leaving a fist-sized hole in the area of ​​his heart.

Takeshita's lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but only a muffled whimper escaped his throat.

In his view, the last group of Imperial soldiers who could still stand were mowed down by the machine guns of the tanks.

Their bodies convulsed, twisted, and fell amidst the barrage of bullets, their blood pooling on the ground into a final stream that flowed into the Liao River, shimmering with a dark red glow in the afterglow of the setting sun.

The gunfire stopped.

The battlefield fell into a deathly silence.

Six thousand corpses were scattered across the fields on the north bank of the Liao River, layer upon layer, densely packed.

Some lay on the piles of rubble, some lay on their backs in the mud, and some had half their bodies submerged in the river, swaying gently with the current.

Six thousand lives were lost on the banks of this great river within half a day.

Bamboo's eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

With his last bit of strength, he lifted his head and looked north.

In the afterglow of the setting sun, he saw the follow-up troops of the Northeast Army approaching.

Leading the way was a military flag, which fluttered in the evening breeze.

Under the military flag, a young general on horseback was slowly walking towards him.

Takeshita couldn't see the person's face clearly.

His vision began to blur, and the world appeared as a dark red chaos in his eyes.

Takeshita, commander of the 4th Brigade of the Kwantung Army, died on the north bank of the Liao River.

His eyes remained open until his death.

sunset.

Zhang Xueming's central army finally arrived at the banks of the Liao River.

He rode his horse slowly across the battlefield.

Horse hooves pounded on the blood-soaked mud, splashing up dark red mud spots.

He looked around and saw mountains of corpses, burning vehicle wreckage, weapons and flags scattered everywhere, and the century-old stone bridge that had been reduced to ruins.

"Clean up the battlefield. The engineering corps shall immediately begin constructing a pontoon bridge."

"Infantry finishing blows: two shots to the chest and one to the head. Leave no one alive!"

"yes!"

Zhang Xueming rode his horse to the riverbank and looked at the rushing Liao River below.

The river was still washing over the banks, and the surface of the river was covered with corpses, layer upon layer, as if the river was being blocked.

Above him, the setting sun was slowly sinking below the horizon.

The last rays of sunlight fell upon the Liao River, turning the water a golden hue.

Across the river lies Lushun.

"Wait for the pontoon bridge to be erected."

Zhang Xueming, brimming with pride, declared emphatically:

"I'll take you all south."

"Go to Lushun."

"Let's go together to witness that great moment."