Fierce Battle! Barbarossa!

"Lieutenant Malashenko, wake up, wake up!"

"Comrade Lieutenant, the German tanks are charging towards us! Quickly tell us what to do!"

Huh? Someone speaking in my room? And in Russian?

In a daze, Lin Jie faintly heard two robust Slavic men shouting loudly at him, and suddenly realized that something was not right. He swiftly opened his eyes from his slumber.

"What the hell! How dare that bastard come into my room and steal things! I'll break your legs before you even know it!"

His instinctive shout came to an abrupt halt as he took in the unfamiliar and chilling scene before him.

Taped haphazardly on the cold steel cabin wall were black and white photographs of some unknown girl. The strong smell of gunpowder, mixed with the heavy diesel scent, lingered near Lin Jie's ears, almost choking him instantly. The unfamiliar and inexplicable surroundings left him bewildered, having just woken up from his "dream."

"I... Wasn't I supposed to be in a hotel room? Tied up like a piece of meat? What the hell is this place!?"

Shocked by the unfamiliar environment he found himself in, Lin Jie looked around and subconsciously tried to raise his left hand to pinch his own cheek, to confirm if he was dreaming. But what his left hand touched next startled him, almost making him lose his soul.

"Fuck! Why is there a dead body here? Damn it!"

His eyes widened in shock as he saw the mottled, warm bloodstains on his left wrist. A headless corpse, still warm and blood flowing, sat slumped against the cabin wall next to his seat.

Deeply shaken, he stared at the familiar uniform on the headless corpse. Even in the dim light of the vehicle, Lin Jie could recognize the standard uniform of the early Soviet armored forces during World War II.

Seeing that the highest-ranking officer, who survived in the loading position, had yet to respond, the two tank crew members, occupying the driver's and gunner's positions inside the chassis, once again spoke loudly to their perceived superior.

"Comrade Lieutenant! What should we do now? The German tanks are less than five hundred meters away from us!"

German... German tanks?

Hearing the urgent cries coming from beneath the vehicle's chassis, and considering the headless corpse beside him dressed in Soviet armored uniform, as well as the narrow and cramped surroundings of steel walls that made even turning around difficult, Lin Jie suddenly realized where he was and a very bad conclusion formed in his mind.

"Just wait a moment, let me assess the situation before making a decision!"

With an uncertain and doubtful tone, Lin Jie replied to the two crew members under his seat. He could hardly believe the dreadful conclusion he had reached. With that, Lin Jie stood up from his seat, pushing open the heavy turret hatch above him in a strenuous and unfamiliar posture, and followed by extending his upper body outside the vehicle.

Zoom zoom -

Boom - clank clank

The pungent smell of battlefield smoke mixed with the whistling of shells and the continuous explosions ringing out from all around, impacting Lin Jie's senses in the most realistic way. Looking at the gray tanks in the distance rushing towards them in groups of three or five, he lowered his head and glanced at the angular and smooth turret beneath him.

Although he still vehemently refused to admit this cruel reality, everything that was happening right now was telling Lin Jie an incredibly shocking conclusion.

He seemed to have traveled back in time, and not just anywhere, but to the brutal and life-consuming Eastern Front of the Second World War!

Supporting his tank cap on his forehead, he sat back heavily in the loader's position inside the turret. In a daze, Lin Jie not only understood through his observation after sticking his upper body out of the turret that he was currently on the Eastern Front engulfed in the flames of war, but also by a simple identification, he knew the true model of the Soviet tank he was in - the T-34/76 medium tank, 1941 model.

Just as Lin Jie sat blankly inside the turret, his brain freezing and momentarily losing focus, a penetrator round fired from the German tank's barrel, which had halted its advance, whistled towards them.

Clang -

Accompanied by the dull impact sound of the penetrator round hitting the armored plate area at the front of the tank's hull, this T-34/76 tank, which was stationary, immediately trembled and resonated throughout the entire vehicle, startling the eardrums of all three surviving crew members.

This penetrator round, a 75mm full-caliber capped ballistic cap projectile fired by a German Panzer IV Ausf. C tank from a distance of 500 meters, failed to penetrate the sturdy frontal armor of the T-34/76 tank and bounced off directly. The limited effectiveness of the 75mm KwK 37 short-barreled gun, equipped on the early version of the Panzer IV tank, against armored units was fully exposed at this moment.

Although still skeptical about why he had traveled back to the Soviet T-34/76 medium tank during World War II, the dull roar caused by the non-penetrating penetrator round was like a funeral bell from hell, completely awakening Lin Jie, who was still lost in a blank mind.

"This is the battlefield, it's either you die or I die! If you dare to mess with me, I'll kill you first!"

Guided by the supreme truth of "either you die or I die" on the battlefield, Lin Jie, in a trance, was surprised to find that he could operate inside a tank with such skillfulness. He immediately reached out and pulled the headless corpse in the gunner's position to his own position, swapping places with it.

Sitting in the gunner's position after moving down from the breech, Lin Jie then leaned down and picked up a 76mm full-caliber AP round from the hull below his seat, stained with scattered bloodstains. He returned to his gunner's position and temporarily placed the shell next to his seat. He reached out and opened the breech, causing a yellowish AP round casing, still carrying the residual heat from the barrel, to fall into the shell casing collector at the back of the gun.

Continuing to lift the 76mm AP round next to his seat and push it into the breech, Lin Jie closed the breech and brought his entire face close to the gunner's sight in front of him. He then began rotating the adjustment wheel in his hand, fine-tuning the elevation angle of the main gun and the direction of the barrel, swiftly aligning it with the target firmly locked in his sights.