The mottled ancient city walls of Xi'an are soaked with traces of time, and green moss is dotted between the tiles. However, the sense of time on the city wall was enveloped by the aura of slaughter, and the muzzles of more than 800 cannons pointed at this ancient city ten kilometers away.

In a hollow area, a young artillery officer in the Republican Army's artillery headquarters with a red face said to Ren Di: "Sir, our artillery is ready. The clocks of the various units had become obsolete last night. We can take Xi'an at any time now. ”

Ren Di looked at a pair of eyes with a strong desire to fight. said to the chief of staff who reported to him: "Sun Yaozu, you are from Anhui." The chief of staff said: "Sir, I am a Qianshan person" Ren Di nodded and said: "I am also from Anhui, and I am also between Jianghuai." I think there's something missing in Anhui. The chief of staff said, "Sir, war always destroys something. ”

Ren Di said: "However, it is only distressing that others destroy their own things. Anhui, its humanities are all concentrated in the south of the Yangtze River, there are Huizhou Hui style buildings, Anqing port economic center, and this area only occupies one-third of the land of Anhui Province, an Anqing, a Huizhou, but can be named after the entire province. Is this really the fault of the people of northern Anhui? We are here on the battlefield where the Chu River and the Han border are drawn and ruled. Whether it is the army in the north that needs to levy food, or the dynasty in the south that needs to be fortified and cleared. It is destined not to be rich. ”

Ren Di said: "Just because our things are destroyed by others doesn't mean that we don't cherish them. Shaanxi is destined to be in our hands, and this thousand-year-old city is ours. At this time, a chief of staff said: "Sir, if we can take this city peacefully, of course we also want to, but Zuo Santong has already said that he will live and die with Xi'an, even if it is ruin, he will fight to the end." ”

"Sometimes a powerful enemy looks like a paper tiger. Whether it is in terms of combat effectiveness, or in terms of will to fight. You should take a look at the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang in it invited three times and invited four times, and only then came out of the mountain hypocrisy, the officials of the Ming Dynasty can be said to have learned very clearly. What kind of mentality is the mentality of the person and his army now, and now we need to grasp the following. The desperate battle you speak of, the whole city is united in hatred, and is ready to leave us with a ruin of resistance. This kind of possibility exists, but it is very small, if they have this kind of will to fight, then it will not be so easy for us to enter Shaanxi to fight. On the contrary, I think it is very likely that the person on the left three links is hypocritical. So I give him three days if this strategy allows. Yunchen and comrades in the northwest also agreed with this. ”

Strategically speaking, the sooner Ren Di opens up the northwest road now, the biggest advantage is that he can provide food and ammunition supplies to Yunchenhe's northwest army, and now the best equipment should be the troops under the command of Li Ziming, who have fought the Jiujiang Campaign, and have a large number of munitions transported by the captain of the Nandu Temporary Transport Brigade, as well as the material support of Zhao Weiguo's base flowing down the Yangtze River. The second most important in terms of weapons and equipment should be the East China Front. Compared with Zhao Weiguo's base, the northern Anhui industrial zone built by Ren Di is mainly a mineral material that is not necessary for special steel on the current site. What chrome ore, nickel ore, rare earth ore. Without these things, it would be difficult to make some of the key materials from high-carbon steel alone. But there is no shortage of light artillery, machine guns and ammunition of all kinds. Now the East China Front is under the control of Lu Ming, and it is taking out to support Ren Di's operations.

But the most arduous thing is to talk about Yunchen He, who fought in the northwest, and there are only various types of rifles. Such troops, relying on discipline, overwhelmed the horse bandits in the west. However, they were short of ammunition, and Ren Di's priority to enter Shaanxi this time was to obey the central government's westward strategic considerations. It can be said that the sooner the passage on this road is opened, the better it will be for Yunchen and the Northwest Army. However, Ren Di explained the situation of trying to liberate Xi'an peacefully, and Yun Chenhe expressed his understanding. Xi'an was expanded from the city wall from the Sui Dynasty. If you look at the 21st century road map of Xi'an, you will find that the urban planning is very interesting, and the whole city is square. Such a city with a deep history is enough to qualify as an administrative capital in a European country, but there are several such cities in China.

No matter how strong the brick and rammed earth structure of such a historic city is, it cannot stop the impact of metal shells wrapped in explosives. Once the siege is fought, Ren Di, as a general, must put the lives of the soldiers first and completely blow up the city wall with artillery fire. Cleared some commanding heights of buildings with airplanes. The damage to the city of Xi'an is huge.

If more than 80 percent of the enemy army is eliminated on the battlefield, the remaining 20 percent are likely to surrender. Ren Di deliberately and completely cleared all areas of Shaanxi, leaving the defenders of Xi'an to become the remaining 20%.

In the morning, after the cold autumn wind whistled through the doors of thousands of homes, the planes in the sky also came, and a large number of leaflets and papers were sprinkled from the sky. In order to create tension, the IRA was bombarded with leaflets every hour. And on the flyer the countdown to the siege was noted.

This is the standard psychological warfare role. Some people are not afraid of death, but you only load a bullet on the revolver # pistol in front of this person who is not afraid of death, and then blindfold him and tell him. The next is to use this gun to carry out the death penalty, and a click, a few misses, is enough to break the person's psyche.

Leaflets are dropped every hour, each indicating the number of hours remaining in the final siege. In the face of this kind of paper bullet that reminds you once an hour, anxiety and panic began to permeate the whole city, especially the defenders on the city wall, and there was a feeling of living like a year in the process of waiting for the shells. And at Ren Di's suggestion, every leaflet is a surrender certificate, and this kind of voucher is made into a time-sensitive consumable by Ren Di, if you surrender within three hours of receiving the marked time, you will be given ten silver coins or 1,000 yuan, and you can go home freely without entering the prisoner camp, and if you surrender within six hours, you will be fed three meals within three days of entering the prisoner camp with one pound of noodles and mutton soup. Twelve hours later, the surrendered cornmeal was served in the prisoner camp and the examination was completed. Those who surrender after 12 hours will need to be reformed through labor for one year.

Timeliness, no matter how many prisoner voucher leaflets the Republican Army airdropped in Xi'an, the new ones were always in demand, and even the military police of the army came down to collect them and hid a few privately.

On the first night, a large number of Ming troops hung baskets on the northern city wall to surrender, and in the second half of the night, this act of desertion almost became blatant. Ropes hung from the city, and as the soldiers crossed the blockade, they saw the Republican patrols with their guns in their hands, and their faces were relieved with a look of safety and relief.

In this case, the news of the army spreads very quickly. Fleeing took place along entire sections of the city walls. A path was given to the soldiers who were in a state of restlessness.

By the evening of the next day, the Ming troops guarding the north gate began to flee in a battalion. The cement blocks behind the iron gates on the city walls were pulled apart, and the large iron gates were slowly pulled apart. The officer of the battalion took his gun and said, "Brothers, quick," and the unit disappeared silently in twenty minutes. Until half of it disappeared, a team of patrolling soldiers found that there was no one at the north gate? At this time, the army was divided into two factions.

"Brothers, eighty percent of the people here have left the city, so let's just leave. Why bother working here. A man shouted at the soldiers, but there are always troublemakers, and people are at odds. A white and innocent officer said, "Wang Tiezhu, what do you want to do?" "In response to this officer, it was Wang Tiezhu's shot. The officer looked incredulously at the honest soldier who had been corporally punished by himself in the past two days. The kinetic energy of the bullet penetrated the lobes of the lungs, and blood rushed up to the esophagus, and the officer vomited blood and collapsed and said: "Rebellion." ”

Wang Tiezhu raised his arms and said, "Brothers, after staying here for thirty-seven hours, we will be shelled on the city wall. (The two-day flyers made the soldiers very time-conscious.) I don't force the brothers who want to stay, but don't be unhappy with me and other brothers who want to leave, and no one will hinder anyone when we go to the end of the world. ”

The gunfire was very loud in the night, and the footsteps of other patrol soldiers could be heard in the other streets. Wang Tiezhu's patrol team didn't stay behind to let other patrols find out that they were wrong. If someone informs you, everyone who wants to leave will die. So the patrol squad quickly left through the open north gate.

In two minutes, facing several patrol teams and facing the suddenly open north gate, the brain crashed, this is not a situation where you can quickly unify your opinions by killing only one person. After a shootout, a large number of soldiers began to leave.

After the north gate was suddenly unguarded, there was a broken window effect, and the whole night was as lively as the day in just a few hours, and a large number of soldiers and citizens hurriedly left the road. So much so that there was a stampede at the North City Gate. The Ming army, which came to suppress and maintain order, did not stop the field after firing fire. On the contrary, in the dark, some soldiers were angry in their hearts, thinking that no one would see me anyway. With the guy in his hand, he opened fire on this soldier who shot it.

At three o'clock in the morning, the sky was bent by a crescent moon, and a camp roar took place. On the concrete pavement of the ancient city of Xi'an, groups of imperial soldiers hurried towards the north gate, and the people who were originally preparing to leave the city immediately hid in their houses wherever the soldiers went.

The officer of the Imperial Army on a tall horse shouted hoarsely, "The whole city is under martial law, and all citizens are allowed to enter the houses and not go out, otherwise they will bear the consequences." The streets of the city fell silent except for the gunfire at the north gate.

When the gendarmerie unit arrived in Beicheng, it was immediately shocked by the chaos in the field, and the soldiers who were huddled in bunkers and fired spontaneously formed a group. Attempted to approach the North City Gate. However, the North Gate became extremely difficult to travel due to the large number of horse-drawn carriages and corpses congested.

"Give me all back, you are rebelling." An Imperial colonel general shouted loudly. But as soon as this sentence was spoken, it seemed that the night had strengthened the courage of the soldiers. In this chaotic scene, the oppression of military discipline has disappeared. The Imperial soldiers here have already vented their resentment at the unprovoked drag of the strong men into the battlefield in the past six months. Suddenly, someone contradicted and said: "Lao Tzu is a rebellion, you officials eat meat and oil and drink spicy wine." We nibbled on the grass clippings. I don't want to sell my life to you for a long time. ”

Suddenly, a large number of soldiers chimed in and shouted: "Black dog, don't get in the way." The chaotic slogan finally turned into four neat words: "Good dogs don't get in the way." The shouts of thousands of people shook the north gate so much that the Republican army could be heard from kilometers away. The same slogan also unified the originally chaotic crossfire front, and at this time, it was unknown where the first shot was fired at the gendarmes who came to suppress it. At this time, it was like a hole in the embankment.

The gendarmes suddenly became public enemies and evolved into an exchange of fire between soldiers and gendarmes. There were many soldiers, but the gendarmes were well equipped, and after the initial surprise, after the gendarmes fell dozens of people, the machine guns of the gendarmes began to fire, and mechanical bullets swept the lanes near the city gates. Fragments of rubble were knocked out of the arched gates of the rock-brick gates.

Half an hour after the firefight. The chaos came to an end, and according to later statistics, a total of 472 soldiers died in the firefight, and the rest of the arrested soldiers were captured by the gendarmes.

After hearing about this, Zuo Santong sat up in the lounge of his bomb shelter. Received such news at three or four o'clock in the morning. The bloodshot left tee of the eyes, and the green tendons of the forehead mountain are protruding. "The arrested person will be shot on the spot." ”

In the middle of the night, the gunshots rang out until the sky turned white in the east. The city of Xi'an is like the end is coming, and it is overwhelming fear with terror. Corpses hung upside down in the street, as if telling the story of what had happened last night. The ancient city seems to be like a ghost.

What happened in the city of Xi'an was only known to Ren Di hours later. After getting up, Ren Di heard the excited voice of the young man in the staff department: "Chief Ren, it seems right that you waited for three days now, last night, a fierce fight broke out in Xi'an City." At least 3,000 Imperial soldiers escaped from the northern city, and the defenders of Zuo Santong in the city were only 12,000 according to intelligence. Ren Di flipped through the information and showed a hint of surprise in his eyes. The young man next to him said, "Sir, you have calculated this situation. Ren Di nodded lightly, then shook his head and said, "I estimated that the soldier's mind would fluctuate a little when the leaflet went down, but I really didn't expect it to explode with such a violent scene." They really can't help but get excited. ”

A chief of staff, Zhang Jili said: "Mr. Ren, you seem to be able to see the general thoughts of the soldiers in the city. ”

Ren Di said: "The composition of these soldiers is that they are strong men who are captured and brought in, and they have no reason to convince themselves to stand on the battlefield and fight. The soldiers who were supported by the glory of the empire were all wiped out in North China, and the rest of those who fled had become frightened birds, and the glory or something had long been trampled on, and as for money and women, the things that the officers of the old army stimulated the army's will to fight were all consumed under the psychological oppression of our time. If we don't have the ideals to hold onto, and if we don't have the answer to what we're fighting for, we won't be much better off in this desperate situation than our opponents. ”

Ren Di's words made the young people in the staff start to think. War is not about killing people with advanced weapons, but also about the fear of being killed. Combat belief seems to be an ethereal thing, but it is really a very intuitive problem on the battlefield, and that army will collapse under great psychological pressure without this.

At this time, another voice from the staff asked: "Then will there be a new situation tonight, do we have to prepare?" Ren Di shook his head and said, "Zuo Santong just used killing methods to deter the troops. This reign of fear is impossible to break for the time being. The situation in the city may stabilize for a while. ”

The excitement in the eyes of the young man in the staff subsided, and at this time, Ren Di's tone changed and said, "But we can continue to tease the emotions of the army opposite." ”

For 10 minutes, the fighters of the Republican Army continued to drop new leaflets, which read: "At 12 o'clock at noon, representatives of the Republican Army will enter the city of Xi'an to make a final effort for the peaceful liberation of the city." "The name of Zuo Zitang, the former lieutenant general of the Ninth Army, is prominently on the list negotiated above.

The inheritance of the Zuo family is Zuo Liangyu sixty years ago, and I have to say that Zuo Liangyu had a very high level of rudder at that time. Only then did it mix up a feudal town in the northwest. As for the relationship between Zuo Zitang and Zuo Santong of the Ninth Group Army that was destroyed in East China, the relationship between uncle and nephew is the relationship between uncle and nephew in blood, and nominally Zuo Zitang is Zuo Santong, who has no son and has passed on. It is precisely because Zuo Zitang has such a little ability, in the entire Shaanxi army system, Zuo Zitang let his son control the army to East China to see the opportunity to act.

So after the leaflets came down, the hope of not fighting was once again filled with the army of Xi'an City, which had just been washed in blood. Your son has come to persuade you to surrender, and you should have surrendered. The hearts of the army floated again.

Ren Di looked at Zuo Zitang, who had lost a lot of weight, and said, "You are familiar with our conditions." Zuo Zitang raised his head and looked at Ren Di with wolf-like eyes and said, "You don't have any promise to protect the property status of the Zuo family, aren't you worried about me?" ”

Ren Di smiled and said, "Our attitude is not for your father, but for the soldiers in the city. They didn't want to fight for a long time. It's a big deal to let your father down the soldiers again. ”

Zuo Zitang suddenly smiled nervously and said, "Since this is the case, then why should I cooperate with you?" Ren Di said: "Fame, the Great Wall is still there today, and I don't see Qin Shi Huang back then." Your father and I will eventually disappear from this world in a hundred years, but the city of Xi'an will continue to exist. Peaceful liberation to avoid the fire of this famous city, future generations will naturally comment fairly. ”

Zuo Zitang's smile faded, and his eyes revealed lament. "Where are you from?" Atmospheric tolerance, you can't be cultivated in a civilian family. Ren Di said: "I am indeed from a civilian family, but I am standing on the cusp of the times and have the need to look farther away." ”

At twelve o'clock in the afternoon, the city gate opened on time, and Zuo Zitang's emaciated face was raised, aiming at the large number of imperial soldiers on the city who wanted to see him clearly. Back then, I set off from here with the Ninth Group of the Empire. But now a lone man entered the gates.

A captain of the Imperial Army saw Zuo Zitang and said, "Young Master is really you." Zuo Zitang nodded. The captain opened his mouth, but finally mustered up the courage to ask, "Young Master, are we still going to fight?" ”

When you see your former subordinates, ask yourself this. A sense of time flies in my heart. It seems that the subordinates used to say excitedly: "We promise to destroy the opponent." Zuo Zitang muttered the words from the red political books he had seen for so many days: "The army must have thoughts, but the army's ideas must be purely their own." "When the former pride and glory of this army I saw faded, it turned out to be so fragile.

Glory can be consumed by failure, but the spark of hope will not be extinguished as long as a person lives. Suddenly, Zuo Zitang understood the root of the failure.

In a trance, Zuo Zitang walked to the room where Zuo Santong was and saw his father's indifferent face, and looked at each other for a while, and the corners of their eyes unconsciously left tears. There is always hope in life. Without waiting for Zuo Zitang to speak, Zuo Santong opened his mouth first and asked, "Can we still fight this battle?" ”

After five o'clock in the afternoon, under the reflection of the red sun in the west, the sun and moon flag of the empire was lowered. Then a white flag was hung on the head of the city, which represented the undefended. Xi'an was peacefully liberated.