Alien Arms Empire.

Chapter 1814 1815 The Feelings of Civilians

"Open the door! Is there anyone inside? Open the door quickly!" The sound of knocking on the door echoed in the corridor. Two young soldiers carrying Mauser rifles were ordered to go door to door to clear out the surrender leaflets dropped by the Tang army.

That’s right, this is the third time that the Tang army has dropped leaflets to persuade the enemy to surrender. Although the destructive power of this thing is very low, its effect is very huge.

Now the people of Roslina were in a panic, and the whole city was in a worrying and gloomy atmosphere. Chaos seemed to be on the verge of breaking out, and a strange smell filled the air. It only took a little spark to ignite and turn into a terrifying explosion.

"We are only responsible for collecting the leaflets scattered by the enemy! Please open the door and cooperate." The soldier's weak voice continued before the door was closed.

The man just opened the door and handed over a few leaflets sent by the Tang army that he had picked up. These leaflets were not printed beautifully and there were no new features on them.

It simply means that the Tang army has begun to move south, and the elf troops are about to collapse. If they don't want to die in vain, they should surrender quickly. The Tang army promises not to kill innocent people.

But these harmless words could not cause any waves for the elven main city, which had not experienced a serious war for hundreds of years: the elves seemed to be more afraid of being ruled by humans than of death.

After closing the door, the shouting in the corridor became much quieter. The man walked back to the dining table, pulled out a wooden chair and sat down.

The woman was taking care of her two underage children. While serving them food, she complained, "When will this kind of life end..."

The children may still be carefree, lowering their heads and enjoying their delicious food. They don’t know that the food in their home is almost running out, nor do they know how dangerous the world outside is.

The man looked at the other flyers on the table and felt unhappy. He had gone out to make money yesterday, but he ran into soldiers who were conscripting men. When he escaped back, he picked up these flyers on the way.

In fact, these leaflets were not completely useless. There were rumors that as long as they had these leaflets, they could save their lives when the Tang army entered the city. Others said that after the Tang army occupied some cities, they would use these leaflets to exchange for relief food.

Anyway, no matter what the use is, there is nothing wrong in keeping a few of them. The soldiers who collect these leaflets are not very strict now. As long as you hand over some, they will be very easy to talk to and leave immediately.

But as the war situation changes, the situation will become complicated: soon those soldiers who conscripted men will start knocking on doors from house to house. By then, he will have nowhere to hide, and it will not be a good thing to anger those soldiers with guns.

Thinking of this, the man sighed and said, "Oh, don't say anything. The food at home is about to run out, but I don't know when this war will end."

To be honest, the living standards of the elves have not completely improved in the past few years. At least many neighborhoods in Roslaine have electric lights, and many ordinary people have gadgets such as radios in their homes.

However, compared with the Tang Empire, such progress seems insignificant, and the exploitation of traditional nobles also makes it difficult for the elven people to get rich.

The woman gave the man a bowl of rice, a kind of mushy soup made from beans. This thing looked very unappetizing. The common people of the Tang Empire had not seen something like this on the table for a long time.

There is no way. Food is the most direct reflection of the local economic development level: the more developed a region was, the more advanced its food culture is.

Relatively speaking, paste is a relatively backward food content, which often appears when food is scarce. When food is sufficient, people prefer food that is higher quality and looks "drier".

The woman handed the man the bean paste, which had little seasoning and tasted very ordinary, and explained uncomfortably, "I went to the street to buy flour today, and guess what? The price has doubled again! It's okay, but the key is that it's sold out."

Their family was one of the better-off ones in Roslina. The woman's father was a carpenter and she herself was a teacher.

Before the war broke out, the man eating bean soup was a manager in a factory workshop. After the war broke out, his factory was controlled by the army, and he, a small manager, was replaced by people sent by the army.

This was really frustrating, because their factory was one of the first companies to be expropriated and controlled because the products it produced had some connection with the military. So he went home in a daze.

Later, as more and more similar enterprises were requisitioned, the army could not send any decent officers to take over, and instead many of the original managers of the factories were retained.

In other words, he was one of the more unlucky ones. In fact, he didn't need to go home, but ended up becoming an idler who went home: now the situation on the front line was tight, and unemployed people like him who had lost the protection of the factory were very easy to be arrested and sent to the front line.

So compared to his job and income, what he needs to be most careful about now are the minions of the conscription department wandering the streets.

The good news is that the family still has some savings, so they are not completely broke for now. The man sighed and said worriedly, "I guess it's impossible to buy it. I asked my friends in the factory, and they said the factory can't get any food now."

If the shortage of supplies is not to a certain extent, then relatively important factories will definitely be able to provide workers with some supplies to sustain their lives.

After all, even in the most difficult times, it is very important to maintain factory production. After all, soldiers on the front line can be recruited, but if there is a shortage of weapons and ammunition, there is no other way.

"What should we do? The family needs to eat. If we can't get food tomorrow, we will starve." The woman sat down next to the man, her eyes full of worry. Her father had come before and said that the business had completely stopped and the family was running out of food.

The man chewed the tasteless beans, letting the hard bean skins roll around in his mouth. He looked out the window and said, "Being hungry is a small matter. If humans come to attack us, we don't know what kind of suffering we will have to endure."

When the woman heard the man say that, she was obviously afraid: "Ah? Humans are coming to attack? Attack Roslina? Honey, don't scare me!"

The two children heartlessly started fighting with spoons at the table, completely ignoring their parents' conversation. In their world, spoons are swords, and they are knights in a duel. Of course, no one told them that times have changed, and now it is not even rifles that decide the outcome of a war... Those more terrible weapons may rewrite the fate of an ordinary family at any time.

The man thought it would be better to talk to his woman about the actual situation. After all, he still had some judgment of his own in this regard. "Why would I scare you? It seems that the human army is only a few hundred kilometers away from Roslina at most."

"Isn't that still very far away?" The woman obviously had no idea about a few hundred kilometers, and the man's guess was actually not that accurate.

"You don't understand. I guess they are approaching Mats." The man shook his head. He roughly knew the current flying distance of the plane. Since those invader attack planes had begun to circle over Roslina, it proved that the Tang army had really approached Roslina.

Moreover, airports are often located far away from the real front line. In other words, the Tang army's ground forces must at least fully control the airport before they can repair the occupied airport and boldly deploy aircraft at the airport.

In other words, the Tang army's ground forces should actually be closer to Roslina than the airport. Maybe the Tang army has already approached Matus City, or even started to attack Matus City.

"Ah? We're already in Mats? What should I do?" The woman had no idea of ​​distance, but she was very familiar with Mats. So when she heard about Mats, she was completely frightened.

……

Conversations like this were happening in every corner of Roslina, and everyone could actually see the changes in the battle situation from some details.

For example, the number of soldiers on the streets began to increase, and the conscription department became active. Many places outside the city were turned into military zones, and many people were conscripted to build fortifications outside the city.

The original farm became a strategic location. Trenches were dug and reinforced with sandbags. Many were covered with wooden roofs and reinforced with sand.

However, due to time constraints, many of these fortifications were only prototypes, and few were qualified. No one knew when the Tang army would arrive, nor when this place would become a real battlefield.

In a small village about 70 kilometers away from Roslina, some elven soldiers were ordered to load all the food they could find into trucks and transport it away.

Several farmers helplessly begged the soldiers to leave some rations for them, but the elf soldiers carrying weapons could only coldly follow the orders.

If they didn't grab the food, their troops would soon have nothing to eat. So they had to choose between starving themselves or starving the civilians, and they chose to starve others.

"Get out of the way! We are just following orders!" The soldier closed the door of the car and shouted at the farmers who were still begging: "The Tang army will be here soon, you should run as well, you will definitely find some food along the way."

“Sir!” The elf farmers still kept the habit of calling him “Sir”. They bowed bitterly and begged in tears: “Leave some for us! Even if we have to flee, leave some for us…”

"Didn't I leave some for you?" The soldier frowned and walked impatiently to the front of the car. They were also following orders, and in fact, they did leave some food for these unruly people.

But... how much and what to keep is entirely up to conscience. These farmers don't have much to eat, if they leave too much, how will they, the soldiers, explain it when they go back?

Before the farmers could say anything, a gunshot rang out, scaring everyone so much that they involuntarily shrank their necks.

The gunshot came so suddenly that it caught people off guard. The Elf soldiers beside the car took off their Mauser rifles, pulled the bolts in panic, and kept looking for the source of the gunshot.

An elf soldier ran over quickly with a rifle in hand, pointed at the entrance of the village and said breathlessly: "Tang, Tang Army! The Tang Army is coming!"

His words were like a stone thrown into the water. The elven peasants who had just been begging fled in all directions, and the remaining elven soldiers were in even greater chaos.

At this moment, a wheeled armored vehicle of the Tang army rushed out from the woods not far away, and then a wheeled infantry fighting vehicle also rushed out of the bushes beside the woods, aiming its turret at the village.

The Tang army came so quickly that the elven soldiers in the village were not prepared at all: they didn't even receive any warning and didn't know that there were Tang troops active near them.

In fact, even their superiors did not know that the Tang army had advanced so far. They still thought that the Tang army was near Mats. Many people did not even know that Mats had fallen into the hands of the Tang army.

"Oh my god!" The elf soldier had completely lost his previous arrogance. He dropped his weapon and hid in the corner with his head in his hands. Behind him, the other elf soldiers were not much better off. They covered their heads and ran away to avoid the guns of the Tang army.

Then the Tang army's armored reconnaissance vehicle drove into the village. The elf soldier driving the truck did not dare to move at all. He stood beside the truck with his hands raised, fearing that the oncoming Tang army armored vehicle would misunderstand something.

If he really started the car and ran away, he would probably be shot into a sieve by the 30mm machine gun equipped on the armored vehicle.

The two trucks became the spoils of the Tang army, and the elf soldiers did not escape, but all became prisoners of the Tang army's reconnaissance troops.

When the elven civilians mustered up the courage to come out to check the situation, they saw the elven soldiers who had troubled them before squatting beside the truck with their heads in their hands. Their weapons were placed aside, and several human soldiers in strange costumes were standing there and saying some incomprehensible words to the black box in their hands.

They didn't know that radios could be made so small, nor did they know the role of camouflage uniforms and tactical vests. These farmers didn't dare to get close, and could only watch from a distance at the two human tanks that obviously looked more powerful than the elves' trucks.

Then they got back their own food, which made them very happy. On this day, the Tang army was still 70 kilometers away from Roslina.