Preface Symphony of Fate_4

"I guarantee I'll complete the mission!"

Before the colonel could respond, Li Yunxiang had already turned and run out.

Watching his retreating figure, the colonel couldn't help but sigh, then even let out a wry smile.

Here, counting the reconnaissance aircraft fitted with machine guns, they had less than a hundred fighters, while the enemy across the front had at least a thousand.

Yes, Li Yunxiang was an ace with thirty-seven individual victories, an airborne loner who struck fear in the enemy.

But could he still dominate the skies with several hundred kilograms of bombs loaded?

...

Empire's Northeast border, Ice Storm Peninsula, a battlefield hospital on the Northeast Front.

Some viewed the peninsula, infamous for its harsh cold and fierce storms during winter, as the beak of the Empire's eagle, deterring any enemies from the east at a glance.

Others called it the Empire's appendix, plaguing the nation with afflictions whenever it was weak and feeble.

But now, it had become an incurable ulcer on the Empire, constantly bleeding out.

Of the three ground fronts, the Northeast Front was the last to form, yet it was also the most brutal and bloody.

In the past two-plus years, around this narrow front of less than three hundred kilometers, both sides had clashed over a hundred times with at least thirteen major engagements involving more than a hundred thousand troops each—nearly once every two months. Within a fifteen-kilometer radius north and south of the front, at least three million soldiers and officers were buried. After such devastating losses and suffering, they had held onto their positions.

Over these two years, not a single soldier was able to crawl five hundred meters forward after climbing out of the trenches.

In the face of defenses composed of trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery, any attempt by flesh and blood to advance was futile, charges only led to the senseless sacrifice of lives.

Interestingly, after the front was established, the busiest were no longer the soldiers clutching their rifles, crouching at the bottom of muddy trenches in constant fear, but the military doctors in the battlefield hospitals. Whenever the artillery on both sides prepared to handle damp shells or a new commander wanted to make a mark, hundreds of soldiers would become casualties. Some, lucky enough, found release in death, yet others were fated to live with disability and nightmares for a lifetime.

Early in the morning, the main battlefield hospital next to the train station bustled with activity.

It wasn't that the front had erupted in fighting, but that the military train had arrived on time at the station, offloading supplies successfully and ready to transport the wounded on the return trip.

"No, no, no, no, no, all these stay behind; they're beyond saving. Putting them on the train would only end in death."

Under the instruction of the medical officer, the porters set down their stretchers, even though the wounded on them were alive, with several fully conscious.

"Starting from here, only the wounded with marks on their forehead can board the train."

On the roadside, hundreds of stretchers were neatly arranged, and a few medical personnel with red watercolor pens were busy marking the wounded.

A circle indicated that the wound had been treated and didn't require immediate attention.

A hook meant the wound was under control and needed timely follow-up treatment.

A cross indicated that the wound severity was yet to be determined, but the injuries were not critical and should be handled as appropriate.

These were all standard injuries.

The ones from before, they had all inhaled poison gas—even alive, they could only hold on for a few days; even if they got on the train, they would still die.

If the enemy had fired shells containing rat carcasses, the wounded had to be isolated for observation and could not be sent to the rear.

As he was lifted by the porters, a soldier with half of his head wrapped in bandages, revealing only the area below his right eye, raised his right hand.

A sergeant, the name on his medical card read: Wang Kaiyuan.

On his forehead was a red circle.

But who would care?

The porter pushed the raised hand down; the doctors and nurses were preoccupied with other wounded, no one paid attention to the gesture of a disabled sergeant.

Minutes later, the porters carried him onto the train carriage.

A carriage packed full, divided into three layers, all with severely wounded lying on single racks!

The stench of rotting wounds and excrement filled the air, along with moans that sounded like the cries of lost souls.

...

Today, on the 31st of October of the 78th year of the New Calendar, following the fifth year, the first global war finally came to a ceasefire.

Soon after, as the decree ordering ceasefire spread through the wireless to all levels of command, the fates of four Empire soldiers across four battlefields took a dramatic turn.

Who could have thought that the lives of these four soldiers, unacquainted with each other, with no intersections, would intertwine from that point on? Over the following decades, they would compose an epic and tumultuous symphony of fate, inaugurating and writing a magnificent and mighty epoch!