On the walls of Kulun City.
The White Bear Army's city defense commander stared at the scene before him, his face deathly pale.
"Hold the line! Hold it for me!"
He shouted hoarsely into the phone.
"Send the men from the second line of defense through the communication trenches! Hurry!"
"Where's the Discipline Squad? Send them in! Anyone who takes a single step back gets shot on the spot!"
But his orders could no longer turn the tide.
When the first wave of Feng Army soldiers emerged from the dust and smoke of the artillery barrage, the city defense commander's pupils shrank.
They were yellow-skinned soldiers!
They weren't particularly tall, but the Killing Intent in their eyes sent a chill through him.
What terrified him even more was that he saw more than a dozen soldiers in the Feng Army ranks carrying strange metal tanks on their backs, each holding a long nozzle.
"What is that?"
Before he could figure it out,
he saw those soldiers aim at the trench where the defenders were still putting up a desperate fight and pull the triggers.
Whoosh!
A dozen long dragons of fire burst forth, turning the entire trench into a sea of flames.
Piercing screams rang through the sky.
Countless White Bear soldiers, their bodies engulfed in flames, writhed in agony on the ground. The horrifying sight shattered the defenders' morale completely.
"They're demons! They're demons!"
The White Bear Army's line fell into utter chaos.
The soldiers screamed and wept, dropped their weapons, and fled toward the rear, each trying to outrun the others.
The Feng Army's main force trampled over enemy corpses and flames as they roared down into the trenches.
Just then, White Bear Army reinforcements arriving from the third line of defense collided head-on with the Feng Army in the narrow communication trenches.
"Kill!"
Chu Shixin charged at the front. He tossed aside his empty Boxer pistol, gripped his broadsword in both hands, and swung it down at a White Bear Army officer rushing toward him!
A flash of steel, a spray of blood!
The officer was cleaved in two, gun and all.
"Brothers! Follow me! Kill!"
Chu Shixin's ferocity ignited the fighting spirit of every Feng Army soldier in an instant.
Howling like wolves, they clashed with the enemy in the most primitive and bloodiest kind of hand-to-hand combat.
Swords hacked, rifle stocks smashed, bayonets stabbed!
Shouts, screams, and the clang of weapons merged into one inside the communication trench.
In the command tank in the distance, Zhang Xueming watched the entire battle through his binoculars. When he saw the infantry locked in a deadly struggle with the enemy, he grabbed the radio handset and gave the final order.
His voice was cold, yet carried the ruthless resolve to burn everything to ash.
"Whole army! Fix bayonets!"
The news of Zhang Xueming's battle beneath Kulun City sprouted wings and swept across the land overnight.
The Northern Prefecture regime tightly suppressed the news, but there was no way to keep something like this under wraps.
Merchants returning from the front, refugees fleeing their homes, even reporters from newspapers with a conscience—all spread the news of the Feng Army's crushing victory over the White Bear Army through every channel they could. It became flyers, newspaper extras, and whispers on street corners.
"Have you heard? Brigadier General Zhang Xueming beat the White Bear Army to a pulp beneath Kulun City!"
"That's not all! They say he took over ten thousand heads! The White Bear Army's bodies filled the trenches!"
"Really? The White Bear Army was so powerful, and they got beaten down just like that?"
"Absolutely! My second uncle's cousin's son is in Fengtian, and everyone there is talking about it! They say Brigadier General Zhang used a tactic called 'creeping barrage,' and some strange contraptions that spew fire, burning the White Bear Army until they were wailing for their mothers!"
For a time, Zhang Xueming's name became the hottest topic on every street and in every alley.
People no longer wondered if he was putting on a show, nor worried that he was a discarded pawn of the Northern Prefecture.
When a handwritten copy of the battle report describing how the Feng Army's flamethrowers had burned the enemy to a crisp began circulating among the people, everyone understood that this Brigadier General Zhang was serious.
He wasn't acting.
He was truly risking his life to fight for a way forward for this long-suffering nation.
And so, a surging undercurrent began to gather among the people.
"Let's donate money to Brigadier General Zhang! He must be short on funds for the war!"
"Exactly! We can't go to the battlefield and kill the enemy, but surely we can do our part and chip in for military expenses!"
Merchants' guilds, local gentry, and even ordinary people across the country began raising funds for Zhang Xueming of their own accord.
They didn't know where to send the money, but they believed that if they put their hearts into it, they would find a way.
Chengde.
A young man stormed into the room, clutching a crumpled newspaper.
"Dad! Look! You have to look!"
His father, a shrewd, capable-looking middle-aged man, sat in a grand armchair, lazily smoking a pipe. He didn't even raise his eyes.
"What's all the fuss? Is the sky falling?"
"This is more important than the sky falling!" The young man slapped the newspaper down on the table. "Brigadier General Zhang won at Kulun! A great victory! He wiped out the White Bear Army! The score's settled for what happened in Wulan City!"
His father blew out a ring of smoke and gave a nonchalant, "Oh."
The young man grew frantic and snatched the pipe from his father's hand.
"Dad! What kind of attitude is that? Brigadier General Zhang is risking his life up there, avenging us, and all you can say is 'oh'?"
"What do you expect me to do? Beat gongs and drums and march in the streets? Then wait for those Northern Prefecture lackeys to come and ransack our house?" His father shot him a sidelong glance.
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