The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army 4407th Division, in order to annihilate the Beiyang 2nd Division which had a troop strength roughly equal to its own, launched a concentric attack from the east, west, and south directions, with the exception of the 1st Regiment which was defending in the north.

The first to launch the offensive was the 2nd Regiment attacking from the east. As the charge bugle of the "Dagger Company" thrusting straight into the Beiyang Army sounded, the entire 2nd Regiment, deployed across an attack width of nearly one kilometer, began their assault in three routes: left, center, and right.

The Dagger Company was a unit of the 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment. As they began their attack, the remaining three companies started to advance in echelon along the path opened by the 1st Company. Following closely onto the 1st Company's departure position was the 2nd Company, which included the battalion headquarters. The moment the Battalion Commander stepped onto the high ground, the first thing he did was to deploy the artillery position. Looking down from the high vantage point, the entire battle situation was extremely clear. The soldiers of the 1st Company were completely following the tactics of "fierce fighting, fierce charging, and fierce pursuit". In order to maximize the efficiency of their firepower, apart from the 1st Platoon charging at the very front in a column formation, the remaining three platoons appeared to be in columns but were actually in line formations facing the two flanks. The entire force presented a wedge shape.

As the sharp tip, the 1st Platoon strove forward, while the 3rd and 4th Platoons constantly used volleys and bayonets to eliminate and drive away the enemies on both flanks, expanding the width of the breach. The 2nd Platoon followed closely behind the 1st Platoon, with the goal of fighting alongside the 1st Platoon should they encounter stubborn enemy resistance.

Once the battalion headquarters position was established, there was better overall control of the situation. The Battalion Commander's responsibility was not to charge at the front killing enemies, but to command the nearly one thousand soldiers of the whole battalion to fight more effectively. After observing for just over a minute, the Battalion Commander ordered the 2nd Company that had come up to join the attack on the 1st Company's left flank. In reality, there were only a few choices for combat command: either let the 2nd Company take over the work of the rear half of the 1st Company and continue to split the enemy, or expand the situation already opened by the 1st Company and let the 2nd Company take over a certain flank of the 1st Company to open up a new battle line.

As the soldiers of the 2nd Company charged out in three parts based on platoons led by the Company Commander, the battalion's mortars and 37mm field guns, as well as the heavy machine guns left behind, began suppressive fire towards the enemy.

After the 2nd Company charged out and quickly took over the 1st Company's left flank, the 1st Company's 3rd Platoon no longer needed to expand the left side of the breach. The 3rd Platoon Leader gathered his troops slightly, ordered the comrades to change magazines, straightened out their formation, and immediately joined the frontal attack ranks. With the addition of this platoon, the frontal attack speed of the 1st Company, the Dagger Company, immediately accelerated. Encountering places where enemy forces were concentrated, the 1st Company used the fierce firepower of light machine guns to scatter their organization, while ordinary soldiers fired rifles in squads, constantly knocking the enemy down. After knocking down the enemy, the troops relied on the battlefield terrain to constantly occupy favorable positions to determine the assembly point for the next advance.

Inheriting the infantry squad and platoon tactics of the People's Liberation Army, the combat unit of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was the squad as a combat team and the platoon as a combat cluster. A company commander could control an attack direction exceeding 200 meters in width. A battalion commander, on the other hand, could be responsible for an attack direction over 500 meters wide.

Opposite the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, the Beiyang Army's 2nd Division had assembled over 4,000 combat personnel on this battle width of over 500 meters. One thousand soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army threw themselves at these 4,000 Beiyang combat personnel without the slightest fear. They not only had to fight one against four, but also had to split these enemies who outnumbered them four to one, and even surround and annihilate them.

The attack unfolded very smoothly. The Beiyang Army's front line was stunned by the Dagger Company from the very beginning. Human instinct is to flee immediately when encountering irresistible danger. Ordinary commoners, when facing firepower lethality they have never seen before, might launch a meaningless charge with no possibility of success into a hail of bullets out of ignorance. The Beiyang troops knew how formidable guns and cannons were, so under the sudden fierce attack, their fighting will disintegrated instantly. The Beiyang troops obeyed human instinct and began to scurry away like rats holding their heads. This chaos not only made the Dagger Company's attack extremely smooth but also disrupted the Beiyang Army's formation. The Beiyang soldiers fled in panic towards their core position, unable to organize effective resistance any longer.

Not long after the 2nd Company set off, the 3rd Company's troops caught up to the high ground. The Battalion Commander only observed for a moment before ordering the 3rd Company's troops to continue north, but not to join the 2nd Company's right flank. Instead, they were to go and seize the Beiyang Army artillery position further north of the 2nd Company.

After the 3rd Company set off, the 4th Company caught up. This time the Battalion Commander did not issue new combat orders immediately. It is necessary to hold a certain degree of reserve force in hand, especially when the current battle is going smoothly; there is precisely no need to throw all forces into the battlefield at once. This was a problem repeatedly emphasized in the military academy. "Unless you are battle-hardened, it is impossible to have expectations for tactics that are completely in line with future developments. At this time, comrades must uphold the view of completing the battle with the minimum force. A great victory, a complete victory, sweeping like the autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves—every one of us hopes for this. When encountering such times, what is most needed is to be able to control oneself."

"Under circumstances where military means are already determined, the firmness in the mind of every commander is the most precious quality. Because we have to be responsible for the entire unit. We do not pursue personal victory; we do not pursue personal glory. We pursue the victory of the entire Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. This is not to let us climb to some position over the bones of countless people. It is to maximize the reduction of casualties among our comrades on the basis of ensuring victory."

Facing the collapse of the Beiyang Army, throwing in all forces at one fell swoop might make the situation look better. But after sending the 4th Company onto the battlefield, the Battalion Commander would only have one platoon and the artillery unit left in his hands. Encountering an emergency change, the Battalion Commander would be completely unable to provide any support to the troops.

The 4th Company Commander watched the troops ahead killing into the Beiyang Army like the autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, cutting the enemy in half like a sharp blade. The Beiyang soldiers scattered and fled like lambs under spring thunder, and were then knocked down piece by piece. He excitedly asked the Battalion Commander for permission to fight, "Battalion Commander, let our company go up."

"Get ready to move out and await orders at any time." The Battalion Commander was completely unmoved. After refusing the 4th Company Commander, he held up his binoculars to observe the battlefield.

The Battalion Commander was from Anqing. After the Second Battle of Anqing, forced by livelihood, the Battalion Commander, who had studied books, signed up to join the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. Being educated did not make the Battalion Commander immediately valued. Aside from being used as a culture teacher, the Battalion Commander also started as an ordinary soldier. Understanding culture actually became the Battalion Commander's disadvantage; that sour air of an intellectual made the Battalion Commander work in the position of a soldier for almost a year. He then worked as a squad leader for over a year. Comrades did not like his high-and-mighty style and could not accept the Battalion Commander's air of being above others. In various cadre elections, the Battalion Commander could never get the approval of the soldiers, so naturally, he did not get promoted.

Naturally, the Battalion Commander also participated in political training. But as a scholar, naturally, he "did not speak of others' shortcomings". So his lukewarm "gentleman" attitude made the comrades dislike the Battalion Commander particularly. It wasn't until one time when the Battalion Commander finally exploded and got into a big fight with a "disrespectful" comrade. At this time, the Battalion Commander could no longer maintain the "dignity of a scholar", and the depression and unhappiness accumulated in his heart for a long time exploded completely. First, he had a major conflict with the Company Political Instructor, and in the company's "Democratic Life Meeting", the Battalion Commander fearlessly counterattacked the criticisms of the comrades.

In such a fierce collision, the Battalion Commander and the comrades discovered that there were two main points to the gap between the two sides. First, the Battalion Commander indeed felt that scholars were a cut above others. In addition, although the Battalion Commander himself had no bad intentions, he was not a guy who was very good at communication, especially not good at communicating with comrades of ordinary mass origins. After the unit summarized these two points, they proposed that the Battalion Commander either leave or correct himself. Holding a breath of anger at the time, the Battalion Commander expressed that as long as everyone didn't bully people, he was willing to stay. He thought that he had worked for nearly two years, and even if he had no merit, he had worked hard. He felt that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was unfair to him in his current situation.

Changing his previous practice of keeping everything inside, the Battalion Commander finally dared to speak his mind at the "Criticism and Self-Criticism Meetings" and "Democratic Life Meetings". Precisely because he actively started trying to integrate into this collective, the Battalion Commander was also gradually changing. In principle and in practice, the Battalion Commander discovered he was wrong. After blushing with shame and being forced to take the initiative to admit his mistakes the first few times, the Battalion Commander discovered that he had not become wiser than others because of reading books; instead, because he held onto those rigid dogmas from books, the Battalion Commander was precisely unable to "advance with the times". With passive progress, the Battalion Commander suddenly understood one thing one day: his previous life had been about deliberately distorting the "Sage's words", twisting them into statements beneficial to the Battalion Commander. No one opposed him before because the people around the Battalion Commander were either bastard scholars like the Battalion Commander, or because the common people had not read books and had even less time to talk this nonsense with the Battalion Commander.

After understanding this, the Battalion Commander almost committed suicide because of the spiritual pain. He always rushed to the most dangerous places in the war, not to establish merit, but because he didn't have the courage to commit suicide, so he hoped the enemy would "lend a hand" on the battlefield to liberate him from this spiritual pain.

Perhaps it was the blessing of his ancestors, but every time the god of death passed the Battalion Commander by. Yet the war merits he accumulated, as well as that attitude of "disregarding his own life", allowed the Battalion Commander to be constantly promoted. After entering the military academy, the Battalion Commander met He Zudao, the Secretary-General of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. At this time, the Battalion Commander had not completely shed that sourness of a scholar. For a Confucian sour scholar, the mentality of "fearing great men" still existed. So the Battalion Commander, who was still a Vice Company Commander at the time, asked this "big shot" for advice, hoping to break free from the pain.

He Zudao listened carefully to the Battalion Commander's words, and then laughed: "Vice Company Commander, you are either living in the future, wanting to establish some merit to prove yourself. Or you are living in the past, what you did right before, or what you did wrong before. If you did something right before, you want to carry forward this right thing. If you did something wrong, you want to make up for it, want to smear over past events, even if you can't completely cover up the past, at least portray the past as if you actually didn't do wrong. When do you live in the present? What are you doing right now, what can you do right now. This is reality. Our People's Party talks about materialism, and materialism tells us that we only live in this second of the present. We can never live in the past or the future."

The Battalion Commander was two years older than He Zudao, but there were at least a dozen levels of class difference between him and He Zudao. He once thought that He Zudao only had his current position because he was Chen Ke's confidant. Being pointed out all his problems so clearly by He Zudao, while ecstatic, the Battalion Commander suddenly discovered that the gap in understanding between the two could not be described by these dozen levels of class difference at all. The two's views on the world were completely different.

Progress is always slow. Even if the Battalion Commander accepted the problems and solutions pointed out by He Zudao, self-reform took several years. But at least for now, although the Battalion Commander was still the same person physically, mentally he had completely turned into another person. At least when commanding in the present moment, facing the fierce battle situation, his heart was extremely calm. Thinking neither of the past nor the future, the Battalion Commander just faced the current battle situation, using all he knew and learned, ready at any time to deal with the arrival of the forever unknowable next second.

Time is fair to everyone; everyone lives in this second of the present. The People's Party is like this, and the Beiyang Army is also like this.

The Dagger Company's attack, just as the name implied, cut open the Beiyang position like a dagger, thrusting straight towards the core position of the Beiyang 2nd Division, which was the Beiyang train column. Not just on the frontal battlefield, but in accordance with the "one point, two faces" tactic, the troops on the two flanks had also rushed up. The two flanks and the central troops formed two semi-encirclement postures and began to split and surround the Beiyang Army. The battle had entered a critical stage; just one more step, and the scales of war would completely tip towards the situation dominated by the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army.

At this moment, fierce gunfire rang out from the Beiyang side. That was the roar of heavy machine guns. The Battalion Commander looked towards the sound; he discovered that the Beiyang side had set up heavy machine guns on the train, using the height difference to strafe fiercely at the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army.

And just now, the Beiyang heavy machine guns had been concealed behind some cover, and the Battalion Commander had been focusing on the battle situation, so he actually hadn't been able to see that situation in the extreme distance very clearly.