Chapter 57: Brothers in Arms

To many newly enlisted recruits, some of the veteran soldiers in the company appear chillingly aloof. In daily life, they only joke and laugh among themselves, almost entirely ignoring greenhorns like them.

This led some recruits to secretly ask me if those veterans looked down upon them.

Every time, I would answer them earnestly and with absolute certainty: Rest assured! That is definitely not the case.

However, I would never tell them the cruel reality: the reason those veterans ignored them was simply because they could not bear the heart-wrenching agony of seeing the comrades they had just grown familiar with killed right before their eyes.

Rather than facing that, it was better not to get close to each other at all.

Yet, the aloof attitude of the veterans ultimately served no purpose.

No matter how hard they distanced themselves from the recruits, once everyone fought side by side for long enough, it was almost inevitable to forge that profound, life-or-death bond of brotherhood.

...Excerpt from Hu Biao's diary collection "Hu's Words"...

"Damn it! Why hasn't Commander Xiang and the others arrived yet? If they don't get here soon, they might as well just come collect the corpses for Third Company!"

Struggling to fish a few rounds of ammunition from his pocket to reload his empty Hanyang rifle, the two-hundred-odd-pound Huang Ahdi cursed aloud.

Even though he knew that, despite feeling like this battle had already dragged on for ages, they had actually only charged onto the position a short while ago—perhaps for a mere minute or two. The sensation of time stretching was merely an illusion brought on by the grueling, arduous combat.

Truth be told, among the seven time-travelers, Huang Ahdi was practically the only one who still had the mental bandwidth to worry about when the main force of the 804th Regiment would arrive from behind.

As for Company Commander Hu Biao, that fellow was nothing more than a street-stall peddler; what on earth did he know about tactical command?

At that very moment, a few meters ahead of Huang Ahdi, Hu Biao was clutching a pistol, pressed flat behind a sandbag, shouting frantically while firing alongside another brother at the enemy ahead, desperately blocking several Japanese soldiers from launching a counter-charge toward their sector.

Ever since he took the lead in charging forward, Hu Biao had done nothing aside from screaming "Charge, charge, charge!" without making a single tactical adjustment.

Actually, this style of command wasn't entirely wrong.

The critical issue was that by now, after they had torn a gap nearly fifty meters wide into the Dunwu Temple position, the casualties in Third Company were simply too heavy. Huang Ahdi had no idea how many men were even left, and the momentum was already severely flagging.

Forget about continuing to expand the breach; they were barely holding on against the frantic Japanese counter-attacks, which made Huang Ahdi extremely anxious and panicked.

Therefore, if the regiment's main force didn't arrive soon, all of Third Company's efforts would go down the drain.

Finished cursing, Huang Ahdi prepared to turn his head and glance backward to see if he could catch a glimpse of the main force.

It was rather helpless, really. To him—previously just a corporate cog slaving away in a factory—the combat had been far too tense and frantic.

From the start of the charge until now, he hadn't even had a spare second to look back.

Just as Huang Ahdi was about to turn his head, the corner of his eye caught a sudden flash of fire erupting right in front of Hu Biao. It seemed the Japanese had lobbed a grenade from a knee mortar, which detonated barely a meter away from him.

Hu Biao was quick-witted, though. Right before the fragmentation shell exploded, he had instinctively flattened himself behind the sandbag, narrowly dodging the lethal crisis.

However, the brother firing alongside him—Liu Aiai, the very same guy who, on the night they ate at Yun Cuisine, had vividly described how delicious his auntie's mapo tofu was—did not share such good fortune.

The explosive shockwave blasted him backward several feet, and he crashed straight onto Huang Ahdi, causing the handful of bullets Huang Ahdi had just pulled out of his pocket to scatter all over the ground.

Shoving Liu Aiai's heavy body off himself, Huang Ahdi's first instinct was to save his comrade.

He quickly realized that was impossible. First, multiple shrapnel pieces had shredded the man's face into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp, and he was clearly beyond saving.

Second, before the dust and sand kicked up by the explosion had even settled, a Japanese soldier seized the moment and charged forward with a fixed bayonet, mere seven or eight meters away from Hu Biao.

At that moment, in the surrounding area, the other brothers were also locked in desperate, grueling struggles.

By the time Hu Biao, their so-called commander, managed to scramble back to his feet, he would likely take a bayonet straight through his chest.

Seeing this, Huang Ahdi discarded his unloaded rifle, whipped a heavy saber off Liu Aiai's back, and roared as he lunged forward to meet the enemy.

The Japanese soldier also abandoned his plan to finish off Hu Biao and thrust his bayonet directly at Huang Ahdi.

Disregarding the glittering bayonet bearing down on him, Huang Ahdi swung his saber wildly toward the Japanese soldier's face, throwing caution to the wind with a mindset of taking the enemy down with him.

This guy's fighting style was purely a last resort.

He had a crystal-clear understanding of his own capabilities: did he really expect to out-fence a well-trained, elite Japanese soldier?

Right now, he was gambling. He was betting that the flashy saber techniques he had once learned while playing the role of an anonymous Song dynasty foot soldier at Hengdian Film Studios would prove somewhat useful in actual combat.

He was betting that the little devil before him wasn't willing to die together, and would therefore pull back his rifle to parry, allowing him to gain the upper hand.

Put bluntly, Huang Ahdi's tactic was to put his worthless life on the line and see who was more vicious and unhinged.

And the result? Barely two moves later, his saber was knocked aside by the Japanese soldier, and the bayonet flashed lightning-fast toward his chest.

"What the hell! I didn't even last three moves."

That was the exasperated thought that flashed through Huang Ahdi's mind in a split second before he realized he was about to meet his maker...

******

The two-hundred-pound Huang Ahdi ultimately did not die, because at that crucial juncture, Commander Xiang and the main force finally surged onto the position.

Who knows who fired the shot that dropped the little devil about to skewer him?

As numerous roaring Sichuanese brothers, gripping bayonets and swinging heavy sabers, surged past him and charged at the enemy, a shell-shocked Huang Ahdi collapsed onto the ground.

He panted heavily, lacking even the strength to twitch a finger.

The battle wasn't over yet, but pushing it this far had completely exhausted every ounce of his strength. For a rookie's very first battle, he figured he had performed well beyond his limits.

As for Hu Biao, Uncle Bo, Black Star, AT, Hammer, and the five other time-travelers—and indeed, the surviving soldiers of Third Company—they all reacted the exact same way.

Rushing through artillery fire in a short span of time, executing reckless breakthroughs, and fighting the beast-like Japanese had drained their physical stamina and mental spirit completely.

Only after the main force finally caught up did they feel a crushing wave of exhaustion wash over them.

Along with the dull, throbbing pain from cuts, concussions, and gunshot wounds sustained earlier.

It left them somewhat bewildered: why hadn't they felt these injuries before? How had they managed to fight with such ferocity just moments ago?

Only Little Chao was different, because he was still straddling the Japanese soldier whose ear he had bitten off, his hands locked tightly around the enemy's neck.

Even at this point, the little devil's face had turned cyan; he was clearly already choked to death.

This state persisted for nearly another half minute.

When Hu Biao pulled out his dwindling supply of coarse tobacco, intending to hand one to Huang Ahdi beside him, he inadvertently caught sight of the scene from afar.

He immediately shouted at the top of his lungs:

"Chao, Chao, you can let go now! That Jap is already dead."

Hearing those words, Little Chao tipped backward and collapsed. Don't worry, the kid wasn't dead; it was simply that after such a frenzy, he no longer had the strength to even sit upright.

He could only lie there, his chest heaving violently.

About ten minutes passed before deafening cheers erupted.

Feeling as though he had finally recovered a shred of strength, Hu Biao propped himself up and scrambled to his feet. In the distance, he could see roughly four hundred and fifty to six hundred Japanese soldiers fighting and retreating toward the rear.

After a bitter, grueling battle, their 804th Regiment had finally recaptured Dunwu Temple.

Yet to achieve this goal—excluding the current survivors of Third Company—the main force of the regiment was now reduced to a maximum of three hundred and seventy or eighty men.

As for how many were left in Third Company? With a mixture of anticipation and dread, Hu Biao shouted at the top of his lungs:

"Third Company, roll call! One."

"Two." Exerting every ounce of his strength, Huang Ahdi immediately yelled out, officially initiating the headcount of the survivors after the bloody battle.

"Seven." When the voice reached his side, Black Star chimed in.

As soon as he finished, he sucked in a sharp breath of air—he had taken a rifle butt to his left shoulder during the melee, and the slightest movement sent sharp pains shooting through him.

"Twelve," Hammer shouted.

During the combat, as Black Star's assistant gunner, he had long since been separated from his primary gunner by an unknown distance.

"Twenty-three," AT replied weakly, his mind flashing back to the look of sheer disbelief on the young deserter Wu Yenian's face before he shot him dead, a heavy ache twisting in his chest.

"Thirty-one," Little Chao spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and reported back with indignant grievance.

"Thirty-ine," Uncle Bo responded as he slumped outside the position, cradling his standard Mauser rifle. He was uninjured, and his stamina consumption from long-range sniping hadn't been severe, but the psychological toll had been immense.

When the echoing roll call reached this point, it stopped completely.

This meant that, coupled with the three men operating the Maxim heavy machine gun in the cotton field behind them, Third Company—which originally numbered 109 men—now had only 42 voices left to answer.

Realizing this, Hammer, the honest newcomer who had just joined this time, felt as though a blade were twisting inside him. He collapsed onto the ground right then and there and burst into bitter tears.

Because these men were their brothers-in-arms.

And across this battlefield, the muffled, suppressed sobs of a grown man sounded far more heart-wrenching than a woman's wailing...