Chapter 365: Commander!
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
“Li Yang, tell me everything that happened that day!”
In Wild Wolf Town, a man in his fifties or sixties, wearing a one-eyed mask, spoke in a deep voice
“Uncle w.a.n.g, is there really a need to be so tense?”
Li Yang, a young man who looked to be in his late teens, decked out in gold and silver and with dyed green hair.
He stood with a defiant expression, hands in his pockets.
“You know what a dead soldier is?!”
Uncle w.a.n.g’s expression was grave. “Based on your description, those soldiers were ready to die to protect their officer. Do you realize what that means?”
Li Yang nonchalantly picked his ear with his pinky finger, “Doesn’t matter who he is, I won anyway!”
“You didn’t win!” Uncle w.a.n.g said, frustrated.
“If you were going to make a move, you should have finished it cleanly. You should have sent people to chase down and eliminate that officer too!”
“Hey, all his men are dead, what’s there to fear from a lone commander?”
Li Yang scoffed dismissively, seemingly not understanding Uncle w.a.n.g’s caution.
Uncle w.a.n.g shook his head, reminding him, “Do you know anything about their background”
“How can you be sure they were just a small team? What if they had backers, a larger group behind them…?”
“Heh!” Li Yang chuckled.
“Uncle w.a.n.g, you’ve gotten old, the bolder you get, the world belongs to the young…”
Seeing the old man’s increasingly grim expression, Li Yang tempered his tone slightly, ‘They couldn’t possibly be from a major power.”
“I observed them before taking action. They brought lots of food and supplies. Do you think soldiers from a major power would need to bring those things here?”
“Only locals would carry that much food…”
“Besides, when I went to the shelter, there were still fifteen of them guarding it, and the bodies in the shelter had been cleaned up…”
“Who from a major power would bother with that?”
“Clearly, they were locals, cleaning up the bodies to stay permanently…”
Uncle w.a.n.g frowned slightly, seeming to find some sense in his words, but still worried, ‘Dead soldiers…’
“There are only two ways to create dead soldiers…”
“One is through loyalty, where others are willing to die for someone, a master of psychological warfare…”
“The other is through threat, with families held hostage, leaving no choice but to become a dead soldier…”
“But from your description, those soldiers immediately protected their officer, which means these dead soldiers were the first kind…”
Li Yang laughed, “So what? However formidable he is, didn’t I still wipe out his men?”
“His weapons, his car…”
“His shelter, aren’t they all mine now?!”
Uncle w.a.n.g shook his head slightly, countering, “Do you think you have dead soldiers now?”
“Me?”
Li Yang paused, then pondered, “Gou Zi might…”
“Er Suo might as well…”
Uncle w.a.n.g sighed, “Now you understand, right? Making a group of people willingly die for you is too difficult. Even in our army before…”
He shook his head, “I don’t know if our troops would have been willing to die for their commander under such circ.u.mstances. Probably, our most likely response would have been to fight back freely, not to protect the commander at first instance…”
Li Yang was skeptical; he couldn’t believe that someone could inspire such loyalty in soldiers. How charismatic must that person be?
To be honest, he saw himself as a child of destiny, rising smoothly all the way.
Even he didn’t have such loyal soldiers, so why should others?
“Humph!”
Li Yang snorted, a hint of jealousy in his voice, “If he comes, I’ll kill him!”
“No, I’ll take the initiative. Starting now, I’ll send people to investigate and search for that guy’s whereabouts…”
Uncle w.a.n.g frowned, “Don’t forget, a radiation beast was led to our area…”
“I know, I’ll send people to lead it away. The one with the dead soldiers is our priority right now.”
While they were talking, a few hundred meters away, behind a mound of earth, a camouflaged soldier with binoculars was carefully observing the town.
After about ten minutes, the soldier retracted the binoculars and crawled backward until he reached the jungle, then stood up and left bending down.
Two kilometers from Wild Wolf Town, atop a small hill, a man in a sergeant’s uniform stood upright, waiting for something.
“Rustle—!”
Footsteps sounded in the distance. The soldier who had been covertly spying on Wild Wolf Town hurried back, standing directly behind the sergeant without saying a word or saluting.
After a while, three more soldiers returned, standing behind the sergeant.
The sergeant, however, rolled his eyes and remained motionless for over ten minutes before slowly returning to normal and silently leading his team away.
The group of five moved swiftly, crossing the hill and a forest, and arrived at an old road.
Upon spotting them, a figure suddenly leaped out from the side of the road.
The five army in group immediately stopped. The leading sergeant stepped forward, saluting, “Reporting, the first squad of the ‘Revenge Operation’ reconnaissance team is here to report!”
“Speak!” Zhao Yu nodded slightly.
“Wild Wolf Town is surrounded by a wall four meters high with barbed wire on top, three watchtowers at the north gate… there are two patrol teams…”
“We found our abandoned vehicles and weapons inside the town…”
“Based on information gathered by four scouts, we deduce that the total number of combatants is between three hundred and five hundred…”
“The trees within five hundred meters around the town have been cut down, apart from a few main roads, the rest are minefields…”
After a brief understanding of the situation, Zhao Yu turned and waved towards the woods on both sides, “Retreat!”
The next second, three camouflage cloths were pulled down, revealing the vehicles and soldiers hidden in the forest.
This time, the soldiers who came were not many, just ten people including the five from the reconnaissance team, forming two small squads of five each.
However, these men were elite, with four a.s.saulters and four recons. Each had undergone training worth 5 tech points, the cheapest among combat roles, but their professional quality was beyond that of ordinary special forces.
In addition to the eight specialized combat troops, there were two sergeant commanders, each trained with 10 tech points.
Initially, Zhao Yu had just wanted to try out the training, but the performance of the commanders exceeded his expectations.
Each commander was proficient in various tactics, although a sergeant-level could only command a squad of five.
But the primary use of these commanders was to fully harness the abilities of their subordinates.
Moreover, the commanders and soldiers didn’t need to communicate verbally; within a hundred meters, the chips in their heads could automatically send signals for communication and information transfer.
Zhao Yu also discovered that the chips in the commanders’ skulls seemed superior to those of ordinary soldiers, having greater intelligence and capable of conducting normal conversations with humans without revealing their robotic nature.
Previously, Zhao Yu mostly refrained from letting his soldiers converse with other humans, fearing too much talk might reveal their secrets.
Of course, these were secondary. For him, revenge was the key.
Thus, Zhao Yu invested all his tech points into the training 15 soldiers, all with sergeant commanders.
He formed three groups: a sniper team, an a.s.sault team, and a reconnaissance team.
Since being ambushed last time, Zhao Yu had focused on reconnaissance and intelligence, prioritizing the reconnaissance team.
The results satisfied him, at least deducing the number of armed personnel in Wild Wolf Town.
Three hundred to five hundred people, with heavy firepower; with his current strength, it seemed difficult to breach the town.
Zhao Yu sighed; the revenge mission couldn’t be completed yet. He needed further development.
The group of eleven got into three off-road vehicles and drove away.
After leaving their hiding spot and pa.s.sing a small hill, Zhao Yu stopped the convoy and turned to a commander, “Inform the sniper team to retreat!”
“Yes, Commander!”
This was another role of the commanders, to relay information to other commanders, with a range of a hundred meters.
Ordinary soldiers could only communicate with their own commander or report and transmit information.
Shortly after, a team of five soldiers with sniper rifles and supportive gears ran down from the hillsides flanking the road.
These were the snipers Zhao Yu had set up for his retreat, to prevent being discovered by the enemy and to have a means of retaliation.
As the sniper team’s first squad boarded the vehicles, the s.p.a.ce became cramped, but Zhao Yu, sitting in the co-driver’s seat, wasn’t affected.
“Head to the shelter first…”
Now being too close to Wild Wolf Town, Zhao Yu planned to drive the vehicles there before wrapping up.
There were tire tracks on the ground from earlier when the enemy had captured their vehicles, so no need to erase the tracks.
On the way back to the base, Zhao Yu made arrangements, deliberately taking detours to mislead the tracks in other directions.
By the time Zhao Yu returned to the base, he had been awake for nearly twenty hours and was extremely tired.
He arranged for the reconnaissance team to lie in wait near the base to prevent being discovered, then made some other defense preparations before finally falling into a deep sleep..