Chapter 40: In Human Affairs, Timing Is Everything

Zhang Shan wore a bright smile as he said, "I bet the opposing Yamato division commander is having a very 'happy' time right now."

Having thwarted the Ninth Yamato Division's offensive today, the Yamato forces would have no choice but to launch a desperate frontal assault on the southern sector of Red Tower City.

His guess was spot on. Inside his bunker, the opposing Lieutenant General Yoshikawa lost his composure and let out a howling lament right on the spot.

"Those were the elite of the Imperial Army—aaahhhhh!"

His voice sounded as if he had just lost both his parents.

Actually, it was quite understandable.

In today's battle, out of the four infantry regiments, the one that went in for the charge suffered near-total annihilation, losing over 3,700 men. Coupled with poorly dug trenches, a multitude of their troops were strafed by fighter planes. The infantry alone—the core combat strength—sustained over four thousand dead and more than three thousand wounded.

What broke Yoshikawa's heart the most was the complete obliteration of his artillery regiment.

In this era, artillery could be described without exaggeration as a high-tech branch of service, and training them was exceedingly difficult. Especially since out of the three-thousand-plus men in the artillery regiment, fewer than a hundred survived, every single one of them wounded, with half permanently disabled.

This was definitively a unit wiped out in its entirety.

An army does not fear moderate casualties; as long as a unit can preserve its seeds to educate the next batch of recruits, the so-called tradition and martial spirit remain intact.

What they feared most was this kind of near-total extermination.

This meant that if Lieutenant General Yoshikawa wanted to rebuild his artillery regiment, he would have to pull strings and pay a heavy price to beg for men from friendly units.

Counting the logistics troops, this battle resulted in over 8,000 dead and more than 5,000 wounded.

It was no exaggeration to say that the Ninth Division had been crippled in a single engagement.

If this couldn't be called amputation below the eyebrows, it was practically equivalent to being paralyzed from the waist down.

General Honda, Commander-in-Chief of the Kuanbei Army, cared little for such nuances. Upon receiving the battle report, he cursed Yoshikawa mercilessly over the telephone right then and there: "Yoshikawa! Does this performance of yours do justice to His Majesty? Not ordering you to commit hara-kiri on the spot is my utmost benevolence. Until the new commander arrives, you will answer to Yasui-kun."

Lieutenant General Yoshikawa's face instantly turned the color of cooked liver.

Divisions originating from different recruitment regions had their own factions. The soldiers of the Ninth Division (Zekin) hailed from the Hokuriku region of Yamato, and ordering them to take commands from the central region's (Moss) division was undoubtedly a supreme humiliation.

The wretched Yoshikawa had no room for choice and said in a deep voice, "Hai!"

What Yoshikawa found most unacceptable was that those scoundrels of Rossiya had actually refused to let the Yamato burial teams go out and collect the corpses.

Anyone who dared approach was greeted directly by machine guns. Waving white flags or wearing Red Cross armbands made no difference for the lowly grunts.

Even when the Yamato forces found someone who spoke the Rossiya language to shout across the lines, saying, "Are you not afraid of a plague?"

The Rossiya response was—incendiary bombs!

Anyway, this entire area was already scorched earth, so naturally, they had no fear of any prairie fires.

Besides, after getting to know each other this well, there certainly wouldn't be any plague... right?

Having no other recourse, the moment Lieutenant General Yoshikawa led his troops in a retreat from the northeastern corner of Red Tower City, a scene that made their eyes split with rage immediately unfolded before them!

"Your Excellency! Those damned Rossiyans actually cut off the heads of our fallen comrades and piled them into a sharp tower!"

Hearing the messenger's report, Yoshikawa practically leaped out of his chair. "Those beasts! How dare they do such a thing?!"

When he spent half an hour stealthily making his way back to his former command post through the previously dug communication trenches, he looked through his binoculars to witness a group of stocky Rossiyan middle-aged women cursing loudly as they hacked off heads with demon-like horns, stacking them into the shape of a pyramid.

"Open fire! Open fire! Open fire immediately and blow those witches to pieces—" Yoshikawa flew into a rage.

"Your Excellency! Get a hold of yourself, we don't have any artillery left."

"..."

That very night, an unwilling Yoshikawa launched a night raid.

An infantry battalion crept forward stealthily across the scorched battlefield, attempting to infiltrate enemy lines.

As a result, after a Rossiyan illumination flare soared into the sky, before these infantrymen could even cross the open ground between the two armies, Rossiyan TB-3 bombers flew overhead and greeted these night-prowling demons enthusiastically with incendiary bombs.

Consequently, a bunch of Yamato soldiers achieved a glorious promotion, becoming experts in archaeological roasting and roasted-bird immortals.

Watching the medium-rare Yamato men happily and joyfully dancing in the flames while cooking themselves, the Rossiyans on the opposing side could not have been happier.

"Don't shoot! Let them burn!" The officer's order was strictly executed by the soldiers.

Though there were some superfluous noises.

"Hahahaha!"

Having lost over five hundred men that night, Yoshikawa retreated with tears in his eyes.

He had to retreat.

Had it not been for the assault on the northeastern corner of the city, coming within ten kilometers of the enemy's Height 114 would have invited a greeting from their artillery shells.

Staying in this wretched place for too long meant death could come at any second.

As the Ninth Division withdrew, the chorus of "Urah" echoing across the mountains and plains from the enemy side served as the ultimate mockery.

Meanwhile, a set of "Demon Scenery" photographs was likewise distributed worldwide by Zhang Shan through the media.

Being as clever as he was, Zhang Shan naturally wouldn't only publish photographs of the slaughtered Yamato soldiers.

The front page of the newspaper featured a set of contrasting photographs taken by battlefield photographers:

On the left was an image of civilian casualties in Red Tower City. Facing the threat of death, a Rossiyan mother tried to shield her infant beneath her body in her final moments, only to be impaled right through by a Yamato command saber and nailed to the wall. Evidently, the excessive force used caused the blade to snap, leaving behind undeniable evidence.

On the right was a countless number of Yamato infantry corpses with their heads severed and stacked into a pyramid. As for those skulls, so long as they weren't entirely charred, their faces still froze the terrified and distorted expressions they wore before death.

Above the images was a headline composed of crimson characters: [An Eye for an Eye, Blood for Blood]!

This set of pictures was packed with visual impact.

Every person who witnessed these photographs, provided they possessed any conscience, could feel the supreme fury welling up from the deepest depths of the Rossiyans' souls.

The reprinted newspapers were distributed across the globe, and the Sericans naturally felt a deep sense of shared empathy.

Those standing outside the war reacted differently.

The Britannians said with disdain, "Let those Yamato demons and barbaric Rossiyans perish together."

Asgard's Emperor Odin fell into deep thought before finally sneering, "As expected of orcs."

Though the Great Powers disapproved of Zhang Shan's methods, it did not hinder them from further increasing their investments.

The Britannians and the Gauls dispatched a joint delegation to discuss further loan programs.

The Asgardians quietly fulfilled their promise, shipping the equipment of the third division by sea to Rossiya's St. Petersburg, from where it was transshipped via the great Trans-Beria Railway to the Grand Duchy of Beria.

On the Yamato side, General Honda proved true to form as a gambler whose eyes had turned red from losing, audaciously ordering a frontal assault to break into the city from the southeast of Red Tower City.

Unlike the heavily fortified southwest and northeast corners, the southeast of Red Tower City could be described as wide open.

There was no helping it; as an industrial metropolis with a population of four hundred thousand, the city itself was vast in scale. Aside from densely populated residential areas, the outskirts of the city contained a massive number of ore-dressing plants and steel-smelting mills.

This ensured that the southeast of the city had a safe zone at least ten kilometers wide, guaranteeing immunity from the artillery fire of the "Titan Train Baron."

Yet, not a single building of sufficient size, height, and solidity existed in the southeast to serve as a defensive core.

By now, roughly thirty buildings in the southeastern part of the city had already been occupied by the Yamato forces.

This included several massive concrete-built factory workshops spanning over ten thousand square meters each, as well as a few five- or six-story tubular apartment blocks.

On the second night, just as Zhang Shan had anticipated, the Yamato forces began to go berserk.