Mission, Sweating Bullets

Mission ⑨ · Sweating Bullets

Preface:

Our people are being scourged by hateful invaders. Hatred of the enemy who invades us is the most sacred and humane of feelings. Yet this feeling is so painful by nature, so tormenting to the soul, that God forbade anyone from ever experiencing it again.

—Pavel Batov | In Battles and Campaigns

What cannot be won on the battlefield cannot be won at the negotiating table. That is the lesson history has left for posterity.

Judas still clung to his fantasies. To him, this zero-sum game was a high-stakes gamble.

The Guiyi Sect's current bargaining chip was the more than four million people living in the thirty-seven cities and towns in the vast wetlands of the Ax Peak Mountains, where Danqiu Country was located. These civilians were Judas's hostages. The siege of Maling Village was a case in point: the moment full-scale war began, wherever the Fast Knife forces attacked, lives would be lost.

This was not something Ming De could decide on his own. It was dictated by the organizational structure Judas had established and Danqiu Country's local militia conscription and merit system.

That was why Su Xingchen kept emphasizing—

—Judas was the one who decided how the war would be fought, where it would be fought, and how it would begin and end.

The Fast Knife Synthetic Brigade had been targeting Judas's Guiyi Sect from the very beginning. There was no way to get around the Tusi militia's human shield. Most of Danqiu Country's towns and villages had already completed the merger of religion and state, and there was no shortage of young people willing to lay down their lives for Lingguang Buddha and Commander Yu.

Ye Bei's shout reached Judas's ears through the Chaos Egg's power amplifier.

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