Boom!
The RGD-5 grenade exploded right before the back entrance. Almost simultaneously, Yamamoto Kamimine and twenty Japanese volunteers sprang up, crouching low as they charged the door.
The fierce, violent savagery etched into their DNA and coursing through their veins was on full display.
Right at that moment, an ecstatic, jubilant, almost deranged voice shouted from just inside the doorway.
"Today, I, Chen Ge, am bringing glory to my ancestors! Hahaha! Fuck your mothers, you little Japs, die for me!"
That familiar, unmistakable Mandarin struck like a bolt from the blue, crashing down right on the heads of Yamamoto Kamimine and several volunteers who understood it.
Their bodies instantly froze, cold dread electrifying their scalps.
Without hesitation, Yamamoto shrieked, "Kuso! It's an ambush! Run—"
Inside the rear entrance, Chen Ge was so thrilled his hands trembled slightly. He forced himself to steady his breathing and slammed down on the detonator.
Five MON-50 directional mines detonated practically at once, spaced merely 0.8 seconds apart.
Boom!
Seven hundred grams of composite explosive inside each mine detonated, unleashing five dazzling bursts of light from beneath the concealing rubble, white with an electric blue fringe.
The flashes expanded, merged, and fused into a wall of flame more than ten meters wide, rearing up only to collapse forward.
Thousands of six-millimeter steel balls and jagged shrapnel tore out at an initial velocity of 1,200 meters per second, casting an inescapable net of death that engulfed Yamamoto Kamimine and the twenty Japanese volunteers.
Detonated, torn apart—all twenty-one valiant volunteers bloomed into crimson mist!
In the front rank, the chests of Yamamoto Kamimine and seven volunteers shattered simultaneously. Fist-sized cavities blasted through their backs, spewing dark red mist laden with shredded viscera. Their bodies shattered like porcelain struck by a speeding truck.
In the rear rank, half of one volunteer's face was ripped away. The remaining half of his mouth hung open, tongue twitching, before a storm of steel balls tore through his waist and sheared him in two.
Two more took dozens of steel balls across their torsos at once, bursting apart like watermelons struck by sledgehammers.
Grayish-white smoke billowed up, its base rolling outward against the ground in an ochre-red cloud.
A few seconds later, as the smoke thinned, the dark gray ground was stained deep crimson, glistening with an oily sheen.
A hundred meters away, half a tactical boot hung from the rearview mirror of a wrecked truck, its laces neatly tied, the shaft entirely empty.
A severed hand lay among the rubble at the annex tunnel mouth, the exposed wrist displaying yellow fat, red muscle, and white tendons still faintly twitching.
Up on the second floor, a shard of skull sailed in through a window, a few strands of black hair clinging to it. Greyhound picked it up, examined it, and muttered in surprise, "Black hair? Are there East Asians in the Ukrainian army?"
Bull tilted his head, glanced at it, and said, "Probably Japanese. I saw on the news a while back that Japanese volunteers joined the International Legion."
"Suka. Disgusting little Japs ought to be shipped to Siberia to dig potatoes. Fuck them!"
Greyhound cursed in disgust, tossed the bone fragment out the window, and wiped his hands on his trousers.
A bizarre stench hung in the air—the sharp acidity of burnt saltpeter, the sweet metallic tang of rust, and a thick, nauseating smell like overcooked broth gone cold and rancid.
The combined odor almost made Chen Ge gag, and he quickly held his breath.
Standing on a concrete slab by the tunnel mouth, Kraken stared at the severed hand. His breath caught, his limbs went numb, and he nearly lost his footing. He hastily barked an order to pull back into the tunnel and wait for the tanks before launching another assault.
"Hiss... Where'd they go? That was that powerful?"
Chen Ge poked his head out from beside the rear door. Taking in the aftermath, his eyes widened in sheer disbelief, and he sucked in three sharp breaths of cold air.
Not a single intact body remained. Utterly blown to pieces, turned into literal scraps.
It felt good—so damn good!
Just how good did it feel?
Picture a sweltering forty-degree summer day where you're unemployed fresh out of college, drenched in sweat delivering takeout down alleyways all day to earn two hundred and fifty bucks. On your way home, you buy a scratch-off ticket and hit five million. The moment you cash it, the dream girl you've crushed on since childhood confesses she's loved you all along, reveals her father is a high-ranking provincial official, and that she's an only child. She asks for no bride price, her father lines up a cushy career, and the family pours all their resources into your future... Yeah, pretty much that good.
"Blyat, those MON-50s are ruthless! Not even a whole corpse left. Hahaha, beautiful work!"
Night Cat stepped up behind Chen Ge, stood on tiptoe to peek out, looking equally thrilled.
"Shame we only had five. Want me to tell Kuzma to rig up some tripwires with grenades?"
Chen Ge almost laughed. Was Night Cat hell-bent on getting Kuzma killed?
Of course, Chen Ge wouldn't mind seeing that loudmouthed bastard dead either.
He wasn't the type to swallow an insult or waste time second-guessing himself.
Second-guessing only happened when you treated assholes with too much decency. Life was barely thirty thousand days long—cut ties when called for, cast aside polite manners, and enjoy being petty. Throw a fit when pushed. Better to make life hard for others than suffer in silence. Circumstances didn't break a man; unchecked frustration did. Sort out your mood before sorting out your business, and never waste tears on transient nobodies who didn't deserve your grief!
"Yeah. Rig up as many booby traps as you can before the Ukrainians launch their next push. Watch out for sniper fire."
Chen Ge gave the instructions, then walked over to the northeast corner room on the north corridor to observe the mixing plant through the window.
The battle was brutal. Knowing they had nowhere to run, the Ukrainians defended desperately. The Peregrine Battalion's main force advanced at a crawl, taking at least twenty casualties for every floor they cleared.
Huh? K-soldiers were in the mix too?
Chen Ge spotted quite a few convict troops moving through the building.
Throwing convict soldiers with zero urban warfare or close-quarters combat training into room-clearing assaults—Trench was ruthless.
Just then, Trench's weary voice crackled through his headset.
"Sledgehammer, this is Trench. I heard heavy gunfire and explosions from your side. Did Ukrainian reinforcements arrive?"
Chen Ge keyed his PTT. "Affirmative. Elite foreign volunteers. We repelled their initial probe and dropped over forty of them. A second wave should hit soon. I'm worried they'll bring up tanks to breach the building. Can the attack drone platoon run reconnaissance?"
Hearing that Chen Ge had beaten back the assault, Trench audibly relaxed.
"Will do. And I've got good news: our cyber warfare units took down the Ukrainian drone operators in this industrial sector. Haven't you noticed their drones haven't shown up for a while?"
Chen Ge was no fool; he had already noticed the absence. He glanced up at the overcast sky and replied, "Well, the cyber boys finally did something useful. Send that drone recon immediately. Don't let their fucking tanks get anywhere near the Laboratory Building!"
"Rest easy, air superiority is ours right now. No more chatter. Hold the Laboratory Building at all costs—that's an absolute order."
"Copy that!"
Chapter 62