Chapter 29: The Annihilation at Nangaocun

Receiving the order, the forward units stabilized their formation, and a regimental commander led his soldiers in a sprint toward Nan-Gao Village in the rear.

Another regiment set out for the southwestern heights. As for Bai Jiasheng, from the moment he was ambushed, he realized that the force attacking them was undoubtedly that Red Army unit. He felt as if every move he made had been calculated by these "Red bandits." Fortunately, the enemy’s numbers did not seem vast; he reasoned that if he could occupy the surrounding key heights and strongholds, the enemy would be unable to do much against them.

Regaining his composure, Bai Jiasheng detached an additional battalion, intending to outflank the Red 18th Regiment’s position on the riverside heights from the side. As for himself, he led two battalions to hide on a smaller nearby hill, observing the situation on the battlefield.

The first clash occurred at Nan-Gao Village. The thousand-strong First Regiment pushed aggressively along the riverbank toward the village. Qi Delong, having spat out the pumpkin vine he had been chewing, rested his finger on the trigger of his C96 pistol, aiming at the soldiers in the lead. He held his fire; even as the foremost enemies drew within fifty meters of the village’s defensive line, Qi Delong waited.

He counted silently, gauging the distance.

"Forty meters..."
"Thirty-five meters..."
"Thirty meters..."

At that very instant, he let out a thunderous roar.

"Fire!"

Before the roar had even fully dissipated, Qi Delong pulled the trigger. The bullet whistled through the air, piercing the chest of the man in the lead and dropping him to the ground with a dull thud. The moment the shot rang out, the fire support points concealed within Nan-Gao Village erupted. Machine guns stationed on rooftops and behind windows poked their dark muzzles outward, unleashing a torrent of fire upon the advancing enemy.

The terrain in front of Nan-Gao Village was an open field with almost no cover. Within the funnel-shaped zone formed by the heights and the Qingshui River, nearly a thousand Security Brigade soldiers were scattered. These men were now living targets, fully exposed to the firepower of the First Battalion. The crossfire, a dense tapestry of light and heavy machine guns and Hanyang rifles, erupted with the relentless intensity of firecrackers.

The charging enemy, caught off guard by this sudden blanket of fire, saw hundreds of their men cut down before they could even let out a scream. The soldiers further back, seeing this, reflexively turned to flee. However, the rear-guard execution squads were ruthless; seeing the front-line soldiers retreating, they roared in anger, firing their own weapons to force them forward.

Caught in the middle, the Security Brigade soldiers were ultimately driven by shouts and threats to launch a desperate charge toward the village.

The Second Regiment’s objective was the southwestern heights, defended by the Second Battalion and a mortar platoon. Like Qi Delong, the soldiers held their fire as the enemy charged the slopes, leading the enemy to mistakenly believe the heights were undefended.

At that same thirty-meter mark, Yang Gang’s plan was executed with precision. The central defensive line opened fire, sweeping the enemy with a barrage of three light machine guns, multiple submachine guns, and over a hundred Hanyang rifles, creating a fan-shaped kill zone. The charging enemy was mowed down in rows, tumbling back down the hillside. Instinctively, the survivors at the center tried to scatter toward the flanks, unaware that the machine guns there had been held in reserve specifically for this moment.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat!!!"

The flank machine gun nests roared to life, joined by the chorus of rifles and submachine guns. The interlocking fire from three directions became a lethal trap. Unable to find cover on the open hillside, the enemy left hundreds of corpses behind and were forced to retreat.

Their retreat was far from smooth. From the riverside heights opposite, Miao soldiers of the Sniper Company, led by Baobao, used their Hanyang and Lee-Enfield rifles to pick off the soldiers on the southwestern slopes. At a range of over two hundred meters, these marksmen—who had lived with guns since childhood—maintained a terrifyingly high hit rate.

"Bang!!!"
"Bang!!!"

The snipers had become hunters in the jungle, calmly aiming and pulling their triggers to drop their "prey" one by one. Under the pincer of fire from both sides, the Second Regiment suffered heavy losses and was forced to rout down the mountain.

Long Wencheng, peering through his binoculars, spotted a detachment of the enemy attempting to outflank the riverside position from the rear.

"Wensong, take a shot! Two o'clock direction, those White bandit troops are trying to circle behind the Fourth Battalion!" Long Wencheng shouted.

Wensong’s mortar platoon, limited by their meager supply of ammunition, could only fire on high-priority targets. Upon receiving the order, Wensong’s eyes lit up with excitement.

"You got it, Regiment Commander!"

He yelled back, quickly adjusting the elevation of his mortar.

"Thump!!!"

An 81mm mortar shell arched through the air toward the enemy on the opposite slope.

"BOOM!!!"

The massive explosion sent four or five of the enemy flying.

"Precise! Absolutely precise!" Long Wencheng couldn't help but cheer. Wensong’s accuracy was top-tier, even by the standards of future armies.

"Well, Regiment Commander, since I'm so accurate, can I fire another?" Wensong asked tentatively.

"No, conserve the shells," Long Wencheng replied, turning his gaze back to the riverside position.

The mortar blast had indeed caught Peng Hongsen’s attention. He immediately detached a company to deploy toward the rear flank and ordered ten snipers from the Sniper Company to lie in wait, ready to pick off targets.

The enemy battalion commander, seeing his force exposed, abandoned caution and led his men in a desperate charge toward the summit. But before they had covered half the distance, a hail of bullets rained down upon them. Simultaneously, shots rang out from two hundred meters away. The flank fire was not heavy, but its accuracy was uncanny—one or two shots were enough to claim a life.

Less than ten minutes into the engagement, the battalion had lost fifty or sixty men and was forced to retreat. As they fell back, the snipers on the flank continued to fire relentlessly. For these marksmen from the Basha Miao village, they had fully mastered their Hanyang and Lee-Enfield rifles. To them, these were vastly superior to the flintlocks they had used in the past, especially in terms of the stability and range of the rifled barrels compared to their old, smooth-bore weapons.