Chapter 63: Successful Airstrike

Hu Hao and his men spent the evening organizing their newly assigned troops and frantically digging trenches. Around 10:00 PM, more reinforcements finally arrived from the rear and were immediately distributed along the line.

A battalion-sized element of these fresh troops was assigned to Hu Hao’s sector. Upon arrival, they quickly grabbed entrenching tools and joined the massive digging effort. Hu Hao walked the line, correcting the recruits on how to dig proper fighting positions, occasionally barking at them to hit the dirt whenever the enemy artillery fired a sporadic harassing volley.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Suddenly, massive explosions erupted far in the distance on the opposite side of the river. The concussions were followed by towering pillars of fire that illuminated the night sky.

Hu Hao looked across the river and instantly knew what it was. The Allied forward ammunition depots had gone up. The Imperial Air Force had successfully executed the strike.

“YES!” Hu Hao cheered, clenching his fist in satisfaction.

“Hao-ge, what’s happening over there?” Huan Xingtao and several others jogged over, looking at the distant inferno.

“Our forces hit the enemy’s ammo dumps! The Air Force pulled it off! I’ll give them credit—throughout this entire disaster of a campaign, the Air Force is the only branch actually performing their duties competently. The rest of the military is a mess,” Hu Hao said, staring at the burning horizon.

“How do you know it was our Air Force?” He Jizhong asked, confused.

“Because it was my idea! Why wouldn’t I know?” Hu Hao grinned at them.

“Ah! Hao-ge, you came up with that? Well, then of course it worked!” The veterans from his old squad laughed proudly.

“Excuse me, Battalion Commander,” the commander of the newly arrived reinforcements jogged over to Hu Hao. “I wanted to ask… are my men going to rotate to the rear to rest tonight? They can’t just keep digging trenches all night, right?”

“What Battalion Commander? He’s a Regimental Commander! Hao-ge is a Lieutenant Colonel now; he just hasn’t received his new insignia yet!” He Jizhong corrected the officer sharply.

“Oh! Apologies, Colonel! Er… when do our troops rotate out? It’s almost midnight, and the men are exhausted!” the Battalion Commander asked nervously.

“Rotate out? Rotate out to where? This is a fight to the death! We sleep right here in the trenches! Are the foxholes finished? If they’re finished, tell them to get some sleep!” Hu Hao replied bluntly.

“What?! Sleep here?! The entire place reeks of blood and rotting flesh! How is anyone supposed to sleep in this?!” the Battalion Commander gasped in shock.

“Are you on vacation, or are you fighting a war? Why the hell can’t you sleep here? Unbelievable,” Huan Xingtao scoffed, glaring at the officer.

“You sleep in the trenches. Look around. Do you see a single unit pulling off the line to rest? Everyone sleeps in the dirt. Alright, brothers, let’s catch some shut-eye. God only knows when the enemy is going to push again,” Hu Hao said, turning back to his squad.

“Got it. We’re almost done digging. Once we’re done, we’ll sleep,” Huan Xingtao nodded.

…

Meanwhile, far away in Hu Hao’s family home, Hu Xingjun walked through the front door, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Well? Did you find anything out?” Wang Xueying stood up anxiously.

“Nothing. I tried to take the recruitment officers out to dinner, but they’re completely swamped; they couldn’t leave the depot. I asked if they could check the system for me, but they said they don’t have the authorization to access the active-duty personnel database. They said I’d have to go directly to a regional command office to find that out. Sigh,” Hu Xingjun explained, collapsing onto the sofa.

“Just a little while ago, the Xiao family down the street received a KIA notification. Their son was stationed in the Southern Combat Zone! Is there fighting over there too?” Wang Xueying asked, her voice trembling.

“Enough! Stop talking about it. Right now, no news is good news! Also… what about Xiao Hui? Pack his bags. Send him back to the countryside tomorrow to stay with his grandfather. I bet Haozi listed his home address as our old house in the village. He hasn’t been back since we moved here; he doesn’t even know this address!” Hu Xingjun ordered.

“Right. I’ll send him back tomorrow,” Wang Xueying agreed quickly.

“Sigh. Everything was fine… how did a war start so suddenly? Several of my friends had their sons conscripted today. The boys had never even held a gun, and they were just hauled off to training camps. Dammit, this is a nightmare.

We’ll wait a few days. If the business here completely tanks because of the war, we’ll pack up and move back to the countryside too. We can’t stay here,” Hu Xingjun sighed heavily.

“Okay! Sigh… it’s all because of our eldest. Why did he insist on going to a military academy? He acted like we didn’t have any money! He just didn’t want to ask us for tuition, so he joined the military instead!…” Wang Xueying broke down crying. She had always carried a deep guilt regarding her eldest son.

They had practically abandoned him as a child, leaving him to be raised by his grandparents while they built their wealth. And now, that neglect had led him straight into a war zone.

“Forget it. What’s the point of crying about it now?” Hu Xingjun sighed.

Upstairs, Hu Jing and Hu Hui were silently listening from the landing, having sneaked out of their rooms when they heard their father’s car pull up.

…

The night passed quickly. Early the next morning, Hu Hao woke up and cautiously poked his head over the edge of the trench to observe the opposite bank. Everything was quiet.

Seeing no immediate threat, Hu Hao stood up and began inspecting their defensive line. After the Air Force bombed the Allied ammo dumps last night, the enemy artillery had completely stopped firing; they were clearly conserving their remaining shells.

Slowly, the other soldiers began to wake up. When the newly arrived reservists finally saw the battlefield in the harsh light of day, many of them screamed in terror. The ground was littered with severed limbs and chunks of flesh. Several men immediately began vomiting uncontrollably.

“Gather the body parts and bury them!” Hu Hao ordered his veterans calmly.

The veterans wordlessly stood up and began the grim task. The bodies of the fallen Imperial soldiers had largely been evacuated during the night, but the scattered, unidentifiable remains had been left behind in the mud.

It was the height of summer. If they didn’t bury the flesh now, the trench would smell so horrific by noon that no one would be able to breathe. The Allied forces had done the same; after the fighting ceased yesterday afternoon, they had sent out small boats with white flags to dredge the corpses of their men from the river.

Watching the veterans casually picking up severed limbs and tossing them into shallow pits, the raw recruits vomited even harder. The veterans didn’t mock them. They had all reacted the exact same way during their first battle. They were just used to it now.

When breakfast rations were distributed, many of the reinforcements couldn’t bring themselves to eat. Even the Battalion Commander from the night before was pale and nauseous. When the steaming pots of meat stew were brought down the line, the smell alone caused another wave of violent retching among the recruits. Some even tried to dump their bowls of stew into the dirt.

“If you’re not going to eat it, don’t you dare waste it!” Hu Hao roared, glaring at the recruits. The men froze, their bowls hovering over the mud.

“Give it to us!” the veterans immediately demanded, snatching the bowls away. They knew the brutal reality of the front line: once the shooting started, you never knew if you would live to see your next meal. Wasting food was a sin.

“If you can’t stomach the steamed buns right now, wrap them up and put them in your packs! When the fighting starts, you’re going to be starving! I forbid anyone from throwing away rations, and I forbid anyone from refusing their share!” Hu Hao yelled, his face dark with anger.

Intimidated by Hu Hao’s fury, the recruits meekly wrapped their steamed buns and shoved them into their rucksacks.

“Hao-ge, when do you think they’ll attack?” Zhao Haibin asked, walking over. Thanks to the overnight reorganization, Zhao Haibin had officially been appointed as a Battalion Commander. Even though his official rank was still Captain, Hu Hao had given him the operational command.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. Either they don’t attack at all today, or this morning is going to be an absolute bloodbath. They are going to fight like rabid dogs,” Hu Hao said, staring across the river.

“We’ll be fine, right? We got a massive influx of reinforcements last night!” Zhao Haibin asked hopefully.

“Don’t be naive. Having more men sitting in these trenches doesn’t mean a damn thing if we don’t have the courage to launch a counter-offensive across the river. Until we can push them back, we’re just sitting ducks waiting to be slaughtered,” Hu Hao replied grimly.

Meanwhile, inside the Allied command headquarters established in a nearby captured city, a full General of the Mara Empire stood before a dozen Lieutenant Generals, listening to their reports.

This was General Mushaqi, a highly decorated veteran commander who possessed extensive combat experience from leading numerous counter-insurgency campaigns back in the Mara Empire.

“Commander, last night, the Eastern Spirit Air Force successfully bombed our primary logistical depots and destroyed numerous critical bridges along our supply routes. We are currently operating on critically low ammunition reserves.

Furthermore, the Eastern Spirit forces received massive reinforcements on the opposite bank overnight. If we launch an amphibious assault now, we will inevitably suffer catastrophic casualties. However… it is still a battle worth fighting!” a Lieutenant General reported.

Sitting beside General Mushaqi was another full General: Wenkeduo, the original commander of the Langcheng offensive. He had been temporarily superseded by Mushaqi for this specific phase of the campaign.

“General Wenkeduo, what is your tactical assessment? How should we proceed?” Mushaqi asked with a polite smile, turning to his colleague.

“We attack,” Wenkeduo stated flatly. “Their reinforcements mean nothing. They are entirely comprised of raw, untrained conscripts; they pose absolutely zero offensive threat to us. The only forces capable of genuinely threatening us are the battle-hardened veterans who survived yesterday’s assault.

However, Commander, I must point out that the Eastern Spirit Empire actively targeting our rear logistical lines last night is a very troubling sign. It suggests that their Generals are finally beginning to understand how to actually fight a war. They finally realized they need to blow the bridges!” Wenkeduo warned.

“If that’s the case, why should we attack now? They have a solid core of veterans dug into their trenches, and they maintain a purely defensive posture. If we force a river crossing, our casualties will be astronomical!” another Lieutenant General Corps Commander argued immediately.

“Hmph. Their casualties will be even higher!” Wenkeduo sneered coldly. “You must remember our primary strategic objective for this campaign: the rapid and total annihilation of the Eastern Spirit Empire’s main combat forces! We must grind them into dust as quickly as possible! If we allow ourselves to be dragged into a protracted war of attrition, we are the ones who will suffer. Our coalition simply does not have the economic or logistical endurance to outlast the Eastern Spirit Empire!”

“Exactly,” Mushaqi nodded in agreement. “This is not the time to sit back and trade potshots. We must crush them quickly!”

“But Commander, if we attack, our current ammunition reserves will only last until noon! If we fail to completely shatter their defensive line before midday, we will be left stranded on the beaches with empty rifles! It’s too dangerous!” another Corps Commander protested vehemently.