Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 302 Purgatory on Earth
Under the strict orders of its commander, Masaharu Honma, the Japanese 27th Division had no choice but to continue its arduous march despite the risk of being bombed.

after an hour.

"Woo..."

Just as Honma Masaharu gritted his teeth and forced himself and his troops to continue advancing, a shrill whistling sound suddenly rang out in the sky. The sound was like the horn of death, instantly piercing through the smoke and dust in the air and striking the eardrums of every Japanese soldier.

An SBD-2 Dauntless dive bomber, its fuselage gleaming with silver-gray light, swooped down from an altitude of three thousand meters at an almost vertical angle, like a predatory raptor.

When the aircraft is diving at high speed, the strong airflow passes through the bagpipes under the wings, producing a piercing and sharp siren sound.

The sound was so terrifying that the Japanese soldiers on the ground, upon hearing it, didn't need any orders; they all instinctively dropped their weapons and scattered in terror like startled birds.

At that moment, the truck drivers couldn't care less about anything else.

They slammed on the brakes, and the truck, propelled by inertia, screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.

The driver at the front didn't even have time to pull the handbrake before he impatiently pushed open the car door, darted out, and rushed towards the roadside ditch, burying himself as much as possible in the mud.

Honma Masaharu, who was riding on horseback, was also pulled off the horse by several guards around him.

The guards moved roughly yet swiftly, grabbing Honma Masaharu's arms on either side and scrambling him to the roadside, where they pinned him down in a muddy ditch.

"I won't leave... let me get up... you bastards... let me get up... waaaah..."

Honma Masaharu's eyes widened in anger as he struggled furiously, letting out a defiant roar.

He tried desperately to get out of the mud, but how could he break free from several strong guards?

Four guards pressed him down on his back and limbs, holding him firmly at the bottom.

Honma Masaharu's face was pressed into the muddy water. As he struggled, he swallowed several mouthfuls of mud with an earthy taste, his mouth and nasal cavity filled with murky mud.

He felt extremely humiliated; this disheveled state was something he, as a general in the empire, had never experienced before.

When the SBD-2 dive bomber was more than 800 meters above the ground, its nose suddenly lifted. Immediately afterward, the huge 500-kilogram aerial bomb hanging under the wing, under the force of gravity, suddenly detached from the wing with a crisp "click" of mechanical release, and fell rapidly towards the ground like a black grim reaper with a sharp whistling sound.

"boom!"

A deafening roar shook the entire valley. The super-heavy aerial bomb landed precisely in the middle of the road, and the shockwave, like a visible white blast, spread wildly in all directions from the point of blast.

Japanese soldiers within a radius of hundreds of meters had no chance to scream. Their bodies were instantly torn apart and vaporized by the powerful shockwave and high temperature, turning into flying bits of flesh and viscous liquid.

Their weapons, equipment, and even their clothing were instantly reduced to the finest dust, leaving only huge craters on the ground and the stench of blood and burnt flesh in the air.

Even soldiers a hundred or even two hundred meters away from the blast point, if they did not find good cover, would have their internal organs shattered by the terrifying shockwave, spitting blood from their mouths and noses, and dying on the spot.

Those who survived often bled from all seven orifices, had ruptured eardrums, temporarily lost their hearing amidst the enormous explosion, and had vacant stares, like walking corpses.

As for the trucks, artillery, or mountains of supplies within the blast radius, they were all instantly reduced to twisted scrap metal and scattered parts, as if smashed by a giant's fist, their original shapes unrecognizable. This is the true power of this super-heavy bomb; it's not just simple killing, but utter destruction.

As Honma Masaharu lay in the ditch, he felt the ground beneath him tremble violently. A huge blast of air, carrying mud, gravel, and an indescribable stench, slammed against his back.

The blast wave jolted him, filling his mouth and nose with even more mud, and his ears were ringing, making it temporarily impossible for him to hear anything.

He felt as if he were being trampled by a giant beast, and all the bones in his body were creaking.

He buried his face in the mud and water, hugged his head tightly with his arms, and tried to curl himself up into a ball, feeling the force that seemed to tear his body apart.

The guards around him were also pressing him down tightly; their bodies were trembling, but none of them dared to let go.

After the loud bang, the world seemed to lose all sound in an instant, leaving only the intense buzzing in Honma Masaharu's eardrums and the "booming" sound of blood rushing through his body.

He was pressed down into the cold mud and water, where mud and gravel mixed with foul-smelling blood foam covered his face and mouth, and he even unconsciously inhaled it into his nose and mouth.

He felt a sharp pain in his chest, as if he had been struck by an invisible giant hammer. Immediately afterwards, a wave of nausea rose in his throat, and his stomach spasmed violently, as if he were about to vomit up his internal organs. He coughed forcefully a few times, only to cough up more mud and bloody foam.

When the guards eased their hold on him slightly, allowing him to barely lift his head, the sight that greeted him made his pupils shrink.

What was once a flat road has now been blasted into a crater several meters in diameter and several meters deep. The edges of the crater are charred black, and the soil has been burned into a glassy state by the high temperature.

Around the pit, the Japanese soldiers who had been marching in orderly formation had vanished without a trace, leaving only scattered patches of blood and gore on the ground, as well as some unidentifiable bone fragments.

The air was thick with the smells of gunpowder, burnt food, and nauseating blood.

Those once imposing Type 94 trucks were now nothing more than twisted piles of scrap metal, their wheels flying dozens of meters away, their cargo compartments blown to shreds. Supply trains, ammunition boxes, and even the soldiers' helmets and rifles were torn into tiny pieces by the massive shockwave, scattered across the ravaged ground.

Honma Masaharu's gaze swept across the scene blankly, a surge of indescribable fear and despair welling up within him. This sight was more brutal and destructive than any battle he had ever experienced before.

He suddenly recalled the scenes from the Battle of Shanghai.

Back then, the Imperial Navy's ship cannons were the true grim reapers.

The 60,000 elite Guangxi Army soldiers, known as the "Wolf Soldiers," launched a desperate attack on the Japanese positions, but under the cover of naval gunfire, they were almost completely annihilated in a short period of time. That was not an ordinary baptism of fire; it was a true "plowing through the enemy's stronghold."

He remembered clearly that at the time, the Imperial Navy's ship guns ranged in caliber from 76 mm to a terrifying 460 mm.

Take, for example, the 460mm high-explosive shell, the largest caliber shell ever used on battleships. That thing weighs 1.3 tons, has a charge of over 300 kilograms, and an explosive radius of over 200 meters! One shot is enough to level an area the size of half a football field.

In other words, if that thing were to fire one shot, people within a football field's radius would either be blown to bits or killed by the terrifying shockwave!
Now, he is facing an attack from the sky, one that possesses the same destructive power.

Moreover, this attack is not a one-off or two-off, but a continuous one.

It's unbelievable that the Chinese Air Force possesses heavy bombs with the power comparable to the Imperial Navy's naval guns!
Honma Masaharu trembled as he reached out and wiped the mud and blood from his face, his eyes filled with shock and fear.

His body trembled as he struggled to prop himself up, trying to climb out of the mud.

Muddy liquid was still gushing from his mouth and nose, and blood and saliva were mixed together, dripping down his chin.

Even my head was throbbing with pain, and my eardrums felt like they were being torn apart. Apart from a constant buzzing sound, I couldn't hear anything else.

Masaharu Honma served in the military for over twenty years, participating in countless battles, from the Russo-Japanese War to the invasion of China. He considered himself accustomed to life and death and had brushed shoulders with death several times.

But this was the first time he had ever personally experienced such a direct and devastating threat of death.

He estimated that if that 500-kilogram aerial bomb had been just a hundred meters closer to him—no, fifty meters!—his name, Honma Masaharu, would have been engraved on a cold memorial tablet at the Yasukuni Shrine within days. It was a fear he had never felt before, a deep-seated, bone-chilling sense of powerlessness.

Before he could fully recover from the shock and fear of the bomb, more black dots began to appear in the sky, on the distant horizon. Those dots quickly grew larger, and soon it became clear that they were more and more planes!

They pressed down like a dense, dark cloud, their numbers far exceeding those of the previous formation.

Immediately following, accompanied by eerie, ghostly screams, one after another, SBD Dauntless dive bombers, like rigorously trained death dancers, began to swoop down in formation at near-vertical angles toward the highway that stretched for dozens of miles.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The explosions of heavy bombs echoed one after another, relentless and continuous. The entire pass had become a hellish place of explosions, the earth trembling violently as if it were being torn apart. The mud, rubble, and remains of corpses kicked up by the explosions rained down like raindrops.

Amidst the explosions, there was also the distinctive, muffled "rat-a-tat-tat" of a large-caliber machine gun. It was the machine gun mounted on the SBD bomber, strafing the ground as it dove. The dense hail of bullets, like the scythe of death, relentlessly reaped lives on the road.

Under the terrifying bombing and strafing, Japanese soldiers were either blown to pieces by heavy bombs, leaving no trace of their bodies; or they were thrown into the air by the shockwaves of the explosions, their bones broken, their internal organs ruptured, and they coughed up blood, becoming crippled; or they were accurately hit by machine gun bullets, their bodies riddled with holes the size of bowls, or their limbs torn apart, leaving them disabled.

Many others, under the threat of death, unleashed an astonishing will to survive. They let out desperate roars and screams, frantically running towards the ditches, crevices, and even the smallest embankments on either side of the road, trying to find a sliver of hope for survival.

For a time, the road, which stretched for more than ten miles, was filled with the sounds of running, shouting, cursing, screaming, and explosions.

Thick smoke, flames, blood, flesh, and ruins intertwined, resembling a living hell on earth. The shadow of death loomed over everyone, and despair spread like a plague.

(End of this chapter)