After receiving the order of Xue Yue, the commander of the Ninth Theater, Sun Yumin immediately ordered Dong Wenbin to lead his troops to set off first to rescue Wang Jiaben's 79th Army in Xiangxiang.

The Japanese army from the beginning of Yiyang, all the way to Sun Yumin pursued by the army, the attack on Ningxiang and the 73rd Army Peng Weiren Department lost a lot of troops, the battle to Dai Cunxiang and Dong Wenbin combined a heavy loss of a multi-wing, although most of them still escaped, but when they hit Xiangxiang, the entire 40th Division compared to when it first entered Hunan, has lost nearly half of the troops, if it were not for Yokoyama Yong personally sitting in Yueyang command, Aoki Chengichi may have led the troops to retreat.

At the same time as the smooth sailing of the east and middle roads, although Aoki Chengyi also marched all the way according to the plan, he was beaten by Sun Yumin's troops in several battles in a row. Now there is only one way in front of him, that is, to capture Xiangxiang with all his might, and then hold on to this small city, waiting for the other two friendly forces to capture Changsha, and then besiege this Chinese army trump card that has made him lose his troops: the Twelfth Army!

Yokoyama Yong, who was in command of Yueyang, also saw this, so he paid attention to the battle situation of the 40th Division on the West Road while urging all units to attack the surrounding areas of Changsha, and at the same time strictly ordered the 58th Division and the 34th Division to step up their efforts and launch an attack on Changsha City as soon as possible.

After receiving the order of Yokoyama Yong, the Japanese army on the East Road began to carry out a pincer attack on Liuyang on June 10, 1944, and the 3rd Division, under the command of the division commander Yamamoto Sano, quickly broke through the Gaokaiqiao position of the 44th Army of the National Army, and attacked the city wall of Liuyang City from the west and north; The 13th Division under the command of Lieutenant General Chilu Li attacked Liuyang City from the east with the 65th Wing through Gugang, while the rest of the main force all detoured to the south of Liuyang City, and launched a frantic attack on Liuyang City with the strong artillery support of the 19th Wing of the Mountain Artillery. Under the personal supervision of the commander Wang Zejun, the 44th Army of the National Army suffered heavy casualties in the 150th, 161st and 162nd divisions, but it still held hard for three and a half days, and fought fiercely until the morning of the 14th without the arrival of reinforcements, and was forced to break through and Liuyang was occupied.

Two divisions of the Japanese army in the middle of the route, the 116th Division of Iwanaga Wang and the 68th Division of Sakuma, crossed the river from Mishui and forced the Laodao River near Chunhua Mountain, repulsed the outer guard troops of the 4th Army guarding Changsha, and entered Zhuzhou and the vicinity of Shiting in the southeast on the day of the fall of Liuyang. The defending Shen Fazao's Temporary 2nd Army's Temporary 7th Division, after a little resistance, retreated to the south bank of Lushui.

At the same time, the 34th Division of the Japanese Army, under the command of the division commander Ban Jianxiong, forcibly crossed the Xiangjiang River and entered the eastern and northern sides of Yuelu; The 58th Division of the Japanese Army led by Maori Suehiro also advanced to the east of Changsha, and the siege of the city on three sides was completed.

Although he didn't want to retreat the headquarters like this, Xue Yue didn't have a good way to stop the Japanese soldiers. Originally, there were still the Provisional 2nd Army and the 44th Army on the outskirts of Changsha, but Shen Fazao and his people did not want to become a bare-bones commander and did not want the situation of the 87th Division to be staged again, so they only let his temporary 7th Division resist a little near Shiting, and then retreated to the south bank of Lushui; Wang Zejun's 44th Army can be regarded as having all its strength, but it really can't withstand the attack of the two divisions of the Japanese army, if it weren't for his subordinates gritting their teeth and breaking through the bloody road, I am afraid that even he himself would have to die in Liuyang City.

In the current Changsha City, except for Zhang Deneng's Fourth Army, only Zhang Xiaohu's 20th Division remains.

The 20th Division was Sun Yumin's starting unit, with three brigades and nine regiments of the 58th, 59th, and 60th Brigades, plus tens of thousands of troops directly under the artillery regiment and division headquarters, and compared with the Fourth Army, which had three divisions of the 59th, 90th, and 102nd Divisions, the strength and equipment were above it. According to Xue Yue's personal division, Yuelu Mountain and its surroundings were defended by Zhang Deneng's Fourth Army, and Changsha City was defended by Zhang Xiaohu's 20th Division.

Before Sun Yumin went to Xiangbei, he told Zhang Xiaohu not to regard the Fourth Army as a unit of the 12th Army, when Ou Zhen was in office, the Fourth Army was still an iron army, but since he was promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the 27th Group Army, the combat strength of the Fourth Army has deteriorated, Zhang Deneng is really not a person who can be sincerely trusted, this kind of friendly army is completely unreliable. He repeatedly told Zhang Xiaohu that he had to rely on himself in everything, and he had to think about his brothers in everything, although he did not say it explicitly and let him abandon the city and retreat at the right time, but his words were already very clear.

Sun Yumin's words to Zhang Xiaohu were not that he also preserved his own strength and deliberately abandoned Changsha, but that he knew that Changsha was impossible to hold, and the Japanese army did its best this time, not only did all the main forces of the 11th Army pour out, but even mobilized the surrounding forces to attack and contain them, preventing the reinforcements of the national army in the third theater and other places.

Historically, since June 16, 1944, the Japanese army, with the direct support of the 1st Air Flight Group, launched a general attack on Yuelu Mountain and Changsha City, and the 34th Division captured Huxing Mountain and Niuxing Mountain in the east and west of Yuelu on the same day. These two places are the gateways to cover Yuelu Mountain, Zhang Deneng in these two positions, each arranged a regiment, but under the attack of aircraft, heavy artillery and tanks, the Japanese army broke through these two positions in one afternoon, and at dusk, the Japanese 58th Division even broke through the position of the 59th Division's headquarters in the repair station, and the 59th Division had no choice but to retreat to the core area of Miaofeng and Tianxin Pavilion.

After fighting all day, both the enemy and us were exhausted, and they invariably chose to stop fighting. There was no fighting all night, which made Zhang Deneng mistakenly think that the Japanese army was already at the end of the crossbow, and he breathed a long sigh of relief in the headquarters, but he didn't expect that before breakfast was finished, the Japanese planes flew over the battlefield again, and naturally it was another indiscriminate bombardment. With the support of aircraft and heavy artillery, the devil's infantry also launched a fierce attack on the positions of the 59th Division in Tianxin Pavilion and Taohuashan, and what was even more vicious was that in order to achieve a quick victory, the devils fired a large number of poison gas bombs at the positions of the Fourth Army, many of which had erosive poison gas that seriously violated humanitarianism.

The 59th Division did show the tenacious fighting spirit of the Chinese army, but it had no gas mask and suffered extremely heavy casualties, but despite this, they still dealt a very heavy blow to the Japanese army, and the remnants of the 59th Division actually broke through the encirclement of the devils and returned to Changsha City.

The fight over there is fierce, and this side is the same hell on earth. Sakuma, the commander of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army, personally led the 58th Brigade, bypassing the 34th Division, detouring from the right flank of the 34th Regiment to the left flank of the 90th Division of the defending National Army, and storming the Yanzishan position where it was stationed, and the 268th Regiment of the 90th Division, which defended the main position, was damaged by more than half of the 268th Regiment of the 90th Division defending the main position in just one wave.

In fact, with the strength of the 90th Division, relying on the terrain of Yuelu Mountain, it would be no problem to hold on for another day or two, but it was precisely because of Chen Kan's several requests for help that Zhang Deneng decided to reinforce Yuelu Mountain with the main force of the whole army, except for the troops who left a little "seed" for each division, and the rest of the troops all crossed the Xiangjiang River at night to reinforce Yuelu Mountain.

Due to the suddenness of the order, the extremely hasty preparations for crossing the river, and the fact that the Japanese army flanked the troops who crossed the river with heavy artillery fire on the Niuxingshan and its east, resulting in heavy casualties among the troops crossing the river, if they continued to cross the river, I was afraid that the main force of the Fourth Army would be crippled before they saw the devils.

Seeing the failure of the main force of the army to cross the river, Chen Kan, the commander of the 90th Division, thought that it would be a dead end to defend Yuelu Mountain, so he took it upon himself to escape from Yuelu Mountain with his troops at night. By the time the troops of the Fourth Army had crossed the river, the core position of Yuelu Mountain had been occupied by the Japanese army, so they had to turn and flee, but they encountered the troops of the 34th Division of the Japanese Army, and after a contact exchange of fire, they were quickly routed and fled all the way to the Shaoyang area.

Chen Kan of the 90th Division is a lucky general, it stands to reason that he gave up his position and fled without permission, which will be a capital crime of killing his head, but he accidentally ran into the commander of the 68th Division who personally commanded the attack on the way to escape, and there were only a very small number of troops around this old devil, this is really a big pie falling from the sky, Chen Kan only thought that he had encountered a small army of lost devils, but when he saw the lieutenant general of the devil who had been killed by the soldiers, he almost vomited blood without laughing.

The Fourth Changsha Warring States Army continued to suffer heavy defeats, but only Chen Kan, the commander of the 90th Division of the Fourth Army, took shit luck and killed Sakuma, the commander of the 68th Division of the Japanese Army, which was also the biggest result of the Chinese army in this battle.

The annals of history did not record the strange results of this battle, Sun Yumin naturally did not know about this incident, but he clearly knew that the loss of Yuelu Mountain was a foregone conclusion, and the heavy artillery positions set up on the mountains in the Ninth Theater were no longer like the last battle, and they played an unexpected role, and after the 90th Division withdrew, it became a dish on the plate of the Japanese army, and these American heavy artillery became a nightmare for the defenders of Changsha City, and it was their own 20th Division that was going to garrison Changsha. He naturally didn't want to see his troops being blown to pieces by the heavy artillery that originally belonged to him, which was the main reason why he hinted that Zhang Xiaohu immediately withdrew from Changsha City with his troops when the situation was not right.

Of course, at this moment, he still can't care about the war in Changsha, because Aoki Chengichi here, he has not finished cleaning up, killing his two brothers in a row, this Japanese 40th Division must pay a heavy price.

Wang Jia, the commander of the 79th Army, was not a good man, although he did not send troops to save Ningxiang as Peng Nengren thought, but he still had great determination to defend Xiangxiang.

At present, Aoki Chengichi's 40th Division no longer has the combat strength it had when it first entered Hunan, and the main reason is that Sun Yumin's troops and the 73rd Army have lost too much vital strength. Attacking Xiangxiang, where the 79th Army was stationed, had clearly felt that it was powerless, and from the beginning of the fighting on the periphery, every time the national army position was captured, it had to pay a lot of price, and although Aoki Chengichi had not yet reached the point where there were no troops to fight for, he had an iron plate in front and a sharp blade behind him, and he and the 40th Division would be wiped out at any time. Although he was very reluctant to ask Yokoyama for tactical guidance, the reality was that he could not wait for delay, so he had to send a telegram asking for help.

It is impossible for Yokoyama to ignore Aoki Chengichi, since he knew that Sun Yumin's 12th Army was eyeing the 40th Division, he made a plan to use the strength of this division on the west road to contain the main ace of the Chinese army, otherwise how could he still let Aoki Chengichi attack all the way to the south, even if he occupied a city and was captured by Sun Yumin's department, even if he saw that the 40th Division was about to fall into a situation of being flanked, Yokoyama Yong still gave the order to attack Xiangxiang. Although Aoki Seiichi didn't understand why the commander had to attack Xiangxiang by himself, he could still vaguely feel that his 40th Division was being used as a bait, and the object was the trump card of the Chinese army: Sun Yumin's 12th Army!

After receiving Aoki Seiichi's telegram asking for help, he ordered the 116th Wing of the 132nd Division to approach him, and notified the 1st Flying Team to send several fighters to help in the battle.

Aoki Seiichi knows very well that the iron plate in front is not an unbreakable iron plate, as long as he is given time to destroy this iron plate, that is a sure thing, and the biggest danger is to prevent the sharp blade that is about to be stabbed in the rear, which is the most deadly.

So he put the only wing in his hand, the 234th Wing, which still had a complete formation, in the back, and personally set up two lines of defense, and the order he gave was: Hold on, hold on, and hold on! No matter what temptation you are subjected to, you must remain unmoved and stick to your position.

Aoki Seiichi had fought against Sun Yumin, and he had more experience than anyone else about this opponent that had changed the color of many Imperial Army generals, and he also used an extremely conservative but most correct tactic: to defend to the death!

Once the devils settled down and defended to the death, although Dong Wenbin's troops were well-armed and highly mechanized, it was impossible to penetrate the devils' defense line at once, and after losing three M3 light tanks and running out of shells, they still did not make a breakthrough, so they had no choice but to suspend the attack and wait for the arrival of Dai Cunxiang's troops.

At this time, with the help of the plane, Kawashima, the commander of the 236th Wing of the 40th Division who had lost Huang Wei's second regiment, made another trick, and led the remnants of the army to dig two secret passages under the city wall at night, and used explosives to blow up the solid wall of Xiangxiang city defense. The battle situation was immediately unbalanced, and after Wang Jiaben's hard fighting, he led his troops to break through and led his troops to retreat to Yongzhou.

Sun Yumin learned from the telegram transmitted by the Ninth Theater Headquarters that Xiangxiang had been lost, and the Japanese 116th Division was already moving closer to the 40th Division, so he had no choice but to order the attacking troops in front to retreat.

However, some people don't want to just watch the culprit go free! When he received Sun Yumin's retreat order, he used the excuse that the two armies were already fighting and could not retreat, so he once again sent troops to attack Xiangxiang, and Dong Wenbin also acted as an "accomplice" at this time, making this "perjury" for Dai Cunxiang.

Under the powerful offensive of the new 34th Division and Dong Wenbin Brigade, the two lines of defense of the Japanese 234th Wing were finally broken, except for a small number of troops who fled back to the occupied Xiangxiang City, most of the rest were annihilated, originally these two guys still wanted to attack Xiangxiang City, but at this time, the Japanese planes came, suffered a bombing, and lost two M3s again, they finally knew that the fighters were gone, and followed Sun Yumin's order to march in the direction of Changsha.

After holding Xiangxiang steadily, Aoki Chengichi's 40th Division was no longer able to advance, gathered and gathered forces, and waited for Yokoyama Yong's replenishment, and their next opponent would be the main force of the 74th Army and the 24th Group Army under the personal command of Wang Yaowu.