Inside the latrine, filth was splattered all over the walls, and under the high temperature, it quickly turned into dried black traces.

A large, gaping black hole had appeared on the latrine wall. If a living person were to look out from inside, they would see rows of brilliant flames arranged in neat formation outside, resembling the stream of traffic on a highway under the night sky of the 21st century. Aside from the fact that every streak of flame represented the death and slaughter of the God of War, the rocket artillery flying harmlessly through the air actually gave off a very brilliant and peaceful feeling.

But the combat warheads of the rockets were loaded with high-explosive shells. The intense heat of the violent explosion instantly blasted the inside of the latrine to smithereens. The walls connecting the latrine to other parts were blown down, and the wall section leading to the corridor turned into countless fragments, instantly killing the people outside as well. So there was no human activity here. Apart from the unique sharp *whoosh* of the rockets coming from outside, there were only the loud bangs and shockwaves caused by the rockets landing.

After a good while, the sound of running was finally heard. "Your Excellency! Your Excellency!" someone shouted while running over.

The Japanese troops in the Lushun Fortress naturally didn't think the Chinese army wouldn't attack Lushun. For over a year, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had been encircling Lushun and making various preparations, and the Japanese army had been observing all along. The withdrawal of Chinese people from Lushun was an even more unmistakable signal.

The best means of defense in war is offense. After taking the initiative to attack and destroy the invading enemy, there is no pressure on defense. Although they were a bit "two" (silly/stubborn), Japan generally placed great emphasis on the spirit of offense. For example, in officer interviews, there was a type of question where the examiner would ask, "What should you do if you suddenly discover the enemy ahead?" If it were in the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, a force full of offensive spirit, the answer would generally be: take cover immediately, send out reconnaissance troops, and prepare for combat at the same time. In the Japanese army, such an answer would definitely be given a poor rating. The standard answer was: immediately surround and annihilate the enemy! If a serious Japanese soldier dared to ask, "Under what circumstances was the enemy discovered?" then this Japanese soldier's future would certainly be dim.

But talk is talk; the Japanese Lushun troops simply didn't actually execute this kind of "martial spirit." Not only did they lack martial spirit, but the Japanese defenders' orders were to strictly guard the fortress and guard against a sneak attack by the Chinese army. Cruel factual data explained one thing to the Japanese army: fighting field battles with the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had already resulted in the loss of three divisions. If the three divisions in Lushun were to bravely leave the fortress, the result would definitely not be good.

On the 26th, the Japanese army didn't discover anything special. The so-called "nothing special" referred to the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army still being in that posture of being ready for combat at any time. Regarding whether war would break out on the 27th, there was much debate on the Japanese side, and the conclusion was "better safe than sorry."

Level one combat readiness continued to be maintained, and officers at all levels had to be on duty. Fortress Commander Major General Abe Nobuyuki, who came from an artillery background and had served as commander of multiple fortresses, adhered to the attitude that "carefulness allows a ship to sail for ten thousand years." At midnight, he personally led a team to inspect. Since the Fortress Commander was so serious, according to the tradition of the Japanese army, the three division commanders naturally couldn't lie in their dormitories and sleep soundly.

The soldiers had long known that the supreme commander was coming to inspect the camp. Seeing that the generals really hadn't slept at past 11 PM and instead appeared among the frontline garrison troops, the soldiers and officers were extremely moved. One by one, they stood straight with high spirits, welcoming the commander's inspection with their best appearance. Major General Abe walked solemnly in the long military passage, his leather boots stepping on the ground, emitting a dignified *thump-thump* sound. The general and field officers behind him were also strictly groomed, following silently behind the commander. Doing such a thing in the dead of night created a gloomy sense of horror amidst the solemnity.

By the end of September, the weather had cooled down, and the night wind was even a bit chilly. After visiting multiple artillery positions, Major General Abe finally made a suggestion, as if to prove that he was a living person of flesh and blood: "Let's go take a piss."

Before setting off, everyone had drunk tea to refresh themselves. After walking for so long, they indeed felt the urge to urinate. The latrine definitely couldn't be built in the center of the fortress. With poor drainage and ventilation, the smell alone could kill people. Although the windows weren't large and were difficult to climb from the outside, the latrine still had windows.

According to the habits of the Japanese army, when the commander took a piss, someone stood guard outside the window. The sentry watched the fireworks-like things flying up into the sky, actually unable to figure out what they were. That brilliant scene looked rather like a fireworks festival in Tokyo. However, as the trajectories of the fireworks in the sky diverged more and more, and instead of extinguishing, the fireworks dived towards the ground with sharp whistling sounds, the Japanese soldier standing guard outside the fortress latrine wall didn't think to cover the latrine behind him at all. Instead, he instinctively screamed and dodged to the side.

The violent explosion and shockwave made this guard, whose reaction was considered quite agile, dizzy and dazzled. His chest felt as if a large stone had been stuffed into it, heavy and suffocating. His nose was filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder smoke, and his throat felt a fishy-sweet sensation. Not knowing how much time had passed, the guard's mind finally cleared a little. He found that his entire self was beginning to be swallowed by numbness. He subconsciously used his arms to prop himself up from the ground, wanting to crawl up, but discovered that while his arms had propped against the ground, he couldn't feel the existence of his arms at all.

This shock stimulated his nerves. The guard instinctively looked left and right, trying to find someone who could help him. What came into his view was a large, gaping black hole on the wall outside the latrine, from which billowing thick smoke was emerging. "Did something happen to the General? Then I won't be able to account for it!" This thought immediately surfaced in the guard's mind. The thought triggered agitation, and the stuff that had been blocking his throat sprayed out in liquid form. In the suffocating pain caused by fresh blood blocking his throat, the guard's vision was soon swallowed by darkness.

Later war history recorded that during the rocket artillery's coverage fire, one shell hit the Japanese Lushun Fortress commanders who were in the latrine. It killed two generals, including the Fortress Garrison Commander, and two colonels on the spot. Within the following day, another general and a Japanese lieutenant colonel died from their injuries. The Japanese Lushun Command Headquarters suffered a devastating blow.

This was an unexpected surprise. The accuracy of the rail-mounted rocket artillery was very poor, with a shooting error of around a hundred meters. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army hadn't considered conducting any decapitation strike at all, but rather intended to use rocket artillery for coverage fire. With such a large margin of error, accurately destroying a Japanese strongpoint was purely a matter of "beating the rabbits while cutting the grass" (incidental success). The primary target was the minefields laid by the Japanese army outside the fortress.

The Japanese army had learned from the Russian army and laid broad minefields outside the fortress. Whether the rockets could penetrate the thick fortress defensive walls was a toss-up, but they were extremely effective tools for destroying landmines. The Japanese combat troops placed outside the fortress walls suffered a devastating blow. When a rocket landed, everything within a dozen meters turned into a sea of fire. The massive shockwave also had terrible lethality. The Japanese troops inside the fortress at least had defensive walls, but a large portion of the Japanese troops outside the fortress weren't killed by the explosion, but by the concussive force. Those Japanese soldiers had intact exteriors, simply curling up quietly in the trenches with traces of blood at their mouths and noses. Aside from that, they looked like they were asleep. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army dissected many Japanese corpses after the battle and obtained a considerable amount of data.

This round of fierce artillery fire did not completely breach the Lushun Fortress. Amidst the violent explosions, alarms rang fiercely inside the Japanese fortress. Various units woke up from their sleep, and amidst the frantic shouting of officers, the Japanese soldiers grabbed their weapons and rushed to their posts. The violent tremors gave the Japanese soldiers the feeling of being on a boat. Dirt fell rustling out from the cracks in the fortress masonry. Unlucky Japanese strongpoints were hit directly by rocket shells; shrapnel, flames, and rubble swept in from the blasted-open front like a storm, tearing everyone inside to shreds.

Devastating artillery fire continued to explode in uncertain places, as if the end of the world had arrived. However, the twenty-something minutes of earth-shaking shelling was as swift as its beginning; there was no extended fire, but an abrupt stop.

The Japanese troops couldn't see the situation outside clearly in the dark night. Smelling the pungent gunpowder smoke and looking at the pitch-black outside, they looked somewhat bewildered and at a loss. Inside the fortress, they talked about fighting every day for years, and the Japanese troops' nerves were almost numb. When war arrived, they didn't feel relieved, but puzzled.

Soon, the artillery of the Lushun Fortress began to return fire. Although they didn't know the specific location of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's artillery positions, the Japanese artillery still began to fire desperately. Having been seized by the enemy, what remained to be done was not to wait, but to counterattack. However, being completely in the dark, they could only conduct retaliatory counterattacks.

In the pitch-black night, the Japanese officers and soldiers widened their eyes, staring at the impenetrable night outside.

Taking out the enemy's fortress commander was completely an accident. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army artillery units quickly packed up their gun carriages, and the trucks immediately shifted positions.

Inside the General Headquarters, the two commanders, Mu Husan and Mi Feng, discussed the next phase of the battle. Mu Husan excelled at frontal combat; surrounding and annihilating the enemy with an imposing army was his forte. Mi Feng had a different set of characteristics; he was very good at fighting battles that seemed very dangerous. The main problem with attacking the Lushun Fortress lay in the Japanese naval-land coordination. The largest caliber artillery of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army was only 155mm; the fortress guns exceeding 200mm caliber were currently still at the Qingdao Fortress. A frontal war would inevitably be a cruel siege battle. Once such a siege battle entered the stage of full-scale attack, the rocket artillery with its poor accuracy might pose a greater threat to their own people than to the enemy.

Mu Husan knew he absolutely couldn't have formulated a battle plan like Mi Feng's. He couldn't help but say, "Commander Mi, this is a one-shot deal."

"Since it's already this dangerous, how much more dangerous can fighting like this be?" Mi Feng was quite open-minded. "Order the special shells to prepare for firing!"

This was the biggest difference between Mi Feng and Mu Husan. Mi Feng believed that after the first round of coverage fire, the Japanese troops that hadn't been destroyed should have all gone into the strongpoints by now. This was the best time for gas shells to display their power.

Mu Husan knew that he absolutely wouldn't dare to use this as the pivot of battle command just because he believed it. Yet Mi Feng dared. Not only did he dare, but he solidly formulated the siege tactics with this as the core. However, on second thought, Mu Husan felt relieved. If Mu Husan were commanding, the battle would just employ normal offensive tactics. And the second half of the campaign progress formulated by Mi Feng was also exactly the same standard attack method. Mi Feng was just playing a little trick at the opening of the campaign. If the little trick didn't succeed, the subsequent battle would still be bloody and cruel. If the little trick succeeded, the subsequent battle would be vastly different.

This was really a matter of personality! Mu Husan suddenly felt he could understand why Chen Ke wanted the more junior Mi Feng to be the campaign commander. To others, there might be many twists and turns in this, such as fearing Mu Husan would have to bear too much responsibility if he failed, so letting Mi Feng take the fall. Or wanting to support more people to rise up to achieve balance in the army. In short, there were plenty of explanations centered on power struggles.

However, in Mu Husan's view, Mi Feng's greatest strength was that while understanding standard offensive tactics, he possessed a mindset of adapting to local conditions. If such a person were a frontline commander, he would be quite difficult to deal with.

The development of the war proved Mi Feng bet correctly. After more than an hour, the artillery, ready once again, switched to special shells and began firing at 3:15. It was still a scene of soaring fire dragons, still comprehensive coverage fire. This time, what landed on the ground were not explosive warheads, but steel cylinders one after another. After landing, the steel cylinders began to spew out large amounts of gas.

In the darkness before dawn, the Japanese troops couldn't see clearly what was happening outside at all. The artillery attack that ended over an hour ago still left the air filled with the strong smell of gunpowder and various pungent scorched odors. The rocket artillery coverage fire had completed its task literally; every inch of land in the entire fortress had undergone the baptism of explosions, or at least the baptism of strong shockwaves.

The Lushun Fortress was built against the mountains, and many passages were underground. The ones on the surface had already been ravaged horribly by the powerful firepower of the rocket artillery. Intelligence on the fortress's losses had now been somewhat tallied. Any position that didn't have semi-permanent defensive fortifications had suffered a devastating blow. Many underground ventilation holes were blocked by the large amount of soil blasted up. The Japanese army didn't yet know that the headquarters had suffered a devastating blow while using the toilet. Intermediate commanders ordered people to report the situation while urgently ordering the clearing of ventilation vents and simultaneously turning on ventilators for air exchange.

Almost at this very moment, the second batch of artillery gas shells arrived at the Japanese positions. This was phosgene. The Germans had used it in World War I, and were quite experienced with it.

The Japanese defenders in Lushun didn't notice at first that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had used gas shells. All the Japanese soldiers were seeing such an overwhelming artillery bombardment for the first time and hadn't yet recovered from such a shock. The strange smell of phosgene mixed in the gunpowder smoke didn't seem that odd, or wasn't discovered at all. As for chest tightness and coughing, it wasn't necessarily a symptom that only appeared because of inhaling poison gas.

By the time the Japanese army discovered that the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had used gas shells, it was already 3:50.