Arc of Fire

Following this, Wang Zhong gained an even deeper understanding of the role of heavy artillery.

It was just a salvo, but out of four shells, two missed their mark; it was actually the last one to fall that hit the enemy smack dab in the middle.

Even so, for the next hour, the enemy’s armored reconnaissance battalion couldn’t do a damn thing except rescue the wounded, collect equipment from the wounded and the dead, and push the destroyed vehicles to the side of the road—three tasks that kept them incredibly busy.

At first, Wang Zhong paid close attention to the enemy’s next move, but after a while, he let out a sigh, pulled up a chair, and sat down by the window to look at the sky.

Officially he was looking at the sky, but he was actually still using a bird’s eye view to watch the enemy.

His mentality had changed, now feeling like a child squatting on a school playground, having just destroyed an ant’s nest with a bottle of mineral water, and now watching with relish as the ants attempted to save themselves.

In truth, an armored reconnaissance battalion didn’t pose any threat to Loktov’s defenses to begin with, and now that they’d been shelled by heavy artillery, they were even less of a threat.

At eleven o’clock in the morning, it seemed like the enemy had finally regrouped, and they spread out across the fields.

Then they encountered the first “present” Wang Zhong had prepared for them: the fake minefield.

No, that’s not right, the minefield close to the main road had been laid by the urban defense forces, and those were definitely real.

Vasily also reported that they had buried two boxes of real mines in the fake minefield, mixed with a bunch of pickle jar lids to confuse the enemy.

That should give the Prussians something to worry about.

As Wang Zhong was thinking about this, the enemy infantry searching on both sides of the highway stepped on the mines that the urban defense forces had laid.

One man was blown three meters up into the air, and his legs flew even farther, crossing the road and landing on the other side.

Wang Zhong was dumbfounded, “You’re telling me this is a mine?”

Through the optic of the artillery sight, Dmitry said, “Normal. This thing has a 300-gram charge, not killing those nearby would be considered a malfunction.”

Wang Zhong was shocked, “Were these anti-tank mines that were laid?”

“Anti-personnel mines!” Vasily said, “I personally buried two boxes, and they were definitely anti-personnel mines.”

What kind of infantry needs 300 grams of explosives to be killed?

Could it be that the Prussians have Aesir gods? Valkyries? That can’t be killed without using this much explosive?

No, it might just be the typical Russian brute-force approach.

Wang Zhong continued to watch the enemy, and after one person was killed, the rest of the enemy silently withdrew from the minefield. It was at this moment that the scattered enemy troops found the signs Vasily had planted.

The soldier who discovered the sign called an officer over, probably to ask what to do.

After a brief exchange, the soldier grabbed the sign, looking like he was preparing to pull it out to show to a higher-ranking officer.

No sooner said than done, the ground surged upward! And then it exploded like a burst balloon!

The fountain of soil sent the group of Prosen soldiers flying into the air.

Excited by the sound, Vasily exclaimed, “That sound! Could it be the big one I buried getting detonated? I buried a whole block of TNT underneath, over two kilograms!”

Wang Zhong was sweating bullets, “You’re cruel, man.”

“Do you know how far the enemy flew?” he asked.

Vasily: “How far?”

Dmitry interjected, “I saw one land on the top of a barn ten meters away.”

“Hahaha!” Vasily slapped his thigh and laughed loudly.

Wang Zhong: “Pay attention to the monitoring, you idiot, I think you’re planning to pick dung for the rest of your life!”

Vasily hurriedly adjusted his headphones properly.

The recent explosion had the entire Prosen Army hitting the dirt, thinking that the heavy artillery bombardment had started again.

An officer was yelling something, and then the soldiers started to get up in twos and threes.

A messenger ran along the line in which the troops were spread, shouting the new orders.

Wang Zhong guessed that it was probably instructing all the soldiers to stay away from those minefield warning signs.

The enemy began to retreat, stopping only two hundred meters away from the minefield, almost leaving Wang Zhong’s field of vision.

Dmitry said happily, “The enemy has retreated! It looks like they don’t have engineers equipped to handle the mines!”

At that moment, Yegorov, who had been manning the phone, also came to the window, holding binoculars to observe the enemy, and said in astonishment, “If it was me, I would probably send out a reconnaissance team to follow along the minefield, to see how wide it is and where it ends.”

No sooner had he spoken, two half-tracked vehicles loaded with soldiers headed northwest and southeast, clearly the enemy commander had the same idea as Yegorov.

Wang Zhong marveled, “If we had more Divine Arrows, we could take out those two reconnaissance teams, or at least damage the vehicles to slow down the enemy’s scouting.”

Yegorov: “But we don’t have any Divine Arrows.”

Suddenly Vasily shouted, “I hear the enemy at the front communicating with their superiors, their report says… Let me check!”

As he spoke, he flipped through the notebook that Wang Zhong had personally led a team to capture yesterday, checking the recorded radio call signs and location codes.

“The armored reconnaissance battalion is reporting to the headquarters of the 15th Division, saying that Loktov is covered by Army Group-level artillery firepower, and there’s a massive number of mines! The intelligence on the defending force’s numbers here may be wrong!”

After translating, Vasily looked at Wang Zhong excitedly, “General, we’ve been mistaken for an entire Army Group!”

Wang Zhong smiled slightly, “Mainly thanks to the B4 heavy artillery.”

Yegorov was impressed, “They certainly wouldn’t imagine that there’s heavy artillery here just because the commander is the Crown Prince’s wastrel brother.”

Vasily was about to chime in when suddenly he pressed his headphone to his ear, listening intently, apparently someone was speaking again.

While listening, he frantically flipped through the notebook and after a moment said, “The 15th Division’s headquarters says that the engineers will get here around three o’clock in the afternoon!”

The officers in the room collectively checked their watches.

Yegorov: “It’s three o’clock. There are only five hours left until dark, probably not enough time to clear all these minefields. Looks like the first day of combat will end like this.”

Wang Zhong: “Do we have any firepower that can reach the engineers clearing the mines?”

Yegorov: “Our heavy machine guns have a max range of 1000, but experienced veterans can lob shots up to 1500, but… the accuracy is completely unreliable.”

Wang Zhong: “No matter, don’t expose the firepower points we really want to use. Set up the machine guns in temporary positions, and lob fire to cause trouble for the enemy engineers.”

“If it’s just to cause trouble,” Yegorov blinked his eyes, “you can lob from behind obstacles, making the gun and the shooter invisible to the enemy. Of course, rookies can’t do this, but the few machine gunners who survived in my old unit can manage it. Anyway, it’s all about probability; as long as you get the bullets close to the enemy, leave the rest to Saint Andrew.”

Saint Andrew, the founder of the Eastern Holy Church’s Secular faction, was also the only one from the Secular faction who had been sainted.

Wang Zhong: “Good, get on it right away!”

Yegorov immediately went to issue the orders.

At this time, Vasily asked, “What do we do before the enemy engineers arrive? Just wait around?”

Wang Zhong: “Seems so… right?”

Vasily: “What was it like between the enemy’s two assaults at Peniye?”

Wang Zhong: “I was running a fever then, went to sleep after the enemy retreated, so don’t ask me.”

Vasily was shocked: “A fever? The fever I’m thinking of?”

“Yes!”

“And you still won? Now that you’re not feverish, the enemy’s in trouble.” Even Dmitry, who had been intently observing the enemy, couldn’t help turning back to say.

Vasily: “No, maybe you fight better when you have a fever.”

Wang Zhong glared at Vasily, thinking to himself, damn it, this asshole’s mouth really does deserve a beating, any other general might have had him shot by now.

Just then, Yegorov returned, so Wang Zhong took the opportunity to pass the question to him: “Yegorov, the new recruits are asking how to pass the time between battles.”

Yegorov immediately answered: “Clean your guns. The first time I went to battle, that’s what the veterans taught me. We were fighting the civil war as part of the Secular faction’s army, defending a place called Charytin.

“The enemy launched a total of seven attacks in one day, each repelled in about 20 minutes, then they would take an hour and a half to organize a new assault.

“So from four in the morning until nine at night when it got dark, after repelling the first attack, I asked the veterans why the enemy didn’t just attack immediately. They told me the enemy needs time to regroup the forces that ran back, which takes about an hour, then resupply ammunition and form a new attack, another half an hour gone.

“And during this time, the first thing we as defenders needed to do was clean our guns; certainly a lot of sand and dust would have gotten inside during the battle, and without a proper cleaning, you might jam the next time you fire, and then you’re dead.”

After listening to this, Vasily looked down and counted on his fingers, then asked, “From four to nine, seventeen hours, each assault taking two hours, they attacked seven times, what about the remaining three hours?”

The room grew quiet.

Wang Zhong somewhat regretted having chosen to focus on cultivating this troublesome soldier.

Well, just a little.

Yegorov: “The enemy needs to eat, you idiot! You’re on dung duty tonight, that’ll teach you!”

Vasily’s face showed his misery, and the smile shifted to Wang Zhong’s face.

At that moment, the radio suddenly rang again, and Vasily hurriedly put on the headset to listen, flipping through the notebook while listening: “This is… The 15th Armored Division is requesting the Air Force… to destroy something unknown. I guess they’re targeting our howitzers.”

Wang Zhong: “Any response from the Air Force?”

“No response yet… wait, here it comes. The Air Force is asking the 15th Armored Division to provide the location.”

Wang Zhong: “It seems our tactic of sealing off reconnaissance is working.”

There really was no place around Loktov where you could see the two positions of B4; they could only rely on aerial reconnaissance.

Vasily: “The 15th retorted, isn’t aerial reconnaissance supposed to be the Air Force’s responsibility? Do the Prussians have bad relations between their army and Air Force?”

Yes, their inter-service rivalry was quite bad, a common issue among many countries during World War II.

Vasily listened for a while longer and said, “No more information. Both sides are silent.”

Wang Zhong: “Tell Brother Peter to be extra vigilant for enemy reconnaissance planes. And try to fake more artillery positions.”

Yegorov immediately passed down the orders.

Vasily: “Besides cleaning guns, what else do you do to pass the time?”

Really, are you still on this topic?

Yegorov: “Play cards.”

“Play cards?” Vasily exclaimed.

“Yes, it’s better than drinking. Either way, it’s just killing time, it makes no difference. War is like that, mostly doing nothing, and it’s only that one percent of the time when you’re licking blood off the knife edge, but you never know when that one percent will come, so you’re on edge all day long.”

Wang Zhong: “Did you bring any playing cards?”

Yegorov pulled a deck of playing cards from his shirt pocket.

“On the front line, we usually gamble with cigarettes.” he said.

————

In the afternoon, Yegorov contentedly stashed away the cigarettes he had just won into his document case: “I’ve now beaten a legend—a future legendary general.”

Wang Zhong tossed the playing cards onto the table with a click of his tongue: “I don’t smoke much anyway, I let you win on purpose!”

“Oh, is that so?” Yegorov said proudly, “With your card-playing skills, you’ll quickly become an easy target.”

Just then, Dmitry, who had been at the artillery sight all this time, shouted: “A Number One tank! A barricade-breaking vehicle modified from a Number One tank! The engineers are coming up!”

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