143: Chapter 143 The Ruthlessness of Gangcun!

"Dispersing means their strength is diluted! It means we have the opportunity to defeat them one by one, or at least strike key targets!"

The atmosphere in the meeting room suddenly shifted!

Although the heavy losses were still hard to accept, Okamura's sophistry about "letting the enemy off to catch them later" and "turning the passive into the active" at least injected a sliver of twisted hope and the thought of a counterattack into the despairing crowd.

If nothing else, how could the Eighth Route Army defend the entire sky over Southeast Shanxi?

"Your Excellency the Commander is wise!"

"I see! The Eighth Route Army is walking right into our trap!"

"Disperse their forces, expose their weaknesses, and then defeat them one by one..."

"Soka..."

However, some devils whispered, "It's just a pity for those Imperial warriors who shattered like jade..."

Okamura snorted coldly, "Hmph! Such womanly sentimentality!"

"To be able to sacrifice themselves for the Empire's great cause and to lure out the enemy's main force is their supreme glory!"

These words sent a chill down the spines of some high-ranking devils.

Those were over ten thousand actual Imperial soldiers!

In Okamura's mouth, they had become "bait" that could be discarded at will!

This newly appointed Commander was simply too ruthless!

If he was this ruthless to his own people, then toward the enemy...

But no one dared to show the slightest dissent.

"Now, hear my orders!" Okamura's voice suddenly turned sharp, regaining his authority as Commander.

"First, Operations Section! Immediately formulate a plan to dig and construct large-scale anti-tank trenches on all major traffic arteries and mountain passes on the periphery of the Taihang Mountains and Taiyue Mountains!"

"They must be deep, wide, and continuous!"

"I want to form an airtight cage to trap the Eighth Route Army's tanks and heavy equipment in the open ground of Southeast Shanxi!"

"So they cannot advance to attack our core areas, nor can they retreat quickly back to the mountains!"

"Hai!" The officer from the Operations Section nodded.

"Second, Aviation Corps!" Okamura looked at the officer in charge of the Army Air Service.

"From today onwards, primarily using small reconnaissance flight groups, conduct multiple sorties at irregular intervals over Southeast Shanxi, especially around newly occupied towns, traffic lines, and suspected assembly points."

"The focus is not on bombing, but on figuring out the specific deployment, density, and reaction time of the Eighth Route Army's anti-aircraft fire, and finding their air defense loopholes and weak periods!"

"The Taihang and Taiyue regions are vast; I don't believe their air defenses can cover everything without any flaws!"

"Understood!" The Aviation Corps officer immediately took the order.

"Your Excellency the Commander is wise!"

"Once an air defense loophole is found, we can concentrate bomber groups to level all those occupied county towns!"

Other officers chimed in, their faces showing cruel anticipation.

However, Okamura slowly shook his head, a colder and more sinister smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

"No!"

He slowly spat out the word, and under the confused gazes of the crowd, said one word at a time, "Do not bomb the county towns!"

"Not bomb the county towns?" The devils were stunned.

If not the county towns, then where?

Okamura's finger slowly traced across the green area on the map representing farmland in Southeast Shanxi.

"We will bomb here!"

"Farmland?" Exclamations rang out again.

But soon, many devil officers realized, and their eyes burst with the light of realization and admiration!

"Brilliant! Your Excellency's move is truly... masterful!" Chief of the Operations Section, Arisue Seizo, couldn't help but clap his hands.

"Bombing county towns would certainly cause destruction, but it would also incite stronger resistance from the defenders and the people, and since the Eighth Route Army now has new anti-aircraft weapons, the cost might be high."

"But bombing the fields... it is now the turn of spring and summer, the critical period for crop growth!"

Another officer added excitedly, "Yes! For the Eighth Route Army, which relies on base areas for survival—especially after just acquiring large grain-producing regions—food is their lifeblood!"

"Destroying their fields and ruining this year's harvest is equivalent to strangling them by the throat!"

"With hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians having no food to eat, internal chaos is inevitable!"

"If the Eighth Route Army wants to provide relief, they must allocate grain from their already tight reserves, depleting their strategic stockpile; if they cannot provide relief, they will lose the people's support, and their foundation of rule will be shaken!"

"This is a plan to wipe them out entirely!"

Okamura nodded slightly, clearly very proud of his poisonous scheme. "The Chinese have a saying: 'To kill a snake, strike at its seven-inch mark'!"

"Grain is the 'seven-inch mark' of the Eighth Route Army 'snake' in Southeast Shanxi!"

"I want to see how those Eighth Route Army soldiers, who constantly claim to be for the people, will respond when the people under their rule are starving to death everywhere!"

"They have guns and cannons in their hands, but can they conjure up grain?"

A wave of suppressed low laughter and praise, filled with cruel pleasure, echoed in the meeting room.

Okamura truly lived up to his reputation as a China expert; this tactic of attacking the heart and destroying the foundation was indeed ruthless to the extreme.

To the Nationalist Army, this plan might not mean much, but for the Eighth Route Army, it was a direct hit to their lifeblood!

However, Okamura did not stop there.

The smile on his face gradually faded, his gaze slowly scanning the crowd before finally landing on the officer responsible for special communications.

"Third," he said, his voice extremely low but carrying a bone-chilling cruelty.

"In the name of the Commander of the North China Area Army, secretly contact for me... the Kwantung Army's Unit 731 Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department stationed in Manchuria!"

"Nani?"

As soon as these words were spoken, a synchronized gasp rang out throughout the Operations Room!

All the officers, including those devils who had just been cheering for the poisonous scheme, had their pupils contract sharply, and their eyes were filled with unbelievable horror as they looked at Okamura!

Unit 731!

The Commander actually wanted to use the power of that unit?

Okamura took in everyone's reactions; his face remained untroubled, showing only a calm indifference.

"Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures."

"Since conventional warfare is difficult to be effective quickly, and since the Eighth Route Army possesses power we cannot yet understand... then, for the final victory of the Empire's Holy War and to completely eliminate the resistance forces in North China, all available weapons should be considered."

"Go and make contact; we need their... 'professional opinions' and 'special materials' to deliver a... special 'greeting gift' to the hundreds of thousands of Shina people in Southeast Shanxi..."

...

2025, Province.

The Provincial Party Secretary's office.

The afternoon sun filtered through the blinds, cutting alternating stripes of light and shadow across the polished mahogany floor.

Sha Ruijin leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling on the majestic replica of "This Land So Rich in Beauty" on the opposite wall, his face showing no emotion.

However, his heart was not as calm as it appeared on the surface.

The work of organizing and verifying the life story of his uncle, comrade Sha Zhenjiang, had stirred up quite a stir shortly after it began, as expected.

Especially the part concerning the Brigade Commander.

That "apprenticeship letter," serving as a key piece of physical evidence, became the focus of focuses.

Voices of doubt gradually spread from small-scale discussions in academic circles.

Even a foreign media outlet called "Mirror Weekly" published a long article titled "Can a Single Piece of Paper Prove History? On the Seriousness of Physical Evidence Authentication in Revolutionary History Research."

Although it didn't directly deny it, the sarcastic tone was obvious to anyone with a discerning eye as an attempt to muddy the waters.

To think he could establish a connection with the Brigade Commander based solely on an apprenticeship letter, Sha Ruijin had indeed thought too simply..."