Southern guerrilla warfare: I led the Red Seventh Army Corps to amassed a million troops.

Next, Su Yu demonstrated his meticulous and rigorous side as a chief of staff.

He summoned officers from both divisions and above, assigning tasks in detail and clarifying every aspect, including attack signals, retreat routes, transfer of the wounded, and treatment of prisoners. Orders were clear, and responsibilities were assigned to specific individuals.

Zhou Zeyuan listened from the side, occasionally interjecting to point out any omissions or gaps in his understanding.

To an outsider, this scene would make it seem as if Su Yu was the military commander and Zhou Zeyuan was the chief of staff.

After all the arrangements were made, Zhou Zeyuan praised, "I can't do this kind of meticulous work. You're the only one in our entire Seventh Legion who can."

Su Yu gave a bitter smile: "It was all forced upon us!"

One sentence sums up years of heartache!

His almost harsh meticulousness was not innate.

In his early years with the Fourth Red Army, he was a commander who dared to fight and was more inclined to make decisions on the spot.

But everything changed after Le Shaohua was parachuted in to serve as the political commissar of the Seventh Red Army Corps.

This political commissar, who had returned from studying in the Soviet Union, had only a superficial understanding of military affairs, yet he wielded considerable power and was particularly superstitious about "regularization" and "planning."

He demanded that operational plans be detailed down to the company level, harbored great distrust of any ad-hoc handling, and readily labeled it as "guerrilla tactics" or "disorganized and undisciplined."

Xun Huaizhou and he were like being bound by double shackles.

Outside, there was a relentless and overwhelmingly superior enemy force; inside, there was a command environment fraught with constant constraints and the risk of being blamed at the slightest provocation.

Any tactical mistake can be magnified and used as evidence of a "wrong course"; any unplanned adjustment may lead to accountability afterward.

For this already weak force, a single defeat could mean utter ruin.

They cannot afford to lose, not even a Pyrrhic victory; they must pursue a definite result at the lowest possible cost.

This forced Su Yu to refine the plan to the highest degree.

He must anticipate most possible scenarios on the battlefield and prepare contingency plans accordingly.

He must break down the orders to each key node and assign them to specific individuals to reduce ambiguity and deviation during execution.

He had to repeatedly simulate and calculate everything that could be quantified, such as ammunition consumption, marching time, and the ability to evacuate the wounded.

To some extent, the rapid improvement in military command capabilities of Su Yu and Xun Huaizhou over the past two years is also attributable to this dire situation of being attacked from both inside and outside, and walking on thin ice.

Zhou Zeyuan saw the fleeting weariness and helplessness in Su Yu's eyes, and now he was no longer envious! Top-notch command ability was something he craved; no general could resist such a temptation.

But if it comes at the cost of their comrades' remains, both he and Su Yu would rather not have it.

Some hardships can only be truly understood by those who have experienced them firsthand.

All he can do now is try his best to create an environment where Su Yu's talents can be unrestrained and fully utilized.

In a sense, the two sides fighting each other on a vast battlefield spanning several provinces, their greatest enemy has never been each other!

Whoever can eliminate erroneous thoughts first and choose the right path will win the final victory.

Perhaps this is the meaning of his time travel!

At dawn, the soldiers ate some fried noodles with the water they carried with them, which served as their breakfast.

Immediately afterwards, gunshots rang out from the direction of Datian County.

At first, there were sporadic rifle shots, which quickly turned into dense machine gun fire, interspersed with a few muffled mortar shots.

The Red Seventh Army Corps' directly subordinate units and the Second and Third Divisions, under the command of Xun Huaizhou, launched a feint attack on Datian County.

The county town's garrison was a Kuomintang security regiment. The regimental commander, surnamed Wu, was a local tyrant who made his fortune through tobacco smuggling.

As soon as the gunshot rang out, Commander Wu jumped up from the bed of the eighteenth concubine.

Without even putting on his clothes, he rushed back to the regimental headquarters, his hands trembling as he asked the radio operator to send a message to the 45th Division stationed in Yong'an.

The telegram was extremely exaggerated: the main force of the Red Army, numbering over 10,000 and carrying several artillery pieces, launched a fierce attack on Datian. The division commander suffered heavy casualties and was in imminent danger. He earnestly requested the division commander to rush to their aid.

Inside Yong'an City, at the headquarters of the 45th Division.

Division Commander Dai Minquan glanced at the telegram and snorted coldly. He knew these security regimental commanders all too well. If there really were tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers, Datian County would have been razed to the ground long ago.

However, the fact that the Red Army dared to attack Datian shows that its troop strength was indeed considerable.

"Have Brigade Commander Chen take the Second Brigade there. Tell him that the Red Army is mostly guerrillas with weak firepower. Move quickly, scatter them, and come back. Don't let them wander aimlessly in the mountains."

Upon receiving the order, Brigade Commander Chen grumbled as he assembled his troops. It was so early in the morning, they hadn't even had breakfast, and they were already going out to fight; anyone would be angry in that situation.

On the ambush site, the Red Army soldiers lay motionless in their concealed positions.

In fact, at the current stage, both the First Division and the Seventh Division have veterans making up more than half of the troops. With veterans mentoring new recruits, there is really no chance of major problems arising in actual combat.

The biggest problem right now is still the shortage of guns and ammunition!

Especially ammunition; if we don't conserve it, we'll run out in a single battle.

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to fight a decisive battle that yields rich spoils.

Time passed by, and after most of the day had gone by, the soldiers in ambush ate fried noodles, which they carried with them, for lunch.

It wasn't until late afternoon, when the sun was blazing, that the scouts ran back to report: "They're here! Enemy reinforcements are here! Judging by their size, it's about a brigade, with a battalion leading the way, and they're advancing rapidly!"

On the march, the Nationalist soldiers were disorganized. They simply didn't believe there was any large Communist army. In their view, it was just a routine bandit suppression operation. The scouts at the front even skipped the basic tactical maneuvers of searching for high ground on both sides, focusing only on marching.

As the sun gradually set, the light in the valley grew dim.

The vanguard regiment of the Second Brigade plunged headlong into the pocket formation meticulously laid out by Su Yu.

Zhou Zeyuan, who was lying in the command post on the hilltop, looked at the Nationalist army troops moving like a long snake below the mountain, and then turned to look at Su Yu.

Su Yu held the pocket watch, her eyes fixed on the second hand. The enemy's rearguard had completely crossed the First Division's ambush zone.

"Attack!" Su Yu gave the order.

A red signal flare soared into the sky.

At the bottom of the pocket, the position of the 7th Division's 1st Regiment erupted in deafening gunfire. Three heavy machine guns opened fire simultaneously, and dense bullets swept towards the Nationalist army's vanguard company like wheat being harvested.

The first few dozen Nationalist soldiers didn't even have time to react before they were riddled with bullets and fell into pools of blood.

Commander Chen, who was on horseback, was so startled by the sudden attack that he almost fell off.

He drew his sidearm and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Don't panic! Charge! There are only a few hundred men on the other side! Charge through!"

The Nationalist officers brandished their pistols, urging their soldiers to charge forward. Being a regular army, they quickly organized a counterattack after a brief moment of confusion.

The light machine gun was mounted on a roadside stone and began to unleash its fire on a group of soldiers.

"These guys are pretty fierce." Zhou Zeyuan observed the battle through binoculars. Despite being a ragtag unit, they still had the courage and fighting spirit of soldiers.

Nationalist soldiers, guns at the ready and crouching low, used the terrain for cover as they charged towards a regiment's position.

"Save your bullets, let them get closer and fire!" Regiment Commander Zhang Qiming shouted, and the gunfire on the position gradually thinned out.

Apart from a few sharpshooters, the rest of the men were holed up in the trenches.

This tactic was not only to conserve ammunition, but also to prevent the opposing Nationalist army from firing too many bullets, so that they could capture more.