Chapter 51: Operation Angry Dragon (Part 16)

"Crack—" A heaven-shaking lightning bolt slammed down from the sky, drowning out the continuous roar of gunfire and snapping Yamamoto Hiroshi out of his near-madness.

Looking up, he saw that at some unknown point, thick, dark rain clouds—heavy enough to wring water from—had enveloped the entire sky.

Located in a desolate suburban residential area with practically no streetlights to begin with, the sweeping canopy of black clouds, combined with the soaring flames, made the surroundings resemble a veritable Shura battlefield.

Yamamoto Hiroshi glared fiercely at the distant figure constantly darting about and hurling explosive charges. He commanded his subordinates to press forward desperately while frantically shouting for reinforcements over the radio.

He had completely abandoned hope of eliminating that elusive sniper; his only goal now was to suppress the enemy before the reinforcements arrived, pinning down the explosives fanatic and holding them fast until backup came.

Through the radio, he had already learned that the brigade headquarters had dispatched a twenty-man special operations team via transport helicopter, accompanied by two "Cobra" gunships from the brigade aviation unit.

On the ground, an entire motorized battalion was advancing toward this location at high speed.

Right now, the reinforcements were only twenty minutes away from the battlefield! Once they arrived, absolute superiority in troop numbers and firepower would pound these detestable ghost-devils into mincemeat.

Yet, even if reinforcements arrived, could he achieve his objective? Yamamoto Hiroshi couldn't help but feel a lingering doubt.

These two enemies were simply too troublesome! Putting aside that demon-like sniper, even the demolition madman had caused his men immense grief. Constantly roaming the battlefield, he tossed out countless small explosive charges one after another, blowing apart surrounding trees and small structures to obstruct the troops' advance while providing protective cover for himself and his comrade.

However, despite the slow pace of the advance, concentrated fire and sheer numerical superiority seemed to be taking effect. The two opponents appeared to be gradually suppressed and were slowly converging.

Presently, as the pair closed to within a few dozen meters of each other and finally prepared to merge, Yamamoto Hiroshi noticed his own men gathering as well, taking cover in a six-story building and opening a furious volley of fire toward the opposite side.

Seeing the two adversaries finally pinned down, Yamamoto Hiroshi let out a long sigh of relief, a ferocious grin spreading across his face.

Yet that smile quickly froze on his face, instantly turning into boundless terror.

Glancing at his watch, Lei Dong flashed a cold smile at the gradually assembling soldiers of the Jepen Defense Force. Those pitch-black, brilliant eyes seemed to emit a terrifying, piercing light that cut through the endless darkness, making it unmistakably clear to Yamamoto Hiroshi hundreds of meters away.

"Detonate!" Lei Dong commanded softly. With a grim grin, Bei Shiliang gently pressed the remote control button in his hand.

"Rumble—" A series of muffled, thunder-like explosions erupted beneath the feet of the remaining dozens of Defense Force soldiers, and the earth beneath them began to tremble violently amidst the roar.

Yamamoto Hiroshi staggered. Just as he managed to steady himself, an even more violent series of explosions erupted all around him like deafening war drums!

"Boom, boom, boom, boom!"

The explosives planted along the building's walls detonated in rapid succession. Endless sheets of fire and monstrous shockwaves spewed from the surrounding structures, sending the Defense Force soldiers flying in disarray!

"Fall back, fall back, fall back—" Suddenly realizing what was happening, Yamamoto Hiroshi turned and bolted, his entire body trembling as he let out a heart-rending roar.

It was too late.

The meticulously placed explosives had utterly devastated the six-story building. The structure, over a hundred meters long and nearly twenty meters high, swayed, trembled, and tilted. After a mere few seconds, unable to support its own weight any longer, the entire building collapsed with a deafening roar!

Just as Yamamoto Hiroshi was about to step outside the building's collapse zone, countless shattered precast concrete slabs, steel reinforcement bars, and rubble—borne on a billowing cloud of dust—crashed overwhelmingly down onto his thighs, pinning the lower half of his body firmly beneath the ruins, leaving him completely unable to move!

"Ah—" Yamamoto Hiroshi let out a blood-curdling shriek. Before he completely lost consciousness, a bolt of lightning cleaved through the sky, and torrential rain poured down, instantly swallowing everything between heaven and earth. He seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of two figures flashing past the edge of his vision the moment the lightning struck, only to vanish into thin air.

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Kayazono Akira, the deputy commander of the 702nd Regiment of the Jepen Defense Force's 162nd Brigade, sat inside the armored command vehicle. With Yamamoto Hiroshi's cries for help and the continuous sounds of gunfire ringing in his ears, his face was livid as he stared at the satellite data transmitting onto the command console.

Jepen was still not a "normal country"; military satellites, especially high-resolution ones, were strictly prohibited from being launched. Most of the time, the military satellite data utilized by the Defense Force came from signals provided by their ally, the Minia Federation.

Yet the Minia Federation—a nation that historically only believed in interests—evidently still held an instinctive sense of contempt and wariness toward Jepen. Not only did the data they provided require the Jepen military to purchase at exorbitant prices, but it also underwent extensive technical processing. Issues such as missing data and low-resolution video signals were glaringly prominent.

"Bastards! Cursed Minia ghost-devils!" Kayazono Akira cursed angrily in his heart. To a pure-bred militarist zealot like himself, only by becoming a normal country, subsequently possessing independent and formidable armed forces, occupying vast territories, subjugating billions of people, and ultimately establishing a world-conquering order led by the Emperor and anchored by the imperial military could all these vexations be made to vanish.

With less than thirty minutes remaining until the designated combat zone for reinforcements, the dispatched reconnaissance drone had already arrived and was about to transmit images, while the special operations team sent by the brigade headquarters would reach the battlefield in three minutes at most.

A display screen on the command console flickered—it was the feed from the reconnaissance drone!

The moment he saw the image, Kayazono Akira's expression turned intensely hideous. On the ground lay broken walls and shattered ruins everywhere, alongside the sprawling corpses of soldiers scattered in disarray. In the center of the frame lay a massive pile of rubble. At the edge of the ruins, an officer wearing the rank of lieutenant had his lower body completely buried beneath the debris, his upper body curled into a painful knot, twitching unconsciously...

"No matter who you are, I will tear you to pieces—" Every drop of blood in his body seemed to rush to his brain in an instant, causing Kayazono Akira a wave of dizziness. His expression grew even more ferocious as he roared orders for the troops to accelerate their march.

"Rumble, rumbling—" A series of consecutive muffled thunders erupted beneath their feet, and the earth trembled incessantly. A teeth-grating grinding sound echoed continuously into his ears amidst the rolling thunder, and along with this noise, the hard concrete ground began to develop fine, creeping cracks.

The cracks grew wider, longer, and denser, winding and crisscrossing across the ground to ultimately form a dense, massive net that enveloped the streets and roads within a radius of several hundred meters.

Under Kayazono Akira's terrified gaze, within a mere few seconds, the entire neighborhood violently caved inward with a heaven-shaking roar. A colossal cloud of dust and shattered stone billowed dozens of meters into the air instantly.

Ten minutes later, the dust and smoke gradually dissipated. Kayazono Akira, positioned at the rear of the marching column, looked down with trembling apprehension. A gigantic circular crater, exceeding five hundred meters in diameter and over thirty meters in depth, lay before him. More than half of the Second and Third Battalions of the 702nd Regiment had been buried within the pit, and muffled, heart-rending cries of agony faintly drifted up from the debris piled at the bottom—a scene that resembled the Shura realm of mythology.

As for Kayazono Akira himself, he was less than a meter away from the edge of this Shura hell!

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"The underground drainage system has exploded!" Several kilometers away, Lei Dong shouted without looking back as he ran at a dead sprint. "The reservoir dam has breached; the floodwaters should be arriving about now..."

Author's Note: I'm back. Writing new chapters while revising old ones is driving me to the brink of a breakdown. Who knows when the ban will be lifted...