Chapter 182 Launching the Attack <TOC> Chapter 184 Colossus in the Mire
Translator: SumTLMan
The rainy season had arrived, and the abundant precipitation painted the once dull earth with a layer of tender green brimming with vitality.
Various herbaceous plants grew at an astonishing speed, striving to sprout and climb, in order to seize the precious sunlight.
This vibrant verdant green, full of life, was a nightmare for humans. The people of Xindu referred to it fearfully as the “Green Plague.” The pervasive green signified the imminent arrival of the descenders.
The ruins of the former Pagwa City stood on the earth, with its steel and concrete debris covered by all sorts of climbing plants, almost obscuring the concrete below.
This abandoned city was once home to two or three scavenger tribes. However, after the Soul Cult’s armed forces entered and occupied the city, these tribes either fled, were executed, or became cannon fodder for the Soul Cult.
The entire motorized infantry battalion assembled on a large hardened surface about fifteen kilometers outside Pagwa City, preparing to launch an attack.
Due to insufficient training in normal times, the infantry fighting vehicles were squeezed together in the mud, struggling to form an attack formation, with two of them even colliding.
Li Mu jumped off the infantry fighting vehicle.
“I’m really glad that the Soul Cult didn’t take advantage of this situation to launch artillery fire on us. Damn it, if the Soul Cult had more than six cannons, the entire battalion would be done for!” he said through a psychic connection.
“You’re right, the artillery fire is actually coming!” Shen Luoyan said through the psychic connection, as she detected the high-speed flying shells.
Li Mu looked up at the sky. His ultra-fast nerve reflexes and powerful vision allowed him to clearly see the flying shells in the air.
The shells flew at high speed in the air, and he could even clearly see the shockwaves created by the shells compressing the air as they traveled.
The others on the scene also heard the whistling sound of the shells. The battalion commander had never imagined that the Soul Cult would possess weapons like cannons. The soldiers panicked and lay flat on the ground. Some unfortunate ones were crushed by the infantry fighting vehicles, becoming a pool of bloody flesh.
“Boom!”
With a loud noise, the shell fell about two kilometers away from the assembly area, hurling mud into the air, hundreds of meters high.
Li Mu shook his head speechlessly. The Soul Cult obviously hadn’t conducted range-finding in advance, and the artillery’s skills were quite limited, resulting in such a glaring error.
The first company was appointed as the first wave of the attacking echelon. The battalion commander demanded that at least three security officers assist the company in the attack and also allocated a tank platoon to cooperate with the first company in the offensive.
With Shen Xingyan’s prestigious status, he naturally wouldn’t act alongside the ordinary soldiers. Instead, he stayed in the rear division headquarters, enjoying the meticulous service of maids along with Rajaral Santanu.
Li Mu led two enhancer-type security officers and a group of ordinary soldiers aboard an infantry fighting vehicle to launch an attack.
Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and power armor struggled to form ranks in the mud, finally initiating an assault on Pagwa City twenty minutes later.
During the attack, the Soul Cult fired more than ten shells at the infantry battalion, likely from a single cannon. None of the shells scored a direct hit, but three unlucky soldiers were struck by shrapnel. One of them had half of his head instantly sheared off.
The battalion’s artillery leisurely set up a 120mm mortar position, firing shells in retaliation towards Pagwa City.
Their firepower was significantly more ferocious than the Soul Cult’s, but the sturdy reinforced concrete from before the great catastrophe severely weakened the mortar’s destructive power.
The infantry disembarked from their vehicles about a kilometer from Pagwa City.
Power armor, infantry fighting vehicles, and tanks continued to advance, continuously firing at the Soul Cult’s exposed firepower positions outside the city.
The armed cultists had dug trenches outside the city and used the reinforced concrete from within the city to construct makeshift bunkers.
“Boom!”
A bunker was hit by a high-explosive anti-tank shell fired from a tank, immediately blowing up, and the personnel inside were instantly reduced to shreds of flesh and bone fragments.
“Move forward! We need to be ahead of the tanks!”
Li Mu saw that the entire platoon was hesitating and falling behind the tanks, visibly disjointed.
Soon, the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and power armor broke through the Soul Cult’s defensive line outside the city under fire, quickly choosing to charge into the city.
They showed no intention of waiting for the infantry.
The ruined terrain of Pagwa City was too complex, allowing the Soul Cult to easily set up a large number of anti-armor firepower within it. If the cumbersome tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were separated from the infantry, they would be easily ambushed, becoming trapped behemoths in the mud, easy prey for the enemy.
The platoon leader did not see it that way. In his view, the conscripts brought by the Soul Cult would crumble at the sight of the tanks. Once the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles had crushed the Soul Cult, they could then move forward to occupy the positions.
Charging ahead of the tanks was too dangerous, and they had always fought in this manner.
With a helpless shrug, Li Mu had anticipated the weakness of the allied forces, but he had not expected them to be this feeble.
They had become accustomed to fighting this way, where the mere appearance of a tank would cause the enemy to fall apart without a fight. Firing a few shots would be considered a display of tenacity.
The infantry formed a loose horizontal line, advancing toward the trenches and bunkers cleared by the tanks and armored personnel carriers, tasked with eliminating any remaining Soul Cult armed cultists.
Sporadic gunfire echoed across the battlefield, and surviving cultists who chose to surrender were promptly executed without hesitation.
Li Mu held his rifle, watching the soldiers enthusiastically shooting as if hunting rabbits in the fields.
The dull sound of a machine gun erupted from a hidden bunker that had evaded the tank’s bombardment, unleashing a frenzied hail of bullets at the soldiers.
A storm of bullets instantly brought down three or four nearby soldiers.
Li Mu scoffed and charged forward despite the whizzing bullets. Tracer rounds struck him, only making a clinking sound, like fireflies bouncing off him.
He drew the heavy sword from his back and with one swing, sent a several-ton slab of reinforced concrete flying.
The armed cultist inside the bunker released the trigger, staring in horror at Li Mu standing in front of him, as if he had just witnessed a demon crawling out of hell.
Li Mu raised his rifle and fired three shots, killing all three people inside.
“Finish the cleanup as soon as possible and catch up with the leading armor,” he commanded.
If they continued to delay at this leisurely pace, although they could still weaken the Santanu family’s power, the Soul Cult would have likely completed their ritual and retrieved the Divine Land from the depths of the Source Ocean.
The platoon leader, frightened by the recent gunfire, had dropped to the ground. He looked at the bunker that had been sent flying with a mixture of awe and fear, swallowing hard.
Chapter 182 Launching the Attack <TOC> Chapter 184 Colossus in the Mire