Combat Conference

The sea breeze grew thick in the afternoon, carrying the faintly fishy stench of rotting vegetation from some nameless distant island—an odor that seemed to still cling to Yang Yunzhi's collar.

When he pushed open the door to the base commander's office, Hina was bent over a nautical chart, tracing traditional encirclement routes with red and blue pencils. Hearing the sound, she looked up, her pink hair scattering fine flecks of golden dust in the beam of light filtering through the blinds.

"What is it?" Hina straightened up, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the rough grain of the pencil's wood.

Yang Yunzhi took a stack of oilpaper-wrapped documents from his coat and gently placed them on the nautical chart.

"What's this?"

"The Military Intelligence Office's first result." Yang Yunzhi spoke casually. "The Blood Knife Pirates—seventy-nine members in total, including Captain Henry and First Mate Good. They are currently stationed in the eastern bay of a nameless island forty-seven nautical miles southeast of Red Maple Island."

Hina untied the string around the oilpaper, took out the documents, and began reading.

Yang Yunzhi walked to the window, his gaze passing through the glass and falling on the recruits practicing bayonet drills on the distant training ground.

Those young faces were taut beneath the blazing sun. Sweat ran down their necks and disappeared into their coarse uniforms, while their bayonets carved immature yet earnest trajectories through the air.

On the other side of the room, Hina's breathing paused almost imperceptibly.

What lay on the pages was no ordinary report dashed off by naval scouts.

The first page contained a hand-drawn contour map of the island, with elevation intervals accurate to five meters and annotations for vegetation types, freshwater springs, and tide schedules. Starting from the second page, there were densely packed tables.

The first column: Name/Alias.

The second column: Age/Hometown.

The third column: Physical traits. ("Scar over left brow, South Blue accent." "Missing right ring finger, skilled with a matchlock." "About 1.9 meters tall, fond of drink, likes bragging while drunk that he once killed a Navy sergeant major.")

The fourth column: Preferred weapons and combat style. ("Broad-backed saber, favors powerful chopping strikes, stiff footwork." "Rapier, accurate thrusts, nimble footwork but fears close grappling." "Twin pistols, reloads 0.3 seconds slower with his left hand.")

The fifth column: Personality and relationships. ("Has an old grudge against 'One-Eyed Carl' over gambling debts." "Secretly in love with the cook, 'Fat Martha,' and hides dried fruit for her every night." "Afraid of the dark, must keep an oil lamp lit while sleeping.")

By the seventh page, there were even seven charcoal sketches attached—Henry's vicious scarred face, Good's pale slender fingers, and the distinctive tattoos of several minor leaders.

Hina's fingers stopped at the edge of the page, her nails turning faintly white from the pressure.

She had endured the brutal courses of the Navy's Elite Training Camp and taken part in campaigns to hunt down great pirates with bounties exceeding a hundred million, but she had never seen intelligence like this.

This was not reconnaissance.

It was practically writing a... biography for every pirate.

"All of this..." She looked up, her voice suppressing a tremor. "You got it all within half a day?"

"You know how capable our intelligence network is. Besides, I went to the island myself and took a look around." Yang Yunzhi stepped to her side and tapped a depression on the contour map. "Here. Their camp. Eighty men are split among four groups of huts. Henry lives alone in the largest one, with two night guards at the door—but they slack off and doze in the second half of the night. Good's hut is on the far west side, closest to the shore. He's a light sleeper and wakes at the slightest sound. I saw it all myself!"

He made it sound casual, but Hina could imagine the scene: this man moving like a ghost through a deserted island at night, counting every sleeping face through the gaps in the huts, memorizing every weapon resting against the walls, even making out the South Blue accents in their sleep-talk.

"You linked to one of their people?" she suddenly asked.

Yang Yunzhi nodded without denying it. "A minor thug responsible for guarding the ship. Through his eyes, I saw the amount of gunpowder stockpiled in the hold—twenty barrels. The seals were poor, and thirty percent of it had gotten damp. I also saw Henry lose his temper at breakfast today because the dried meat had gone moldy."

As he spoke, he actually pulled a small cloth bag from his coat, poured out several dark brown strips of dried meat with gray-green mold along the edges, and placed them on the nautical chart.

Hina stared at the moldy meat and suddenly felt her throat go dry.

This was not intelligence.

This was like cutting open the enemy's organs and spreading them beneath the sun, seeing even the undigested scraps of food in their stomachs with perfect clarity.

"Then..." She took a deep breath and forced herself back into the role of a Navy major. "How do we fight this? Do we leave now?"

As a Navy major, she naturally knew how to capture pirates, but Yang Yunzhi had already brought too many new things to this base. She felt that he must have some special ideas about combat as well.

"No rush." Yang Yunzhi cut her off. "How about we hold a combat conference first?"

Hina froze, thought for a moment, then nodded. "All right!"

Base 36, conference room.

This had been newly built after Yang Yunzhi arrived, converted from an indoor training hall.

There had never been such a thing as a conference room before. The previous colonel had never held meetings either.

At that moment, the conference room was filled with the pungent smell of fresh paint, mixed with the sweat and leather scent of more than thirty men.

Both sides of the long table were packed—three company commanders, nine platoon commanders, twenty-seven squad leaders, plus Hina and Yang Yunzhi, making exactly forty people.

The Navy did not actually use company, platoon, or squad formations. Its combat groups were organized by ship, but for the sake of training and command, Yang Yunzhi had brought this system into the Navy as well.

The three company commanders were all officers left over from Base 36's previous administration. The remaining platoon and squad leaders were elites who had risen above the rest during the past two months of training—either outstanding in drills or exceptionally capable fighters.

Yang Yunzhi had also established civilian posts such as battalion staff officers, political instructors, and company political instructors. Unfortunately, few people at Base 36 could read, so many positions remained vacant.

He noticed Luo Ma and Luo Niu sitting in the back row.

The brothers looked even more imposing in uniform. Luo Ma's height of 2.56 meters forced him to hunch slightly to avoid hitting the low beams. Their faces still carried the simple honesty of fishermen, but their eyes now held a soldier's vigilance—something two months of brutal training had carved into their bones.

Yang Yunzhi stood at the head of the long table without an opening remark, merely raising a hand.

Two guards hurriedly drew the heavy curtains, and the conference room immediately fell into darkness.

Then the Pod, Thunder Emperor, floated out from the leather holster at his waist. Its square metal casing reflected a cold, matte gleam beneath the chandelier. A row of tiny vents opened along its side, emitting a low hum like the buzzing of insects.

The next second, a beam shot from the front of the device, spreading a clear holographic projection across the blank wall opposite them.

Suppressed gasps rose through the conference room.

The left half of the projection displayed a three-dimensional topographical map of the island, showing the curve of the coastline, the gradients of the slopes, and the density of the forest with perfect clarity. The right half was divided into upper and lower sections: above were large portraits of Henry and Good, while below was a grid of seventy-nine small headshots. Selecting any one of them would bring up a detailed information card—the visualized version of the table Hina had just read.

"You've trained for two months already. I figure you're sick of it by now. Perfect timing—there's a chance for real combat. The Blood Knife Pirates, seventy-nine members in total." Yang Yunzhi's voice was not loud, yet it pierced every ear like a spike. "Captain Henry, bounty of seventeen million, skilled with a broad-backed saber. Powerful, but slow to turn. First Mate Good, bounty of twelve million, rapier specialist. Nimble footwork but poor endurance. After more than fifteen minutes of continuous combat, his breathing becomes unsteady."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the tense faces.

"And we will deploy two companies—two hundred and eighty men."

Someone muttered quietly, "More than three times as many..."

"Think it's bullying the weak with numbers?" Yang Yunzhi looked toward the voice. It was a veteran with a burn scar on his cheek, now the commander of Third Company. "Captain Drake, if you had eighty pirates camping on a deserted island, and two hundred and eighty Marines crept up to their beds at night—what would you think?"

Drake opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"Think it's unfair?" Yang Yunzhi continued. There was no mockery in his tone, only cold practicality. "When pirates raid merchant ships, do they tell the sailors, 'We're fewer in number, so put down your weapons and let's have a fair duel'? When pirates slaughter villages, do they tell women and children, 'We'll only fight strong young men'?"

The conference room was so quiet that they could hear the chandelier chain swaying softly.

"In war, there is only victory or defeat. There is no fairness." Yang Yunzhi withdrew his gaze. "Our mission is to achieve the most complete victory at the smallest cost—wipe them out completely, leave no future trouble, and keep our casualties in the single digits."

He raised his hand again.