Upon receiving Wu Kexiao's call, Hu Hao immediately ordered the Special Operations Regiment to halt their offensive. As long as the surviving Allied troops remained holed up in their bunkers, the operatives were not to engage. Simultaneously, he ordered the remaining eight companies of the third wave, currently staged outside the city, to move in and establish ambush positions in the southern sector.
"Hao-ge... this is insane. We're doing it too fast! We only committed roughly a thousand men, and we've practically annihilated an entire entrenched division?!" Dong Qipeng stood beside Hu Hao, feeling shocked by what he had just witnessed.
Although he was the Regimental Commander, he still hadn't fully grasped the sheer, asymmetric combat power his unit possessed. The tactics Hu Hao had drilled into them in Daman City were designed for small-unit, unconventional warfare.
To see those tactics scale up and completely dismantle a conventional military formation in a matter of hours was staggering. Hu Hao himself was pleasantly surprised; he had originally estimated it would take the entire night—and the entire regiment—to break the division.
But the first wave of 1,000 men, striking from dozens of different vectors simultaneously, had completely shattered the Allied command and control. At this point, the Allied forces likely still had no idea where Hu Hao's "main force" was. They didn't realize that the Special Operations Regiment was the main force.
"Mm, the men fought well. The next phase is the Allied relief division. Tell the operatives to maintain overwatch on the surviving garrison elements, but everyone else should rest and reload. I estimate the relief column will arrive in one to two hours," Hu Hao nodded, turning to Dong Qipeng.
"With these tactics, we'll be invincible in urban combat!" Dong Qipeng exclaimed, his eyes shining with excitement.
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you think I trained this regiment just to throw them into conventional urban meat grinders? Tonight is merely a live-fire exercise to test your training!
"In the future, your regiment will operate in tandem with the conventional forces. Your primary objectives will be deep reconnaissance, sabotage, and the targeted assassination of high-ranking Allied commanders! You won't be fighting conventional battles.
"I'm using you like this tonight specifically to identify any lingering weaknesses in your training through actual combat! If I used you as standard urban shock troops, it would be an incredible waste of specialized talent!" Hu Hao laughed, shaking his head.
"Hao-ge, if all our conventional forces possessed even a fraction of this capability, the Allied coalition wouldn't stand a chance!" Dong Qipeng nodded, understanding Hu Hao's strategic vision.
"That's impossible. We simply don't have the time or resources to train hundreds of thousands of conventional infantry to this standard. Nor does every soldier possess the innate aptitude for it.
"However, we will continuously expand the Special Operations Regiment. You're a Major General now. If your regiment grows large enough and your combat record is flawless, I'll find a way to get you promoted to Lieutenant General!" Hu Hao smiled.
"Understood!" Dong Qipeng grinned.
Deep underground, Major General Hippocrates sat in silence within his reinforced bunker. The intense gunfire above had largely ceased. He was surrounded by the remnants of his Guard Battalion—fewer than a thousand men.
Outside, the sporadic, terrifying BANG of a heavy sniper rifle occasionally echoed through the ruins, signaling that the invisible enemy was still out there, waiting.
He knew, with a sickening certainty, that the rest of his division was gone. The only survivors were huddled in this bunker.
"Commander... the enemy seems to have halted their assault. If we try to break out, they shoot us. If we stay put, they leave us alone," a staff officer reported nervously.
"They are using us as bait. They want to ambush the relief division. Damn it!" Hippocrates deduced Hu Hao's strategy instantly.
"Ah?!" The surrounding staff officers and surviving regimental commanders gasped in horror.
"Contact the relief column! Tell them to accelerate their advance! The moment they breach the city limits, we will launch a desperate breakout! If we can link up with them, we immediately retreat! This city is lost! We must evacuate!" Hippocrates ordered coldly.
He harbored no illusions that the relief division could drive the enemy out. If a single division—his own—had been utterly dismantled without even seeing the enemy, another division would fare no better. He still didn't even know what kind of Eastern Spirit unit he was fighting. Staying in Tianyu City meant death.
"Yes, sir!" the staff officer saluted and hurried to the comms station.
"Damn it... order the men to hold their positions. Anyone stepping outside now is committing suicide. We wait for the relief column to draw their fire, and then we run!" Hippocrates ordered another staff officer, who quickly moved to relay the command.
Above ground, the Special Operations operatives and the newly arrived third wave were meticulously preparing the battlefield for the incoming relief division.
They needed to ensure flawless mutual support and overlapping fields of fire, while also guaranteeing secure exfiltration routes. An intact, cohesive division marching into the city was vastly different from the fractured, isolated units they had slaughtered earlier.
To defeat the relief division, they had to break its cohesion. The Platoon Commanders gathered around maps of the southern sector, rapidly devising ambush points and kill zones to string the Allied column out and carve it into manageable pieces.
Hu Hao remained silent, simply observing their planning process. When they finalized their deployment, he nodded in approval, and the Platoon Commanders immediately dispersed to position their men. With the traps set, the operatives settled in to rest.
In a second-floor apartment overlooking the southern approach, three operatives sat quietly on the balcony floor. Inside the living room, a young couple huddled together. They had a small boy, perhaps three years old, who was restless and wide awake despite the late hour.
Curious about the men in black gear, the toddler waddled out onto the balcony.
One of the operatives reached into his tactical vest, pulled out a ration chocolate bar, broke it in half, and handed a piece to the child. The boy, having never seen chocolate before, took it hesitantly and ran back to his father.
"Thank you," the young father smiled gratefully at the soldiers.
He knew that the intense gunfire earlier meant the National Defense Force was fighting the invaders. The fact that the gunfire had stopped, and these soldiers were now resting on his balcony, meant they had won.
"When I tell you to blow out the candles, do it immediately. Otherwise, the Allied forces might target this apartment with heavy weapons.
"Furthermore, when the fighting starts, you must all lie flat on the living room floor and do not move! As long as you stay low, the stray bullets won't hit you.
"However, you should flip that heavy sofa on its side and drag those solid wooden cabinets to the center of the room to create a barricade. If an Allied rocket hits the balcony, that barricade will shield you from the shrapnel," the operative who gave the chocolate advised the father.
"Oh! Thank you! I'll do it right now!" The young man immediately sprang up and began overturning the heavy furniture, creating a makeshift bunker in the center of the room.
His wife sat behind the barricade, holding the toddler, who was happily munching on the chocolate.
"Thank you so much... will you be leaving after the battle is over?" the mother asked nervously, looking at the three operatives.
"No," one of the operatives shook his head.
"Really?!" The father paused his work, looking at them with desperate hope.
"We have to fight our way back to our own hometowns. We all have parents, siblings... some of us have children exactly the same age as yours waiting for us. We will fight our way back," the operative said softly.
"Ah?" The couple looked at the heavily armed, lethal soldiers in surprise. They hadn't expected such a vulnerable answer.
"Most of us were refugees. You could say this is a refugee army. We want to fight our way home. Hao-ge promised he would lead us back. It might take a year, it might take ten years... but we will slaughter our way back home," another operative smiled grimly.
"I envy you. Your wife and child are right here with you. You're incredibly fortunate. Us soldiers... our homes are gone. We don't even know if our families are still alive," the first operative sighed. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and stared out into the rainy night, thinking of the family he hadn't heard from in months.
"Excuse me... is your army still recruiting?" the young father asked suddenly, his voice firm.
"Our specific regiment isn't. The conventional forces probably are. However, since you have a wife and a young child, they likely wouldn't conscript you unless the frontline casualties were catastrophic and they were desperate for manpower," the operative replied.
"I want to join. I have to avenge them. You don't know what it's been like... the civilians in this city have been living in hell! The Allied forces slaughtered so many of our neighbors! I have to avenge them!" the young man said, his fists clenched.
"You're actually the lucky ones. We've liberated cities where not a single civilian was left alive. Entire populations, butchered," the second operative said, looking at him with haunted eyes.
"Ah?!" The young couple gasped in horror.
"All units, attention!. The Allied relief column is less than five kilometers from the city limits. ETA: ten minutes. Maintain absolute noise and light discipline!" The operatives heard Dong Qipeng's voice crackle in their earpieces.
"Blow out the candles! Now!" The three operatives instantly pinched out their cigarettes and turned to the young father.
"Yes!" The man scrambled to extinguish the few candles illuminating the room.
The apartment plunged into absolute darkness and silence. The operatives sat motionless on the balcony. Through the faint, ambient glow reflecting off the wet pavement, they could see the massive Allied armored column approaching rapidly in the distance.
They conducted final checks on their weapons and ammunition, ensuring everything was flawless.
Ten minutes later, the blinding headlights of dozens of Allied tanks and APCs illuminated the southern outskirts of Tianyu City. The Allied commanders, seeing the eerily silent, dark city, were hesitant. If they hadn't seen the mangled corpses of their own sentries at the highway checkpoints, they might have assumed the city was completely abandoned.
(End of Chapter)