Hu Hao stood in the command center, his eyes fixed on the live feeds from Jinhe City. He watched as desperate Allied soldiers poured out of the subterranean bunkers, only to be cut down by stray bullets the moment they stepped into the open, their bodies collapsing into the mud.
The advancing Eastern Spirit troops also saw the mass exodus from the bunkers. Instantly, countless heavy machine guns pivoted and directed their streams of fire toward the exits. The sector initially controlled by the Allied forces had been incredibly small to begin with, and Hu Hao's troops had already pushed roughly 300 meters deep into it.
Therefore, the Eastern Spirit lines were now terrifyingly close to the bunker entrances—barely 200 meters away. Seeing the enemy clustered at the choke points, the frontline soldiers didn't hesitate to pour everything they had into the kill zones.
"Brothers, they don't have many left! That's their final reserve! Annihilate them!" an Eastern Spirit Regimental Commander roared.
The offensive was proceeding flawlessly. The pace wasn't lightning-fast, but it was methodical and relentless. Hu Hao's troops were clearing every corner, every piece of rubble. The moment they spotted an Allied soldier, they opened fire.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
"Damn it! Why are they charging out?!" an Allied Regimental Commander cursed as he saw his men, including junior officers, swarming out of the rear bunkers. He realized with a sinking heart that the entire strategic reserve, including the command staff, was now exposed on the surface.
"Look out!" a guard screamed, spotting an incoming RPG round.
Before the commander could react, a deafening explosion ripped through the air. The commander and his radioman were violently thrown backward by the blast, instantly killed.
"KILL!" The Eastern Spirit soldiers advanced methodically, providing mutual covering fire. They pushed forward meter by bloody meter.
These men fought with a terrifying ferocity. While their tactical movements might have lacked the polished coordination of seasoned veterans, their hearts burned with an unquenchable hatred. Often, they didn't even wait for their officers' commands. They simply gripped their weapons and charged forward into the teeth of the enemy fire. Once they secured a foothold, the rear echelon would move up to consolidate, and the vanguard would push forward again.
"Brothers, steady! Don't rush! We're going to wipe them all out tonight, but don't be reckless!" the Eastern Spirit commanders shouted from the rear, watching their men brave the Allied return fire with utter disregard for their own lives.
Some soldiers, severely wounded, refused to fall back. They crawled through the mud and rubble, dragging themselves forward just to get a clear shot at the enemy. They showed absolutely zero mercy.
The vast majority of these soldiers were refugees. They had lost everything. They had watched their families slaughtered by the Allied forces. Some had even witnessed their loved ones murdered right in front of them.
That profound, visceral hatred drove them forward. It compelled them to seek revenge, to exact a toll in blood from every Allied soldier they encountered. They had once lived peaceful, fulfilling lives. They had loving families and good jobs. But the Allied invasion had burned it all to ash. The only thing they had left was their lives, and they were more than willing to trade them for vengeance.
Countless soldiers had sworn oaths that as long as they drew breath—even if they were maimed—they would return to the battlefield.
In earlier engagements, wounded soldiers had to be physically dragged off the line by their comrades. They had cursed and struggled, screaming that they weren't dead yet, that they could still pull a trigger, that they needed to kill more of the enemy. In the field hospitals, the wounded constantly badgered the doctors, demanding to be discharged so they could return to the meat grinder.
"Hao-ge... our men are fighting brilliantly. Their tactics might be a little rough around the edges, but my god, they are absolutely fearless!" a staff officer remarked, deeply moved by the raw courage displayed on the monitors.
"They are. Sigh... they were driven to this by the Allied forces," Hu Hao nodded, his voice heavy with emotion. He had absolutely no complaints about the performance of his frontline troops. When soldiers were willing to lay down their lives so freely, what more could a commander ask for?
RUMBLE... RUMBLE...
The thunder continued to crack overhead, and the torrential rain showed no signs of stopping. Hu Hao remained rooted to his spot, his eyes locked on the feeds. The soldiers in Jinhe City were fighting in a blinding downpour, completely ignoring the miserable conditions as they poured fire into the Allied lines.
"KILL!" the roars of the Eastern Spirit vanguard echoed faintly even over the distant comms.
Hu Hao turned away from the screens and looked at the officers assembled in the command center. The officers, unsure why Hu Hao was suddenly focusing on them, quickly stood at attention.
"Brothers, do you see the soldiers charging out there?" Hu Hao pointed back at the massive tactical displays. The officers nodded subconsciously.
"I, Hu Hao, am proud and honored to command such men! But brothers... you know why they are fighting so desperately. You know why they throw their lives away without a second thought, don't you?" Hu Hao asked, his gaze sweeping across their faces.
"For revenge," several officers replied through gritted teeth.
Many of them were in the same position; they had lost contact with their own families. They had been regular army officers when the war began, immediately deploying to the front lines and fighting a continuous series of desperate retreats.
They had no idea if their loved ones were alive or dead. Like the refugees, they had plastered their names and unit details on the 'missing persons' walls in every city they passed through, praying their families would eventually see them.
"Exactly. Revenge. Brothers, most of us hail from Tianyu Province. We don't know where our families are. We don't know if they are even alive. But we know one thing for certain: we want revenge! We will make the Allied forces pay in blood!" Hu Hao nodded emphatically, his voice rising in intensity. The officers stared back at him, their expressions equally grim and resolute.
"But brothers! If you do not learn how to command effectively... if you do not master the art of war... tell me, how many Allied soldiers can we actually kill leading these brave men?! The Empire's entire military strength has dwindled to roughly three million men, perhaps even fewer!
"Meanwhile, there are over a billion civilians trapped in the occupied territories! How many of them have already been massacred? We don't know! Even if every single one of us manages to kill ten or twenty Allied soldiers before we die, it won't be enough to tip the scales!
"Brothers, I implore you: study the art of war! Learn it in the crucible of this conflict! You must become brilliant commanders! You must lead these fearless, desperate soldiers effectively so they can kill the enemy by the thousands! You must lead them to avenge the countless innocent civilians butchered by Allied bayonets!" Hu Hao's voice echoed with raw, impassioned urgency.
"YES, COMMANDER! FOR REVENGE!" the officers roared, their voices shaking the concrete bunker.
"Remember them! Burn the image of those charging soldiers into your minds! They are not afraid to die! Their only fear is that you will fail them—that your incompetence will render their sacrifice meaningless! Do not let them die in vain! Remember them!" Hu Hao pointed forcefully at the screens.
"YES, COMMANDER!" the officers shouted again.
Satisfied, Hu Hao nodded and turned back to monitor the battle in Jinhe City. The offensive was still grinding forward, slowly but surely compressing the Holy Ancient 7th Corps into an ever-shrinking pocket.
As their perimeter collapsed, the Allied casualties skyrocketed. Many soldiers found themselves trapped with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Some had completely exhausted their ammunition and could only cower in the mud until they were shredded by heavy machine-gun fire or obliterated by stray explosives.
Meanwhile, in Yonghe City, the Mara Empire's forces were still launching desperate, relentless assaults against the Eastern Spirit defensive lines. They were determined to expand their foothold. Kelly had issued a 'fight or die' order: they must breach the Eastern Spirit lines tonight.
The torrential downpour had just hit Yonghe City as well, but it did nothing to blunt the sheer desperation of the Allied offensive.
"Damn it! The Allied bastards are fighting like cornered rats! Suppress them! We are not afraid to bleed!" an Eastern Spirit Regimental Commander roared, seeing the Allied infantry surging toward his lines.
The fighting here was incredibly grueling, but the Eastern Spirit soldiers refused to yield an inch of ground. They held the line with fanatical stubbornness. When a heavy machine-gunner was killed, another soldier would instantly scramble over the corpse to take his place and resume firing.
Even if the replacement had no specialized training on the weapon, he would simply grip the triggers and pour lead into the advancing enemy. Many replacements managed to fire only a few bursts before they too were killed, but there was always another soldier ready to step up. The guns never fell silent for long.
"Medic! We have a wounded man here! Drag him to the rear before the rain gets into the wound!" a soldier shouted between bursts of rifle fire.
He glanced over and saw the wounded man he had just called for desperately trying to drag himself back to the firing line, his rifle clutched tightly in his hands.
"Get back down! Are you trying to die?!" The soldier abandoned his position for a moment, ducking low to grab the wounded man by his webbing and hauling him forcefully toward a ruined storefront serving as a temporary casualty collection point.
"Let go of me! I don't care if I die! The Allied animals are right there! I need to kill them! I need to avenge my son! Let me go!" the wounded soldier screamed, struggling wildly. He appeared to be in his early thirties.
"Keep your damn life! You'll have plenty of opportunities to kill them later! Don't throw it away now!" the soldier yelled, dragging him into the dry interior of the ruined building.
He immediately sprinted back out, screaming for a medic and pointing to the building. A medic braved the incoming fire to reach the wounded man and begin triage.
Severe cases were quickly stabilized and loaded onto stretchers to be transported through the secure rear tunnels to the deep subterranean bunkers, where the field surgeons operated under the protection of meters of reinforced concrete.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
In the distance, the Mara tanks continued to bombard the Eastern Spirit lines. They refused to close the distance, firing from at least 500 meters away. Some tanks even hid behind massive piles of rubble, exposing only their turrets to fire before ducking back down, terrified of the Eastern Spirit armor-piercing rounds.
"See that ruined building over there? There's a tank hiding inside it! He's been firing from that position for five minutes! Blow him to hell!" a Company Commander pointed out the target to an infantry gun crew.
"I see him! We're dialing it in now! But we have to blast through the rubble pile blocking our line of sight first! We don't have a clear shot at his hull!" the gunner shouted back.
"Then hurry up and clear the sightline!" the Company Commander roared before continuing his patrol along the trench line.
(End of Chapter)