When Hu Hao saw Liang Wanyu approaching, he was utterly shocked. More than anything, he was furious that she was here. This was a meat grinder, a place of indiscriminate slaughter. In Hu Hao’s eyes, this was absolutely no place for a woman.
“Haozi, what is your problem?! I told you, I have an official assignment! I’m only here for half a day!” Liang Wanyu snapped, clearly offended by Hu Hao’s immediate demand that she leave.
“Hu Hao, I’m leaving her in your hands! Protect her with your life!” Staff Officer Ye said. Seeing that the two of them actually knew each other, he was flooded with relief. Without waiting for a response, he practically sprinted away down the trench line.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Hu Hao yelled after him, but Staff Officer Ye acted as if he had suddenly gone deaf, disappearing around a bend in the trench.
“Motherfucker,” Hu Hao cursed, glaring at the spot where the officer had vanished.
“Hey! What is wrong with you?! If you were alive, why didn’t you contact anyone?! Everyone at the academy thought you were dead!” Liang Wanyu demanded, completely ignoring Hu Hao’s foul mood.
“I didn’t have a damn phone! How was I supposed to contact anyone?! And let me ask you: what the hell are you doing here?!” Hu Hao sighed, slumping down heavily onto the dirt floor of the trench.
“You didn’t have a phone? Why not?” Liang Wanyu crouched down next to him, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“We’re fighting a war. They confiscated our phones. Do you understand now?” Hu Hao replied impatiently.
“What is with your attitude? You run into an old classmate who thought you were dead, and you can’t even pretend to be happy? Who are you glaring at?” Liang Wanyu complained, thoroughly annoyed by his reception.
“Listen to me, Young Miss,” Hu Hao said, turning to look her dead in the eye. “This is a battlefield. Do you have any concept of how brutal this war actually is?
If we manage to hold the line today, great. But if the enemy breaks through, we are going to be surrounded. Do you know what being surrounded means for us? It means Killed in Action! Do you understand? KIA! Dead!”
“I know that!” Liang Wanyu replied, though her voice lacked its earlier bravado.
“You don’t know shit,” Hu Hao spat back instantly.
“You… are you trying to piss me off?! Is it really that agonizing for you to protect me for a few hours?! I know how to shoot too, you know!” Liang Wanyu flared up, shouting at him.
“Hey! Someone grab a rifle and a few magazines from the dead!” Hu Hao yelled down the trench to a nearby soldier. The veteran quickly scavenged a standard-issue assault rifle and several loaded magazines from a fallen comrade and brought them over.
“Here. Hold this,” Hu Hao said, taking the weapon and tossing it into Liang Wanyu’s lap.
“Oh? A Major?” Liang Wanyu finally noticed the insignia on Hu Hao’s collar.
Hu Hao rolled his eyes.
“Should I salute you? How did you get promoted so fast? Weren’t you just a Second Lieutenant when we graduated?” Liang Wanyu pressed, refusing to let him off the hook.
“Sigh. Big Sister…”
“I’m younger than you!”
“Little Sister… can you please stop asking questions? I am begging you, just let me have a moment of peace. Also, didn’t you bring a camera? Turn the damn thing on and do your job!” Hu Hao groaned, rubbing his temples in exasperation.
“Just you wait, Hu Hao. You just wait. I am going to make you pay for this later,” Liang Wanyu glared at him venomously.
“If you want to make me pay, you better do it right now,” Hu Hao turned to look at her, his expression dead serious. “I’m telling you the truth: you might not get another chance. This morning is going to be an absolute bloodbath. I could die at any second. If you wait and I die before you get your revenge, it would be a sin to leave you with regrets.”
“Don’t say things like that!” Liang Wanyu’s anger instantly evaporated. Her threat had only been a joke between old friends.
“Did the Zone Commander assign them to you?” Hu Hao asked, pointing his chin toward the heavily armed guards standing nearby.
“Mmh. He gave me a full platoon,” Liang Wanyu nodded.
“Hao-ge! Hao-ge! Whoa, a woman?! Hao-ge, where did a woman come from?!” Sima Xuankong jogged over, his eyes going wide when he saw Liang Wanyu crouching next to Hu Hao.
“What do you want?” Hu Hao asked, looking at him.
“Nothing, just checking in. You said the enemy was going to attack, but there’s no movement over there,” Sima Xuankong grinned.
Hearing this, Hu Hao immediately stood up and raised his binoculars to scan the opposite bank. Liang Wanyu started to stand up with him, but Hu Hao slapped his hand down on the top of her helmet, forcefully pressing her back down.
“Haozi, let me up!” Liang Wanyu struggled against his grip, but she couldn’t break it. She immediately started yelling.
“Stay down!” Hu Hao barked, his eyes never leaving the binoculars.
Forced to crouch in the dirt, Liang Wanyu glared daggers at Hu Hao. She lashed out, kicking him hard in the shin. Hu Hao didn’t even flinch.
“Haozi, what is your problem?!” Liang Wanyu yelled indignantly.
“Are you trying to get your head blown off?!” Hu Hao snapped, looking down at her. “Let me make this perfectly clear: from now on, you stay behind me, and you do not stand up! Do you remember what they taught us in basic training at the academy? When you move in a trench, you keep your back bent and your head below the parapet! Do you hear me?! Do not randomly stick your head out to look around!”
Hu Hao’s voice was harsh and commanding. Liang Wanyu was momentarily stunned; she wasn’t used to being spoken to like this.
“Didn’t you come here to film? Get your camera ready. And remember: you stay right behind me. Do not wander off. If you run off on your own, I am not coming after you!” Hu Hao warned her sternly.
“Fine! Don’t come after me! So what if you’re a Major?! Do you think you’re God?! I’ve seen plenty of Majors! I don’t need you to watch over me!” Liang Wanyu’s pride flared up again, and she yelled right back at him.
Hu Hao sighed helplessly, turning his head away. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag, and exhaled slowly.
“Do you know how many Imperial soldiers died on this riverbank yesterday?” Hu Hao asked quietly, turning back to look at her.
Liang Wanyu remained stubbornly silent.
“At least a hundred thousand dead. Another hundred thousand critically wounded. In one day,” Hu Hao said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
“One hundred thousand. To you, sitting in the Capital, that might just be a statistic. But to us… those were lives. For those hundred thousand boys, their entire existence ended right here in the mud. Do you understand that?
You are the daughter of a powerful family. Your life is precious. Dying here would be a tragedy. We are different. We’re just commoners. We have no choice but to pick up rifles and march to the front.
Look at yourself. You, a single girl, waltz onto the front line, and the Zone Commander instantly assigns a full platoon of his elite, personal guards to protect you.
But do you know what’s going to happen when the shooting starts? It is highly likely that the majority of those guards are going to die. They are going to die specifically for you. As the Commander’s personal detail, unless the command bunker itself is directly attacked, they never would have been sent to the front line.
But because you decided to play tourist, they are out here risking their lives. Could you please just grow up a little? Remember: this is a battlefield. It is not the academy. It is not a live-fire training exercise. It is a slaughterhouse!”
Liang Wanyu stared at Hu Hao, the anger slowly draining from her face, replaced by a dawning realization of the absolute horror surrounding her.
“Get your gear sorted. You stick to me. Do not stray further than one meter from my back. Do you hear me? If I tell you to hit the dirt, you hit the dirt instantly! Even if there’s a bomb on the ground, or a rotting corpse beneath you, you throw yourself down! Do not hesitate for a single second!
If you hesitate, you become a corpse too. If I tell you to crawl, you crawl! Do you understand?!” Hu Hao looked at her, his eyes burning with intensity.
“Mmh,” Liang Wanyu nodded meekly.
She suddenly felt as though she didn’t know Hu Hao at all. The change in him was so profound, so absolute, that she hardly recognized him. If his face hadn’t been the same, she would have doubted this hardened, ruthless veteran was the same boy she had known at the academy.
“Hurry up and get your gear ready,” Hu Hao said, turning back to the parapet.
Liang Wanyu pulled her backpack over and carefully took out a compact, military-grade camcorder. Gripping it tightly, she started to stand up again.
Hu Hao instantly grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back down.
“I just want to film the enemy positions on the opposite bank!” Liang Wanyu protested, looking at him.
“Just raise the camera over your head! At worst, they shoot your hand off. It won’t kill you!” Hu Hao instructed bluntly.
“Oh,” Liang Wanyu nodded. She flipped open the LCD screen on the side of the camcorder, angled it downward so she could see the feed while crouching in the trench, and slowly raised the lens over the parapet. The opposite bank was still eerily quiet.
“Hao-ge! Phone!” He Jizhong jogged over, handing Hu Hao his satellite phone.
“Yes?” Hu Hao answered.
“Hao-ge, there’s no movement from the enemy. Are they not attacking today?” Xiao Quan’s voice crackled through the receiver.
“They’re attacking. There is zero chance they aren’t attacking. Look at the buildings on the far bank—you can see clusters of Allied soldiers hiding in the shadows. If they were planning to retreat, they wouldn’t be holding those forward positions.
My guess is they just finished breakfast and are resting before the push. Tell your men: do not wander around! Stay low in the trenches. It’s the only place we have any cover!” Hu Hao ordered firmly.
“Understood!” Xiao Quan agreed, and Hu Hao ended the call.
“Hey… how exactly have you survived all this?” Liang Wanyu asked softly. She was holding the camera up, slowly panning across the river, but her eyes were fixed on Hu Hao.
“Ha. Keep your eyes on the screen!” Hu Hao chuckled, leaning back against the dirt wall of the trench.
“Seriously, tell me. Everyone in the Capital heard that the 27th Corps was practically annihilated. That’s why we all assumed you were dead,” Liang Wanyu continued.
“Of course it was annihilated. The 27th Corps is a Class-A corps. At full strength, we had sixty thousand men. Do you know how many men were left when we ran the tally last night?” Hu Hao asked, looking at her.
“Casualties must have been over fifty percent. Thirty thousand?” Liang Wanyu guessed.
“About twelve hundred,” Hu Hao said flatly.
Liang Wanyu froze. Her eyes widened in absolute shock, staring at Hu Hao in disbelief.
“You can ask your guards if you don’t believe me. The entire Southwest Combat Zone started with three hundred and thirty thousand troops. By last night, the number of men still standing on this line was roughly twenty thousand.
I told you, you shouldn’t have come here. Did you think this was going to be fun? People die here. The only reason anyone survives this place is pure, blind luck. That’s it. Just luck. Not getting blown apart by artillery, not catching a stray bullet in the head… do you know how astronomically low the odds of survival actually are?” Hu Hao smiled bitterly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Liang Wanyu whispered. She finally understood why Hu Hao was so fundamentally different. The sheer weight of the horrors he had witnessed and survived had irreversibly altered him.
“Forget it. Just get your footage and get out of here. I know your family background is extraordinary. It would be a genuine tragedy if you died in this mud.
Furthermore… this is a war. Women should never have to set foot on a battlefield like this. The men of the Empire aren’t all dead yet. It is not time for the women to march to the front line!” Hu Hao declared firmly, looking her in the eye.
Liang Wanyu stared back at him in silence, unable to find the words to respond.