Chapter 35: Takeshita Shun and Yamamoto Ichiki!

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Just then, sharp-eared Jiro Tanaka suddenly detected an extremely faint sound.

It was highly regular—and strangely familiar.

Frowning, he raised a hand and signaled to Saki Nakamura beside him to keep quiet.

“Wait, Nakamura. Don’t say a word.”

“I think I heard something.”

With that, Tanaka carefully inclined his head and listened.

A few seconds later, he seemed to realize what it was and hurried toward the interior of the carriage.

He went straight to a wooden crate filled with mortar shells and yanked open the lid.

The moment they looked inside, both men’s faces turned deathly pale.

Resting on top was an ordinary-looking pocket watch.

Beneath it lay several detonators bound together!

Neither man knew what this strange combination was meant to do.

But they knew perfectly well what detonators did.

They exploded!

And all around them were artillery shells of every kind.

Worse still, the other carriages were packed with explosives as well.

If those shells detonated sympathetically, the resulting blast would destroy everything within several hundred meters.

Everyone present would likely be doomed.

Should they try to defuse it—or carry it away?

Who knew how many of these special bombs were hidden here?

The two men exchanged a glance and saw nothing but terror in each other’s eyes.

Without hesitation, they turned and scrambled desperately toward the outside of the carriage, using both hands and feet.

At the same time, they strained their voices and shouted at the Japanese soldiers around them.

“Retreat!”

“Retreat at once!”

“Hurry! Hurry!”

But by then, it was already too late.

The slender second hand of the pocket watch had reached twelve o’clock exactly.

The next instant, a tiny spark suddenly burst from inside the time bomb and swiftly ignited the fuse.

With a deafening boom—

it exploded!

Almost at the same moment, several other carriages erupted as well.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

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It was as though a sleeping beast had suddenly awakened.

The artillery shells, explosives, bullets, and every other flammable or explosive material piled high inside the carriages were detonated one after another.

BOOM!!!

Accompanied by an even greater roar, the tremendous shock wave tore through everything around it.

In an instant, an enormous yellow-brown mushroom cloud rose into the sky, surging straight toward the heavens.

The force of the blast was so immense that it even blotted out the bright moon overhead.

Although Jiro Tanaka and the other Japanese soldiers were fleeing for their lives, they were still far too slow.

In the blink of an eye, the blast’s searing heat and violent pressure reduced them to ashes, scattering them into the wind.

By comparison, the several dozen Japanese soldiers stationed on the outer perimeter as sentries were somewhat luckier.

They likewise had not had enough time to escape the blast radius completely, but their positions were farther away.

At least they did not die on the spot like Tanaka and the others.

The fierce blast wave hurled them brutally to the ground. One after another, the Japanese soldiers crashed down, their heads split and bleeding, their bodies battered and disheveled.

Still, they had managed to preserve their lives—for the moment.

But when the King of Hell decrees that a man dies at the third watch, who dares keep him alive until the fifth?

Before they could even rise and rejoice at having escaped disaster, one of the Japanese soldiers suddenly clutched his mouth and began foaming at it.

A soldier beside him was just about to check what had happened when he suddenly widened his eyes, began foaming at the mouth as well, and collapsed.

Poison gas!

The poison-gas shells had detonated too, and the blast had carried incompletely burned gas over to them.

In less than twenty seconds, the several dozen Japanese soldiers were foaming at the mouth, their hearts ceasing to beat.

On a high slope eight kilometers from the site of the explosion, Li Yunlong looked at the mushroom cloud billowing into the sky and grinned.

“Old Gu, you’ve certainly got a fine touch!”

“You said it would explode now, and it exploded now!”

“How about it? Interested in joining my New First Regiment? I happen to be short of a deputy commander.”

Far away in Changzhi, Xing Zhiguo suddenly sneezed.

Could someone be praising my good looks?

Hearing that, the grinning Tan Ziwei laughed and cursed him without mercy.

“You really are something, Li Yunlong!”

“Trying to poach my man right in front of me? Are you looking for a fight?”

“Come on, let’s go back. I’ll show you just how powerful my iron-head technique is!”

……

Inside the headquarters of the Japanese North China Area Army in Taiyuan.

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Yamamoto Kazuki was looking enviously at the younger Takeshita Shun before him.

Although the two men currently held the same rank of lieutenant colonel, Yamamoto had served in the army longer than Takeshita.

By all rights, given the Japanese military’s habit of respecting seniority, Yamamoto’s position should have been somewhat higher.

But the truth was exactly the opposite.

Compared with seniority, the Japanese military placed far greater importance on family background.

Yamamoto came from no more than a minor noble family and could not possibly compare with Takeshita, who belonged to a distinguished lineage.

Moreover, Takeshita was the senior disciple of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū school.

His master was an exceptionally famous kendo master in Japan.

Many Japanese officers had studied kendo under him, giving him considerable influence within the Japanese military.

Later, even after his master was murdered by certain individuals for his opposition to the war, Takeshita encountered no trouble whatsoever. Instead, he received even greater attention from the Japanese high command.

When Yamamoto studied abroad in Germany, the army had sent him to the obscure Munich Special Warfare Academy.

Takeshita, however, had attended the Berlin Military Academy, renowned as the “cradle of German generals and field marshals.”

It was the celebrated institution that had produced Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, one of the future three great German commanders.

The difference in their status was therefore obvious.

Ambitious by nature, Yamamoto had been unwilling to return from his studies and become an ordinary infantry brigade commander.

So he had sought another path and happened upon the field of special operations.

In the end, Yamamoto chose to enroll at the Munich Special Warfare Academy—a school many Japanese officers looked down upon—to study special operations.

What he had never expected was that, at a gathering of Japanese officers, he would learn that Takeshita had also chosen special tactics as his field of study.

The discovery only strengthened Yamamoto’s resolve.

What did an ordinary background matter?

As long as he seized special operations as a stepping-stone, he would surely stand at the pinnacle of the world one day!

When that time came, let alone Takeshita—even that old bastard Terauchi Juichi would have to treat him with respect!

Terauchi, who was chatting amiably with Takeshita nearby, had no idea that Yamamoto was indulging in such grand fantasies.

As for the regimental flag of the Sakata Regiment, now in the hands of the New First Division, Terauchi was more than troubled by it.

The Special Higher Police had lost a considerable number of agents without uncovering even the slightest clue.

And on the main battlefield, there was no chance of capturing Changzhi City in the short term.