"Hurry up and seize the high ground on the left!" Lieutenant Kumamoto Jiro, a company commander of the Kyushu Division, roared at his subordinates. The Japanese army wasn't stupid enough to launch a large-scale landing operation using small boats directly under a hail of bullets. Apart from appearing extremely tactically foolish, the more important reason was that the Japanese army simply lacked the technical means and corresponding equipment for such an operation.

The Japanese land forces landed at Longkou and Yangkou in Laoshan, planning to march and converge on Qingdao from two directions. Then they would begin a pincer attack on Qingdao in conjunction with the fleet and the frontal landing forces. However, as soon as the Japanese advance troops landed, they were greeted by a volley of rifle fire. Without a second thought, Captain Kumamoto immediately commanded his subordinates to seize the high ground near the landing zone.

Seeing a squad of his subordinates shouting as they charged forward, running and rapidly approaching the Chinese army's position, Lieutenant Kumamoto hadn't even had time to relax when he heard a burst of dense and intense gunfire. In an instant, his running subordinates fell to the ground in twisted heaps. A whole squad was wiped out during the approach, which greatly shocked Lieutenant Kumamoto.

"Machine gun fire!" Lieutenant Kumamoto immediately ordered. The Japanese heavy machine guns had already been transported to the beach. The machine gunners quickly set up the guns, and upon hearing the order, the heavy machine guns immediately began to roar.

The enemy facing Lieutenant Kumamoto reacted extremely quickly. From somewhere, several artillery shells flew out, describing arcs with great curvature, heading straight for the Japanese heavy machine gun positions. One of them exploded just over two meters away from a heavy machine gun, and the machine gun's roar instantly ceased. The enemy gunners had no intention of quitting while they were ahead; shells were fired one after another, exploding ceaselessly on the Japanese positions. The Japanese troops were well-trained after all; they all lay prone on the ground or hid behind safe cover. The Chinese army's attack opposite them came fast and went fast. In an instant, it went silent.

Just as the shaken Japanese troops were gradually beginning to stand up and regroup, several more shells flew over. Two of them accurately hit a Japanese squad, and the sound of explosions mixed with wailing and howling rang out over the Japanese landing zone.

It wasn't just the Kumamoto Company's attack that was frustrated; several Japanese offensive sectors suffered head-on blows from the Chinese army. However, the Japanese offensive only paused for less than an hour. After reorganizing the troops, naval guns first bombarded the Chinese army positions mentioned earlier. Before the smoke had even cleared, the Japanese army had already regrouped and begun their attack.

This time, the Japanese attack met no resistance. Several Japanese units, including the Kumamoto Company, easily occupied the positions previously held by the Chinese army. However, they found no Chinese troops on the bombed-out, messy positions. No corpses, no bloodstains. Apart from a few scattered shell casings proving that an army had indeed fired from here, due to the shelling, there were hardly even any footprints to be seen. The Chinese army had withdrawn at some unknown time.

Just as the Japanese troops were feeling puzzled, a muffled sound came from the distance again. Accompanied by the screech of shells, the Japanese troops who had rushed onto the Chinese positions were subjected to a barrage of violent artillery fire. The power of the shells this time was far greater than before. Amidst the rumbling explosions, some Japanese soldiers were simply blown into the air.

Lieutenant Kumamoto could not bear such losses at all. Through his binoculars, he could roughly see the shadowy mountains opposite, and the smoke permeating everywhere. But he just couldn't see any signs of the Chinese army. These enemies seemed to have popped out of the ground; apart from a few puffs of smoke in the distance, not a single soldier could be seen.

The Japanese commander attacking Longkou soon ordered the naval guns to begin firing on the enemy artillery units, while the landing forces were to hold the areas they had already occupied. Not long after, two Japanese reconnaissance planes took off. Being high above, they could always find traces of the enemy. It wasn't just reconnaissance planes; army balloons also began to ascend.

Lieutenant Kumamoto breathed a sigh of relief. With these eyes high above, there was no fear of not finding the Chinese army's tracks. However, less than ten minutes after the Japanese planes and balloons ascended, several planes with a completely different appearance from the Japanese ones suddenly appeared in the sky. More importantly, these planes, painted with red stars in the binoculars, actually emitted the sound of gunfire while flying. Lieutenant Kumamoto had no idea what was happening. He himself rarely saw reconnaissance planes, but because his family ran a machinery factory, he wasn't completely ignorant of the principles of airplanes.

Why planes in the sky would make sounds similar to shooting while flying was something Lieutenant Kumamoto couldn't understand at all. Even when some planes fell from the sky trailing black smoke, Lieutenant Kumamoto still didn't figure out what had actually happened. Even when a series of large holes were punched into a Japanese reconnaissance balloon, and the crew screamed as they accelerated towards the ground with the balloon, the balloon's basket smashing to pieces on the ground, Lieutenant Kumamoto, having no concept of air combat, didn't realize he had witnessed the first true air battle in his life.

Lieutenant Kumamoto might not understand, but it was impossible for the Japanese commanders not to understand what had happened. After a brief pause in the offensive, all units received orders to attack the Chinese army fiercely. The orders required each unit to send out elite advance troops to conduct reconnaissance in force, and fierce but short battles ensued immediately. Lieutenant Kumamoto soon discovered the tactical methods of the Chinese army opposite him. These Chinese troops didn't conduct key point defenses at all; they fought and retreated from pre-set positions. Besides rifles, the Chinese army also used a strange machine gun to coordinate with small units, utilizing fierce firepower to suppress the Japanese firepower.

In addition to rifles and this type of machine gun, the Chinese army also used an artillery piece with a very high curvature to fire at the Japanese. These guns were placed in artillery positions that couldn't be seen at all; at most, one could use the smoke from the muzzle to discover the Chinese artillery positions. But it was impossible to destroy them with direct fire.

Behind the Japanese army was the powerful firepower of the Japanese naval fleet. A single heavy artillery shell could send rocks flying and thick smoke billowing on the mountain. Any Chinese army position that was discovered would be fiercely attacked by these heavy guns. It was just that these attacks didn't have any effect. The Chinese army just kept retreating and retreating. Before every retreat, they would inflict considerable casualties on the Japanese army.

The battle lasted for less than four hours, and the Kumamoto Company had already suffered over 60 casualties, dead and wounded. After Lieutenant Kumamoto captured the fourth Chinese army position, he had to order his troops to stop attacking. He ordered a message to be sent to the rear: "This company has suffered heavy casualties and hopes to pause the attack."

Having sent out the messenger, Lieutenant Kumamoto let his subordinates pause the attack. The successive lessons had made quite an impression on him. He ordered his men to stop and rest in a relatively safe place. He himself, after observing the enemy situation, also sat down exhaustedly behind a rock.

The situation before him not only failed to disappoint Lieutenant Kumamoto, but instead aroused his impulse to attack. Because this war concerned not only the fate of the Empire but also had a significant impact on the fate of Lieutenant Kumamoto's family.

The Japanese mobilization this time was quite hasty, and the Navy and Army rarely cooperated temporarily. At least in terms of troop transport, both sides implemented rare and efficient cooperation. That is to say, the Kyushu Division to which Company Commander Kumamoto belonged only waited at the port for two days before the Navy's ships arrived.

During these two days, the officers of the Kyushu Division realized that their target this time was China's Qingdao. Moreover, there were instructions before departure that Qingdao was an industrial port city of the People's Party of China, and they should try their best not to damage the Qingdao industrial zone. Hearing that they were going to attack a Chinese industrial city again, Kumamoto Jiro immediately felt motivated. Kumamoto Jiro's father, Kumamoto Ginji, used to be a soldier and participated in the Eight-Nation Alliance, and even took part in the battle to attack Tianjin, China. After the war, Kumamoto Ginji figured out who held the machinery from the Tianjin Manufacturing Bureau that had been looted by the Japanese army. After returning to Japan, Kumamoto Ginji purchased a considerable amount of equipment and started a mining equipment parts processing factory. Now he was also a medium-sized small factory owner in Kyushu.

Kumamoto Jiro's older brother, Kumamoto Ichiro, attended a Japanese junior college (equivalent to a technical school) majoring in mechanics, and after graduation, he helped his father run the factory back home. However, life in Japan had suddenly become difficult in the past two years. Mining production had an increasingly high demand for equipment parts, but the prices were getting lower and lower. The machines looted from China were German goods, of very high quality. But no matter how good the quality, they were machines from over a decade ago. If it weren't for his brother Kumamoto Ichiro relying on the techniques he learned at school to maintain them as best as possible, the family factory would have barely managed to keep going.

Army Intelligence indicated that the People's Party of China had seized the German territory in Qingdao, so presumably, the People's Party's factories would be full of new German machinery. If he could grab a handful like his father Kumamoto Ginji did, adding a few more new machines to the family business, it would presumably greatly alleviate their current predicament.

Without his superiors needing to emphasize the significance of the battle to attack Qingdao for the "Empire," Kumamoto Jiro already possessed unprecedented enthusiasm and a strong will to fight. However, war was war after all, and the Japanese army still had enough apprehension about the Chinese army, especially the People's Party's army. After all, this army had seized the Qingdao Fortress from the Germans. Two of Japan's battle-hardened units, the Kyushu Division and the Sendai Division, took on the responsibility of the land attack. The Kyushu Division attacked Longkou, and the Sendai Division attacked Laoshan Yangkou.

Even though he had absolutely no intention of giving up now, Lieutenant Kumamoto still felt immense pressure. The tactics of the Chinese army in front of him were vastly different from the tactics of any country taught in Japanese military academies. The intensity of the battle was not low at all. The enemy relied on rapid movement and accurate fire strikes to constantly suck the blood of the Kumamoto Company.

If they could rely on the naval guns behind them and the divisional artillery that would soon be transported to the landing site, they could certainly deal a fatal blow to the enemy. But the current enemy hit and ran, as slippery as a loach in a paddy field. Yet the enemy never disengaged from combat, nor even disengaged from the battle line...

While Lieutenant Kumamoto was considering the enemy's tactics, just like the previous few times, the Chinese army suddenly began a fierce bombardment. These shells shot almost vertically down into the Kumamoto Company's assembly point. It was as if the amulet Lieutenant Kumamoto carried had worked; not a single piece of the massive amount of shrapnel hit Lieutenant Kumamoto. But his subordinates were not so lucky; the scattering shrapnel caused many soldiers to scream.

Being beaten passively like this was completely unexpected before the war. Lieutenant Kumamoto could bear it no longer. He looked at the mountain ridge still quite a distance away, looked at the path they had come from below, and then looked at the sun which had already started to sink below the horizon. Company Commander Kumamoto Jiro made a decision, "Withdraw to the previous attack point first."

The Kumamoto Company immediately began to retreat. Not long after he retreated, battle cries shook the sky across the entire front line. The Chinese army blew bugles and began to attack amidst fierce artillery fire. The Kumamoto Company had just retreated to the previous attack point when they saw the Chinese army charging over in a formation they had never seen before. It was a formation difficult to describe, wearing colorful, ragged military uniforms, with hats made of grass and branches on their heads. The Chinese army charged down in a formation that looked scattered and disorganized, spread everywhere. Coordinating with their attack was the fierce bombardment of that peculiar artillery.

"Fire!" Company Commander Kumamoto and the officers and sergeants of other platoons and squads began to command their subordinates to return fire. It was just that the Japanese marksmen felt extremely uncomfortable facing such a formation. The Chinese army wasn't using the traditional wave attack. If it were a wave attack, the Japanese army could effectively stop and kill the enemy with disciplined volley fire. At least, the Japanese army used this kind of tightly organized wave attack.

The Chinese army opposite them seemed to be attacking all over the mountains and plains, everywhere, the whole lot of them like undisciplined skirmishers. But they made it difficult for rifles and machine guns to find their optimal targets. On the battlefield, everyone knew that if one bullet could eliminate one enemy, one would be invincible. But on the battlefield, what was most lacking was precisely this ability to "eliminate one enemy with one bullet."

Free firing would cause the hit rate to drop rapidly. Concentrated firing could certainly improve efficiency, but with the Chinese army's duck-herding-like formation opposite, this firing efficiency was actually lower.

On the other hand, for the Chinese army, if one man was hit, it had no effect on the soldiers attacking behind him. Moreover, the performance of the wounded was amazing; as long as they hadn't lost their combat effectiveness, the wounded actually stopped to exchange fire with the Japanese army. The Chinese soldiers who weren't wounded did the same; they looked like they were charging fiercely like a herd of ducks, and their formation was as loose as a herd of ducks. Yet there were always units that would use the terrain to stop and exchange fire with the Japanese army in groups of two or three during the attack. The firepower wasn't fierce enough, but there were extremely numerous firing points. Many small amounts added up to a lot, making the Japanese army feel extremely uncomfortable.

The charge was fast, and the Chinese army was not without losses; at least the troops that charged to within twenty or thirty meters of the Japanese army were already quite sparse. At this moment, the Chinese troops at the very front paused slightly, but not out of fear; the Chinese soldiers behind them pulled out hand grenades and threw them at the Japanese positions. Amidst the booming explosions, the Japanese army immediately suffered unprecedented losses. Company Commander Kumamoto could no longer endure such continuous blows. "Fix bayonets, charge!" he roared loudly.

Facing the Chinese army, the Japanese army couldn't necessarily always gain the upper hand with guns and artillery. In fact, the fiercely attacking Japanese army was often contained by the fierce rain of bullets from the Chinese army. At this moment, the only thing that could break the stalemate was a bayonet charge. The Japanese soldiers fixed their bayonets one after another and charged forward bravely under the leadership of officers and sergeants. It was only at this moment that Lieutenant Kumamoto suddenly realized something: the rifles of this fiercely charging Chinese army before his eyes were all flashing with the cold light of bayonets.

Almost simultaneously firing a final volley, the Kumamoto Company and the Chinese army charged and clashed together with bayonets.

At the same time as the bayonets of the two armies began to collide with each other, Lieutenant Kumamoto discovered something that surprised him extremely. A small portion of the Chinese soldiers actually pulled out pistols from their waists. Just like that, they began to shoot and kill Japanese officers and soldiers with pistols at extremely close range. Close combat was just this cruel; whether it was bayonets or pistols, they were fighting at extremely close range. Even if one blinked for an instant, a life would be completely lost, or at least half lost.

In an instant, half of the Chinese and Japanese soldiers fighting together fell. Among them, Japanese soldiers accounted for nearly seventy percent. Company Commander Kumamoto saw that the number of Chinese troops was constantly increasing. He could no longer hold on. Fighting in this way, it wouldn't take long for the unit to be completely annihilated. He made a prompt decision and began to retreat with the troops that had not yet engaged in combat.

The afterglow of the sun did not last too long. Although the sky still had light, the ground had already darkened. The remnants of the Kumamoto Company retreated all the way back to the first line of positions they had captured before stopping. The night also prevented Japanese artillery support. In this pitch-black night, trying to accurately hit the Chinese army and effectively kill them would rely entirely on good luck. Not to mention, the Chinese army wouldn't be stupid enough to leave a large number of troops on the position waiting to be shelled by the Japanese.

Despite losing nearly two-thirds of his troops, the Kumamoto Company was considered to have been able to withdraw. Because he was worried about being severely reprimanded, Lieutenant Kumamoto still sought out a staff officer he knew in the battalion, wanting to get some news from him. He did get some news. It was hard to say whether it was good or bad.

Of the nearly two battalions of troops committed to the attack this time, the number of Japanese troops who withdrew was less than two companies. All units suffered strong counterattacks from the Chinese army at sunset, and more than seventy percent of the Japanese troops were lost in these mountains. Among them, four companies were completely wiped out. Although the Kumamoto Company had been defeated and retreated, at least they had saved quite a few people. If it were before, Lieutenant Kumamoto would have been severely punished, but now that the regiment's strength was greatly damaged, it seemed that there would be no overly severe punishment for Lieutenant Kumamoto for the time being.

When he received this news, the sky had completely darkened. Looking at the high grounds hidden in the night in the distance, Lieutenant Kumamoto felt waves of chill in his heart. This was the Chinese army he had to face, this was the People's Party's army.