59: Chapter 60 The Iron Is Burning!

The rain stopped just as dawn broke.

But the sun did not come out.

Instead, there was a sky full of suffocating screams.

Van Fleet was furious.

Last night's night raid felt like a slap across the face of the American Lieutenant General.

He no longer bothered with tactical probing, nor did he care about ammunition expenditure.

He gave the artillery the only order:

"I swear to God, if I hear you stop firing for even one second, I'll stuff you down the barrel of a cannon!!"

"Everyone into the foxholes! Quick! Burrow into the deepest parts!"

Just as the Platoon Leader finished shouting, the world collapsed.

This was not a metaphor.

The entire Hill 207.4 seemed to be grabbed by an invisible giant hand and violently shaken in the air.

When the first volley landed, Jack felt his eardrums shatter instantly.

Even covering his ears and opening his mouth wide, the blast wave still drilled down his esophagus into his stomach, churning everything up.

Then came the second round, the third round... There was no pause.

The explosions merged into one continuous sound, impossible to distinguish individual blasts.

Layers of earth were flung upward into the sky, only to fall back down and bury everything.

Rocks cracked, and large trees were pulverized.

Jack huddled in the deepest part of the dugout tunnel, the wooden supports above his head emitting a teeth-grinding cracking sound.

Dust and ash rained down, instantly burying people like clay figurines.

This bombardment lasted another three hours.

The artillery positions of the US Eighth Army heated their gun barrels red hot.

They poured every type of shell they had ever seen in their lives—high explosives, incendiaries, armor-piercing—onto this small hilltop as if they cost nothing.

According to their calculations, every inch of land within a few kilometers had been struck by an average of five shells.

Forget people; even an ant would be shaken into powder.

The cannon fire finally stopped.

The hilltop was deathly silent.

The once lush forest was gone, leaving only scorched earth emitting wisps of green smoke.

The dark brown soil resembled a freshly baked, soft cake, emitting a pungent smell of sulfur.

The system's cold prompt sounded in Jack's mind:

[Battle Damage Report: Elevation of Hill 207.4 decreased by 2 meters.]

[Our position is still held.]

"Cough..."

The dirt shifted.

Jack pushed a hand out of the two-meter-deep layer of loose soil.

He brushed the dirt covering his face and took a huge gulp of air thick with gunpowder smoke.

His nostrils and mouth were full of sand; every cough expelled a puff of yellow smoke.

"Alive?"

he rasped.

"Not... not dead."

From a nearby mound of earth, Brother Bao crawled out like a zombie, shaking the dirt off his head.

"I think I saw my great-great-grandmother just now."

Dai Dai was also dug out; she was still tightly clutching the medical kit, although the box was already smashed flat.

"Is that the US military?"

Dai Dai pointed down the mountain.

As the smoke dissipated, dense figures appeared at the foot of the hill.

An entire reinforced battalion of the US Army.

They weren't crouching or using tactical movements; some even carried their rifles on their shoulders, chewing gum, and swaggering up the mountain.

In their eyes, this was no longer a battle; it was a cleanup operation.

No one could survive artillery fire of that density.

Nothing would remain on this mountain now except rotten flesh and broken bones.

"Two hundred meters."

Jack spat out the sand in his mouth, his eyes as cold as ice.

He yanked his old-fashioned rifle out of the dirt; the bolt mechanism was full of sand.

He tore off the hem of his shirt, vigorously wiped the bolt, and chambered a round with a *click*.

"One hundred fifty meters."

The scorched earth around them began to writhe.

One, two, three...

Figures, covered in dust and grime, crawled out of the depressions previously thought to be completely dead.

Some soldiers were deafened by the blasts and couldn't hear orders, only focusing on the movements of their comrades next to them.

Some soldiers had broken arms and used their legs to clamp grenades while twisting off the caps.

They had buried themselves in the earth, enduring suffocation and immense pressure, just waiting for this moment.

"Fifty meters."

The American captain leading the advance could already make out the texture of the crater in front of him.

He turned his head and said something with a smile to the soldiers behind him, probably a joke about where they would go drinking tonight.

The moment he turned back, the "scorched earth" beneath his feet suddenly split open.

A thin, dark hand shot out and grabbed his ankle.

The captain's smile froze on his face.

He looked down in terror and met a pair of bloodshot eyes burning with murderous intent.

"Go drink in hell."

Boom!

The soldier who had been ambushing beneath the surface layer of loose soil pulled the trigger on a 'glory round' (suicide charge).

This explosion sounded like a starting pistol.

"Fire!"

Jack roared, and the rifle in his hand spewed fire.

The previously silent hilltop instantly transformed into an erupting volcano.

Countless firing points erupted from beneath the feet and flanks of the US military, places they never expected.

Bullets and grenades rained down like a storm upon the unprepared invaders.

This wasn't a battle; it was a slaughter.

The US military collapsed instantly.

Their vaunted tactical proficiency vanished under an attack that defied all common sense.

The front-line soldiers fell like wheat stalks being cut; those behind them threw down their guns and scrambled down the hill screaming.

"Ghosts! They are ghosts!"

"They can't die! There's magic on this mountain!"

The American radio channels were filled with these hysterical cries.

They didn't fear steel or artillery, but they feared these specters crawling back from hell to claim their lives.

Jack leaped out of the crater, bayoneting an American machine gunner who tried to resist.

He stood on the flattened mountaintop, his feet sinking into the soft, scorched earth littered with enemy corpses.

Even though the mountain was two meters shorter, the spine of these men was higher than the sky.

The US military was terrified, so they resorted to the dirtiest tactics.

Since artillery shells couldn't kill them, they would use fire.

Several black attack planes roared low overhead; this time, they weren't dropping iron lumps but white fireworks that exploded in the air.

"It's white phosphorus! These beasts are violating the convention! Everyone, do not let it touch you! Do not touch it!"

Brother Bao's shrill cry changed pitch.

The white sparks drifted down slowly, like a persistent ulcer.

They looked almost beautiful, like a bizarre snowfall.

But touching them meant a nightmare.

An NPC soldier, codenamed 'Little Tiger,' was only seventeen.

While moving an ammunition box, a drop of blue spark splashed onto his left arm.

Sizzle—

There was no bright flame, only white smoke.

It was the sound of flesh burning through.

Little Tiger screamed and instinctively tried to slap it away.

But the fire seemed alive, burning from his palm up to his chest.

Water couldn't extinguish it; dirt couldn't bury it; it would burn until it consumed the bone, until the last trace of organic matter was gone.

"Don't come near! Stay away, everyone!"

Little Tiger backed away several steps as Jack rushed forward to save him.

His face was contorted in agony; it was torture directly applied to the nerve endings.

But he was frighteningly lucid; he knew the fire was contagious—whoever touched it would die.

"Aaaah—!"

Little Tiger let out a non-human roar.

He didn't collapse and roll around, nor did he call for help.

He fixed his gaze on a group of US soldiers who had just rushed the breach in the defensive line, turned, and charged.

He had become a human torch.

Blue flames enveloped his small body, his uniform crackling as it burned.

"Devil... this is the devil..."

The American soldiers who had just climbed up saw the most terrifying sight of their lives.

A 'monster,' engulfed in blue fire with flesh already charring and peeling off, charged toward them holding a bayonet.

On the face, already burned beyond recognition, only his eyes were terrifyingly bright.

"Run! Run!!!"

The mental defenses of the US military completely collapsed.

Their Thompson submachine guns were shaking; bullets struck Little Tiger, but they couldn't stop the rush of fire.

Little Tiger plunged into the enemy ranks.

He dropped his gun and tightly hugged an American combat engineer carrying a flamethrower.

Boom!

The flamethrower's fuel tank detonated.

A massive fireball engulfed over a dozen US soldiers nearby.

Jack knelt behind cover, his fingers digging into the dirt until his fingernails broke off.

He didn't cry; his tears had long since dried up.

He just stared fixedly at the slowly extinguishing fire.

A brief vacuum appeared on the battlefield.

Then, the US military retreated.

It wasn't a withdrawal; it was a rout.

They scrambled and crawled away from this cursed hilltop.

A slower American soldier was taken prisoner by Brother Bao.

This tall, six-foot-three white man was now huddled in the corner of the trench, trembling all over, his crotch soaked.

"Don't kill me... don't kill me..."

He babbled incoherently, his eyes vacant, completely insane.

"You aren't human... fire can't kill you... Oh God, I want to go home, there are devils here..."

Jack did not kill him.

He walked up to the prisoner, threw his rifle—which only had half a stock remaining—at his feet, and pulled a rock-hard potato from inside his coat, tossing it onto the man.

"Look closely."

Jack pointed at the potato, his voice as cold as iron.

"This is what we eat."

He then pointed to the pile of spent casings the US military had thrown down the mountain:

"That is what you fire."

"You use five hundred artillery shells to kill one of us."

Jack bent down, staring into the American's eyes.

"We use the heat of one potato to drive you back into the sea."

"Go back and tell your general."

"The mountains here, every single rock bites. The ghosts here are all vengeful spirits coming to claim your lives!!"

The system interface popped up at that moment, the red data shocking to behold:

[Battle Damage Update: 189th Division original strength over 9,000 personnel.]

[Current combat personnel: 1,420.]

[Positions lost: 13.]

[Day Seven]

Jack looked at that number.

One thousand four hundred people.

An original division was now reduced to less than two regiments.

Everyone was scattered, compressed into pitifully small combat teams, like iron nails scattered across the wilderness of Iron Field.

"The Division Commander said he wanted to smash the mountain into pieces and scatter them."

Brother Bao leaned against the trench wall, loading bullets into an empty magazine, his fingers covered in blood blisters.

"We are those broken stones now."

"Then let's use them to break their teeth."

Dai Dai wiped the dust off her medical kit and carefully rewrapped the few flower seeds.

Jack looked up toward the dim horizon.

It was the seventh day.

Eight more days to go.

Behind him on the position, those surviving 'ghosts'—wounded, starved down to nothing but bone—stood up again like silent statues, their muzzles all pointed outward.

"Van Fleet! There are fourteen hundred devils waiting for him on this mountain! Want to pass? Leave your lives behind!"