Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1315: Chapter 63: Majestic Mountains (Part 7)

After three days and two nights, the hundreds of square kilometers around Shuangxi Bridge Town had become a scene straight out of hell.

Tens of millions of energy bullets and missiles, in a near-continuous battle over three days and two nights, had plowed this mountainous region over and over. The once orderly houses in the town were now nothing but piles of rubble of varying height. The once lush green forests were now just ragged hilltops where gray-white rock and ocher soil lay exposed.

The most brutally battered, of course, was the defensive positions south of the town.

The endless defensive line stretched from west to east, with countless mecha wrecks and bodies scattered across the open ground in front of the battlefield. And in the trenches of the line, corpses lay everywhere. Craters overlapped one another. Roaring Fierce Fire and billowing black smoke shrouded the entire mountain area.

The red-eyed, charging Jiepeng people had fallen back, the tidal wave of mecha vanishing without a trace.

All of a sudden, a cheer shook heaven and earth. The entire line boiled over.

Warriors in tattered uniforms and covered in wounds leaped out of the trenches, out of the bunkers, out of their mecha. They rushed unrestrained onto the open ground before the line, up the slopes, cheering and jumping for joy.

Dozens of Chuckna Fighters skimmed overhead, and the ground below was packed with cheering crowds. Countless battle flags, already torn to shreds, were waved with all their strength; countless people were jumping, shouting, embracing one another.

When the sixteen Fei Alliance Armored Divisions conducting wide-ranging maneuvers through the Northern Mountain Region had split up and encircled the scattered Jiepeng Forces; when the second wave of Allied landing forces had successfully come ashore; when follow-on troops were setting out from Chuckna in an endless stream; when nine Armored Divisions closed relentlessly on Beiguan City and forced Jiepeng Prince Bobett to abandon his Headquarters...

This campaign had finally entered its final act.

Countless Jiepeng Soldiers raised their hands high in surrender to Allied units across the broad expanse of the Northern Mountain Region. Countless towns welcomed the mighty Allied columns. One high ground after another saw the Allies’ flag raised; arrowheads on the electronic sand table silently extended forward, sweeping through everything in their path.

From east to west, from Tangtai City to Beiguan City, all had become landing zones for the Fei Alliance Joint Army.

The blocking battle at Shuangxi Bridge Town was over. The successive assaults of four Jiepeng Armored Divisions and one Infantry Division had ultimately failed to break through the Shuangxi Bridge defensive line. When, behind them, they heard the soaring bugles of the Allies—that sound that haunted the souls of every Chuckna Warrior—they could only flee in panic. This battle’s outcome was already decided.

The heavy hatch of the concealed command post opened, and Li Cunxin, Pei Litong, Balmer, and the others burst up to the mountaintop at a running speed utterly at odds with their age and status, straining their eyes southward. Looking at the cheering positions in the distance, at the waves of reinforcements pouring down from the far-off slopes, listening to the piercing bugle calls, none of them knew what day it was anymore.

This was only one campaign, yet this one campaign had opened an excellent prelude for the great decisive battle at Resk yet to come!

Su Fei and Felix hefted their cameras, filming nonstop, wishing they could split every lens already cut into ten resource channels into a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. They wanted to record the look of every warrior in this instant of victory. To record this history that belonged to the Fei Alliance, to Chuckna, and to each individual.

At this moment, the sun shone bright and the sky was a flawless blue.

”Get me the frontline command.” Li Cunxin suddenly turned his head and said to the staff officer beside him.

”Yes, sir!” The staff officer with the portable communication device immediately connected to the line command post, which then relayed a signal up to the Allied Frontline Command in space.

It took only a few minutes for the signal to get through.

The cheering died down, and everyone watched Li Cunxin anxiously. They all knew that here on this very land, deep within those mountains, there was still a unit that had made enormous contributions and sacrifices for this campaign, now being hunted by the enemy and struggling on the line between life and death.

”What’s the situation on Major General Tian’s side now?” As soon as Admiral Li Hongwu appeared on the comms screen, the old man asked urgently.

”They’re at the end of the road.” Admiral Li Hongwu didn’t hesitate or hold anything back. He stared straight at his own father, his gaze steady and cool: ”I’ve already ordered all squadrons into the air, to airdrop supplies first and open up an air corridor. The Transport Ships are ready as well; we’ll carry out a forced mecha air drop at any cost. We must get them out of there!”

Mecha air drop! The officers nearby were stunned speechless by Admiral Li Hongwu’s decision.

That was a mountainous region, a natural advantage zone for mecha. With electronic mecha escorting them, fighters could hardly detect mecha in the jungles. Against high-speed mecha that could constantly dart between sunlit and shaded slopes, between heights and valleys, fighters had no advantage at all. A single division of mecha was enough to send ten fighter wings home in disgrace.

The role of fighters had already been pushed up from the atmosphere into space. To rely on fighters to slug it out with an Armored Division in mountains—that was an absolute error in military command! The exorbitant cost of fighters and their disadvantage against mecha would be enough to send any Commander who made such a decision straight to a court-martial!

”That’s a mountainous region! A paradise for mecha.” Li Cunxin stared hard into Admiral Li Hongwu’s eyes. ”Do you know what consequences a decision like this will bring?!”

”I know,” Li Hongwu replied without a trace of hesitation, ”but I know even more clearly that we absolutely cannot stand by and watch the Suicide Camp fall into a desperate situation. For me, this may be a wrong decision, but I believe that for all of Chuckna, it will be the right decision. Our pilots are ready; they support my decision as well.”

”What about the Transport Ships?” Li Cunxin looked at Li Hongwu, his gaze flickering. ”Over mountainous terrain, a slow-moving Transport Ship is a living target. The moment it appears, the enemy’s air defenses can turn it into a fireball in an instant. Every warrior on that Transport Ship will die! Are a bit more than a hundred warriors worth this to you?!”

Li Hongwu smiled, nodded, and said, ”Air‑dropping under the enemy’s anti‑air fire in the mountains is indeed a very dangerous move. But this time I’m deploying thirty medium Transport Ships. Half of them are decoys. This is the greatest lift capacity I can concentrate right now, and it’s also the only method I can think of.”

As he spoke, Li Hongwu pointed at an airdrop schematic behind him and said, ”This is our airdrop plan. Our fighters have basically figured out the enemy’s force deployment. We’ll carry out simultaneous airdrops at these six coordinates, of which three are real drop points. After calculating the strength of the Transport Ships’ energy shields and the enemy’s anti‑air fire, we estimate that from entering the air‑defense zone to actually conducting the drop will take fifteen minutes. With the fighters giving full escort, the energy shield can hold for ten minutes. The remaining five minutes will require... sacrifices, and a bit of luck. If we succeed, we’ll have six Transport Ships complete the airdrop.”

”And if we fail?!” Li Cunxin still stared fixedly into Li Hongwu’s eyes.

”I haven’t thought about it,” Li Hongwu said calmly.

”Think of defeat before you think of victory—this is something you should have understood when you were eight years old,” Li Cunxin said expressionlessly.

”I’ll think about it for other battles,” Li Hongwu said with composure. ”For this one, I haven’t. From the moment I made the decision, I stopped considering the consequences of failure. There are battles we simply have to fight.”

”Good.” A trace of relief appeared on Li Cunxin’s face. He looked at Li Hongwu, hesitated for a long time, and finally, just before turning to leave, forced out a stiff sentence.

”Good son!”

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In the busy command hall of the carrier [Hermo], the roar of voices suddenly dropped a lot.

The staff officers’ footsteps and their talking unconsciously grew quieter. At this moment they did not wish to disturb the middle‑aged man on the command platform, whose eyes glistened with crystal light, yet whose posture seemed even straighter.

”Admiral, the troops have assembled and are awaiting orders,” the chief of staff stood behind Li Hongwu and reported. ”We’ve already established contact with Major General Tian. He says...”

Li Hongwu turned around and listened as the chief of staff continued, ”...he’ll find a way to handle those five minutes! Also, the farewell video messages of all the warriors have already been sent over. The Presidential Palace and the Alliance Command Center hope to broadcast this battle live.”

”Live?” Li Hongwu frowned slightly. Right now, the Jiepeng 2nd Armored Division was just a lone force. The electronic advantage was on the Alliance forces’ side, so there was no real worry about intelligence leaks. But if this rescue operation failed, it would deliver a heavy psychological blow to the entire Chuckna populace.

How could the Presidential Palace and the Alliance Command Center make such a decision?!

”This was Marshal Hastings’s proposal.” The chief of staff, seemingly knowing what Li Hongwu was thinking, explained, ”The Feiyang Republic has already passed a resolution to send more troops to Resk, but it hasn’t been announced yet. If we win this battle, it’ll be a huge boost for the entire Allies. If we lose, we’ll immediately release the news of sending reinforcements for revenge, uniting all the people so that everyone stands together against a common enemy!”

”Understood.” Li Hongwu nodded and said, ”Get in touch with the production team. The live broadcast will start when the Transport Ships enter the air‑defense zone.”

After speaking, Li Hongwu walked to the front of the command platform, picked up the communicator, fell silent for a moment, then gently pressed his finger down.

”Operation start... codename: Never Give Up!”

Codename: Never Give Up.

These words quickly spread through the communications system, echoing across the entire fleet, across the massive flight formations entering the atmosphere, across all ground forces, and across all of Chuckna.

Seeing these six urgent characters appear on the screen, all the people stopped in front of their televisions.

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. They all went off to have fun. That damned White Goose actually called and dragged me out to drink... bastard, he’s already written quite a lot of tomorrow’s Chapters. Only trash like me, who types slowly, is stupid, and has no stockpile, is still stuck in a hotel room banging on the keyboard. Also, maybe some readers can’t wait for the big battle anymore and think I’m stalling, writing a bunch of irrelevant stuff. But I think this is a novel, not a plot outline. You need the straightforward thrills, but you also need the buildup that leads into the climax. Look carefully—my buildup word count really isn’t that high. I’ve already tried to use as few words as possible to ramp up the tension and lay out the plot. It’s just that, unlike other authors who can crank out ten or twenty thousand characters in a day, I make it feel draggy. What’s dragging is the time, not the story.

..

.For the coming climax, everyone, throw in your monthly tickets. Let Seventy‑Two be able to straighten his back a little at the annual meeting!

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.(To be continued. To find out what happens next, please log on to www.qidian.com. More Chapters there—support the author, support legitimate reading!)