Chapter 132: Massive Howitzer Barrage on the

The rain curtain remained thick.

The entire Zai An Defensive Line was shrouded in a hazy gray.

With a muffled metallic scrape, the soldiers pushed two 105mm howitzers out from beneath the camouflage net, their thick barrels glowing faintly in the rain.

It was the killer weapon in Song Mengqin's hands, and also Jiang Anguo's "Stabilizing Needle" left for this defensive line.

Shi Xiaomao moved with great agility, darting a few steps to the left gun.

He knew the gun intimately, practically a gun fanatic; after Jiang Anguo assigned him to the artillery crew, Shi Xiaomao, day or night, slept beside the cannon.

Shi Xiaomao half‑crouched, squinting, habitually slipped his right index finger into his mouth for a dab of saliva, then quickly wiped the barrel's sighting scale.

It was his unique calibration ritual.

"Adjust bearing, add three to distance, fire!"

At his command, the shell was slammed into the breech. The loader skillfully closed the breech block and yanked the firing cord.

"Boom!"

A deafening blast, the massive recoil jolted the gun, and an orange‑red fireball burst from the muzzle, instantly swallowed by the rain. The shell's screaming tear through the air cut the battlefield's dullness, soaring toward the distant mountain peak.

Shi Xiaomao didn't even lift his head, nor glance at the impact point, rushing like a gust to the right gun. His eyes fixed on the rising smoke on the distant ridge, his brows instantly furrowing.

"Off target! Damn it, off by just a bit!" he cursed, his fingers flicking the traverse rapidly.

Although the first shell deviated slightly due to wind, it didn't trouble the genius gunner whom Jiang Anguo had dubbed "Keluobo". Fortunately he had prepared two guns, precisely for error tolerance.

"Fire for me! Blast those Little Devils!"

"Boom—boom—boom—!"

The second shell whistled out, and this time a smile tugged at Shi Xiaomao's mouth.

At a distant observation post, Song Mengqin kept his binoculars on the Japanese Army's high ground. The first shot missed the empty space, but failed to hit the big fish at the center.

Song Mengqin was even more nervous than Shi Xiaomao; if the big fish escaped, recapturing it would be hard.

When the second shell fell, the cluster of Japanese Army commanders gathered on the ridge seemed struck by an invisible giant hand.

The orange‑red blaze exploded among them, hurling mud, shattered stones and torn limbs into the air.

"Well done!" Song Mengqin, excited, slammed a fist onto the sandbag before him, splashing mud that drenched him, "The commander was right, this kid is a born artilleryman!"

Song Mengqin didn't know the exact ranks of the blasted soldiers, but from the dense staff, command swords and binoculars, it was clearly the core command of the 56th Division.

And fate seemed to play a huge joke.

Watanabe Masao, the 56th Division's commander and a zealot who always saw himself as a gambler, bent down to pick up a fallen operation map a second before the shell struck. That reflex saved him from being blown to pieces, but the massive shockwave still slammed into him like an invisible wall. He didn't even have time to hum; his vision went black, and he fell straight into the mudwater, dead unconscious.

However, his comrades were not so fortunate.

The precise coverage of those two 105mm howitzers almost wiped out the 56th Division's command echelon entirely.

The two lieutenant colonels serving as operation staff were blown to pieces on the spot; as for the seven or eight officers of major and lieutenant colonel rank, casualties were severe, their wails instantly drowned by the rain.

The soldiers guarding Watanabe Masao had some have half their heads sliced off by shrapnel, others were lifted by the blast and hung on branches.

After Watanabe Masao fell, the scene instantly fell into a brief vacuum and chaos.

The Japanese Army never imagined that the Expeditionary Force had deployed heavy artillery in this direction! Their intelligence clearly showed the Expeditionary Force's main artillery was stationed toward Mandalay, with only a handful of guns, unlikely to be used easily. Why would this remote Zai An Defensive Line possess such a killing weapon?

"Quick! Quickly get the division commander to the field hospital!"

A hoarse, urgent voice broke the chaos.

The speaker was Jin Gang Zong Si Lang, the commander of the 146th Detachment of the 56th Division. At this moment his face was covered in blood, unsure whether it was his own or someone else's, but he knew that if he didn't step up, the entire division would collapse in the next moment.

Because he was at the edge of the blast, and it was Watanabe Masao's order to attack Zai An that luckily spared this Japanese detachment commander from the bombardment.

The other artillery, engineer, logistics, search detachment commanders, and the division chief of staff were all confirmed dead after a check.

In the 50th Division, all officers above colonel rank, except the 146th Detachment commander Jin Gang Zong Si Lang, were reduced to the severely wounded, unconscious Watanabe Masao.

The surrounding guards, jolted awake from a nightmare, finally snapped out of it, scrambling to lift the unconscious Watanabe Masao and stagger back through the mud.

They quickly moved away from this flesh‑and‑blood ground.

Meanwhile, far away Shi Xiaomao clearly wasn't satisfied; another two howitzer shells roared in, but unfortunately the Little Devils had already withdrawn their unconscious division commander.

One must admit, the Little Devils moved very quickly.

Had they been a bit slower, these guards and their division commander would have remained on this land.

At this very moment, Jiang Anguo, en route to Myitkyina, sat in the rattling Transport Vehicle cabin, closing his eyes to rest.

The bumpy road made him nearly vomit; he could only shut his eyes.

Suddenly his eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at the wildly jumping numbers in the system; the figures kept rising, certainly not the points supplied by today's troops.

So where did those points come from, and why were they so huge?

"28,800 points?!"

Jiang Anguo stared in disbelief, rubbing his eyes, fearing he had misread.

In the secondary system, a single ordinary Little Devil yields 20 points, meaning those 28,000 points represent at least 19,000 enemies killed!

What an auspicious number!

Of course, Jiang Anguo didn't believe it; killing that many at once would require an atomic bomb or a gas weapon.

He quickly opened the system battle report, scanning the long list of kills, his eyes nearly popping out.

"Killed 4 Japanese Army colonels, 7 lieutenant colonels, 12 majors…" The Little Devils listed afterward were automatically ignored by Jiang Anguo.

One colonel = 4000 points, one lieutenant colonel = 1000 points, one major = 400 points.

"What a guy!" Jiang Anguo couldn't help shouting a profanity, "This is wiping out the Little Devils' nest!"

Except for the old devil Watanabe Masao who escaped, the other 56th Division staff officers were almost all wiped out.