Bright Sword: Construction starts from southeastern Shanxi

It turned out that after Okabe Naozaburo succeeded Umezu Yoshijiro, he was eager to make achievements to consolidate his position as the commander of the First Army. However, he did not have enough troops to cause trouble for the 389th Brigade. The main force of the Japanese army was assembled in the Xuzhou battlefield, and the vast occupied areas in the North China Plain urgently needed to maintain public order. The war in southern Shanxi was also underway.

Considering that the 389th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army now had the ability to encircle and annihilate an entire division, and the Japanese troops in Shanxi needed to maintain their occupied territory in the north, they urgently needed to wait for the fighting to end before freeing up their forces. Then, in the blink of an eye, they saw southern Shanxi. Since crossing the 389th Brigade's defense zone would easily lead to encirclement and suppression, why not just not cross it?

The 389th Brigade is not easy to deal with, but what about the Jinsui Army and the National Army in southern Shanxi? Is there anything difficult about it?

So Okabe Naozaburo decided to go around western Shandong to confuse the 389th Brigade, and then directly enter northern Henan from western Shandong. At the same time, Okabe Naozaburo studied the actions of the 389th Brigade in the past and this time, and found that they always liked to surround and attack the reinforcements. The previous 79th Regiment and the current 108th Division were all destroyed in this way.

Therefore, the 14th Division was ordered to advance in a group and not to split up. At the same time, in order to prevent being ambushed by the Eighth Route Army, it was escorted by aircraft after entering Shanxi throughout the day, and patrolled continuously for more than ten kilometers around the periphery at night to see how the Eighth Route Army could ambush it.

So under the operation of Naosaburo Okabe, the effect was really achieved. The army marched safely all the way, and finally successfully captured Changzhi, then turned its guns and besieged Yuncheng.

Zeng Jiwen couldn't think of any other solution for a moment after learning about this situation. During the day, there were planes escorting the ship in the sky, and at night, there were scouts constantly patrolling the surrounding area. Zeng Jiwen was so angry that he cursed.

Finally, seeing that he could not think of a solution, he simply sent the 83rd and 88th Regiments to attack Wuan. Unexpectedly, they took it down smoothly. Handan did not send any troops to support it, which made Zeng Jiwen dumbfounded. Then he simply occupied Wuan and refused to withdraw.

It turned out that all of this was predicted by Okabe Naosaburo, and Zeng Jiwen also helped a lot. Okabe Naosaburo found a sense of familiarity in Zeng Jiwen's methods of ambushing the Japanese army every time, so he asked the people around him, and the people around him told him that this was a classic tactic of besieging a point and attacking the reinforcements in Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Okabe Naosaburo suddenly realized and immediately asked someone to translate Sun Tzu's Art of War. After reading it, he felt that he had benefited a lot. When formulating the plan to raid Changzhi, he even thought that he should deceive Zeng Jiwen and secretly attack Chencang, and finally go straight to Jincheng, and then cut off the source of the trouble. At the same time, he took into account that if Zeng Jiwen did not ambush the 14th Division, he would definitely attack Wu'an by besieging Wei to save Zhao.

So when Zeng Jiwen sent troops to attack Wu'an, Okabe Naosaburo had an expression that showed he saw through Zeng Jiwen, and said to the people around him nonchalantly that Zeng Jiwen had no other tricks, so let him do whatever he wanted, and when the locust army's battle in Yuncheng was over, he would launch a nine-way siege on him.

His words were even published in newspapers by the North China Front Army, mocking Zeng Jiwen to the extreme. After Zeng Jiwen learned the news, he was immediately amused. The Japanese devils were quite cunning and even played military tricks on him.

Zeng Jiwen then joked to Zhou Xi, "When it comes to military strategy, we are his ancestors. It seems we must teach Okabe Naosaburo a lesson this time and teach him what Sun Tzu's Art of War is."

"Sure, Brigade Commander. Look, the commander of the Japanese First Army has already challenged you. Let's teach them a lesson and let them know what Sun Tzu's Art of War is."

There is another thing that is a big deal for Zeng Jiwen. After Zeng Jiwen annihilated the 108th Division, commendation telegrams from various war zones floated like snowflakes to Zeng Jiwen's 389th Brigade. Commander Li of the Fifth War Zone even praised it for boosting the morale of all the soldiers participating in the Battle of Xuzhou at a time when the situation was low.