42: Chapter 42 The Non-existent Safe Zone

[System Warning: High-intensity aerial threat detected.]

[Current Air Superiority: 0%.]

[Current Status: Completely Exposed.]

Before Jack could clearly see these lines of blood-red text, the entire ground began to tremble violently.

It was the US Far East Air Force's F-80 'Shooting Star' jet fighters, mixed with low-flying F-4U 'Corsair' attack aircraft.

The roaring sound of propellers churning the air was so loud it made their eardrums ache.

No reconnaissance, no probing.

The first incendiary bomb landed in the woods two hundred meters away.

There were none of those exaggerated explosion effects seen in movies, only a massive, orange fireball silently expanding, instantly engulfing the surrounding dozens of meters of trees.

Immediately following that was the long-delayed massive boom.

The blast wave, mixed with hot air, whipped the loose soil from the edge of the trenches into a swirling cloud.

"Take cover! Quick, take cover!"

Someone shouted, but the voice was insignificant against the roar of the aircraft engines.

Su Yun sat in front of the pitch-black control panel, expressionlessly hitting the Enter key.

On the screen, the bombing data for the US aircraft was scrolling crazily.

"If we want to restore a realistic war, there can be no luck."

Su Yun looked at the data stream and slid his finger over a line of parameter settings.

"In the face of absolute firepower superiority, there is no such thing as a 'rear area'."

Ordinary earthworks had their defense coefficient forcibly set to zero against 500-pound aerial bombs.

Inside the game, the field hospital.

Dai Dai was kneeling before a broken wooden board, changing the dressing for a wounded soldier.

There wasn't enough bandage, so she had to tear her own undergarment into strips, wash them clean in the snowmelt, and then use them.

The wounded soldier was an NPC named Er Niu, only eighteen years old, with a large chunk of flesh torn away from his leg by shrapnel.

"Sister, it hurts.", Er Niu's face was deathly pale, his lips cracked like withered tree bark.

"Endure it, it will be over soon.", Dai Dai's hands trembled slightly, and she tried hard not to look at the gruesome wound.

A shriek came from overhead.

Dai Dai instinctively wanted to throw herself over Er Niu. This was a reflex she had developed over the past few days.

But this time, the attack came too fiercely.

A heavy bomb pierced directly through the earth layer of the mountainside where the hospital was located.

The huge shockwave threw Dai Dai outward, slamming her heavily against a rock two meters away.

Her health bar instantly dropped by half, and her vision turned completely blood-red.

"Cough, cough...", Dai Dai struggled to pull herself up.

The scene before her left her mind completely blank.

The makeshift tent that had been standing moments ago was gone. The wooden board Er Niu had been lying on was also gone.

In their place was a deep pit spewing black smoke.

All around were scattered limbs. White bandages hung from scorched tree branches, fluttering in the heat wave.

There were no cries of grief.

Because even the people who would cry had been blown away.

"Er Niu?"

Dai Dai crawled to the edge of the pit, frantically digging in the scalding mud with both hands.

"Er Niu, where are you? Sister will bandage you..."

Her fingernails broke, and her ten fingers were bleeding profusely.

There was no response from the mud.

Only a distorted, scorched metal canteen—the treasure Er Niu always kept on his waist.

Dai Dai clutched the canteen, curling her body into a ball.

She didn't cry; she just bit down hard on her lip until it broke, allowing the rust-like taste of blood to permeate her mouth.

This was a hospital.

It flew a Red Cross flag.

But in the eyes of those iron birds in the sky, this was just a coordinate, a data point to increase their kill count.

Brother Bao's voice exploded over the public channel, laced with rare anxiety.

"Don't hide in shallow craters! That stuff is paper-thin! Dig deeper! Those are ground-penetrating bombs!"

All the players turned into groundhogs.

They used entrenching tools, bayonets, and even their bare hands, desperately digging into the frozen earth.

Fingernails ripped, finger bones fractured, but no one stopped.

Su Yun adjusted the parameters for [Physical Penetration].

The days of being able to hide from bombing runs by simply lying in a shell crater were over.

A thermite bomb landed at the entrance of an air-raid shelter that had just been dug.

The viscous burning agent flowed in like water.

The screams coming from inside even drowned out the roar of the planes.

Those were not sounds a human could make; they were the final convulsions of vocal cords under extreme heat.

Jack was pressed against the cold stone wall beneath a huge piece of granite.

He saw a truck on the highway.

It was a transport vehicle that had luckily avoided the blockade line from last night.

The truck bed was covered with a canvas sheet, bulging underneath.

"That's food!", a comrade next to him shouted.

"It's fried noodles! I can smell it!"

Hunger was a more primal instinct than fear.

Several brave players rushed out from behind cover, trying to salvage the truck.

"Come back! Are you looking to die?!"

Jack reached out to grab them but grasped only air.

An F-4U Corsair attack aircraft had clearly also spotted the target.

It lowered its nose, and the cannon under its wing spat out fire.

Thick 20mm shells hit the ground, kicking up a series of half-meter-high columns of dirt.

The bodies of those few players who had rushed out were instantly severed.

Literally severed—the upper bodies flew away while the lower bodies remained in place.

Still warm.

"Damn it..."

Jack squeezed out a single word from the depths of his throat.

He looked at the players who had been blown to smithereens.

An unprecedented anger overwhelmed his fear.

This was the price of having no air superiority.

This was the suffocating feeling of being forced to lie on the ground and take a beating.

"Stop hiding, all of you!"

Brother Bao jumped out of the dirt pit.

One lens of his glasses was shattered, and his face was covered in black ash.

He raised the old type 38 rifle in his hand, pointing the muzzle straight at the sky.

"Running is death! Hiding is also death!"

Brother Bao roared, his voice terribly hoarse.

"Fight with me! I don't believe these metal birds are invincible!"

"Ready—!"

Brother Bao quickly calculated the lead based on the aircraft's dive trajectory.

"Aim three fuselage lengths ahead of the nose! Wait for the moment it pulls up from the dive!"

Dozens of players stood up from behind cover.

Then hundreds, then thousands.

They were ragged and held simple bolt-action rifles.

And above them were the steel eagles representing the strongest industrial might of the Blue Star at that time.

This was an extremely asymmetrical confrontation.

This was an almost tragic, suicidal counterattack.

"Fire!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The dense sound of volley fire echoed through the valley.

A barrage composed of thousands of bullets shot up to meet the diving aircraft.

Most of the bullets missed.

But one F-80, flying too low and too arrogantly, was hit in its wing fuel tank by the dense rain of bullets.

The aircraft emitted a plume of black smoke, and its fuselage suddenly tilted, but it did not crash. It merely staggered as it gained altitude, fleeing toward the sky.

This did not result in a kill.

But these Infantrymen, armed only with rifles, used their actions to tell the arrogant pilots above:

The people on this land have bones harder than your armor.

The bombing lasted for a full four hours.

Only when the sun reached its zenith did the flock of metal birds depart, clearly not yet satisfied.

The battlefield fell into a deathly silence.

The forest had turned into smoldering charcoal.

The supply line was completely severed. The original road surface was covered in craters; not even a rat could get across.

Jack crawled out from under the rock.

A violent twisting pain shot through his stomach.

This was the system's true physiological feedback. His hunger level had spiked into the red zone.

At that moment, the cold system prompt sounded again.

This time, there was no passionate background music, only an extremely cold verdict.

[Server-wide Announcement: The logistical supply line has been completely cut off.]

[Due to the airstrikes, forward material reserves are zero.]

[Estimated time until the next batch of supplies forcefully breaks through the blockade to reach the front line: 72 hours.]

[Current Hunger Status: Extreme.]

[Countdown begins.]

Jack looked up at the still smoke-filled sky.

72 hours.

In this extreme cold hell, without food, and still facing the counterattack from the US military.

"Su Yun, you truly are a madman."