Homo Sapiens

Tianzhu.

The core city of the Siliguri Corridor—Siliguri City.

This is a vital chokepoint for Tianzhu, a place of immense strategic importance. Tianzhu has heavily fortified this long, narrow corridor.

So, just how narrow is this so-called Siliguri Corridor?

It can be described like this: if Tianzhu as a whole is a bull, then the Seven States of Assam are its head. Siliguri is the neck—and a very skinny chicken neck at that.

The Siliguri Corridor is about 160 to 170 kilometers long, but its narrowest section is only 20 kilometers wide.

And Siliguri City is the core city of this corridor. If anything were to happen here, the geographical link between Tianzhu’s main territory and its northeastern region would be completely severed.

At this moment, in a military camp approximately 4.3 kilometers west of Siliguri City.

A sky-blotting swarm of drones was conducting a precision bombing run on the area.

Terrifying explosions tore through the camp, relentlessly destroying vehicles, armored cars, communication stations, fuel depots, ammunition depots, and supply warehouses.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!...

A dozen drones whizzed past, like vultures circling in mid-air.

”Hh... Hh... ’Dammit! Where did these enemies come from?’” Colonel Delar, hiding in a bunker with a few shell-shocked subordinates, had nothing but the single pistol in his hand.

As for the other soldiers, they were already running around like headless chickens. The armory had been completely blanketed by thermite and napalm from the drones in the first wave of strikes. No one dared to stick their head out to fight the fires.

Only a few sentries and soldiers from the Guard Battalion were armed with assault rifles.

The problem was, assault rifles were largely ineffective against the drones.

Delar looked at the small pistol in his hand, then at the fiery chaos outside. He and his subordinates exchanged bewildered glances for a few minutes before he decisively lost his nerve.

The bombing lasted for over twenty minutes.

The once-imposing camp was now a field of rubble, littered with mechanical wreckage. Thick smoke billowed everywhere, and the groans of wounded soldiers filled the air.

An entire mountain division had nearly a quarter of its effective strength annihilated. Even more terrifying was the loss of weapons and equipment.

This was modern warfare, not the First World War. Without heavy weaponry and anti-air defenses, they had virtually no way to fight a conventional battle.

Three New Human security battalions, who had long been lying in wait nearby, immediately pushed toward the camp the moment the drone bombing ended.

As some of the drones had carried smoke bombs, the inside of the camp was now shrouded in smoke.

The Tianzhu soldiers, not yet recovered from the bombing, were completely unable to organize any resistance.

In the bunker, Delar, wearing a gas mask, heard the explosions outside cease. He cautiously stepped out of the concrete defensive structure.

Suddenly, his eyes widened.

Not far away, a dozen of his own men collapsed for no apparent reason. A thought instinctively surfaced: ’Is the air poisoned?’

Then, he saw something moving in the light mist, its outline visible only as it displaced the fog.

He raised his pistol, his hand trembling.

BANG! A bloody hole appeared on Delar’s forehead. He collapsed, his eyes wide with disbelief even in death.

His subordinates, terrified by the scene, screamed and scrambled back toward the bunker.

However, they only made it a few steps before their bodies grew heavy, and they fell to the ground five or six meters from the bunker.

In less than half an hour, the entire camp was completely cleared.

...

「Meanwhile.」

A dozen armed helicopters, captured from Xilong Airport, appeared at the western end of the Siliguri Corridor, less than 20 kilometers west of Siliguri City.

The hastily trained pilots, using biological retinal augmentation devices, saw the pheromone and magnetic field markers on the ground.

They unhesitatingly pressed the switch for the rocket pods.

In an instant, a dozen special rockets blew a highway bridge to smithereens.

BOOM! Chunks of collapsing reinforced concrete broke off from the bridge structure and crashed heavily onto the river’s surface.

A nearby railway bridge also fell victim to the merciless rockets.

The dozen armed helicopters unleashed all their ammunition.

The resulting destruction left the railways and highways near Siliguri plowed over several times by bombs.

Over 50 kilometers of railway track were blasted to pieces.

The road surfaces were pocked with massive craters, and the highway and railway bridges were completely obliterated.

...

In the various cities and towns of the Siliguri Corridor.

The Foreign Affairs Division, using sleeper agents prepared long in advance, swiftly began to ”specially recruit” the locals. Those unwilling to ”work” in the Seven States of Assam were driven south to West Meng State.

For the poor, however, they did not want to leave, knowing that they would be unable to survive anywhere else.

It was the middle class and the minor wealthy who fled south in a hurry.

They could leave, but their fixed assets, gold, and silver had to be left behind.

The security squadrons in charge of the cleanup had no intention of showing mercy. In any case, the real gold and silver had to stay.

Thanks to a pre-existing plan and the numerous sleeper agents the Foreign Affairs Division had cultivated in the local towns, the common people in the townships were quickly ”specially recruited.”

The cities, on the other hand, were more troublesome to handle.

The towns, emptied of their populations through ”special recruitment,” became deathly still.

At the very front line of the Siliguri Corridor—Fumen Town—there were no ordinary civilians left. But on its empty streets, some people were still moving in secret.

The 15th Squadron of the Blood Blade Special Team, along with over two hundred New Human security personnel from the Fumen Base, had split into security squads. They were operating across a 400-square-kilometer area of land, 18 kilometers wide and 22 kilometers long.

Dami Squad was in a field at the forefront, quickly pulling out barbed wire and wooden stakes that had been hidden in a nearby village. They used the stakes to secure the barbed wire, creating a barrier.

Fortunately, it was the dry season in the South Asia Region. The rice paddies were mostly free of standing water, making it easy to walk on them.

Dami carried a special backpack—a portable magnetic field radar. It could detect ground activity within a 3 to 6-kilometer radius, low-altitude moving targets within a 12-kilometer radius, and mid- to high-altitude moving targets within a 50-kilometer radius.

This place had become the front line, and he had no desire to die a heroic death.

After checking the surrounding magnetic field readings, he shouted, ”Get it done, quickly!”

”Almost there! Another 800 meters and we’ll link up with Shaxi Squad’s section.”

A little over two hours later, all the barbed wire was in place.

Then they hung signs on the wire, marked with symbols and local dialect for ”Mines” and ”Traps.”

And right behind Dami Squad, another team was working feverishly to lay mines.

This 400-square-kilometer area had already been thoroughly scouted by the Foreign Affairs Division through clandestine commercial investigations. Combined with the Fumen Base hidden underground nearby, vast quantities of barbed wire and mines had been prepared in advance.

This allowed the minefields to be set up with extreme speed.

This operation was codenamed ”Operation Flash Flood” precisely because of its sudden and ferocious nature, like a flash flood erupting from the mountains.

The entire Siliguri Corridor would be turned into a special zone, filled with various traps and defensive fortifications. In the future, there would be no ordinary people here; it would exist as a purely military zone.

Such a long and narrow area was bound to be difficult for Tianzhu to retake, unless they could borrow a path through their two smaller neighbors.

The problem was, as the regional hegemon of South Asia, Tianzhu’s relationships with its neighbors were not good. Borrowing a path was basically out of the question.