Hu Hao and his men were locked in a desperate firefight on the front lines. They had no idea when the promised reinforcements would arrive, so they didn't waste time hoping for salvation from others. They knew they had to plug the breach themselves.
But while Hu Hao's squad was furiously holding their sector, the Allied forces managed to punch through the line at a different location. The Imperial defensive perimeter stretched for over twenty-five kilometers. Faced with the overwhelming ferocity of the Allied assault and lacking any pre-built fortifications, the Imperial soldiers were suffering catastrophic casualties. Breakthroughs were inevitable.
Hu Hao and his veterans pushed forward relentlessly, gunning down any Allied soldiers attempting to widen the gaps in their immediate vicinity.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Hu Hao continuously hurled grenades wherever the enemy clusters were thickest, while the veterans laid down suppressive fire and slowly advanced.
"Hao-ge! More Allied boats on the river!" a soldier roared.
Hearing the warning, Hu Hao grabbed a handful of grenades and tossed them out over the water. He didn't even know how many grenades he had thrown by now; his entire right arm was completely numb from the exertion. But he didn't dare stop. Even if a grenade only killed a single enemy, it relieved a fraction of the crushing pressure on the Imperial defenders.
It took nearly half an hour of brutal combat, but Hu Hao and his men finally managed to plug the breach in their sector.
Shortly after, the promised reinforcements finally arrived. However, they didn't deploy to Hu Hao's sector; they were rushed directly to the other major breach down the line.
When the reinforcements engaged, it took an immense, bloody effort to push the Allied troops back across the river. But as more and more Imperial reserves poured into the trenches, the Allied commanders finally halted their amphibious assault and resumed their heavy artillery bombardment.
Fortunately, the newly arrived Imperial corps had brought their own artillery regiments. The moment the Allied guns opened up, the Imperial artillery immediately launched a counter-barrage, targeting the Allied firing positions and bombarding the staging areas on the far bank.
Under the weight of the counter-battery fire, the Allied forces finally pulled back, giving Hu Hao and his men a brief, desperate moment to catch their breath.
"Hurry! Get on the radio to logistics! Tell them we need entrenching tools right now! We have to dig trenches! Fast!" Hu Hao yelled, collapsing onto the dirt.
"Where the hell are we supposed to get entrenching tools now? The logistics units were thrown into the fighting line too! If you want shovels, you'll have to scavenge them yourself!" a Brigadier General said, walking over to Hu Hao.
Hu Hao didn't recognize him, but judging by the insignia on his shoulder, the General was from the 31st Corps of Dingkang Province.
"Smoke?" the Brigadier General offered. Hu Hao nodded and took the cigarette.
Nearby, the few soldiers who actually had entrenching tools began frantically digging individual foxholes. Because Hu Hao's unit was currently holding the very breach they had just sealed, Huan Xingtao and the squad began digging their scrapes right there.
They hadn't eaten since early morning. They had been fighting a high-intensity battle all morning; during the adrenaline-fueled chaos, they hadn't felt hunger, but now that the shooting had stopped, their stomachs began to gnaw fiercely.
"Hao-ge! Food!" a soldier yelled, having scavenged some rations from one of the parked APCs. He ran over and handed them to Hu Hao.
"Want some?" Hu Hao offered a piece of bread to the Brigadier General.
"Mmh. Starving. We haven't eaten a thing since morning either," the Brigadier General accepted the bread, tore open the wrapper, and began ravenously tearing into it.
"Hu Hao!"
Hu Hao looked up and saw Corps Commander Li Tianyuan approaching. The General was followed by a meager twenty or thirty men. The sight was staggering—Li Tianyuan's personal Guard Battalion usually consisted of a full, over-strength battalion. Now, this was all that remained.
"Here. Catch," Hu Hao tossed a piece of bread to him.
Li Tianyuan caught it, sat heavily on the dirt next to Hu Hao, and began to eat in silence.
"Dad! Dad, are you okay?!" Li Jingsong spotted his father from a distance and sprinted over, his face pale with worry.
"I'm fine," Li Tianyuan mumbled around a mouthful of bread. Li Jingsong slumped down next to him, grabbed a piece of bread from the pile in front of Hu Hao, and started eating.
"Brothers! Unload all the food and water from our vehicles! Distribute everything to the other men!" Hu Hao shouted down the line.
Many of the veterans from Hu Hao's corps immediately ran to the civilian vehicles and began hauling out the food and water they had scavenged back in Langcheng.
"Dammit. We probably have about an hour to rest. The Allied troops need to eat too," Hu Hao said after giving the order.
"Our reinforcements have arrived. Do you think we can hold the line now?" the Brigadier General from the 31st Corps asked.
"Hmph. One corps of reinforcements? Do you realize that this morning alone, we committed over three full corps to this defensive line? Look around you. See how many men are actually left," Li Tianyuan said, his voice dripping with helpless despair.
"Dad, you should fall back. Don't stay on the frontline," Li Jingsong urged his father anxiously.
"Fall back? Fall back to where? High Command ordered a defense to the death. Not a single officer is permitted to leave this line. Unless the Zone Commander issues a formal retreat order, anyone who abandons their post will be executed by firing squad," Li Tianyuan chuckled bitterly.
Li Jingsong lowered his head, unable to respond.
"Before, the soldiers hated us. Now... I hate us too. I hate myself, and I hate High Command," Li Tianyuan spat, his voice trembling with anger. "Motherfucker. The intelligence was completely wrong. The deployments were flawed. The entire system is riddled with catastrophic problems, but no one wants to fix them! Everyone just pretends they don't know, pretends they don't see it!
And now look at the result. Look at how many bodies are littering the ground. All Imperial soldiers. In a single morning, the casualties among our three corps must be over fifty percent!" Li Tianyuan cursed vehemently between bites of bread.
Hu Hao remained silent. In the face of a battle of this massive scale, he was powerless. Without an army under his direct command, personal skill meant nothing. Furthermore, the sheer incompetence of the aristocratic Division Commanders meant that even if Hu Hao was given temporary operational control, it was highly unlikely he could actually secure a victory.
The Imperial Army needed to be completely restructured from the ground up to have any chance of fighting effectively. But right now, the vast majority of the Imperial Generals hadn't even begun to realize this.
Hu Hao felt a deep sense of powerlessness. As a soldier, he naturally wanted to win the war. But as a mid-level officer, he lacked the authority to influence the outcome of a major campaign.
"Hao-ge, what are you thinking about?" Li Jingsong asked.
"Nothing. Dammit... if we keep fighting like this, it won't matter how many troops the Empire throws at them. The Allies will just slaughter them all!" Hu Hao cursed.
"Why do you think the Allied forces are pursuing us so relentlessly?" Li Jingsong asked.
"Are you stupid? Where else are they going to find an opportunity like this?" Hu Hao glared at him in disdain.
"What opportunity?" Li Tianyuan asked, looking up. The Brigadier General also turned to listen.
"The opportunity to systematically annihilate the absolute core of the Imperial Army's main forces. If they can grind down the standing army now, our massive reserves won't have time to fully mobilize or train. When that happens, it won't matter how many millions of reservists we conscript, or how many weapons we stockpile. Untrained conscripts are useless against a veteran, mechanized army!" Hu Hao explained grimly, staring out across the river.
"But... all we have to do is hold them off to buy the Empire three months to train the reserves, right?" Li Jingsong argued.
"Three months?" Hu Hao sneered. "Let me ask you this: in the past ten days alone, exactly how far have we retreated?"
Li Jingsong immediately lowered his head in shame.
"So the enemy is attacking us here specifically to draw in the Empire's main forces? They are deliberately pushing a hard line toward the Imperial Capital so that our forces have no choice but to throw themselves into the meat grinder?" Li Tianyuan deduced, looking at Hu Hao for confirmation.
Hu Hao nodded slowly.
"If that's truly the case... then the units in the other Combat Zones are likely in the exact same state as ours. They won't be able to hold the line against a concentrated Allied assault either. We will be forced to retreat again and again, bleeding men every step of the way, until the Capital falls and the Empire is destroyed.
Sigh... this is critical. I need to call the Zone Commander. I have to tell him this analysis so he can immediately warn the Grand Marshal and His Majesty," Li Tianyuan decided, standing up.
Hu Hao didn't object. High Command absolutely needed to realize this. If they still hadn't deduced the Allied coalition's true strategic objective, the Empire was doomed.
Having finished his bread, Hu Hao felt his strength returning. He stood up and began helping the other soldiers treat the wounded, carrying them to the waiting vehicles for evacuation.
In this sector, the distinction between officer and enlisted man had vanished. They were all in the same boat. Many of the surviving officers no longer had units to command; their only option was to pick up a rifle and fight in the mud alongside the privates.
"Reinforcements are here!"
While Hu Hao was busy moving the wounded, he noticed a massive convoy approaching from the rear. Strangely, almost all the vehicles were civilian cars and trucks.
The vehicles stopped, and thousands of men poured out. They were all wearing civilian clothes. They began unloading tools from the trunks—shovels, pickaxes, hoes—and crates of brand-new military rifles.
Looking at the pristine weapons, Hu Hao realized these men were the newly conscripted reservists. They had been rushed to the front so quickly there hadn't even been time to issue them uniforms. As soon as the men arrived, Imperial officers immediately began barking orders, directing them on what to do.
"Hao-ge... sending these guys to the front line... isn't that just sending them to die?" Huan Xingtao muttered, walking over to Hu Hao.
"Are you alright?" Hu Hao asked, looking him over.
"I'm fine. Sima Xuankong caught a stray bullet, but it's nothing major. He's patched up and resting over there," Huan Xingtao reported.
"Motherfucker... what kind of war is this? Are we really going to bleed to death on this riverbank?" Hu Hao cursed, watching the terrified civilian-clothed reservists being herded toward the trenches.
"Sigh... Hao-ge, go get some rest. There aren't many wounded left to move," Huan Xingtao suggested softly.
Meanwhile, in Qicheng, massive convoys of ambulances and transport trucks were pouring into the city. Every hospital was overflowing with casualties. The hospital parking lots and several nearby schools had been hastily converted into overflow triage centers. Hundreds of local youths were volunteering, frantically helping to carry stretchers and tend to the wounded.
The civilian population was in a state of shock and utter bewilderment. They couldn't comprehend how a war had erupted so suddenly, nor how the enemy had pushed this deep into the Empire's heartland so quickly. Dingkang Province was supposed to be the secure rear.
Just moments ago, they had watched His Majesty the Emperor appear on national television to issue a General Mobilization Order. The decree mandated that every able-bodied male citizen between the ages of 18 and 30—excluding active students—must immediately report to their local recruitment stations.
Veterans who had previously served in the military were to be issued weapons and commence immediate refresher training. Civilians without prior military experience would be organized, processed, and assigned to training camps based on their family circumstances. Across the Empire, recruitment stations were working around the clock, registering the identities of the young men. Convoy after convoy of newly designated reservists were being shipped directly to military bases for emergency training.
At that exact moment, in a city in Huaizhong Province—a province bordering the Imperial Capital—a young woman sat in her living room, watching the national mobilization broadcast on television.
"A war...?" the girl muttered in shock, staring blankly at the screen.