Chapter 410

Time flew by. Several hours had passed since Yoshizumi and his old cronies retreated. Another sunset arrived, casting rays of light through the clouds and painting them a deep, blood-red. Beneath the sky lay the corpses of countless soldiers, piled high in every direction. The trenches not far from the carnage, however, stood empty. Following the withdrawal of the Combined Arms Regiment, the various units that had been lying in ambush there had also pulled back. The entire battlefield returned to a state of deathly silence. The battered Yoshizumi was leading his remnants in a dejected retreat toward the designated assembly point. A division that had originally numbered over ten thousand men was now reduced to a mere few thousand—and that included the wounded. Without them, the count would be even lower. Yoshizumi remained grim-faced and silent throughout the journey.