On October 7th, shortly after 8:00 AM, Lieutenant General Kawai Misao, Commander of the Kwantung Army, received the 'Declaration of War' and immediately ordered the Japanese troops to enter their defensive systems.

Over the past few years, as the strength of the Northeast Army increased rapidly, the Japanese army began to increase defenses at the border of the Kwantung Leased Territory. When Lieutenant General Kawai Misao took office, he continued to strengthen the defense system of the Kwantung Leased Territory. At this time, the border of the Kwantung Leased Territory had a land defense system built around several extremely sturdy reinforced concrete fortresses.

The 1st Group Army was responsible for attacking the Kwantung Leased Territory. At 8:55 AM, all personnel at the headquarters were watching a fortress within their field of view in the distance. No one spoke; they just quietly watched the silent battlefield. When Commander Zheng Silang checked his watch for the third time, the hands showed it was already 9:00 AM.

All units had synchronized their watches with a difference of less than a minute. On the positions of the 13th Army, which was responsible for attacking the Kwantung Leased Territory, the 120mm mortars belonging to each regiment opened fire one after another at the Japanese troops.

From the intense flash and loud noise when the shells landed, Zheng Silang knew the troops were using high-explosive shells. Unlike armor-piercing shells that break through enemy hard defenses, after high-explosive shells hit a target, the explosives filled inside the shell explode, producing fragments, metal jets, shock waves, and smoke to damage the target.

Without even looking closely at the magnificent scene produced by the explosion of the high-explosive shells, Zheng Silang said 'Let's go back' and left the front line with the headquarters personnel.

Some comrades wanted to watch a while longer, but Zheng Silang did not rush them. After all, such a grand situation was a first for the Northeast Army. But Zheng Silang didn't want to watch the war like a spectator; what a commander had to do was command the troops to fight the enemy.

The signal corps had already laid the field telephone lines. When Zheng Silang returned to the headquarters, the news that should have been sent to the headquarters had not arrived yet. The frontline combat units were organized by regiment. Between the regiment and the group army, there were still two units: the division and the army. Bypassing the chain of command was a taboo in the military, and Zheng Silang would absolutely not do such a thing.

Outside the headquarters, the sound of artillery was rumbling, like thunder on the horizon before a summer rainstorm. Zheng Silang sat in his chair with his eyes closed to rest, but in fact, he was combing through the known intelligence of both the enemy and his own side again in his mind, predicting the course of the battle.

Like Group Army Commander Zheng Silang, who was in the rear preparing to adjust deployment according to the battle situation at any time, the regimental commanders directing operations on the front line were also fulfilling their duties with all their might.

The regimental artillery units participating in the first wave of attacks were firing fiercely at the Japanese firing points in front of them. After the first test shot, each gun position quickly adjusted its firing data and began the second round of shooting. Japanese firing points were already being hit by Northeast Army shells. Artillery observers strained their eyes, trying their best to determine with maximum accuracy whether the shells had accurately hit the Japanese firing points marked on the map.

After the third round of shelling ended, more Japanese firing points were hit. No one cheered because of this. Behind those Japanese frontline firing points, the huge Japanese fortresses stood motionless. Fortresses as massive as monsters were definitely not something 120mm mortars could deal with. Currently, these fortresses hadn't reacted yet, but before long, the Japanese artillery inside the fortresses would begin to counterattack. The powerful fortress guns would pose a huge threat to the Northeast Army officers and soldiers on the front line.

While the Northeast Army officers and soldiers felt a huge threat, the Japanese troops facing the Northeast Army were stunned.

Japanese units assigned to the defense system received a call from headquarters around 8:40 AM, ordering all units to enter the defense system immediately. Although the various units of the Kwantung Army acted immediately, they did not truly realize what was happening.

Just as the Kwantung Army defense troops entered their defensive positions, shells flew over like rain. Experiencing the terrifying shockwave brought by the shell explosions personally, seeing comrades from the same unit in the distance blown into bloody pulp or simply turned into pieces of corpses, the Kwantung Army finally realized that war had broken out.

But it was too late to realize it now. The Northeast Army's firepower preparation was fierce and efficient. Field earthworks were blown sky-high as long as they were directly hit by a 120mm high-explosive shell. The only things that could withstand it were the Japanese reinforced concrete bunkers.

Even so, the Japanese troops inside these reinforced concrete bunkers were shaken to the core. Those unlucky Japanese soldiers suffered internal injuries, with blood starting to flow from their mouths, noses, and even ears.

The last time the Japanese army participated in a high-intensity war was the Russo-Japanese War 18 years ago. Now, middle and high-ranking commanders in the Japanese army basically had experience from the Russo-Japanese War. Junior officers enlisted later and only heard seniors bragging about the brutality of the war at the wine table, or searched for records of war scenes from military history materials. Japanese soldiers who enlisted in peacetime had no idea what a high-intensity war was like.

On the earth-shattering battlefield, the struggling Japanese troops finally heard their own artillery begin to return fire. Artillery inside several Japanese fortresses opened fire on the Northeast Army positions, and the Northeast Army artillery fire weakened almost simultaneously.

The young Japanese officers who understood this were overjoyed and quickly seized this opportunity to reorganize their troops and prepare for the ensuing battle.

Seeing that the Japanese fortresses had begun to operate, Senior Colonel Qiu Wenchang, Commander of the Artillery Regiment of the 13th Army responsible for the attack, covered his cheeks with both hands and rubbed them like a cat washing its face. When Senior Colonel Qiu Wenchang felt he had fully entered the state, he put down his hands and ordered the troops beside him: "Prepare to fire!"

Behind Qiu Wenchang were four extremely huge artillery pieces, and two Germans were standing with the Northeast Army artillerymen.

The artillery battle had proceeded until now like the precise operation of a machine. Our army was like this, and the enemy army began to operate just as our army had predicted. Next, Qiu Wenchang looked forward to the war process continuing to run like this.

Hearing Qiu Wenchang's order, the 13th Army's artillery immediately began to operate the four giant guns.

The two German soldiers were both veterans of World War I. The reason the Northeast Army hired them was that both had been crew members of the German siege gun 'Big Bertha'.

At the beginning of WWI, the Belgian Liege Fortress blocked the German advance. The concrete defense walls of the Liege Fortress were three meters thick and reinforced with steel plates. The Germans used 40,000 troops and more than 200 cannons to attack the Liege Fortress, but they couldn't make a dent in it.

The German army immediately deployed giant siege mortars nicknamed "Big Bertha". The "Big Bertha" giant gun was 7 meters long, weighed 42 tons, and had a caliber of 420mm. Each shell alone weighed 1 ton and could penetrate hard reinforced concrete buildings; its power was extremely huge. To transport it to the front line, it first had to be transported by train to the end of the railway line, then a special road had to be paved, and then it was dragged by 36 strong horses to the German positions near Liege.

At that time, the German army only had 9 such guns. Helmuth von Moltke the Younger allocated 4 of them to Ludendorff at once.

At the same time, cannons from Austria were also in place. Named "Slim Emma" (Schlanke Emma), produced by Skoda, the caliber was not weak either, at 305mm. The two launched a competition for the first time at Liege, which claimed to have the strongest fortress in the world. What made the German army feel incredibly gratified and the Belgian army astonished was that 12 Emmas and Big Berthas tore the so-called impregnable reinforced concrete defense line into fragments in just four days.

Japan's industrial strength was far inferior to Europe's. Although the intelligence was not detailed enough, it could be basically determined that the thickness of the concrete used in the Kwantung Leased Territory's defensive fortresses was definitely not 3 meters. Therefore, the artillery produced by the Northeast Arsenal was not even a 'Little Bertha', but a 'Slender Emma' with a caliber smaller than the Austrian-produced siege gun 'Slim Emma'.

The siege gun 'Slim Emma' had a caliber of 305mm, while the Northeast Army's siege mortar had a caliber of only 255mm. With the Northeast Army's habit, if they could use whole numbers, they didn't like using fractions. However, a 250-caliber artillery sounded a bit off no matter how you listened to it [Note: "250" is slang for an idiot/simpleton in Chinese]. That was how the 255-caliber siege mortar appeared.

Regardless of these details, the 255-caliber siege mortar also used delayed-fuse armor-piercing shells. The armor-piercing shell would not explode immediately after hitting the fortress. Instead, it would wait until the shell penetrated into the interior of the fortress and its kinetic energy was exhausted before detonating.

No one dared to operate the artillery near the 255 gun; the huge shockwave would immediately kill the surrounding soldiers by concussion.

The 255 guns were placed on reinforced concrete bases. It took more than an hour to complete the adjustment of firing data. The artillerymen quickly retreated to nearly a hundred meters away and fired the shells electronically.

At that moment, the earth trembled violently. The nearby artillerymen felt as if their hearts had been grabbed by something. Every artilleryman was wearing earplugs and a hood. Even so, it was impossible for no sound to enter. But at the moment the artillery fired, the world seemed to suddenly become quiet. All background noise disappeared completely, and the surrounding sound entered an extremely uniform state.

The terrifying roar of the artillery overwhelmed all sounds in an instant. The powerful sound wave impact made the artillerymen's senses unable to receive other signals at that moment.

At this time in the sky, several tiny objects that were almost invisible were flying; they were reconnaissance planes of the Northeast People's Liberation Army.

The planes were monoplanes with single propellers and two seats. Looking down from an altitude of nearly a thousand meters, everything on the ground was so tiny. The flash and dust of the 120mm artillery felt no stronger than a small firecracker exploding during the Spring Festival. The fierce artillery battle was as insignificant as a game of children throwing stones on a lake surface.

The Japanese fortress was the only object with some presence in this game. Compared to the fortress, the artillery positions were like mantises launching a brave attack against a cart.

Suddenly, the observer in the back seat saw a huge flower bloom abruptly at a position about 200 meters above [or on] the Japanese fortress. In the center of the flower was a bright orange-red fireball. The size of this flower was already a fraction of the size of the fortress.

The fortress, which looked lonely and indifferent, finally met a companion that could match it.

Immediately, the plane began to shake left and right. The pilot seemed to be cursing something while manipulating the plane, swaying and flying higher. The shockwave of the shell could even affect the high altitude of nearly a thousand meters. This was something neither the pilot in the front row nor the observer in the back row had expected.