The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army Northeast Field Army had the most pieces of clothing among all the units. The innermost layer was naturally thermal underwear, with a layer of wool sweaters and woolen leg and knee warmers in the middle. Outside that was a very thin camouflage snow smock, and the outermost layer was a camouflage cotton greatcoat. They had scarves around their necks, woolen balaclavas and steel helmets on their heads, and woolen gloves and cotton mittens on their hands. On their feet were thick socks, footwraps, and rubber-soled felt-lined snow boots. If not for such thick cold-weather gear, these comrades, who had no idea what thirty-some degrees below zero meant before leaving the pass, would have long been wretchedly tormented by the severe cold.

One of the reasons the Japanese army did not conduct large-scale operations in winter was that they believed the severe cold could greatly weaken the combat effectiveness of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army.

After getting used to wearing these heavy winter clothes, the comrades didn't think to take them off even during hand-to-hand combat. Every surviving comrade of the 6th Regiment at this moment had participated in the bayonet fight less than half an hour ago, and many commanders and fighters had various cuts from bayonets on their cotton coats. After shedding the cotton coats, their bodies felt much lighter. Without the thick cotton coats as a degree of protection, the comrades' mood inevitably became even more tragic and heroic.

Located in the center of the battle line was the 3rd Battalion of the 6th Regiment. The current Acting Battalion Commander, Xu Donghai, was the deputy company commander of the 2nd Company. The 4th Company had only seven or eight soldiers left, and the company commanders, political instructors, and deputy company commanders of the 1st to 3rd Companies had all gloriously sacrificed themselves. The 3rd Battalion had nearly five hundred men at full strength, but now all the commanders and fighters added together numbered less than two hundred.

Standing at the head of the formation, Acting Battalion Commander Xu Donghai took two deep breaths. The icy air stimulated his lungs, causing a burst of pain. As a comrade with a "problematic" background in the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, Xu Donghai was a captured Shaolin Temple warrior monk a few years ago. When the People's Party fought the local tyrants and distributed the land in Henan, the Shaolin Temple, the largest landlord in Songshan, naturally bore the brunt. As personnel making amends for their crimes, the Shaolin warrior monks had to contribute various Shaolin martial arts techniques. During his reformation, Xu Donghai accepted revolutionary concepts and recognized the fact that the Shaolin Temple monks used land to exploit the Songshan commoners. With his experience as a warrior monk, Xu Donghai was famous in the army for his surpassing fighting skills.

Xu Donghai had just picked off at least seven or eight Japanese officers and soldiers. Facing the Japanese soldiers swarming up like a tide, the emotion boiling in Xu Donghai at this moment was not fear, not panic. He was not unaware that he might not be able to survive the coming bayonet fight. More than half of the comrades of the 6th Regiment had already sacrificed themselves in the previous battle. By this point, no one really thought they could avoid death. However, even realizing this, what boiled in Xu Donghai's chest was a strong impulse to fight; he even craved death. Whether it was the enemy's death or his own was indifferent, as long as it was death brought about by combat, it was what Xu Donghai craved!

Even though the Japanese army was less than ten meters away from rushing to his face, Xu Donghai did not wait for death to approach. He raised his rifle and waved it. "Kill!" Accompanied by this angry shout, Xu Donghai took the lead and charged towards the Japanese army.

Every Japanese soldier opposite looked to have white beards and white eyebrows, and they were imposing when charging straight over, but Xu Donghai felt a slight difference from before as soon as he engaged them. This time, without the cotton coat as a burden, Xu Donghai parried the enemy's thrust more easily, then took a step to the left, turned his body slightly, and the bayonet in his hand extremely easily sliced open the enemy's neck directly from the enemy's right side. Turning back to block another Japanese soldier's bayonet thrust, Xu Donghai fluidly repeated the previous action. The bayonet again easily cut the blood vessels and windpipe on the Japanese soldier's neck.

However, a third Japanese soldier had already pressed extremely close, and Xu Donghai couldn't twist his body around in time. But the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's bayonet fighting was in groups of three. A comrade coming up from behind Xu Donghai had already used a rifle to parry the Japanese soldier's thrust, and another comrade's bayonet pierced the Japanese soldier's chest directly from the front.

"Stab from the left! Stab from the left!" Xu Donghai had already begun to roar.

This voice was only heard by a circle of surrounding comrades amidst the wind, snow, and the roar of hand-to-hand combat, and even if they heard it clearly, quite a few comrades didn't understand what it meant. However, the right-thrust tactic in hand-to-hand combat had also been specially taught in the unit. A few groups of comrades were reminded and quickly turned this reminder into practice.

Before long, more and more comrades understood that the right-thrust tactic in this wind and snow was indeed very effective. The shouts of "Stab from the left!", "Stab from the left!" became more and more frequent. Having taken off their heavy greatcoats and holding a determination to fight to the death, the more than 800 soldiers of the 6th Regiment of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army fought fiercely and tenaciously with the Japanese troops of the Miyazaki Brigade in the wind and snow. The situation of the second hand-to-hand battle was even better than the first. Under the leadership of commanders like Xu Donghai, the unit not only did not perish rapidly in battle, but the kill ratio between China and Japan even changed from four-to-six in the first round to two-to-eight. The seemingly fragile defense line of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was firmly nailed in front of the second line of defense like a solid reef in the ocean tide, without retreating in the slightest.

At this time in the 18th Army Headquarters, Mu Husan listened to the dense ringing of telephones, his expression incomparably grave. Not only was the 6th Regiment under enemy attack, but on the defensive positions facing the 19th Division direction, the Japanese army had launched attacks in five or six places. Not only did the infantry launch attacks, but the Japanese artillery also opened fire again to bombard the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's positions. Lacking combat experience in large-scale bitter cold weather, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army encountered the problem of frozen guns on a large scale. All units were very tense.

And where the enemy's main attack point was at present became the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's biggest doubt. Due to being at a disadvantage in troop strength, adjusting position defense was not easy. Mu Husan had only dispatched a battalion of reinforcements in the direction of the 6th Regiment. Mu Husan was very puzzled by this Japanese action of completely abandoning firepower warfare and adopting bayonet melee combat in the heavy snow. It wasn't just Mu Husan; most comrades in the 18th Army Headquarters believed the Japanese army had a major conspiracy. Once the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's defensive positions underwent major adjustments and the Japanese army suddenly launched a fierce attack, it could lead to the collapse of the entire defense system. The problem was, where exactly was the Japanese army's next attack point?

"If not, send the Air Force to reconnoiter?" a staff officer asked. But his tone was also extremely uncertain; the Air Force could hardly sorty in such heavy snow.

"Or raise a hot air balloon to observe," another staff officer suggested.

Chief of Staff Liu Guange glared at these two comrades. "With the current temperature, hot air balloons can't rise at all!"

As soon as the voice fell, Mu Husan suddenly stood up from his seat. "Order the 5th and 7th Regiments on both sides of the 6th Regiment to close in on the 6th Regiment's direction together. If they still encounter the situation of frozen rifles, conduct bayonet fighting. In any case, we must completely wipe out the enemy in front of the 6th Regiment."

The comrades in the command headquarters were all stunned, but Liu Guange quickly revealed a look of understanding. He immediately picked up the phone and began ordering the operator to connect.

A staff officer hurriedly said, "Commander, the front of the 6th Regiment has indeed encountered a large number of enemy attacks, but this should be a feint."

"A feint? We have planes and positions, and we prepared for several days, yet we still can't figure out the Japanese deployment. On what basis can the Japanese figure out our deployment? Besides, it snowed all night; can the Japanese not know? Marching in the snow, how much physical strength do the Japanese have to send out large reinforcements? The Japanese devils just want us to think the 6th Regiment is facing a feint."

"If it's not a feint, why would the Japanese use such a backward tactic as melee combat?" The staff officer still didn't quite understand.

"How is melee combat backward? If an army dares not conduct bayonet-to-red melee combat, this army is not a qualified army! In this heavy snow, our guns won't fire; can the Japanese guns fire?" Mu Husan had completely thought through the crux of the matter. After loudly refuting the staff officer's objection, he continued to issue orders. "The Division Commander of the Japanese 19th Division has quite seasoned tactics and rich winter combat experience, able to adjust according to the situation. All units must be prepared for bayonet fighting and melee combat. When the enemy facing each unit launches melee combat, our army must make more use of close-range weapons like hand grenades. However, all units must ruthlessly deal the enemy a head-on blow with bayonet fighting!"

Facing such a straightforward order, most of the staff officers revealed shocked expressions. Only Chief of Staff Liu Guange was unaffected, issuing orders to each unit according to Mu Husan's intent.

Brigade Commander Miyazaki Shuji of the attacking Miyazaki Brigade stood straight in the snow. This was not because he deliberately wanted to maintain a soldier's bearing, but because in the temperature of minus twenty-some degrees, the human body would naturally assume a stiff posture. As a Brigade Commander, Miyazaki Shuji was also wearing a woolen greatcoat with better warmth retention. Ordinary Japanese soldiers only wore a military uniform that was "thicker" relative to autumn wear. Miyazaki Shuji could imagine that the bodies of these Japanese soldiers were probably even more "stiff" at this moment.

In front of Miyazaki Shuji were several corpses of Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army officers and soldiers who had died in battle. The clothing on the corpses had been removed. This was the first time the Japanese army had obtained samples of Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army winter gear. These uniforms used a large amount of woolen material. Even the cotton coats had very ingenious designs; at the waist and other positions, several lines were sealed with sewing machines. Moreover, the cotton coats were also equipped with wide waist belts. Don't look down on such simple processing; it made the waist position tighter, reducing the problem of clothes flapping around that would occur during combat.

Even after taking off the greatcoat, the thin cotton coat inside the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army uniform had sufficient warmth retention. Its performance far exceeded the Japanese army's current "winter clothes."

"No breakthrough yet?" Miyazaki Shuji forcibly moved his gaze away from the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army uniforms and asked the Chief of Staff beside him with a slightly guilty conscience. Actually, this question was very superfluous. The distant shouting had not ceased in the slightest, and the chaotic sounds meant that fierce fighting was proceeding cruelly.

"We have not received news of victory for the time being," the Chief of Staff said very implicitly.

The Miyazaki Brigade now had nearly ten thousand troops, and the troops able to go to the front line to participate in melee combat approached eight thousand. The Miyazaki Brigade had already thrown all its forces into the battle. According to the intelligence obtained by the Japanese army, the opposing Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army 18th Army was a reorganized unit. Even at full strength, the whole army was only twenty thousand men. The total number of enemies the Miyazaki Brigade had to face would absolutely not exceed three thousand. With a troop strength advantage of nearly three times, they still could not resolve the facing Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army in a short time. Miyazaki Shuji felt a wave of true chill in his heart. He had participated in the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian army, those "Tsar's gray cattle," had quite outstanding performance in melee combat. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, possessing such combat effectiveness, had a comprehensive combat power no lower than the Russian army, which was second-rate in Europe. And the People's Party possessed an army of over a million. Just judging from the current equipment of the Northeast Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, its war potential far exceeded that of the Japanese army. Miyazaki Shuji could not help but feel panic.

The melee combat had approached an hour by this point. The sky had brightened slightly, and Gao Yucheng felt the black fog before his eyes dissipate a lot. The battlefield before him was now much more open, with corpses lying in disorder everywhere on the ground. All remaining commanders and fighters of the 6th Regiment were maintaining the final thin battle line with the regimental commander and the guard squad as the core. Another melee battle of nearly half an hour; the 6th Regiment plus a battalion from the 9th Regiment that rushed over to help added up to more than two thousand men, with less than a tenth remaining. Those who could persist until now, apart from a very few lucky ones, were all melee experts.

Gao Yucheng had been swept into the melee combat ten-some minutes ago. He simply didn't know how he had suddenly stood on the front line with the comrades. The Japanese rushed up howling. Gao Yucheng still subconsciously raised his gun to shoot. But the frozen stiff trigger couldn't be pulled at all. Fortunately, a comrade used a bayonet to parry the enemy's thrust. Gao Yucheng actually didn't know what to do next.

"Coward!" Gao Yucheng heard someone curse angrily nearby. While cursing, that person rushed up with a stride and stabbed a bayonet into the Japanese soldier's throat.

After finishing off the Japanese soldier, that person turned his head and shouted, "Bayonet fight! Use the bayonet to stab!" After shouting, the soldiers in front had already rushed forward like a gale to continue the charge.

Before Gao Yucheng could understand, he was sandwiched among the comrades howling from behind and forced to rush forward.

The last thing needed on the battlefield was thinking. Gao Yucheng dazedly hadn't figured out what exactly happened or what he should do. But after being attacked by the Japanese twice in a row and then saved by comrades, Gao Yucheng also muddily raised his rifle. Another Japanese soldier with white beard and eyebrows rushed over, howling as he charged. This time, Gao Yucheng at least held his bayonet and charged towards the Japanese soldier.

Gao Yucheng's bayonet fighting posture was truly too clumsy. If a comrade in front hadn't used a bayonet to block the Japanese soldier, Gao Yucheng would definitely have been picked off by the opposing Japanese soldier with one stab. But with just that simple parry, Gao Yucheng's bayonet stabbed straight in from the Japanese soldier's chest, not stopping until the bayonet was dead blocked by bone.

It was just this one experience. Gao Yucheng suddenly understood one thing without thinking: he had truly killed a Japanese, and it was the first time he had killed an enemy with a bayonet on the battlefield. Before he could understand what this meant, several more Japanese soldiers appeared in front. The comrade who had just helped Gao Yucheng resist the Japanese thrust had already charged towards the Japanese soldiers.

Gao Yucheng wanted to pull the bayonet out, but he couldn't do it no matter what. Because he used too much force, he accidentally slipped and fell to the ground. There was a rifle with a bayonet attached on the ground. Gao Yucheng couldn't care about that much anymore; he grabbed the rifle from the ground, climbed up, and continued to rush forward following the comrades.

On this boiling battlefield, Gao Yucheng strove to run forward with the comrades. Encountering an enemy, he stabbed fiercely. If a comrade didn't kill the enemy with one blow, he went up to finish them off. Fighting in such a muddled way, Gao Yucheng had actually held on until now. But at this moment, Gao Yucheng's physical strength had also reached its limit. His legs were as heavy as lead weights, and his breathing was as rough as a bellows. And the large amount of cold air entering his lungs made Gao Yucheng's lungs hurt like fire.

"I'm dying, right?" Gao Yucheng struggled to pull the bayonet out of a Japanese soldier. He didn't know which rifle this was that he had swapped for; anyway, the things most lacking on the ground were rifles with bayonets attached and corpses. But after pulling many times, Gao Yucheng also grasped a bit of the knack.

"I really can't go on!" Because he sucked in several large mouthfuls of cold air in a row, Gao Yucheng simply began to cough violently. The violent coughing made Gao Yucheng's snot and tears surge out together.

Standing lonely on the battlefield strewn with corpses, Gao Yucheng saw several Japanese soldiers pouncing towards him. What actually came to his mind was, "If I can survive, next time I definitely must train well in bayonet fighting." This thought made Gao Yucheng feel very surprised. He knew he was about to die at the hands of the Japanese right away, but he didn't have the slightest fear; instead, he had a kind of relief-like gratification. However, even so, Gao Yucheng still unsteadily raised his rifle and assumed a posture to fight with bayonets. Seeing Gao Yucheng's appearance of a trapped beast still fighting, those few Japanese soldiers, who were not just white in eyebrows and beard but whose whole persons were white from being covered in snow, actually hesitated. Their pace also became much slower.

For some reason, Gao Yucheng's heart suddenly relaxed. "Ah! The Japanese are afraid!" This was the first time Gao Yucheng faced the Japanese without any fear, and also the first time Gao Yucheng saw the Japanese show true fear when facing him. Despite this, the Japanese still didn't stop their steps. They just spread out, trying to surround Gao Yucheng from a fan angle, and then attack!

In just this short moment of leniency, Gao Yucheng felt the breath he couldn't catch just now finally smooth out. "If I had known earlier that the Japanese aren't anything to be afraid of, I could have killed more Japanese!" Holding this realization, Gao Yucheng aimed at the Japanese soldier closest to him, held up his bayonet, and charged up.

A burst of dense gunfire rang out. Gao Yucheng found that the Japanese soldier in front of him had fallen, but he immediately felt a burst of ice-cold in his ribs. The strength of his whole person was completely drained clean by that ice-cold sensation. Limply falling to the ground, Gao Yucheng suddenly gave birth to a relaxed feeling. He had lived for twenty-three years, experiencing the hunger of his childhood and boyhood, the indulgence of being a bandit in his boyhood and youth, and that sense of safety obtained with great difficulty serving as a soldier under Marshal Zhang. But on this battlefield of sky-filled flying snow, Gao Yucheng felt peace for the first time. Existing as a true soldier was an extremely brief experience for Gao Yucheng; he didn't even have time to do any thinking. But even with this extremely short experience, Gao Yucheng felt the feeling of truly being feared by people for the first time, and for the first time felt the kind of relaxation brought by the 'too many to count' defying of death that only true soldiers could possess when traversing life and death.

After being deeply stabbed in the ribs by a Japanese bayonet, Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army soldier Gao Yucheng fell. He didn't see the Japanese soldiers falling one after another after being concentrated by a round of bullets. Nor did he see a large number of Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army soldiers surging from both sides of the battle line that the 6th Regiment had maintained at the cost of almost total annihilation. These soldiers didn't fixate on a gunfight; after just firing two rows of shots, they also held their bayonets and joined the melee.

The Japanese army, having marched in the world of ice and snow for almost a whole night and then exhausted their physical strength and will fighting hard for an hour, could not hold on for long under such pincer attacks. The fierce battle continued for less than twenty minutes before the Japanese army, having suffered heavy casualties, collapsed. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had no intention of letting them run away. The fresh troops who joined the battle chased them all the way down, stabbing to death from behind the Japanese soldiers whose flight appeared weak and powerless one by one.

After Gao Yucheng was hit by the Japanese bayonet, he fainted. The Japanese bayonet broke inside his body. The metal rapidly exchanged heat between the interior of the human body and the severe cold air. Gao Yucheng's internal organs and blood vessels quickly froze. In just a few minutes, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army former Northeast Army liberated soldier Gao Yucheng sacrificed himself. Like the other nearly two thousand soldiers who gloriously sacrificed themselves, he left no last words, nor any bold and visionary utterings. He just quietly fell on the land of his motherland.