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On the gentle slope, the cyan uniforms of the Fengtian Army stood out conspicuously among the corpses of the Japanese army in black uniforms and the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army in camouflage.

"Hurry up! Carry these few Japanese out of here! They're blocking the way!" A soldier of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army responsible for supervising the labor of these Fengtian Army soldiers shouted.

If it were ordinary times, these Fengtian Army soldiers would have long thought of running away, but the sight of Japanese corpses covering the ground really scared them witless. Some timid ones were too scared to even speak, while some bolder ones whispered to their companions while carrying Japanese corpses and heavy wounded.

"My God, how many Japanese did the People's Party kill?"

"Must be several thousand, right?"

The questioner and the speaker both kept their voices very low.

"Are these people really Japanese?" someone also asked. As soon as the voice fell, intermittent cursing in Japanese from Japanese wounded came from beside them.

The guy who asked this stupid question was rolled eyes at by his companions. "In this place, everywhere is people speaking Japanese. You tell me if they are Japanese army?"

"Then if you say that, when the People's Party fought us, they really showed mercy. Look, corpses all over the ground, and we only lost a few people," a Fengtian Army soldier said with great rejoicing.

Indeed, on the main battlefield where the Japanese 20th Division was annihilated, the ground was covered with a dark mass of Japanese corpses. When the Japanese army was attacked by the sudden appearance, they performed quite well. Fully utilizing the terrain, the 20th Division headquarters established a command post on the high ground, and the vanguard troops immediately launched an attack on the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army.

Especially on a piece of open ground, it was piled with Japanese corpses. That was the main direction of the Japanese army's several charges. Before the individual shelters and machine gun bunkers rapidly dug by the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, the Japanese army first had more than three hundred men gunned down. But relying on a fierce spirit, the remaining Japanese troops still charged onto the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's position with bayonets. However, these Japanese troops soon died under attacks from weapons like pistols. Except for the infantry stabbing them a few times with bayonets for fear they weren't completely dead, the battle was bloody enough, but not cruel enough.

These corpse-collecting Fengtian Army soldiers were captured in Panjin. Mu Husan didn't think he had the leisure to feed these guys, nor was there a need to let them go easily. Finally, the political commissar came up with a method: anyone willing to clean up the battlefield could be released after finishing the cleanup. This was truly an indescribable thing for the Fengtian Army.

Generally speaking, people cleaning up the battlefield could search for valuable items on the corpses along the way, especially since these corpses were Japanese. Presumably, there were more valuable things. However, the Fengtian Army absolutely did not believe that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army could defeat the Japanese so quickly. Not to mention that the Fengtian Army captives in Panjin this time numbered as high as two thousand. How big a battlefield would it take to employ more than two thousand people to clean it up?

Quite a few Fengtian Army soldiers worried that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was playing some trick, and some timid ones suspected that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army wanted to kill the captives, so they resolutely refused to participate in such a thing full of the scent of conspiracy.

With no other choice, the troops forced these guys to the vicinity of the battlefield with bayonets. Seeing the Japanese corpses covering the entire plain, these Fengtian Army soldiers believed that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was not joking. Even so, during the cleanup, Fengtian Army soldiers kept asking the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army soldiers around them, "Sir, will you really let us go after cleaning up the battlefield?"

However, not all Fengtian Army soldiers were like this. A very small number of Fengtian Army officers were observing the battlefield, guessing the course of the battle. For example, a battalion commander from the Panjin garrison stood up from time to time to size up the distribution of corpses around him, as well as the pits blasted by various shells. His brows were tightly furrowed, and his face wore an expression of incomprehension.

The battlefield was not the appearance of skirmish lines from both sides shooting at each other. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army troops attacking Panjin numbered only twenty thousand, but the Japanese casualties were in all directions. He looked toward the nearby hilltop; the Japanese command post was probably set up there. Looking carefully, it was probably so. The Japanese were certainly not stupid enough to set the command post on the very top of the slope, which could be proven by the appearance of many scraps of paper at a position slightly down from the top. And around here, traces of fierce hand-to-hand combat also appeared. Many Japanese corpses on the ground were disemboweled, and the amount of bloodstains was several times that of other areas.

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had indeed launched a tragic bayonet fight with the Japanese army in this area. After eliminating the Japanese charges with light machine guns and grenades, the Japanese temporarily adopted a defensive stance. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army immediately completely surrounded the Japanese army and constantly compressed and encroached upon the Japanese positions.

After occupying favorable terrain, first a dozen rockets disrupted the Japanese deployment, followed by charging troops launching a fierce centripetal offensive from both north and south directions.

The Japanese 20th Division had three regiments in its establishment. Although one regiment was lost, the force committed to this battle was still over seven thousand men. The charge had only been going on for a dozen minutes, and two battalions of enemy troops that had not yet fallen into chaos charged up with bayonets to meet the two attacking forces of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army respectively. After machine guns and rifles ran out of bullets, the most reliable thing left was the bayonet. The soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army unhesitatingly engaged in combat with the Japanese army with bayonets.

This battle was later written into the war history of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army as the first large-scale bayonet battle in the true sense. Although the final result was not satisfactory, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army still won the final victory. Chen Ke didn't understand bayonet fighting, knowing only a few basic terms like three-man cover. However, the People's Party itself had a scientific attitude. From the Red Spear Society captured in Shandong, the swordsmen invited from Cangzhou, the warrior monks captured from Shaolin Temple, as well as the Taoist priests invited from Wudang Mountain, together with the doctors of the Military Medical Academy, they had conducted scientific research on killing for several years.

From ergonomics to various traditional martial arts combined in bayonet fighting, plus the troops' training, especially the sufficient food for the troops in recent years, particularly the supply of meat and fat, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army did not fall behind in bayonet fighting, and the pistols of the squad and platoon leaders were sharp weapons at close range.

The Japanese army had always believed that bayonet fighting could easily crush the Chinese army just like dealing with the Chinese army before. Not only were the two largest organized units sent by the Japanese division headquarters firm in their will, but other Japanese skirmishers also almost instinctively fixed bayonets and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. Sharp bayonets pierced bodies, cut blood vessels, and severed limbs. Frantic shouts and hysterical roars instantly became the mainstream sounds of the battlefield.

The result was that the more scientific killing techniques of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army won the victory, and this desperate fighting style led to the failure of the Japanese army. They had sent out all their forces, and once these forces were destroyed, the Japanese division headquarters was completely exposed on the attack route of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army.

The October sky in the Northeast was already very cool. Looking at the large patches of bloodstains and the Japanese corpses with miserable and terrible death appearances in the bloodstains, the Fengtian Army battalion commander couldn't help but shudder. Before seeing such a situation with his own eyes, he would absolutely never believe that there could be an army in China more adept at fighting and braver than the Japanese army, brave enough to conduct large-scale hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese army. And everything before his eyes proved that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was an army capable of defeating the Japanese army. The battalion commander felt his legs go a bit soft.

Looking at the battlefield again, the Fengtian Army soldiers cleaning up the battlefield were working hard to pick the pockets of the Japanese dead when the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army wasn't paying attention. Some also untied the Japanese leather belts and strapped them around their waists, then hurriedly covered the belts with their jackets. Some simply took off the Japanese military boots to replace their own broken cloth shoes. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army didn't pursue it too much. Except for a few guys who went too far, such as a guy with seven or eight belts strapped around his waist, whom the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army made keep only one belt and hand over the rest. There were also a few guys whose pockets were bulging to the point of bursting, who were also reprimanded and made to hand over most of the collected stuff.

The Japanese would absolutely not be so tolerant toward the Fengtian Army. If the Fengtian Army dared to touch even a tiny bit of the Japanese army's things in normal times, they would have to pay with their lives.

The Fengtian Army battalion commander suddenly put down the work in his hands. He ran to a Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army commander who was cleaning up the battlefield together with the soldiers and Fengtian Army POWs and shouted loudly: "Sir, I want to join our People's Party."

The commander was stunned, and all the surrounding Fengtian Army POWs were also stunned. Seeing the incomprehension on the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army commander's face, the battalion commander continued to shout: "Sir, I also hate the Japanese! I am willing to serve the People's Party! I... I am a local, you guys will always need locals, right?"

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army certainly needed locals, especially these local snakes of the Fengtian Army. The commander quickly understood what this tall Fengtian Army POW before him meant. He hurriedly said: "Comrade, it is very good that you are willing to forsake darkness for light, but we are here to clean up the battlefield now. How about we finish cleaning up the battlefield together first?"

The next day, Mu Husan received intelligence. After cleaning up the battlefield, more than two hundred Fengtian Army officers and soldiers explicitly expressed their willingness to join the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. And the emotions of the originally shock-unsettled Fengtian Army officers and soldiers clearly stabilized.

Some chose to leave, while some returned to the POW camp, saying they would "think about it again."

Letting the Fengtian Army participate in this battlefield cleanup originally had the intention of establishing prestige. Even if these people were willing to leave, it was no loss to the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. As "volunteer propagandists," they could publicize the combat effectiveness of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army along the way. After all, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army couldn't organize the Northeast people to visit these battlefields. Words from Northeast locals were more likely to gain the trust of Northeast locals. Moreover, for the matter of burning the corpses of the Japanese war dead for great influence, Mu Husan was preparing to hire local people in Panjin to complete it.

With these defectors from the Northeast local army, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army gained many relatively reliable intelligence sources. Ordering the political commissar to hurry up and screen and reform these defecting soldiers, Mu Husan's remaining work was to dig out Japan's eyes and ears in the Northeast.