Chapter 6: Evil Spirits in the Smoke

To confirm this, Wang Zhong, who was lying beside him, asked Captain Sergey, "Is Divine Arrow a kind of rocket?"

"Yes."

Wang Zhong continued to confirm, "Guided by prayers?"

"The prayer givers pray to God, and then God guides it."

Sergey seemed to be making an effort to make his voice sound more devout, but he failed.

By now, Wang Zhong had already determined that Divine Arrow was a kind of radio or wired guided weapon. It was just that the world might have developed again after the destruction of civilization, and modern people were unable to decipher the ancient technology used to make Divine Arrows.

As an experienced player of "War Game: Red Dragon," he immediately realized how important this kind of anti-tank missile was under the current circumstances.

Wang Zhong, "Sergey, send someone to get in touch with the Divine Arrow team. That should be Monk Yeca Neiko's Divine Arrow team."

Ludmila had joined Monk Yeca Neiko's Divine Arrow team, and Wang Zhong remembered clearly that Monk Yeca Neiko's team had lost their prayer giver, which is why Ludmila had been urgently added to the group.

Captain Sergey, "Understood."

Wang Zhong continued to observe the front line.

After losing their tanks, the enemy did not stop their attack.

The Prussians used mortars to launch a smoke screen, blocking the Divine Arrow team's view, and then a second tank, pushing the still-burning wreckage, charged forward.

Wang Zhong was impressed, "The enemy is very experienced."

Captain Sergey, "Didn't you notice? There is an iris flower symbol on the enemy's sleeve, which is proof they took part in the Carolingian campaign."

Wang Zhong had no idea what the Carolingian campaign was, and he didn't dare to ask in case it was common knowledge in this world.

But Carolingian – there was a Carolingian dynasty in the history of the Earth's Franks. Could it be that in this timeline, France was also steamrolled by the Germans, no, by the Prussians?

And now these attacking Prussian troops, were they veterans who had participated in steamrolling through Carolingian?

While Wang Zhong was pondering this, he saw the group that had just launched Divine Arrows leave their original position, apparently planning to move forward, to get past the smokescreen.

"What the hell?" Wang Zhong muttered under his breath, "Advancing forward can indeed bypass the smoke's barrier, but by doing that, you'll be just two to three hundred meters from the tanks. The tanks could even hit you with their machine guns!"

"Huh?" Captain Sergey made a puzzled sound, "I didn't think to move forward?"

Wang Zhong, "Not you! Monk Yeca Neiko's team is moving forward, it's too dangerous! Stop them!"

Captain Sergey looked puzzled and glanced in the distance where he could only see a bunch of buildings, completely unable to see Monk Yeca Neiko's team.

In fact, without an overhead view, it was impossible to get such detailed front-line intelligence from the rooftop because most of the view was blocked by buildings.

Captain Sergey, "I don't even know where they are. How did you see them?"

Wang Zhong shut his mouth. It would be rather troublesome to explain the use of an external helper, and he'd have to be careful in the future to only issue commands without telling others why he was giving those orders.

At this moment, Wang Zhong had already confirmed through the overhead view that Ludmila was indeed there—her figure was too good to miss, and with that silver hair, she could be easily recognized even from an overhead perspective.

The current priority was to stop the Divine Arrow team from making a deadly mistake, but there was no way to contact them now.

Just as Wang Zhong was worrying, Sergey said, "I've contacted the artillery group in the rear; the artillery commander wants to speak with you."

Wang Zhong switched his view back and took the handset—only then did he notice that at some point, the signalman had run the telephone line up to the rooftop.

"This is Count Rocossov speaking, go ahead."

He almost blurted out "This is Wang Zhong"!

"Count Rocossov? Why are you in command?" The voice on the other end was very surprised, "It's over..."

Wang Zhong was very astonished; from the information the duke had revealed before, the Count Rocossov he was portraying was a friend of the Crown Prince, yet these people expressed their opinion of Count Rocossov so bluntly...

"Duke Vladimir is dead, killed by the Prussian Battleship's bombardment. We've suffered heavy losses. If you're calling to make light of our predicament, you might as well hang up now."

"No, wait a moment. I'm calling to tell you that the Prussians are about to reach our artillery position, and I can still provide you with one round of support. After that, you'll have to fight without artillery support."

Wang Zhong immediately zoomed his view to the farthest distance, which from such a height made it feel like looking at satellite images on Google Earth.

Then something unexpected happened; there were troop icons on this "satellite map."

At Wang Zhong's location, there was a symbol with a rectangle and an X, representing infantry, while on the east side of the city, there was a marker for artillery.

The marker was now green, and Wang Zhong felt like he had their vision.

He zoomed in for a closer look and, indeed, he had the artillery's field of view.

Was it because he was on the phone right now?

As Wang Zhong was studying his own exploit, the person on the phone said, "Give me the coordinates, and I'll shoot the shells as far as I can. Then you guys just have to fend for yourselves!"

At that moment, Wang Zhong suddenly noticed that there were still quite a few smoke bombs at the artillery position.

A plan suddenly struck him.

Wang Zhong, "Do you have smoke bombs?"

There was silence for a second on the phone, and then the reply came, "Yes. What about it?"

Wang Zhong, "I'll give you coordinates, shoot all the smoke bombs over there."

Since the Prussians used smoke to obscure the vision of the Divine Arrow team, allowing their tanks to engage at a distance they excelled in, we could do the same.

Using smoke to completely strip away vision, then let the infantry charge and engage the enemy in melee combat.

During melee combat, the direct firepower of tanks would be useless.

Of course, this would also prevent the machine guns from being effective, but the machine guns would be targeted and taken out by the enemy tanks anyway.

The only question was whether the front-line commanders could comprehend the meaning of this round of smoke and seize the opportunity to counterattack.

However, Wang Zhong didn't care about that much; his actual goal was to save Ludmila—if the enemy tanks' vision was completely stripped by the smoke, they naturally wouldn't be able to fire at the Divine Arrow team which Ludmila was part of.

Wang Zhong adjusted his field of view; his overhead perspective came with coordinates, which he then reported.

Unbeknownst to him, Captain Sergey beside him was staring with wide eyes, his mouth agape.

After Wang Zhong gave the coordinates, the other side repeated them and then reconfirmed the order, "Fire all the smoke bombs at these coordinates, right?"

Wang Zhong, "Right, fire them all. Don't use live rounds; this coordinate is right at the tense spot between the enemy and us, lots of the shells will fall on our own men."

Smoke bombs aren't very lethal; as long as you're not unlucky enough to be hit directly, they won't cause injury.

"Understood. After firing these smoke bombs, we'll have to retreat. The enemy's machine guns have surpassing fire that's already reaching us, you get that?"

"Got it! Fire!"

From the other end of the phone came the roar, "Fire!"

Then the call was hung up.

Wang Zhong used his overhead view to try to see the effect when he heard Sergey ask in surprise, "You just called out the coordinates like that? Using just a telescope?"

"Yes," Wang Zhong replied nonchalantly.

"But... they all say that you scored zero in every military subject!" Captain Sergey said.

Wang Zhong thought to himself, what a coincidence? That suits me just fine; I'm a person with no military knowledge anyway, so I won't have to worry about giving myself away in the future.

As he thought this, the smoke bombs came down.

In an instant, the entire block, both enemy and ally, was engulfed in white smoke.

Even Wang Zhong's overhead view was covered so tightly that he could see nothing.

What happened next depended on whether the front-line infantry command was cowardly or not.

Wang Zhong had just this thought when he heard through the dense smoke a deafening war cry, "Ura!"