Jiang Ye ordered the troops to air-drop sub-pods of remote control pods to the front lines of the exiled star.
He entered the main pod of the remote control pod located in the space city, and after a brief darkness, his consciousness connected to the front lines of the exiled star.
His body was immersed in a golden ice-water solution, and the rumbling explosions sounded from all directions, as if he were in a thundercloud. Jiang Ye lifted the hatch and climbed out of the pod. Several mechanical soldiers were kneeling in a defensive posture with their guns, and the captain of the mechanical soldiers extended his hand to pull Jiang Ye out.
"Commander!" The captain of the mechanical soldiers saluted. "I am Tie Jiang 13, responsible for escorting you on your inspection of the front lines."
A gust of hot wind swept over him. Jiang Ye stood up from the ice water, feeling like a frozen food from a refrigerator thrown into an oven. He looked around and felt a pang at the sight before him.
It was ten o'clock in the evening local time, and the sky was completely dark. Black smoke and thick clouds obscured the stars. But within the smoke, streaks of light flashed by rapidly – these were self-detonating drones and launched rockets. The city was engaged in combat, with remnants of both friendly and enemy forces in various positions. After successive air raids, the Royalists had changed their combat tactics, engaging in close-quarters combat with the Surrenderists, shortening the distance to fight. This effectively avoided devastating air raids.
The buildings along the entire street had been destroyed. Some buildings had collapsed halfway, while others had been completely reduced to rubble. Copper-yellow and iron-colored shell casings were mixed with the rubble, ranging from cannon shells the size of a human head to bullets the thickness of a finger. The sheer quantity was astonishing, as if the shell casings themselves were part of the walls.
Bodies lay scattered near the shell casings, their hair matted with dirt, like weeds buried in the earth. The bodies included those in military uniforms and those not, even girls in skirts and children less than a meter tall. Most of the bodies were dismembered, with chunks of flesh and internal organs scattered like garbage. The congealed blood had seeped into the concrete bricks. They had all been dead for a long time.
Filthy, extremely filthy.
The air was suffocating.
"Let's go," Jiang Ye said, changing into his military uniform and grabbing an assault rifle.
The mechanical soldier squad led the way, and Jiang Ye followed, bending low and jogging, traversing the broken walls and streets littered with shell craters.
The further they went, the more bodies they saw, until the street was piled high with several layers of corpses. Jiang Ye was simply stunned by the sheer number of dead. The bodies were mangled and ripped open. Even a medical student studying anatomy would be shocked by the myriad of strange ways people could die and the chaotic poses on the battlefield. Many weapons lay on the ground – improvised grenades, firearms, Molotov cocktails, rocket launchers, and more, all covered in dust.
"The front-line troops said that when the battle first started, the civilians in the city were in a panic. Many tried to flee the city with their families, but they were mistaken for guerrillas and were all concentrated fire upon and killed in the streets. Both the Surrenderists and the Royalists opened fire, fearing that they were enemy personnel in disguise," Tie Jiang 13 said. "Before you arrived, we were collecting bodies in the vicinity and sending them to mass graves in the suburbs. At least two thousand people died in these three blocks, with only three hundred survivors, all hiding in basements."
Jiang Ye was speechless. If he hadn't seen so much of the world, he would have definitely suffered psychological trauma from the horrific scene.
The mechanical soldiers in the front suddenly dropped to a prone position and opened fire fiercely at the opposite side of the street, instantly blowing something up. A fireball erupted from a building dozens of meters away, and several figures were blown out. Bullets shot out from the darkness at the base of the building, and the street was immediately filled with the ricocheting sound of stray bullets. Jiang Ye clearly felt something fly over his head.
Tie Jiang 13 quickly pulled Jiang Ye into the adjacent building to take cover. Several mechanical soldiers provided rear guard, firing two anti-personnel missiles and emptying several magazines before catching up.
A rough, gruff male voice immediately blared from a loudspeaker on the opposite side of the street, speaking a foreign language:
"Bastards! Surrender immediately! We will cut off your heads!"
The mechanical soldiers immediately threw two paper-plane-sized drones from the window. Moments later, the roaring explosions from the opposite side of the street drowned out the shouts. As the explosions occurred, several mechanical soldiers simultaneously rose and opened fire, bullets pouring out like water.
Tie Jiang 13 led Jiang Ye back, taking a detour to another street. Jiang Ye was already starting to pant.
A sudden deafening roar swept across the sky, and the glass in many buildings shattered simultaneously. Jiang Ye's ears buzzed. This sound was caused by a supersonic drone cruising at low altitude, sounding like a rip in the sky.
The exiled star did not have such supersonic drones. These were sent by Cen Yemeng for reconnaissance and bombing. Jiang Ye wondered what the exiled star soldiers in the city felt when they heard this deafening roar.
This was immediately followed by the roar of anti-aircraft fire, which erupted from several blocks away. Orange tracer rounds danced wildly in the night sky, emitting heart-stopping flashes.
This anti-aircraft fire was unlikely to hit its targets; it was purely a matter of luck. The Royalist soldiers fired furiously at the sky, but during a meeting in the space city, Jiang Ye had clearly heard his officers report that the exiled star had virtually no decent anti-aircraft capabilities, allowing for air raids to be carried out with complete disregard.
Soon, the mechanical soldiers caught up again.
They escorted Jiang Ye, occasionally firing at street corners to detonate landmines.
The landmines came in various styles, some as small as ping-pong balls, yet capable of blowing off a soldier's legs. Jiang Ye couldn't find these landmines even with his eyes wide open, but the mechanical soldiers could identify them quickly. Computers and human brains were indeed different.
After passing through layers of ruins, Jiang Ye and the mechanical soldiers entered an underground parking lot heavily guarded by the Surrenderists.
This place had been converted into a field hospital. Two to three wounded soldiers lay in each parking space, and the entire parking lot was filled with half-dead soldiers and civilians. Screams and cries echoed incessantly, like a living hell.
Jiang Ye walked through the parking lot, feeling shocked. There were severed hands and entire kidneys on the ground, already crushed. Various suspicious liquids flowed everywhere – a mixture of disinfectant, vomit, and blood. The stench was unimaginable.
Used syringes and blood-stained gauze were piled up like grave mounds against the wall. Soldiers were eating sushi rolls on these mounds. These soldiers had烂烂的 faces or lost a leg, their hands covered in black gunpowder residue, yet they ate and drank without complaint.
Several doctors were performing emergency surgery on an open-air operating table. On the dirty, flowing operating table lay a young man with blond hair, his lips pale, his expression on the verge of unconsciousness. Swollen intestines protruded from his ruptured abdomen, pale and white, all the blood drained. The doctors were transfusing blood with powerful blood pumps, pouring in bags of clear artificial blood, which Jiang Ye had previously approved for aid.
"The Royalists have planted many booby-traps. There's a mine every step of the way near the Crossroads, and the area near the South Suburb Airport is also full of them. They were all injured by these jumping mines. We received over five hundred wounded yesterday alone," a very fat Caucasian officer walked up to Jiang Ye and saluted crisply. "Greetings, Commander! I am the director of this field hospital, the commander of the first battalion of the second division of the 48th Army of the exiled star, Belvushka! You can call me Bel."
"I'm here to inspect the situation. Report anything you need to me directly," Jiang Ye returned the salute.