It's better to conquer them than to command the steel torrent

Chapter 131 | Miraculous Wishes

While Tukhachevsky was focused on figuring out how to counter Budapest's defensive system, Shank was taking a break from his busy schedule.

I've been stressed for several days, I need to relax.

The sunset was beautiful tonight; the clouds were tinged with red, truly a fiery sunset in the literal sense.

"As expected of TuTu, he's still shrewd after all. He didn't stubbornly charge in." He muttered to himself, then pried open a bottle of beer.

After his probing attack was thwarted, Tukhachevsky did not continue his brute-force assault. Instead, he ordered a temporary halt to the offensive, allowing the troops to rest and regroup while adjusting their deployment.

During this period, the air force and artillery continued to bomb important targets in Budapest without ceasing, weakening the defenders' ability to resist.

Each cannon regiment was assigned its own targets—some to the train station, some to the docks, some to Heroes' Square, and some to the power plant.

Every moment, shells whistled down, and the booming explosions never stopped.

Shang Ke leaned against the entrance of the business school building, gulped down the last two mouthfuls of wine, and gazed absently at the gray sky.

This era is one of great strife. If the Great Unified Federation had prepared its military a few years earlier, it wouldn't have been a problem to raise an army of tens of millions to fight on three fronts.

If that were the case, Europe wouldn't have descended into chaos at all; each region would have been forced to stand at attention and take the beating.

It can only be said that the Chinese are still too conservative, preferring to use soft tactics to wear people down first, and only resorting to hard tactics when they are provoked.

Shank invented a new term specifically to describe a large-scale federal government—mild imperialism.

Just then, Sabo-Monica arrived at the division headquarters to deliver a confidential document.

She sensed the danger and warned, "Hey? Colonel Shang, it's dangerous outside. Let's go back to the basement."

At the entrance of the teaching building, sandbags and oil drums filled with soil were piled up to form an L-shaped bunker wall with angled corners to prevent shock waves and fragments from directly entering. Unless directly hit by a 122mm or larger high-explosive shell, it was quite stable.

In the distance, four shells fell in succession, adding more craters to the already devastated business school campus.

Shank shrugged and said nonchalantly, "It's fine, the shells or bullets that can kill me haven't been made yet."

Then, gazing at the afterglow of the setting sun, he said leisurely in Chinese, "Make a wish, grant me two tons of submachine guns, don't be rude."

After saying that, he remembered that he was still abroad, so he changed his words and repeated them in Hungarian.

Monica was stunned when she heard this.

Making a wish while gazing at the sunset? Measuring submachine guns in tons? Isn't this method of measurement a bit strange? Is the sense of extravagance among Easterners too abstract?
About ten seconds later, several more shells slammed into the same spot.

But this time there were only three explosions?
At the same instant, Shank heard a strange change in sound—from a sharp whistling sound to a low, deep one.

Experienced veterans know what this means.

In a flash, Shank grabbed Monica and pulled her forward to lie down.

"what!"

The expected explosion did not occur.

Shang Ke scanned the area ahead and saw an unexploded shell half-buried in the ground diagonally in front of him, only six or seven meters away.

Monica saw it too, and for a moment she was so shocked she couldn't speak. After a few seconds, she said in a trembling voice, "It didn't explode..."

"A dud." Shank felt a lingering fear, but quickly calmed down.

Soon, soldiers who heard the commotion rushed over and, without hesitation, took away the precious Mr. Shang and Monica. As for the dud, several engineers quickly dug it out.

Shang Ke couldn't forget his extraordinary encounter, so he specifically asked, "When was that dud manufactured?"

The sergeant replied, "It's from 1936, very new. Judging from the serial number, it seems to have been manufactured by the Tsaritsyn First Ammunition Factory, but I might be mistaken."

"Okay, I got it." Shang Ke took out a half-empty pack of cigarettes and tossed it over.

"Thank you, Colonel!" The corporal took the gift, smelled it, saluted, thanked him, and left happily.

At the basement entrance, Shang Ke nodded thoughtfully, thinking to himself: It seems that the oracle of causality has taken effect.

The mysterious divine decree seemed to say to temporarily halt the weaving of some thread of fate for myself, which meant that the manner of death was not yet determined, and that I would not die from an accident for the time being.

This is a rather interesting law of cause and effect. In fact, Mr. Shang even thought that since he wouldn't die, he might as well be bold and go into St. Petersburg alone, taking only one life to quickly reach St. Petersburg.

Of course, Mr. Shang later gave up on this idea, because he felt from the bottom of his heart that the Olympian gods were not very reliable, and perhaps he had deliberately considered such a heaven-defying operation.

Shank breathed a sigh of relief, only to find Monica staring at him.

He chuckled knowingly, "Why are you staring at me? Do I have gold on my face?"

Monica replied seriously, "Colonel Shang, it's interesting to see you thinking."

Shang Ke said helplessly, "Fine, go ahead and watch if you want. I want to ask you why you came to the division headquarters in person."

“You should know that we took down another hidden stronghold the day before yesterday, but the cat-and-mouse game is not over.” Monica smoothed her short brown hair and said calmly, “Just last night, we noticed a suspicious radio signal, but the other party was very cunning and it only lasted for a dozen seconds. We didn’t have time to determine the exact location, and we only roughly judged that it was in the North District.”

She continued, "I have already reported this to the city defense command and now I am requesting that troops from the A defense zone be mobilized to conduct a search of defense zones A1 to A8."

Shang Ke nodded in agreement, saying, "Good, we must catch the fish that slipped through the net."

The dud that startled Shank made him forget the wish he had made for the sunset.

Or rather, it's a situation that's both laughable and frustrating.

I wished for guns and ammunition, and you gave me a dud to scare me. That's really unfair!
next morning.

A captain received a phone call from the city defense command and then excitedly turned around to share the good news with everyone.

"Great, guys! An arms transport ship has docked in Rijeka, and the Ministry of Defense is considering sending some of it to reinforce us!"

"...The attack on this place has also been halted, but small groups of enemy infiltration are still continuing." Shang Ke was discussing the situation from last night with several staff officers when he heard this and asked without turning his head, "A ship full of weapons? What are those?"

"I don't know. It's said that it was a Portuguese cargo ship requisitioned by the Chinese side, and it was carrying weapons and equipment for forming a colonial army."

"Oh?"

Shang Ke immediately had an idea.

He then instructed the captain to call back to the city defense command and request a detailed inventory of the cargo ship.

Around noon, the headquarters sent out the details.

"The Putuya are really stingy. The colonial troops don't have any heavy weapons, but they have plenty of light weapons." Shank complained, but he was quite assertive when it came to asking for things.

He specifically mentioned, "These Bergman submachine guns and Browning automatic rifles have all been sent to Budapest, which has solved our immediate problem. It's like a godsend."

(End of this chapter)