Chapter 47: Operation Raging Dragon (Part 12)

The Mochuan Reservoir was a water conservancy hub built within alpine gorges. To maintain dam stability and shoulder the massive water storage requirements of the backup water source for Kyoto City, the dam adopted a roller-compacted concrete gravity-arch design. Its downstream face was slightly arched and convex toward the massive upstream body of water, utilizing the arch effect to transform the sustained horizontal load into axial pressure transmitted to the bedrock on both banks, where the arch abutments supported the dam body.

Looking at the two massive arch abutments whose bases plunged deep underwater while their upper sections soared high above the calm lake, Song Jingang let out a deep sigh of grief. "Why is it me again? Old Liang is always the most experienced at this sort of thing..."

"Cut the crap and start calculating!" Wuyun glared at Song Jingang, while Luo Haoran, standing beside them, gloated, "Who told you to be so good at mathematics and demolition? Be a good boy now, we're all counting on you..."

Song Jingang rolled his eyes, retrieved a rangefinder from his backpack, and connected it to a military-grade laptop. He began measuring up, down, left, and right, recording data as he muttered to himself, his face furrowed in deep worry.

A few minutes later, Song Jingang raised his head, let out a long breath, and beckoned Wuyun and Luo Haoran to his side, leaving only Lang Tianyu stationed higher up the mountain to respond to emergencies and ensure the team's safety. "This dam is simply too sturdy. The ratio of the dam base thickness to its height already exceeds 0.4, approaching that of a gravity dam, and its internal reinforced concrete is ridiculously solid. I estimate that to blast it open from the front, we would need at least a mini-nuke in the tens of kilotons range..." Song Jingang said, sucking on his teeth.

Wuyun and Luo Haoran exchanged a glance and muttered in low voices, "Stop talking nonsense, just tell us what to do!"

Song Jingang chuckled twice and said, "I've checked. This mountain is mainly composed of granite, which is quite weathered. Over there—" Song Jingang pointed to the joint between the northern arch abutment and the mountain, "—there are as many as five visible cracks. We can totally strike from there!"

"How do we do it?" "Combine smooth-wall blasting and presplit blasting. Drill holes at the joint and detonate them to first widen the cracks, then trigger a chain reaction of successive explosions. With a sufficient explosive charge, we can blow open a breach—twenty kilograms of explosives will be enough! A thousand-li dike collapses in an ant's nest; the pressure of this reservoir is concentrated on both sides. Once we have this breach, hehehehe..." Song Jingang smiled sinisterly.

The three of them took out hand drills and headed straight for the joint.

"Right here. We need ten blast holes, a 90-centimeter gradient, a drilling depth of 4 centimeters, and 1 kilogram of explosive per hole..."

"Here, five blast holes, a 1-meter gradient, a drilling depth of 4 centimeters, and 1 kilogram of explosive at the bottom of each hole..."

"I'll handle the main blast hole over here..."

The buzzing sound of the pneumatic drills started up. Before long, drilling, charging, and setting up the remote detonation device were all complete. Wuyun nodded with satisfaction. "Change into our gear and let's pull back!"

A few minutes later, the four team members, now wearing the uniforms of the Jifen Defense Force looted from the barracks, jumped into a Hammer 2 inside the base and sped along the mountain road toward downtown Kyoto City.

Ten minutes later, having reached the edge of the remote control's signal range, Wuyun made a hand gesture. Lang Tianyu turned on the vehicle-mounted radio, and Song Jingang pressed the detonation button.

"Boom-rumble—" A continuous series of massive explosions erupted violently above the reservoir. Amidst the explosions, Lang Tianyu yelled frantically into the microphone of the vehicle-mounted radio: "Enemy attack—enemy attack—we are under attack, Oh Great Imperial Sun God—"

"Boom, boom, boom, boom!" Amidst even more violent explosions, several questioning voices came simultaneously from the radio: "Where? Where are you under attack? Hello—"

Listening to the panicked voices on the radio, Lang Tianyu let out a miserable scream of "Ah—" and then switched off the radio, tossing it far out of the vehicle.

"Damn it!" Wuyun couldn't help cursing. "If you didn't become an actor, you'd be wasting your talent!" Laughter erupted from everyone in the vehicle.

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"Investigate! Investigate immediately! Where on earth is under attack?" Inside several military camps in the suburbs of Kyoto City, angry roars rang out almost simultaneously.

"Report! According to the radio serial number and electronic positioning, it's the garrison at the Mochuan Reservoir!"

"Nani? Baka!" The angry voice rang out once more. "Reinforce immediately! Order the troops deployed in the city center to fall back immediately, fall back immediately!"

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When the Mochuan Reservoir exploded with a thunderous roar, Lei Dong knew that a grueling battle was about to begin.

It was around one o'clock in the morning, and the riots within the city center showed no signs of stopping. Troops transferred down from the mountains were suppressing the unrest everywhere, but facing a city that had plunged almost entirely into chaos, it was of little use. Pacify it here, and fires would break out over there; just as things settled over there, trouble would flare up right here. The entire Kyoto City area had completely plunged into massive chaos, with gunshots, fires, and cries audible everywhere.

Now, once the alarm of the reservoir being attacked sounded, the military would inevitably withdraw from the city center to reinforce the Mochuan Reservoir. Compared to the catastrophe of a breached dam and a billion cubic meters of towering floodwaters destroying the entire city, the riots in the city center could only be considered a minor skin ailment.

And this was precisely one of the steps in Lei Dong's plan. Initially, the massive riots in the city center were used to draw away the garrison of the Mochuan Reservoir, creating a void in the reservoir's defenses to facilitate a sneak attack. Once the attack succeeded, the massive crisis at the reservoir would then be exploited to draw away the troops heading into the city center and the garrisons of the other two reservoirs to reinforce and fall back, facilitating the next phase of operations within the city center.

After all, the Jifen Empire was still not a normal country. As a defeated nation from the previous World War, this country had long been prohibited from possessing offensive armed forces and militaries. Although the Defense Force was well-equipped, their numbers were not large, and the number of ground troops was extremely limited. Furthermore, most were stationed along the coasts and at various strategic locations, leaving very few troops garrisoned in major cities. Even in Kyoto, the capital and one of the world's largest cities, the surrounding troops totaled only a single brigade.

This handful of troops was clearly inadequate to defend a country with a population of hundreds of millions. This was also one of the reasons why Kishi Keisaburo and many of his predecessors vigorously pushed for the normalization of the country—though Kishi Keisaburo's fundamental consideration was still to walk a path of militarism and restore the "glory" of the so-called "Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

However, whether Kishi Keisaburo's scheming would go according to plan in the face of the impending great upheaval remained a huge question mark; even his own political future still hung in the balance.

As for those troops struggling through all hardships to return and defend the reservoir, what awaited them would be towering giant waves and a boundless expanse of water!

PS: I just wrote casually about the content of blowing up the dam with explosives, so you can just read it casually. Do not try this at home, do not try this at home, do not try this at home!—Important things must be said three times!