Chapter 77: The Death of a Nation? The Death of a People!

Hu Hao and his men continued their relentless push. As they neared the city center, the Allied resistance stiffened significantly. The enemy had fortified the core districts heavily. When the infantry assault stalled against a particularly stubborn defensive line, Hu Hao called in the Air Cavalry to escort the armor. The gunships and tanks quickly tore the barricades apart, allowing the infantry to pour through the breaches.

Meanwhile, inside the drone control room back at Zone Command, Liang Wanyu and the other war correspondents were watching the live feeds. The drones had captured high-definition footage of the massacred civilians littered across the city. The reporters couldn’t believe their eyes. They knew that broadcasting this footage would ignite a volcanic, unprecedented fury across the entire Empire.

Desperate to document the full scale of the atrocity, Liang Wanyu directed the drone operators to fly over areas with the highest concentrations of bodies. Every single correspondent in the room watched the screens through tears. They truly hadn’t realized that the innocent civilians had all become victims of this brutal war.

“Hao-ge! We just secured a hospital ahead! It used to be a school. It’s packed with thousands of Allied wounded, along with their medical staff!” a soldier sprinted over and reported to Hu Hao.

“Kill them,” Hu Hao ordered flatly, sitting against a crumbling wall.

He had led the initial, furious push into the city and was currently taking a brief rest while the armored units and adjacent regiments spearheaded the current sector advance.

“Hao-ge… there are over ten thousand of them,” the soldier hesitated, staring at Hu Hao in shock.

“I said kill them. Every single one of those bastards has the blood of our civilians on their hands. Do not leave a single one alive,” Hu Hao repeated, looking up at the soldier with dead, cold eyes.

“Hao-ge… maybe you should come take a look. The Division Commander and the other Regimental commanders are over there right now,” the soldier suggested, unwilling to relay the execution order himself.

Hu Hao grabbed his rifle and stood up. The soldier quickly led the way to the school, which was located just a block over.

Imperial soldiers had completely surrounded the compound. The Allied medical staff had been herded into the center of the school’s athletic field, where they were currently kneeling on the ground with their hands raised in surrender.

“Hao-ge is here!”

“Make way for Hao-ge!”

The soldiers parted seamlessly as Hu Hao approached the perimeter.

“Hao-ge, you’re here,” Li Jingsong and the other Colonels walked over to meet him.

“Our men have secured the perimeter. There are likely over ten thousand Allied wounded inside the buildings. What do we do?” Li Jingsong asked, handing Hu Hao a lit cigarette.

“What do you think we should do?” Hu Hao asked, taking the cigarette and staring at the Division Commander.

“Kill them. Leave no survivors,” Li Jingsong gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with hatred.

“Then what are you all standing around for? Are you planning to treat their wounds?!” Hu Hao asked coldly.

“KILL THEM ALL!” Li Jingsong roared, spinning around and waving his hand at the surrounding Imperial soldiers.

Rat-tat-tat! Bang! Bang! Bang! Rat-tat-tat!

Instantly, heavy machine gun and assault rifle fire erupted from every corner of the school compound. The Imperial soldiers unleashed an absolute slaughter upon the surrendered medical staff and the wounded Allied troops inside the buildings.

The Imperial soldiers were boiling with an uncontrollable rage. Up and down the streets, their comrades were actively hauling the mutilated bodies of Imperial civilians out of the houses to be collected for cremation. The Empire was located in a tropical zone; if the bodies weren’t processed immediately, the resulting plague would be devastating.

“Hao-ge! Hao-ge, you need to see this! In the southwest sector… there are massive piles of bodies! The Allied forces dug massive mass graves! They’re filled with corpses!” a Battalion Commander sprinted over, sobbing uncontrollably.

“What did you say?!” Hu Hao and the Colonels froze, turning to stare at him.

“It’s just bodies! Mountains of bodies! The men of the 31st Corps are losing their minds over there! They’re launching a suicidal assault on the city center right now; that’s where the Allied forces are holding their primary triage center with their remaining wounded!” the Major sobbed, the horror of what he had seen breaking him completely.

“Motherfucker!” Hu Hao cursed, ripping his gaze away and staring toward the city center.

“Let’s go! We push the center! We slaughter every last one of them!” Several Colonels roared, instantly rallying their troops to join the 31st Corps in the absolute extermination of the Allied forces.

“Finish executing the wounded here, then we all push the center!” Hu Hao ordered, looking at the Colonels.

“Understood!” the Colonels yelled back, ordering their men to accelerate the slaughter inside the school.

Back at the command bunker, Jiang Kai and Liang Wanyu watched the drone feeds displaying the mass graves in the southwest sector.

Jiang Kai had collapsed into his chair, completely catatonic. The entire command staff, along with Liang Wanyu and her team in the separate room, were paralyzed by absolute horror. No one could believe their eyes.

The drones showed literal mountains constructed entirely of human corpses. Next to the horrific piles were fleets of dump trucks, their beds overflowing with more bodies. Excavators sat idle next to massive, half-dug trenches. The Imperial soldiers who had discovered the site had dropped to their knees in the dirt, weeping in agony.

“Commander… our frontline troops are currently massacring the Allied wounded. Should we order them to stop? If we hold them as prisoners of war, we might be able to exchange them for any Imperial soldiers the coalition captured,” Chief of Staff Sun Qinxue suggested, fighting back his own overwhelming grief.

“Do you honestly believe any Imperial prisoners are still alive?” Jiang Kai asked softly, turning his head to look at Sun Qinxue.

Sun Qinxue turned away, squeezing his eyes shut as a shudder wracked his body. He was trying desperately to maintain his composure, but the pain was agonizing.

“Send this footage to the Grand Marshal. Send it to him immediately,” Jiang Kai ordered, his voice trembling before breaking into a gut-wrenching sob. “If we do not counter-attack… if we retreat again… this isn’t just the death of a nation! It is the death of our people! They are exterminating us!”

“Issue a general order to all frontline commanders,” Sun Qinxue commanded the staff officers, his voice hardening into steel. “Regarding the Allied forces in Nanlin City… I do not care what their rank is. I do not care if they are wounded. I do not care if they surrender. We do not want to see a single prisoner!”

“YES, SIR!” the staff officers roared in unison.

Meanwhile, at the captured airport over fifty kilometers away, the armored vanguard of the Imperial Army had just broken through the perimeter.

General Mushaqi had barely arrived in time. With no other options, he sprinted onto the tarmac and boarded a waiting transport plane. Escorted by a desperate scramble of Allied fighters, he fled the province.

Because the majority of the Allied aircraft stationed at the airport had already been deployed to contest the airspace earlier in the day, only a handful of planes remained on the tarmac. These were quickly obliterated by the advancing Imperial tanks. The Allied ground crews and logistical personnel who hadn’t managed to board the fleeing transports were quickly rounded up by the Imperial infantry and herded into an open clearing on the tarmac.

“Orders just came down from High Command. We take no prisoners,” a staff officer reported to his Regimental Colonel.

“What? Execute prisoners of war?” the Colonel asked, deeply shocked by the blatant violation of military law.

“Yes, sir. Execute them all. I heard… I heard that the civilian population of Nanlin City—all one million of them—were massacred by the Allied forces,” the staff officer nodded, lowering his head.

“What did you say?! Say that again!” the Colonel demanded fiercely, grabbing the officer by the collar.

“The civilians in Nanlin City were slaughtered! The Allied forces piled their bodies into mountains!” the staff officer repeated, looking up at his commander with tear-filled eyes.

“Are you… are you telling the truth?! Is this a lie?! How could an army slaughter unarmed civilians?!” the Colonel stammered, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Zone Command issued the order directly. They said we take absolutely zero prisoners. No matter their rank, no matter if they are wounded. Right now, our infantry inside Nanlin City are actively executing the Allied triage centers! Furthermore, our units attacking the outer perimeter have also been ordered to slaughter any wounded Allied soldiers they find!” the staff officer confirmed.

“It can’t be true… how is that possible? How could they slaughter innocent people?! They were completely unarmed!” the Colonel gasped, still struggling to comprehend the sheer evil of the act.

“It’s true! I just got off the radio with a Regimental Commander inside the city! It’s absolutely true! The brothers fighting inside Nanlin City have gone completely insane! They are launching suicidal, fanatical assaults on the remaining Allied positions!” another Colonel sprinted over, his voice cracking with tears.

“MOTHERFUCKERS! KILL THEM! KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!” the Colonel roared, his shock instantly violently transmuting into rage. No human being could stomach such an atrocity.

The Imperial units attacking the outer perimeter and the airport had it relatively “easy” compared to the troops inside the city; they hadn’t been forced to witness the mountains of corpses firsthand. But for the soldiers fighting block-by-block, and the units marching through the surrounding captured towns, witnessing the genocide had driven them completely mad.

Even the most cowardly, pampered aristocratic Generals, who had previously been too terrified to even look at the frontline, were now screaming with rage, firing their sidearms wildly at the Allied positions alongside the infantry.

The battle concluded rapidly. The offensive began shortly after 11:00 AM, and by 7:00 PM, the fighting had completely ceased. The Imperial Army had secured a massive, overwhelming victory.

But not a single soldier cheered. No one celebrated. The men simply worked in grim, agonizing silence, hauling the bodies of the massacred civilians out of the ruined homes.

As night fell, Zone Commander Jiang Kai, accompanied by Liang Wanyu and her team, arrived in Nanlin City to inspect the aftermath.

Illuminated by the harsh headlights of the military convoys, Jiang Kai and his retinue of Generals finally saw the mountains of corpses with their own eyes. The moment they saw the mass graves, Jiang Kai and every single General present collapsed to their knees in the dirt. No one had the strength to remain standing.

They were soldiers. Their sacred, absolute duty was to protect the people of the Empire. Yet here they were, kneeling before the slaughtered remains of an entire city. The Allied forces hadn’t spared anyone; even newborn infants had been butchered.

Liang Wanyu and her team filmed the horrific scene through blinding tears. These images absolutely had to be broadcasted. The entire Empire needed to know. The entire world needed to know what the Allied coalition had done.

Having returned from inspecting the mass graves, Hu Hao and his veterans sat silently in an empty clearing. The soldiers refused to rest inside the intact houses; they felt they had failed the civilians who had been murdered inside them, and sleeping in their homes felt like a profound disrespect.

Hu Hao sat paralyzed by shock.

Up until this very day, he had never truly considered himself a citizen of the Eastern Spirit Empire. In his mind, he was just a tourist—a soul transmigrated from Earth, trapped in a foreign world. He had helped Jiang Kai and commanded the troops simply because he couldn’t stand watching so many young men die meaningless deaths.

But today… witnessing this apocalyptic slaughter… he finally understood. He couldn’t detach himself anymore. He couldn’t remain a tourist. His conscience, his very humanity, absolutely refused to let him remain a bystander in this war of extermination.