71: Chapter 72 The Insurmountable Zero Position

The momentum of the great counterattack had been blocked.

The moon was completely obscured by smoke and dust,

and the entire position was plunged into a deathly dark red.

"Company Commander, we can't advance anymore."

Brother Bao crawled back, dripping wet all over.

It wasn't sweat; it was blood,

some of his own, but more of the enemy's.

Less than three hundred meters directly in front of them

was the Zero Position.

That was the final defensive line the Americans had built on Hill 597.9,

and it was the hardest knot to untie.

There was no dirt there; it was all cement poured into rock crevices.

The Americans had deployed several m2 heavy machine guns on the mountainside,

forming a crossfire net with no dead zones.

"Da da da da da!"

Tracer rounds wove a net of death across the night sky.

As soon as anyone dared to show their head above a shell crater,

that string of red meteors would instantly tear them to shreds.

Jack watched his comrades fall on the path of the charge.

They were only a dozen meters from the enemy bunker,

but those dozen meters had become an impassable gulf between life and death.

"Brother Bao, can you calculate any dead zones?"

Jack held his rifle, his eyes bloodshot.

Brother Bao opened the calculator built into his system.

He replicated all the terrain in this area in his mind,

slopes, shell craters, and protruding rocks.

One second.

Two seconds.

[Calculation Result: Under current conditions, the success rate for a frontal breakthrough is 0.01%.]

[Success rate for flanking maneuver is 0%.]

[System Prompt: This position's firepower intensity has exceeded the limit a single soldier can bear.]

Brother Bao closed the panel and slammed his fist hard into the dirt.

"There are no dead zones. Their machine guns are layered,

and the field of fire for every machine gun overlaps by at least three layers.

Unless we have tanks, or heavy howitzers directly hitting the bunker observation ports."

But they had nothing.

Only a few boxes of grenades delivered in the rain, and an entrenching shovel whose edge was nearly worn away.

"The sky is about to lighten."

The Company Commander looked up.

His deeply set eye sockets revealed a heartbreaking despair.

"If we can't take the Zero Position before dawn,

the counterattack force will become live targets for American aircraft after daybreak."

This wasn't just about gaining or losing one position.

This concerned the success or failure of the entire Battle of Triangle Hill.

If the counterattack failed, all those who had died in the tunnels,

the one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five people who sacrificed themselves for a single apple, would have died in vain.

"I'll go."

A weak voice sounded.

Dai Dai pushed herself up against the rock wall and stood.

Her right hand was wrapped in a thick bandage oozing yellow fluid. Her face was as white as paper, and she struggled even to stand steady.

"What kind of joke is that? You're a Medic."

Jack grabbed her.

"A Medic is also a soldier."

Dai Dai looked at the wounded lying on the ground, unable to even moan.

"Brother Bao said there are no dead zones because the American machine gunners are constantly watching the surface. If... if someone could draw their fire?"

"That's called suicide!"

Brother Bao roared.

He hated this kind of illogical sacrifice the most.

"It's useless, even suicide is useless. Their firepower is too intense. You won't make it five meters out of the crater before you're shredded."

Just then, faint footsteps sounded from the rear of the position.

A soldier covered in blood walked over.

He was the only man left from the second platoon.

He clutched a bundle of explosives in his hand.

"Company Commander, let my assault team try."

His voice was calm.

This calmness carried more power than any roar.

The Company Commander was silent for a long time.

He looked at the exhausted players,

looked at the young men who had lived pampered lives in the real world, now looking like ghosts.

"This battle might not leave you any revival coins."

The Company Commander's voice trembled in the cold wind.

"Who wants to go?"

Jack stood up first.

He picked up a tripod machine gun someone had dropped,

it was his only reliance now.

Brother Bao sighed and also stood up.

He slung the heavy radio onto his back; that was his dignity as a soldier.

Dai Dai didn't speak,

she just silently injected the last dose of morphine from her medical kit into a severely wounded man's arm.

"Su Yun, you perverse bastard."

Jack cursed under his breath,

but a grim smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"How did you come up with this kind of plot?"

In the game backend, Su Yun watched the 'Awakening Value' continuously climb.

He saw the players who had originally just wanted to 'have some fun'

now resolutely walking toward that certain-death position.

They no longer discussed tactics.

They no longer calculated scores.

They only knew that if they didn't take that bunker,

the hurdle in their hearts would never be crossed in this lifetime.

"For victory."

The Company Commander drew his bayonet, the tip pointing toward the Zero Position spitting fire.

"Charge!"

A signal flare rose again.

But this final signal was no longer bright red; it was a tragic white.

Jack rushed out of the shell crater.

The wind shrieked past his ears.

Bullets kicked up sprays of mud around his feet.

He saw comrades ahead fall one by one, but he didn't stop.

In that moment, he finally understood the new recruit named Hu Xiudao.

Sometimes, people don't need logic.

When hatred and mission boil the blood within the body,

the so-called success rate becomes the most ridiculous cold joke.

"Die, bastards!"

Jack pulled the trigger, letting out his final roar before that desperate dawn.

The Zero Position was still spewing fire.

That m2 heavy machine gun seemed tireless,

when the barrel burned red, they swapped it for another; when the belt ran out, they connected another.

It was wedged between two massive rocks,

its field of fire sealing off the entire charge path.

Jack lay in a shallow crater barely deep enough to cover his backside,

his mouth full of the metallic taste of mud.

The tripod machine gun in his hands was long out of ammunition;

now, what he clutched was a rock pried from a pile of corpses.

The machine gun fortress opposite was a wall,

a wall built of steel and gunpowder.

No matter how many times you slammed your head against it, the head would always be the one to break.

"Withdraw..."

Brother Bao's voice came through the walkie-talkie,

mixed with static from the current, it sounded like he had aged decades.

"Company Commander, it's morning. If we don't withdraw now, this small seed group will be completely wiped out."

Withdraw? Where to withdraw?

Behind them was the tunnel, and behind the tunnel was Wusheng Mountain.

To retreat one step meant throwing away the apples bought with the lives of those one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five men,

throwing away all their comrades who suffocated, starved, or died in agony in the tunnels.

The Company Commander didn't speak.

His face was blackened by smoke, its original color unrecognizable,

only his eyes,

staring fiercely at the fire-spitting bunker, were about to crack from the strain.

"Who else?"

The Company Commander's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of broken iron scraping together.

"Who else can move?"

No one moved.

It wasn't fear of death. They truly couldn't move anymore.

They had launched six charges that night.

The assault team, originally over a hundred men strong,

now, those who could still breathe couldn't even make up a fraction of the original number.

The rest either lacked limbs or were nearly bled dry.

That despair was more piercing than the winter wind.

In that deathly silence, a hand was raised.

The hand was thin, the wrist slender like a dry stick,

the cuff of the sleeve was worn to shreds, revealing a section of skin frozen purple.

"Company Commander... I'll go."

The voice wasn't loud; it even carried a soft, gentle tone with a Sichuan accent.

Jack strained to turn his neck.

The speaker was a Communication Runner. Jack had seen this little NPC before.

For the entire duration since entering the instance, this kid had followed closely behind the Company Commander, carrying the radio.

He was usually as quiet as a gourd, only opening his mouth when sending messages or confirming coordinates.

He wasn't tall, had a round face, and always had two patches of frostbite-induced ruddy cheeks, looking barely over twenty.

"You are a Communication Runner, Xiao Guang!"

The Company Commander stared at him.

"Your mission is to relay orders."

"The orders can't be relayed anymore."

Xiao Guang grinned, revealing a set of white teeth that looked strikingly bright against his dark face.

"The phone lines are cut, and the walkie-talkie is out of battery. The only order now is to take out that firepower point."

As he spoke, he unhooked the last few grenades from his waist and reached for the explosive tube next to the Company Commander.

"I'm going to deliver a message."

He said it so lightly, as if he were just delivering a letter to the next village.

The Company Commander's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

He wanted to stop him, his hand stretched halfway into the air, but it froze.

There was no time.

The light on the horizon was growing increasingly harsh,

and the sound of American aircraft engines could already be faintly heard from above the clouds.

"I'll go too."

Two more soldiers stood up. They were Xiao Dengliang and Wu Sanyang.

"Covering team!"

Jack didn't know where he found the strength, but he violently pushed his upper body up from the mud.

"I'll cover you! I still have... I still have one grenade!"

That was the life-saving item he had been unwilling to use.

Xiao Guang glanced at Jack and nodded.

"Let's go."

There were no grand pronouncements, no stirring background music.

These three men, plus Jack, the 'burden' dragging a crippled leg, like four ants, crawled toward the fire-spitting steel behemoth.

Crawl.

They could only crawl.

If their bodies rose even an inch higher,

the dense bullets would slice off their scalps.

Jack followed behind Xiao Guang.

His face pressed against the cold frozen earth, he wriggled forward using his hands and feet among the piles of corpses.

These five hundred meters were the longest road Jack had ever walked in his life.

Every meter was red.

It was the blood left by the comrades who had charged ahead.

Some had already frozen into ice shards, painfully grating against his knees;

some were still warm, sticking stickily to his hands.

"Whoosh—"

A flare exploded overhead.

The pale white light illuminated the earth in minute detail.

"Get down!"

Jack roared.

It was too late.

Wu Sanyang on the left flank was just about to shift forward,

when a burst from a heavy machine gun swept over.

His body shuddered violently, as if struck by an invisible giant hammer,

he tumbled backward twice and lay still.

"Sanyang!"

Xiao Dengliang's eyes turned red as he started to rush forward.

"Don't move!"

Xiao Guang held him down tightly,

his face buried in the dirt, his voice squeezed out between his teeth,

"Don't look up! That's the opening he bought with his life! Crawl forward!"

Jack looked at Wu Sanyang's corpse.

That wasn't data refreshing.

That was a living person,

a man who minutes ago was adjusting his puttees, now turned into a blurred mass of flesh and blood.

Fear, like a cold hand, gripped Jack's heart.

He wanted to retreat.

Even Jack, the one who treasured potatoes,

even Jack, who dared to snipe at a tank, at this moment, facing absolute death, instinctively wanted to flee.

This was fundamentally unwinnable.

That was an m2 heavy machine gun! That was a cement bunker!

That was the most vicious fruit borne by modern industrial civilization!

How could a few bodies and a few crude, earth-made grenades possibly win?

"Scared?"

Xiao Guang ahead suddenly stopped for a moment.

He didn't turn back; his voice drifted with the wind.

"If you're scared, stay down and don't move."

"We're going."

Having said that, he continued to crawl forward.

His movements were slow and clumsy,

his elbows grinding against the broken stones until they were bloody and mangled,

dragging two long blood trails behind him.

Jack looked at that retreating figure.

Small and thin, his uniform ragged,

on his back was the heavy, now dead, walkie-talkie.

It was this silhouette, amidst the hail of bullets,

in this desperate situation where death was certain, that seemed like a mountain, firmly pinning down the legs that wanted to flee.

"Damn it..."

Jack cursed,

tears mixed with mud and water flowed into his mouth, tasting bitterly salty.

"I'm a player... I can revive... What the hell do I have to be afraid of!"

He gritted his teeth, clutching the grenade tightly, and followed using his hands and feet.

Forty meters left.

The bunker's firing port was now clearly visible.

The flames spewing from the dark muzzle were hot enough to feel the burn.

"Cover!"

Xiao Dengliang shouted,

and suddenly leaped up from the side,

throwing all the grenades in his hand out at once.

He was using his life

to draw the machine gun's fire.

"Da da da da da!"

The machine gun swiveled its barrel.

Xiao Dengliang fell into a pool of blood.

But those few seconds were enough.

Xiao Guang darted forward a dozen meters like a leopard, using the dust cloud as cover.

Thirty meters. Twenty meters. Ten meters.

Close!

Jack's heart felt like it was leaping into his throat.

Just then, several grenades were suddenly thrown out from the bunker.

Those were American defensive grenades.

"Watch out!"

Jack only managed to shout those two words.

The blast wave kicked up a cloud of dirt and stone.

Xiao Guang's body was violently thrown up and then slammed heavily back onto the ground.

He lay still.

The surrounding world fell into an eerie silence.

Only that machine gun

was still roaring tirelessly,

mocking these presumptuous challengers.

Lost?

Jack collapsed in the mud pit,

looking at the figure lying ten meters away, despair flooded him like a tide.

Was this the end?

All the sacrifices, all the persistence, ultimately collapsing ten cold meters away?

No...

The figure moved slightly.