Chapter 1428: Chapter 537: Free to Come and Go

After that, nothing unexpected happened. Once the eight Heavy Swords collapsed one after another, Ren Zhong began piloting the personal capital ship in the shape of a Triangular Pointed Cone to once again pass through the pirate fleet’s Central Army Headquarters and withdraw back, preparing to rendezvous with the Trap Formation fleet.

According to his estimation, by the time he returned to the inner flank of the Trap Formation fleet, the slaughter over there should be just about to enter its final phase.

With Ren Zhong providing the technical reference and countermeasures, Ying Zhenshan doing the planning, and the Trap Formation Fleet Commander carrying out the execution, this lure-and-kill plan was bound to succeed perfectly.

The Trap Formation fleet would complete this deep-strike ambush operation in the enemy formation by trading an appalling casualty ratio as high as one to a thousand.

Such a result, even on a space battlefield where a slight technological edge could infinitely magnify the disparity between the two sides’ combat capabilities, was still extraordinarily shocking.

Yet this was not some High Rank stratagem; it did not even involve the most basic psychological contest between the opposing Commanders.

The plan was unusually simple, so simple it almost felt as if it did not belong to this era at all.

But only the single-seat fighter pilots who truly took part in the ambush plan and shouldered the main offensive knew it was not as easy as it looked.

When they played dead, watching enemy fighters and Warships fly past one after another, and then watching one comrade after another, for the sake of the mission, have no choice but to stretch out their necks and accept execution in front of defeated foes.

One had to know that some pilots did not die in an instant; instead, they were treated by the mad enemies like cats toying with mice—the cockpit hatch was pried open, they were seized with mechanical arms, then their protective suits were torn apart.

For the sake of perfect Lurking, these pilots had to pretend to have lost all power of resistance and at least hold on until the last moments of their lives before they could struggle even a little.

If anyone had slipped up and startled the snake in the grass, this ambush could not have been so flawless.

Nearly a hundred thousand people, not one mistake, before they finally lured the enemy into the urn.

The warriors had been enduring all along. They had to suppress their worry for their comrades, suppress their own desire to survive, and even suppress their instinctive struggle in the face of death.

Heaven alone knew how much willpower and how strict a sense of discipline these surviving Red Blade pilots had summoned at the time to disguise themselves so perfectly without the slightest flaw.

In the subsequent mopping-up operation, it was actually still the single-seat fighters that shouldered the heaviest killing tasks.

The medium and large Warships of the Red Blade Expeditionary Army did possess performance advantages, but in terms of numbers they were seriously lacking; in particular, there were only seven large Warships left.

On the battlefield, medium and large Warships actually only played the role of combat fulcrums and information hubs. When it came to encirclement and killing, it still depended on the vast number of single-seat fighters.

The warriors released all the forbearance they had held in before, launching mad charges, their fighting spirit surging.

On the way back, Ren Zhong, who had originally agreed not to take part in any command work, still could not resist taking a look at the battle reports shared with him by the Trap Formation command center, and his brows immediately furrowed.

He contacted the Trap Formation Commander and said, "The Viper Fighter pilots are charging too hard. They’re all using a life-for-life fighting style, and their attrition is too fast. Can you issue an order for the warriors to slightly adjust their tactics, pay more attention to self-preservation, and try to achieve kills at a lower cost?"

The Trap Formation Commander on the other end seemed somewhat troubled.

Although he had seized every chance earlier to flatter Ren Zhong, that did not mean he was a sycophant with no mind of his own.

He hesitated for two seconds, and Ren Zhong immediately sensed the problem, taking the initiative to ask, "Is this inappropriate? Speak plainly."

"Reporting to you, my lord Earl, I’m not questioning your judgment. You are the first true military thinker in the Red Blade Clan. Your observation is very accurate; the attrition rate of our warriors is indeed too high..."

"Just say the ’but’ part directly. No need to fence words with me." Ren Zhong cut off the other’s courtesies. "Your time is extremely valuable. Even when speaking with me, you should be brief and to the point."

"Understood, my lord Earl. In fact, although we have restored the combat command system, there is still extremely severe electromagnetic interference in the war zone, and radio communication is unstable. So most of the orders I issue are fairly general, and the pilots mostly make their own decisions. They are still immersed in the pain of having watched their comrades die before their eyes. They are attacking with hatred in their hearts, and it is very hard to rein them in."

"In addition, although on the surface our current casualty rate is very high, our kill rate is even higher. If we reduce the intensity of our attacks and fail to take advantage of the momentum to crush the enemy in one go, once we become bogged down in a seesaw battle, casualties may actually increase. Finally, the supply and reinforcement fleet is closing in. We must wipe out the intruders as quickly as possible, in order to create a relatively favorable environment for resupply."

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