In May 1945, when the eastward column was advancing northward to the front line of Renqiu Jinghai, Liu Tianshu received information from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, and learned that the Japanese army had urgently increased the strength of one division on the front line of Tianjin Beiping, and had also transferred the chariot units participating in the No. 1 operation plan back to Tianjin Beiping.

It seems that the Japanese army in North China wants to block the eastward column from entering the Pingjin area at all costs, and the total strength of the Japanese army in Pingjin is already twice that of the eastward column, and it also has a heavy artillery wing and a flying brigade, plus a tank wing, Liu Tianshu knows that it is unrealistic for the eastward column to quietly pass through the Pingjin area and rush to eastern Hebei.

However, the eastward advance column advanced to the south of Pingjin, and the pressure on the Japanese army was also extraordinary, forcing the Japanese army headquarters in North China to greatly reduce its strength and abandon some unimportant county towns in the Taihang Mountains, which allowed the Eighth Route Army in various base areas to seize the favorable time to launch a major counteroffensive towards the area occupied by the devils, and regained a lot of lost territory at once.

As for the area in central Hebei, with the joint efforts of the Eighth Route Army and the eastward advance column in central Hebei, the Japanese army has basically withdrawn from this area.

Hao Mengxuan's new 11 th Brigade has been rebuilt, and the three main brigades are distributed in the south of Pingjin, threatening not only Pingjin, but also the Baoding Shijiazhuang line; as for the Bohai Sea, although the Japanese warships still come and go from time to time, the area near the shore is already under the control of the Eighth Route Army.

In June, the Fu Zuoyi Department of the Jin Sui Army, which was originally in the Suiyuan area, suddenly rushed eastward, and the troops pointed directly at the Zhangjiakou line.

Unable to find a chance to strike at the enemy, and the eastward advance column could not advance to the northeast, Liu Tianshu and Jiang Jinyong, after asking the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army for instructions, simply launched a large-scale military training campaign south of Pingjin.

At this time of the war, anyone with a little vision knew that the destruction of the little devil was at hand, because at this time, the U.S. military had wiped out most of the Japanese troops in the Pacific, and even the Japanese army entrenched in the Philippines was also beaten to the point of blood.

Jiang someone, who was far away in Chongqing, naturally saw that the devil's demise was imminent, and he was naturally happy and worried at this time, happy that the little devil was finally finished, and his status as the leader of a big country should be recognized by all countries in the world, and he was worried that he had concentrated his elite troops in the past few years to defend the southwest and expedition to Southeast Asia, and there were no decent troops in North China at all, that is, Central China, and the performance of the third theater was also unsatisfactory.

At this time, he didn't want the day of the little devil's end to come too soon.

After many consultations with the American side, Chiang began to secretly concentrate his forces, and at the same time sent a large number of agents to North and East China.

His elite descendants are still in the southwest, and it is not an overnight thing to reach North and East China, and the most important thing now is to send personnel to infiltrate behind enemy lines and contact those six gods and masterless imperial alliances.

The high-level contest between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was not something that Liu Tianshu, the commander of the eastward column, could interfere in, and he was now focused on the enemy in Pingjin, and the column was directly under the special service battalion, and countless elite troops had been sent into the Pingjin area.

In the afternoon of that day, as soon as Liu Tianshu returned from inspecting the situation of the troops of the New Ninth Brigade, Sun Xuexuan ran over in a hurry.

"Commander, the special battalion sent a telegram back, saying that a prince of the Japanese imperial family will come to Tianjin to inspect in the near future."

"A prince of the Japanese Imperial Family?" Liu Tianshu couldn't help but be stunned when he heard it, it was really strange that the prince of the Japanese royal family would come to Tianjin at this time. Everyone knows that the current little Japan is in decline, and the Japanese army's base camp is enough to prevent the US troops from landing on the mainland, and who will have the leisure to come to China?

Is there some conspiracy in this?

"Did you report to headquarters?"

"Not yet?" Sun Xuexuan said in a low voice.

"Immediately report the situation to headquarters and ask headquarters for instructions." Liu Tianshu thought for a moment and said directly.

Now that his troops are confronting Little Japan, although the two sides have not fought hard, the feeling of saber rattling is getting stronger and stronger.

Whether or not to make a fuss about the arrival of the Japanese Imperial Prince has to follow the instructions of the headquarters.

The next day, a call back from the headquarters arrived, asking the eastward column to try to get the prince.

At this time, the head of the headquarters naturally knew that the day when little Japan would be finished, and with the withdrawal of little Japan from China, no one was absolutely sure whether the Kuomintang and the Communist Party would fight.

It is unclear whether Chiang, who had always loved dictatorship, would allow a genuine democratic government to be formally established after the war.

After receiving a reply from the headquarters, several leaders of the column decided to send a telegram to Zhou Aiguo to immediately collect all the information about the Japanese imperial prince and to be ready to act at any time.

The prince, who was on the Japanese mainland for Tianjin, landed from Tanggu three days later. Originally, the most convenient way to get from Japan to Tianjin was by plane, but after Yamamoto's plane was shot down and died, planes of the Chinese and American air forces appeared in the skies from Japan to China at any time.

In the end, the prince, who went to Tianjin with a top-secret mission, traveled all the way from Japan to Tianjin on a warship.

When the royal prince came, he was naturally warmly received by the North China Front Command, and of course, its security was also included in the highest level.

After Zhou Aiguo received the telegram sent by Sun Xuexuan, he immediately dispatched three more combat groups from Beiping to Tianjin, and at the same time, through the internal line, tried to get the itinerary of the imperial prince.

At this time, although the Chinese in Tianjin were respectful to the Japanese Imperial Army on the surface, they were secretly looking for a way out for themselves, and a deputy director of the Nanjing puppet government's office in Tianjin secretly hooked up with Zhou Aiguo's people.

In the end, Zhou Aiguo got from the deputy director that the Japanese prince would go to an inconspicuous temple in Tianjin to worship in the afternoon of the next day.

Of course, the Japanese intelligence department and the gendarmerie made sufficient arrangements for the prince's operation, and sent people to thoroughly check the situation along the route early on.

In the afternoon of the next day, Kato Moriki, a member of the special high school, followed closely with a few of his right-hand men.

After entering the temple, Kato Moriki checked everything around again, and until they confirmed that there was no problem, they let the prince enter the empty hall with two attachés.

Moriki Kato led people to guard the door of the main hall, several pairs of eyes vigilantly looked around, who knew that half an hour passed, but the prince did not come out, Moriki Kato couldn't help but feel strange, and walked to the door of the hall with courage, shouting the prince in a low voice, but there was no echo inside.

A bad feeling arose suddenly, and Moriki Kato suddenly pushed open the hidden door, and rushed into the hall in a few steps, but there was no trace of the prince and his entourage.

"It's not good, the prince is gone, quickly, immediately block the entire temple, don't let anyone go, immediately report the situation here to the commander." Moriki Kato's face turned pale, and after a series of orders were issued, he immediately led people to search nervously in the main hall.

It's a pity that he led his subordinates to search the entire hall thoroughly, and he didn't let go of even a needle, and still didn't find any clues.

"Director, look here." An agent's eyes stared at the ground abruptly, and his voice was somewhat strange.

Hearing the agent's words, Moriki Kato's eyes quickly turned to the floor of the main hall. The floor of this hall is paved with large square bricks, and at first glance it looks the same, but after Moriki Kato's eyes swept it one by one, he still found that something was wrong.

"Come on, pry these bricks up for me." Kato Moriki blushed.

A group of agents immediately rushed in, and the bricks of the main hall were pried up, and Moriki Kato was shocked to discover that there was a black hole underneath.

Thinking that the prince was lost in his hands, Moriki Kato didn't have time to think about it, so he jumped into the black hole, flashed the flashlight handed by his subordinates, and chased forward with the agent.

After going down the tunnel, Kato Moriki found that except for the first section of the tunnel, which was newly dug, the rest of the tunnel had existed before. He knew that Tianjin City had a relatively complete underground pipe network, but he didn't expect that these pipe networks would lead to this temple.

After a brief chase in the underground pipe network, Kato Moriki spotted the traces of those who had kidnapped the prince.

Unbeknownst to those people, those people found that Moriki Kato was chasing, and immediately two people fired fiercely at the back, blocking Moriki Kato's pursuit.

After Kato Moriki killed the two blockers, he could no longer find the prince.

When Liu Tianshu learned that the prince had fallen into the hands of Zhou Aiguo, he immediately ordered Zhou Aiguo to be ready to escort the prince out of Tianjin at any time.

Just when the Japanese army was conducting a large-scale search and arrest of the entire city of Tianjin, the New 10th Brigade suddenly launched an attack on the Japanese army blocking the front, and for a while, the guns and artillery in the south of Tianjin continued.

At the same time, the guerrillas scattered around Tianjin and Beiping, and the combat groups of the special service battalions began to operate frequently, making the whole of Pingjin completely unpeaceful, and the Japanese army's search and arrest efforts in the city were affected.

When the attention of the Japanese army was attracted, Zhou Aiguo finally succeeded in taking the prince away from Tianjin and entering the anti-Japanese base in eastern Hebei. Twenty days later, the prince was sent to Taihang Mountain.

Knowing that the prince fell into the hands of the Eighth Route Army and was taken to Taihang Mountain, Moriki Kato was ordered to commit suicide by disembowelment.

After some investigation and questioning by the headquarters, the purpose of the prince's visit to Tianjin was finally clarified.

It turned out that after the Japanese mainland was wantonly and indiscriminately bombed by the US military, the Japanese top brass began to plan to move the Japanese imperial family to China's northeast, and the prince's visit to Tianjin was to conduct an investigation and assessment of the situation in the entire north of China.

Upon learning that Japan might move the government to the northeast, the headquarters immediately ordered the eastward column to prepare and strive to advance to the east of Hebei as soon as possible.

At this time, the United States sent a note to Japan asking Japan to surrender unconditionally, but Japan refused. In a fit of rage, US President Harry S. Truman ordered the US military to drop the atomic bombs that had just been successfully developed on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan.

At this moment, the Soviet Union suddenly declared war on Japan, and the Soviet Red Army launched a devastating attack on the Kwantung Army entrenched in northeastern China in three directions.

Just as Liu Tianshu was about to order his troops to launch an attack on Pingjin, the Japanese emperor issued an edict announcing unconditional surrender.

When the news came, the land of China cheered. It is a pity that Jiang immediately issued an order to the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army, demanding that the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army hold the defense area and not attack the Japanese army without authorization, and at the same time demanded that the Japanese army could only surrender to the troops of the Nationalist Government.

As soon as this order was issued, it was immediately resolutely resisted by the Communist Party, so the eastward column received the order and immediately advanced to eastern Hebei.

Although the receiving officials of the Nationalist Government had already entered Tianjin in Beiping by plane, and at the same time ordered the Japanese army not to surrender to the Eighth Route Army, at this time, even if the Japanese army knew that the eastward column had entered eastern Hebei through the suburbs of Tianjin, they did not have the courage to shoot at the Chinese army.

The ultimate goal of the eastward column was to enter the northeast, so after Liu Tianshu received the order, he immediately commanded the troops to advance to the east of Hebei, and finally arrived at Shanhaiguan in September.

At this time, the party Central Committee had issued an order to mobilize the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army and a large number of cadres to march into the northeast, and Liu Tianshu's eastward column, together with the Eighth Route Army in eastern Hebei, was finally included in the sequence of the Northeast Allied Army, participated in the magnificent war of liberation, and made outstanding contributions to the founding of New China.

End of book. (To be continued.) )