Chapter 237: Returning Home with Victory

At the same time, the Wuhan Japanese Army 11th Army Headquarters.

Lieutenant General Yuanbu Kazuo had just been startled awake from his sleep. He was in nightclothes, standing by the window, his face a steely blue as he stared at the sky reddened by distant flames, listening to the relentless, heart‑pounding explosions.

"Report!" a staff officer scrambled in, voice trembling, "Sir Lieutenant General! Wangjiadun Airport and Xujia Peng Airport have been… have been hit by a massive air raid from the Chinese Air Force!"

"What?!" Yuanbu Kazuo whirled around, seized the staff officer's collar, bloodshot eyes, "What did you say? Where are our aircraft? Where are our anti‑aircraft units?!"

"Report, the airports… the airports are already engulfed in flames. The exact losses are unclear… but… according to the last radar record, the number of enemy aircraft… exceeds forty!"

"More than forty?!" Yuanbu Kazuo felt the world spin, released his grip, and staggered back two steps.

Forty! Where did the Chinese Army get forty aircraft?

That's impossible!

The entire Chinese Air Force, even counting the remaining planes, doesn't reach that number! Moreover, aren't their aircraft all old Soviet models?

Right, it must be the Americans. American aircraft, the Flying Tigers' fighters, not only damaged Japanese planes in Myanmar, but also in Kunming and Chongqing, the land‑based air force had encountered even more advanced aircraft, namely the American P40 Fighter Jet.

The explosions just now were clearly from heavy aerial bombs!

You should know that both the Japanese Navy Air Service and the Army Air Service were reluctant to use 500‑pound bombs, or rather they didn't have many 500‑pound bombs; Jiang Anguo decided to give the Japanese a big birthday banquet.

If it weren't for the many Huaxia civilians inside Wuhan, Jiang Anguo even considered bombing the Japanese Central China headquarters, but lacking precise coordinates, otherwise he would have sent Situngka to conduct a pinpoint strike.

In fact, the distance from Changde to Wuhan, three hundred kilometers, is within the bombing range of the Situngka bombers.

"Investigate! Find out clearly!" Yuanbu Kazuo let out a beast‑like roar, slammed his fist onto the table, sending the map and documents flying, "Which unit did this? Who commanded it?!"

His anger erupted like a volcano.

This was not merely a military failure; it was a humiliating disgrace to him and to the entire Imperial Japanese Army Air Service! In his own core defense zone, at his forward base, they were bombed mercilessly as if chopping vegetables—a humiliation never before experienced!

"Notify the Army Air Service! Notify all fighter units in Wuhan! Take off immediately! Even if you have to turn the sky upside down, find those bastards!"

The officers below felt that Lieutenant General Yuanbu Kazuo had gone mad, because all Wuhan's fighters had been destroyed.

At present not a single intact fighter can be found; all 113 fighters and bombers have been destroyed by William's fighter and bomber formations.

It can be said that this bombing dealt a devastating blow to the Japanese Central China Air Force.

"Order the ground forces to immediately block all transportation routes, search! No suspicious clue may be let go!"

"I want them to pay blood‑debt with blood! It must be an insider, otherwise how could they suddenly attack our airport? It must be an insider, baka!"

Yuanbu Kazuo's roar echoed through the headquarters, but outside, the firelight symbolizing failure and shame still burned fiercely.

The engine's roar shifted from a savage howl to a steady rhythm.

The sky, still tinged red by the flames, was rapidly pulling away, gradually returning to a deep ink‑blue.

The massive bombing formation of forty Huaxia warplanes returned silently, like a wolf pack that had completed a lethal hunt.

The exhilaration from the adrenaline was slowly fading, replaced by a bone‑deep fatigue.

William leaned back in his seat, his tense muscles finally relaxing a little.

He glanced at the instrument panel; the fuel gauge was steadily and firmly moving toward the red zone. They had to fly as much of the return route as possible before dawn.

"All squadrons, count the aircraft," William said over the radio.

Until the bomber wing had finished reporting.

William exhaled; this time, aside from a few damaged fighters, not a single aircraft was shot down.

The mission was completed successfully.

He instinctively turned his head, looked through the side window of the cockpit canopy, and took one last look back.

In that glance, a scene that could be etched into the depths of his soul slammed into his eyes.

It was no longer an airport; Wuhan Airport now resembled a burning inferno.

Columns of smoke rose like black dragons, twisting and rolling, trying to obscure the last speck of starlight before dawn. The after‑effects of the explosions still flickered intermittently, like fireworks deep in hell.

Explosion sounds, shouts, cries.

Especially those soldiers hit by aerial bombs, struck by 12.7 mm bullets, collapsing in pools of blood while screaming; even so, it was useless, because the Japanese medics could not save them.

Everyone knows that being hit by a 12.7 mm bullet, unless it strikes an arm joint, is your only chance to survive; if you're lucky enough to be hit in the leg, timely hemostasis can keep you alive.

But that hope was so slim, because a single hit could send you to meet Amaterasu!

In the midst of that chaos, a lone flagpole stood like a tombstone. At its top, the once‑proud plaster flag was now riddled with holes.

Machine Gun Bullet holes and bomb shrapnel cracks made it look like a torn rag. It no longer fluttered, merely hanging limp, blackened by smoke.

At that moment, the first true sunlight pierced the thin mist on the horizon, gently yet firmly bathing the earth.

Golden light, like a deity's judgment, precisely struck the torn flag. Sunlight pierced the bullet holes, as if tallying its sins. The flag shivered violently in the morning light; its ripped fibers whispered faint, mournful sounds in the wind.

It trembled weakly in the wind, as if making a final struggle to display its ugly pattern one last time.

But everything was over.

Finally, the rope attaching the flagpole could no longer bear the broken weight and the wind's pull.

With a light "pop," inaudible at ten thousand meters, yet crystal clear in William's imagination.

The flag, riddled with holes, snapped.

It did not fall but drifted like a lifeless dead leaf, spiraling silently and clumsily into the very sea of fire it had ignited, never to be extinguished.

A cold, satisfied smile curled at William's mouth.

He turned his head, facing forward.

In the east, the sun was rising.

It was not Japan's rising sun, but China's, theirs—a brand‑new dawn.

"All attention," his voice came over the radio, with a barely perceptible hoarseness, "we're going home."

William looked at the long river below, so wide as the nation itself, bearing endless vitality and a civilization bloodline stretching for millennia!

It will protect this country!

Yangtze River!