Chapter 50: The Enemy Is Building Me a Railroad?

"Ah?" When Lieutenant General Antonov heard the translator say that the Yamato forces claimed to have captured Red Tower City, Zhang Shan saw a virtual question mark on the rugged old man's face.

Antonov widened his eyes: Didn't those brats report to me that most of the city is still in our hands?

Zhang Shan sighed: "The Yamato people are fighting a political war. Having failed to capture Red Tower City for so long, the Guandong-North Army will naturally face questioning from other factions back home. They are just trying to fool their superiors."

Antonov's facial expression became quite wonderful. He was not a pure soldier, and once given a hint, he immediately understood such petty tricks.

"Your Highness, should we clarify this as soon as possible?"

"Clarify? Why should we clarify? I'm hoping the Guandong-North Army will keep doubling down. Why do you think I haven't deployed the Grand Duchy's top five divisions yet?"

Zhang Shan was speaking the absolute truth.

Up to this point, apart from reinforcing Red Tower City with the Eighth Division, dispatching the Seventh Division to the northern mountains of the Buryatia Republic to stabilize the front lines and protect the Trans-Siberian Railway, and holding Primorsky Krai with the Sixth Division, the theoretically strongest top five divisions had not moved at all.

Perhaps to others, as long as Prince Andrei could repel the Yamato people's so-called 'border harassment', it would be a great achievement.

Only his cheap father and cheap second brother knew that what he wanted was to swallow the entire Guandong-North Army, and even the entire Yamato Empire.

Nothing could be more amusing than "the enemy stupidly dispatching several elite Class-A divisions, crossing a distance of 200 kilometers, and launching an offensive against his home territory with garbage-tier supply lines."

This grievance was not going unavenged; the time simply had not arrived yet.

After Zhang Shan finished speaking, Antonov looked thoughtful: "Alright, Your Highness, diplomatic matters are of course up to you. I just need to make sure the supply lines are secure."

Second-rate generals focus on tactics, while first-rate generals obsess over supply lines.

As long as the front didn't collapse, the supply lines remained open, and a steady stream of supplies and manpower kept flowing, Antonov dared to fight the enemy until the end of time.

Less than two hours later, Zhang Shan began to put on a show.

[The enemy's declaration regarding the occupation of Red Tower City is an utter lie. Through the heroic counterattacks of the Racia soldiers, we have driven the enemy out of the urban area, and we are currently engaged in fierce combat with the enemy on the outskirts of the city...]

Zhang Shan blabbered on for a long time, but... no pictures, no truth!

When this matter fell into the eyes of ordinary citizens versus the bigwigs, it was entirely two different dimensions.

Civilians were naturally willing to believe Zhang Shan because he had previously provided a large number of pictures in the newspapers, solidifying the proof of their victory.

In the eyes of the bigwigs, this Prince Andrei was typically feeling guilty.

The enemy had already deployed those undefeated Class-A divisions from Cineris to fight urban warfare against you, yet you refused to deploy your own First Division. What on earth were you using to resist the offensive of the Class-A divisions?

Without providing substantial photographic evidence, the louder Andrei shouted, the more outsiders felt that the Principality of Boria must have suffered a minor defeat, allowing the enemy to capture most of the city and indirectly severing the Trans-Siberian Railway.

This did not mean that the Trans-Siberian Railway would be completely ruined if a small section of it was cut off.

In wartime, trains could completely stop before the dangerous zone to unload cargo, transport it by trucks and mules for a stretch, and then reconnect with the railway east of Red Tower City.

Transportation efficiency would certainly drop drastically, but it wouldn't come to a complete halt.

This matter naturally caused a slight ripple in the international situation.

The Asgardians and Britannians had their doubts and sent telegrams to inquire, only to receive the reply: 'Fierce fighting is ongoing, Red Tower City remains in our hands, everything is normal.'

Landing in the ears of the Racia Emperor, it sounded like...

"Hahaha! That kid is cracking under the pressure." Emperor Constantine XVIII drank heartily that night and even took a rare stroll out of the palace to secretly meet his mistress.

This news even made Patriarch Gonif nervously rush over to find Zhang Shan.

"My child, if the battle situation is looking unfavorable, the Ancient Holy Church doesn't mind letting the Church Defense Army join the defense ahead of time!"

Gonif was no outsider. After discovering that even his godfather had been fooled, Zhang Shan smiled, pulled him into a small parlor next to the command center, and explained the reason.

Gonif's face showed a trace of embarrassment: "My child, I have no intention of interfering with your command. These half a million Church Defense Army troops can be sent at any time; I just hope it won't be too late."

Sending troops too early would increase Boria's food supply pressure. Sending them too late, however, risked the main railway being cut.

"Don't worry, we can hold it. By the way, my godfather, let me show you something good."

It was a special city map of Red Tower City, densely covered with drawings of the city's underground pipelines.

"This is..."

"Because of the need to transport ore and the fuel required to refine it, there are countless pipelines beneath this city. Among them, we have mapped out a few abandoned pipes that allow people to pass through..." Zhang Shan said mysteriously.

Old man Gonif's face immediately curled into a smile: "Alright, my child, you shouldn't be telling me these military secrets. I only need to know that you have it under control, and that is enough."

Through Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto, a collaborator within the Guandong-North Army, Zhang Shan had gathered a great deal of intelligence on the Guandong-North Army.

Zhang Shan was thrilled because he had recently acquired a large batch of infantry landmines.

Landmines—let alone in this world at this time period, even back in his pre-transmigration era—were extremely nasty gadgets.

Don't assume landmines in a city are easy to deal with, as if you could just detect them with a metal detector.

This was an urban ruin embroiled in street fighting, littered with broken reinforcing bars and metal fragments all over the ground.

Using that kind of equipment would just make it beep incessantly all day long.

And so, the Yamato people were in for a world of suffering.

There were landmines by the roadside, landmines in fruit baskets seemingly filled with food, and landmines behind doors...

Tripwire-triggered conventional mines, tripwires, chained networks of mines...

Coupled with the TM-38s that Racia combat engineers had modified into all sorts of devilish variants, within just a few days, Red Tower City had become a living encyclopedia of landmines.

The Yamato side was packed with wounded soldiers, all of them howling devils.

The point of landmines wasn't just to kill the enemy, but to incapacitate them.

If a wounded comrade was targeted by an enemy sniper, and his peers chose not to rescue him, that might still be considered somewhat excusable.

However, stepping on a landmine and getting a foot blown off meant that people literally had to carry them or use stretchers to evacuate them to the rear.

At a time when supplies were growing increasingly tight, the wounded Yamato soldiers of the Guandong-North Army could hardly receive effective medical treatment.

Once the wailing cries of those injured soldiers were heard by their peers, it dealt a heavy blow to morale.

Later on, by sheer coincidence, Zhang Shan utilized the system to peer through the reconnaissance plane's perspective and saw the devils' casualty dressing station using filthy, unwashed bandages to wrap wounds. He laughed out loud.

Messing around like that, if even one out of ten wounded soldiers ever made it back to the battlefield, it would only be because they possessed superhuman constitutions.

Combined with Zhang Shan's sustained bombing of the steppe supply lines and continued harassment raids by several divisions of Khanate cavalry, the Guandong-North Army was genuinely having a terrible time.

General Honda was already considering not only fortifying the entire supply line into a chain of fortresses but also laying down railroad tracks all the way along the route.

When this news reached Zhang Shan, he was dumbfounded.

"Wait, Honda, how dare you? You actually want to lay Racia's broad-gauge railway across the steppe?"