Volume 13 Ancient Bronze City Ruins Chapter 622 Main Road
Twenty-five kilometers east of the ancient bronze city ruins.
It is now 2:37 p.m., and nearly two and a half hours have passed since the battle began.
There were approximately 4,000 remnants of the 10th Armored Division that survived the attack of the fusion tentacles. The wounded among them had been taken to the rear of the battlefield by transport ships of the three fleets for treatment. The remaining 1,000 or so combat-capable personnel were incorporated into the left-wing corps that detoured to the east.
At this distance, the soldiers of the 10th Armored Division could even see the outlines of the buildings outside the Ancient Bronze City ruins with their naked eyes.
As a "military fortress", the ancient bronze city ruins are naturally surrounded by a circle of granite high walls similar to city walls. However, compared with the buildings inside the city built with copper alloys, the material durability of this granite high wall is much worse. Today, only ruins less than one-tenth of the original length of this circle of high walls remain.
From a distance, there are only a dozen severely weathered rock pillars scattered on the plain outside the ruins, just like the stone forests commonly seen in karst landforms.
The left wing corps advanced to this position without encountering any obstruction or resistance from the heretical sects.
Compared to the tragic situation on the front battlefield, the calmness here made the soldiers suspicious - some soldiers even began to doubt that everything they had just seen, including the terrifying monster buried deep underground, might just be their own hallucinations...
Of course, the soldiers of the 10th Armored Division would definitely not have such an idea - many of them had their combat uniforms soaked with the blood of their comrades, and the blood had dried and hardened and stuck to the tough fabric, emitting a strong fishy smell. All of this reminded these soldiers that they had just walked through the gates of hell... But even so, they still had a very strong sense of unreality about the scene before them.
The ancient bronze city ruins twenty-five kilometers away...seems to be an empty city?
A distance of twenty-five kilometers cannot be said to be close, but for modern weapons, even squad-level equipment has several types that can attack targets at this distance, not to mention the various tanks, mechas and self-propelled artillery of the armored forces.
With the technological strength of the Alpha civilization, it should not be difficult for the fortress defense facilities to attack enemies twenty-five kilometers away.
However, the Ancient Bronze City Ruins did not take any offensive measures against the Ark Field Army which was "at the gates of the city".
"Contact the air fleet overhead. They can definitely see more clearly than us from the sky." An officer waved to the signalman, "Ask them if they have seen anything inside the ruins."
Less than half a minute later, the signalman immediately replied: "They said that they did not find any traces of the heretical sect inside the ruins... The whole city seems to be a real empty city."
"That's impossible." The officer shook his head in confusion. "If this is an empty city, why would they place a monster like that right in front of the ruins... Isn't that giant Corrosion Seed used to guard the ruins?"
The signalman did not respond, and neither did the other soldiers. No one could answer the officer's question... In fact, everyone had the same doubt in their hearts.
If it were so easy to enter the ruins, then wouldn't the sacrifice of those soldiers who just died on the front battlefield be meaningless?
But regardless of whether these soldiers believed that the ancient bronze city ruins in front of them was really an empty city, they still had to execute the order from the headquarters - "If there is no resistance during the advance, directly attack the interior of the ancient bronze city ruins."
The 10th Armored Division was only five kilometers away from the edge of the ancient bronze city ruins. Some enhanced soldiers with better eyesight could even see the decorative relief patterns on the buildings.
"Stop moving forward!" The officer raised his arm. "The people in the second mobile team will serve as reconnaissance units, and the rest of you will stay where you are!"
As soon as the order was given, a reconnaissance team consisting of six "Biaolang" high-mobility tactical mechas and one "Beidou" high-power communication mecha drove towards the ruins at full speed - four "Biaolang" on air cushions rushed to the front with large-caliber fully automatic shotguns to clear the way, and the other two "Biaolang" holding shields were responsible for towing the slower "Beidou" and following closely behind their teammates.
The seven machines directly entered the main road of a sector of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins, and rushed forward two kilometers along the nearly ten-meter-wide main road in one breath until they stopped at a crossroads in front of them.
"The reconnaissance team reports that at a depth of 2.5 kilometers, no enemy traces were found and no resistance was encountered. The ruins themselves showed no signs of activation, and there were no abnormal conditions."
This message was quickly transmitted to the troops on standby in the rear through the high-power communication equipment carried by the Beidou mecha . Not long after, the 10th Armored Division began to advance in the direction of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins, and the airships in the sky also began to slowly enter the airspace directly above the Ancient Bronze City Ruins.
"Don't let your guard down. Search every room in every building on both sides of the street carefully. Don't miss any clues."
A mammoth tank was at the forefront of the team, followed by three parallel heavy defense mechas. Three giant shields like door panels combined to form a slowly advancing shield wall. Further back were hedgehog-like fire support mechas equipped with rocket launchers, howitzers, technical laser cannons and other weapons.
Behind these armored vehicles are thousands of infantrymen wearing power armor and tactical exoskeletons, holding a variety of weapons in their hands and following closely behind those iron lumps.
"Infantry-tank coordination"... This tactic was already extremely mature a thousand years ago, and it is still extremely practical today, especially in this kind of street fighting. Heavily armored tanks and mechas can serve as good cover for infantry in open areas, while infantry can help armored vehicles clear out some enemies in blind spots of attack, or remove some obstacles that the vehicles cannot remove.
"Don't miss any building. It doesn't matter if we advance slowly. We have already entered the ruins. Our primary goal has been achieved—"
Many of the entrances to the buildings in the Ancient Bronze City ruins are locked, and the ruins hunters cannot enter to investigate - but the same cannot be said for the army. The high-power laser cutting machine installed on the armored vehicle can cut a half-meter thick alloy door in just a few minutes. If the defense facilities are not activated, the simple "physical anti-theft measures" are simply unable to stop the advance of an organized army.
"Is the intelligence wrong? The defense facilities of this ruins don't look like they have been activated at all..." The officer of the vanguard muttered in his heart. Although he was not a ruins hunter, as an officer of the field corps, he had performed combat missions in many ruins. He knew very well the power of the defense facilities of the ruins of the Alpha civilization... To put it bluntly, from the beginning he had prepared himself mentally for the fact that his troops would be completely wiped out and would not even be able to reach the entrance of the ruins, but now, they actually came in so brazenly.
"Are the people above so anxious to assemble the troops because they predict that the heretic sect will not have enough time to activate the defense facilities of the ruins? As for the super-giant Seed of Erosion on the front battlefield, is it just a chess piece to delay our progress and buy time for the activation of the defense facilities?" The officer looked up at the friendly fleet in the sky with some annoyance. He felt that this should be the most correct explanation, but he always felt that something was wrong.
If the purpose was to delay time, why weren't there any blocking troops set up in other directions of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins?
Putting aside other things, releasing a few mutants and using some weapons dug out from the ruins of the Alpha civilization could at least delay the enemy for a few minutes, right?
But now they were let in so easily, which made the officer feel that this relic... was like a trap.
At this moment, a sudden gunshot interrupted his thoughts. The officer looked around hurriedly and saw a soldier at the edge of the queue falling down with his hands covering his neck. His body kept twitching and bloody foam kept pouring out from between his fingers.
"Enemy sniper! Six-story building at ten o'clock, second window from the left!"
"Pierre was shot! The bullet went in through the gap in his exoskeleton and seems to have pierced his trachea! Medic! Medic, come here quickly ! We need surgery immediately to save him!"
"Raise your shields! Mechas, raise your shields! We need a bulletproof shelter with an angle of at least forty-five degrees!"
Shouts immediately rang out one after another, but the soldiers' formation did not become chaotic - these people were all veterans who had experienced many battles, and a mere sniper could not disrupt their formation at all.
A heavy defense mecha immediately took a step back and used a huge shield to protect the infantry behind it. Two medics quickly passed through the crowd and ran to Pierre who was shot.
A dozen soldiers wearing power armor formed a circle around Pierre, using their bodies to provide a safe shelter for the medic to perform surgery.
As for the window where the sniper's head appeared, it was filled with more than a dozen rockets the next moment after he fired the shot.
Intensive explosions were heard from inside the building, followed by billowing smoke pouring out of the windows.
Even if the sniper retreated back into cover immediately after firing the shot, he would definitely not have time to escape the range of the explosion.
The saying "a sniper's enemy can only be another sniper" only applies to fights between small-scale mercenary groups. In war, there is only one best way to deal with snipers -
That's fire coverage.
Simple, brutal, and effective.
About ten seconds after the explosion, three Corrosion Seeds, which had not yet completely "transformed" and had charred human limbs hanging on their tentacles, jumped out of the windows, slammed heavily on the street, and then crawled towards the 10th Armored Division.
Without any orders from the officers, several soldiers who were specifically responsible for dealing with the seeds of erosion had already crossed the mechas and tanks and rushed forward.
The weapons in their hands are a kind of special steel fork that is more than five meters long. The end of the steel fork is fixed on the arm armor of the power armor, and the front end is a pair of movable mechanical claws, which are directly powered by the engine of the power armor.
These soldiers were divided into groups of five and used steel forks to clamp the rushing Seeds of Corrosion - although the power of the Seeds of Corrosion was terrifying, the power that could be burst out by soldiers equipped with high-power powered armor should not be underestimated. In the five-to-one struggle, these Seeds of Corrosion were directly fixed in place and could not move forward another step.
At this time, it was the turn of several other people holding sniper rifles to appear on the scene. They all wore heavy special helmets on their heads. The eyepieces of this helmet had functions similar to those of medical X-ray imaging equipment, but the power of military-grade ones was many times higher than that of medical ones. With the help of this thing, they could quickly lock the position of the "nucleus" in the body of the Seed of Erosion. With one shot of a penetrating bomb and one of an active bullet, they could take away a Seed of Erosion directly with two shots, quickly and neatly.
This is the fastest and most ammunition-saving way for the Field Corps to eliminate a small number of Seeds of Corrosion - of course, if they encounter an attack from a large number of Seeds of Corrosion, they can only choose a saturation attack to "cut the Gordian knot"... Although a saturation attack kills faster, its consumption of active ammunition is also extremely terrifying.
The special forces team here has already dealt with the three seeds of corrosion, and the medical soldiers on the other side have also completed the emergency surgery on Pierre.
The medics simply cut open Pierre's throat, clamped his blood vessels with hemostatic forceps, and then connected him to a simple extracorporeal circulation device - this emergency treatment method may seem crude, but it at least allowed Pierre to escape from life-threatening danger in time and maintain his vital signs for more than six hours.
Such injuries can only be treated in the field hospital in the rear or the medical room of a large airship, but now they are still in the battle stage, and they can't let the airship come down to pick up people just for one soldier, so Pierre can only lie in the armored vehicle for a while.
"Keep moving forward," the officer said. "Pay attention to the commanding heights of various buildings. If there are any suspicious locations, you can directly apply for fire reconnaissance."
For some reason, after being sniped, his inner uneasiness and doubts seemed to have dissipated a lot... In any case, they still encountered a certain degree of resistance, and the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City were by no means an empty city.
