127: The battle between steel

The two leaders of the Lan Bo Mercenary Group's advance force discussed and began to retreat.

Li Xiao watched the footage from the reconnaissance drone and sighed, "What a pity. I was just about to have the mortar platoon feed them some shells, but they retreated unexpectedly!"

Zhao Feipeng said at this moment, "Boss, should we bury some C4 explosives up ahead?"

The green belt in the middle of the highway was indeed a good place to hide C4 explosives, but they wouldn't cause much damage to heavy armor unless detonated at close range.

"Go set it up, but make sure to retreat in time. Even if you can't blow up the tanks, blowing up the infantry behind them will do."

"Yes!"

Li Xiao had to use every means at his disposal now.

Less than ten minutes later, the main force of the Lan Bo Mercenary Group arrived at the service area, and both sides engaged in fire across a thousand meters on the straight highway lanes.

The thirty AMX IFVs that the Lan Bo side had just brought up opened with a volley of thirty anti-tank missiles, instantly engulfing Di Yun's position in flames and billowing smoke.

Following the missiles came the overwhelming artillery fire from twenty M1A8 main battle tanks, with their 125mm cannons continuously striking the AMX IFVs at the very front.

Due to the flat terrain, the main battle tanks could not attack the Ranger and blade ifv units behind, which allowed Li Xiao to deal with Lan Bo's attack with relative composure.

Fortunately, the enemy's tanks and IFVs were at the front, preventing their large number of military off-road vehicles from maneuvering, which saved Di Yun's IFVs from taking quite a few bullets.

Of course, although each main battle tank only had fifty rounds of ammunition, the combined firepower of twenty of them could still destroy Di Yun's vehicles, which had over ten million durability, not to mention that the enemy definitely had vehicles specifically for transporting ammunition.

Therefore, Di Yun did not dare to be overconfident and immediately launched the anti-tank missiles he had just installed, focusing his fire on the main battle tanks.

These eleven anti-tank missiles targeted the two leading main battle tanks, striking directly down from the top of the turrets; amidst the rolling fireballs, the two M1A8s with 350,000 durability were instantly disabled.

Upon receiving this 700,000 durability value, Li Xiao immediately added it to the ten Ranger IFVs that had already finished aiming; although the 30mm rapid-fire cannons installed on these IFVs only dealt 1,800 damage per shot against tanks.

But they had the advantage of quantity and high rate of fire. Yang Chao had taken advantage of the enemy attacking the First Armored Company to complete the deployment of his vehicles, and upon his order, the ten rapid-fire cannons began to output firepower violently.

In just over ten seconds, the hundreds of shells fired dealt over a hundred thousand damage to the leading six or seven main battle tanks.

"Commander! The enemy actually has another company of Ranger IFVs! They are right inside the service area! Their cannon damage is too high!"

Emons, the commander of the Lan Bo Mercenary Group, seemed to realize something was wrong at this point; his main battle tanks had already fired an average of over ten shells at the IFVs blocking their path.

Yet those IFVs remained unmoved, and the enemy soldiers even dared to brave the artillery fire to climb onto the roofs of the vehicles to reload anti-tank missiles.

This reminded him of the upgraded, high-durability IFVs that old man Tony at the Pegasus Casino had mentioned triumphantly before.

"Could it be that the IFVs in front of me are all modified? But those IFVs only have a maximum of 500,000 durability; it's impossible for them to withstand over ten 125mm cannon shots!"

"Boss! How about we attack the Ranger armored company in the service area first! The tank company can't hold on much longer!"

The subordinate's urging left Emons with no time to overthink, and he hurriedly ordered the main battle tanks to turn their turrets.

Immediately, fierce artillery fire landed on Yang Chao's Second Company; the ten IFVs were successively bombarded by missiles, rapid-fire cannons, and tank guns, quickly reducing Yang Chao's Ranger IFVs, which had 100,000 to 200,000 HP, down to their last sliver of health.

Seeing this, Li Xiao hurriedly ordered Yang Chao to retreat to the rear of the service area, and just as he finished giving the order, he saw a large number of light spots rising from the Lan Bo Mercenary Group's rear units two kilometers away.

Li Xiao was all too familiar with these light spots; they were the same type of rockets that Wang Si had used before, and there were thousands of them, raining down on Di Yun's convoy like a meteor shower.

"Retreat quickly!"

Di Yun shouted urgently, but even though the drivers reacted quickly and immediately reversed, the area covered by the rockets was too wide and too dense, and all the vehicles were instantly engulfed in violent explosions.

"This is bad!"

Li Xiao felt a chill down his spine upon seeing this; rockets dealt 20,000 damage to heavy armor, and he couldn't even calculate the damage caused by such a dense barrage of rockets.

Seeing the enemy in the distance surrounded by a sea of fire created by the rockets, Emons breathed a sigh of relief.

"Now, regardless of whether you have one million or two million durability, you'll all be turned into scrap metal for me!"

However, when the rocket explosions ended and the smoke cleared, Emons did not see piles of scrap metal, but rather a second volley of anti-tank missiles rising.

"No! How is this possible!"

Emons was dumbfounded and roared on the spot, "What kind of devilish weapons are these! Even if the vehicles weren't damaged, the high temperature caused by the rockets would have scalded the crew to death!"

Unfortunately, what he would never know was that all the personnel under Li Xiao's command had an average HP of over 500,000.

Di Yun's troops all had over one million HP, and the former core members had even higher, reaching several million or even tens of millions.

Li Xiao checked the status of Di Yun's troops; the personnel inside the vehicles had each lost over 100,000 HP and were still continuously losing health.

Li Xiao wasn't too worried about the HP, but this round of rockets had directly caused three Ranger IFVs with lower HP to explode; fortunately, the crew inside did not die and retreated back into the buildings of the service area.

That blade ifv was not affected because it was far away.

Although the seven IFVs at the very front did not take the full brunt of the rockets, they still took half of the damage, with each one losing nearly three million durability.

And this was the damage value after damage reduction.

"I was careless. Rockets are standard equipment for mercenary groups."

"Boss! The unit's durability is down to less than five million!"

Di Yun's voice, sounding like he had survived a disaster, came through the headset, and Li Xiao said calmly, "I know. Keep attacking!"

Another round of missiles destroyed five enemy main battle tanks that had previously been whittled down by 100,000 to 200,000 HP by the Ranger IFVs. At this moment, Li Xiao called out to Li Le and said urgently, "Notify the Dark Soul Mercenary Group immediately; they can make their move! If they don't move now, I'm going to be done for!"

"Understood!"

Li Xiao added the newly obtained durability to the Second Armored Company once again and ordered Yang Chao to wait for an opportunity to launch an attack.

Emons, realizing he had hit a wall, had decided to go for broke and ordered the large number of infantry in the rear to move up and launch a full-scale assault.

Seeing that the enemy had begun to deploy infantry, Di Yun ordered all IFV machine cannons to open fire.