Northern Guangdong, 1938

“Fire!”

Chen Xingmin sprang to his feet and turned, squeezing off shot after shot from his Mauser pistol at the Japanese infantry behind him.

The Czech ZB light machine gun behind the broken wall on his right roared to life as well.

Bullets scythed through the Japanese soldiers exposed in the open.

The Japanese clearly hadn’t expected such fierce firepower from a position they had already crippled.

“A Zhong, the Bangalore torpedo!”

Chen Xingmin shouted, snatched up a torpedo, and charged out under cover of the smoke.

He moved with astonishing speed, like a nimble leopard.

He had honed those skills as a young man at a martial arts school in Xiguan.

Avoiding the tank’s machine-gun blind spot, he pressed himself to the ground and slid through a shell crater.

The tank, its track broken, was still swinging its turret wildly.

Chen Xingmin rushed behind it and jammed the torpedo hard into the gap between the track and the drive wheel.

He pulled the igniter, rolled away, and leaped into a ditch.

“Boom!”

Flames shot into the sky.

The first tank was disabled too.

The remaining Japanese infantry had lost their cover and fell one after another under the concentrated machine-gun fire.

“Charge!”

Blood covering his face, Chen Xingmin rose from the ditch and raised his Mauser pistol.

Seeing their company commander fight so bravely, the Guangdong Army soldiers in the trench surged with courage.

“Hold the line! Charge!”

A group of men charged out with bayonets fixed.

They clashed at close quarters, blood spraying everywhere.

Chen Xingmin shot dead a Japanese second lieutenant brandishing a saber.

He felt adrenaline flooding his system.

This was their first victory.

But he knew it was only the beginning.