Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 2680 A Bizarre World (Second Update, Please Subscribe)
The battle is over.

At this point, the once lush rainforest was in complete disarray.

More than a dozen large trees were riddled with holes by machine gun fire, and the ground was littered with corpses, broken weapons, and dark red bloodstains, with blood flowing like a stream in the mud.

The team members cleared the battlefield one by one, gathering the prisoners who had laid down their weapons in a relatively open area. After counting the number of people, they found that apart from those who had died in battle, there were only more than thirty enemies left. They were all dressed in rags, their faces covered with mud and blood, their eyes full of resentment, and their gazes toward the commando team were filled with anger.

Although they were compatriots, they were forced to fight to the death in this rainforest. Facing the special operations team, they cursed loudly, but many seemed to ignore their curses. After the battle, these team members took out cigarettes, smoked Bactrian camels, and chatted, but they didn't speak Annamese, but Mandarin.

Actually, I don't know when it started, but they have long been two different countries, with completely different people.

Of course, this doesn't mean they couldn't understand Annamese; they just couldn't be bothered with these people. After all, these guys' fates were already sealed. Only a few intelligence officers were there, trying to extract information.

Chen Shan walked over and whispered to Ruan Haitao:
"Captain, some of the prisoners aren't Yankees; they're Zhenla people. There are also two women among them, resisting alongside the Yankees."

Upon hearing this, Ruan Haitao frowned and strode toward the prisoners. There were four Zhenla people, two men and two women, all of young age. The oldest was no more than thirty years old, and the youngest woman looked only eighteen or nineteen. Although they were covered in mud and blood, their eyes were unusually sharp, unlike the other Zhenla people who were timid. Instead, they showed a stubbornness.

Ruan Haitao stopped and looked down at them. He first asked in Mandarin that Zhenla was different from Saigon. Saigon was full of Chinese people, but in Zhenla, Chinese people accounted for only 10% at most, so Mandarin was not widely spoken.

Seeing the group shake their heads blankly, he switched to broken Greek and asked:

"Are you all Zhenla people? Why are you helping the Shenglong people? They are clearly invading your country."

The other Zhenla people kept their heads down and remained silent, only the young Zhenla woman raised her head, glaring angrily at Ruan Haitao and the surrounding special forces soldiers. Her large eyes were filled with rage, and she gritted her teeth as she retorted:

"They liberated us! My father and mother died under the rule of the Red Chenla, and my brothers and sisters all starved to death in concentration camps. They saved us from hell!"

As she spoke, her fists clenched tightly, and she glared at these people. Her voice was not loud, but it carried a power that pierced people's hearts, and every word told the story of the most tragic past.

Ruan Haitao frowned even more deeply. Before he could speak, the woman raised her chin again, her sharp gaze fixed on his eyes, her tone full of sarcasm and accusation:
“You and those ASEAN allies, you keep saying you're here to help us and give us freedom, but where were you when the Red Zhenla ruled us and slaughtered us? Where were you when we watched our families starve to death?”

Only the Rising Dragons, it was they who attacked and rescued us!

The girl's question made Ruan Haitao frown.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found that his throat was blocked and he couldn't utter a single word.

His desire to fight his way back to Saigon was to rescue his compatriots, but the woman's question plunged him into deep silence; he didn't know how to answer her.

In the eyes of this Cambodian woman, they were not liberators. Who were the liberators in her eyes?

The surrounding special forces soldiers also quieted down, and some of them subconsciously avoided the woman's gaze.

Having experienced the cruelty of war and knowing the fate of their loved ones after the fall of Saigon, they looked at this Zhenla woman and listened to her anger and questions, as if they were seeing their own family.

Just then, Chen Shan walked over and asked:

"Captain, the intelligence officer has finished the interrogation. What should we do with the remaining prisoners?"

Ruan Haitao didn't speak, but slowly raised his hand and waved at Chen Shan. The gesture didn't carry any explicit instruction, but everyone understood its meaning.

Chen Shan nodded and turned to walk towards the prisoners. They were already used to some things, and now they were even more used to it, after all, their comrades and families were imprisoned in re-education camps.

Soon, muffled gunshots rang out from the other side, one after another, each one like a blow to everyone's heart.

The sound of M1911 gunfire was somewhat muffled, but particularly jarring in the silent rainforest. Accompanied by brief cries and roars from the prisoners, it quickly subsided into silence.

Chen Shan returned after dealing with the prisoners of Shenglong. He looked at the captain, hesitated for a moment, and then asked in a low voice:

"Captain, those Zhenla people... should we deal with them as well?"

Before he could finish speaking, Ruan Haitao waved his hand again, interrupting his question. This time, Ruan Haitao still didn't turn around or say anything.

Chen Shan asked no more questions, turned around and walked towards the four Zhenla people, pulling the slide of his pistol as he walked.

The young Zhenla woman did not back down; she continued to glare at the approaching soldiers, her eyes showing no fear, only composure.

She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something, but was interrupted by a gunshot.

After the gunshots, the rainforest fell silent once more.

Ruan Haitao simply gazed calmly into the distance, and after smoking a cigarette, he said:
"Alright, it's all over. Let's go to Phnom Penh!"

……

August arrived, and finally, the final moment came. Phnom Penh was now a ghost town—the enemy had long since withdrawn. Facing the bombing, continuing to hold out in Phnom Penh was clearly unrealistic. Therefore, as the Allied forces approached Phnom Penh, the defenders didn't even hesitate before evacuating the city.

When the allied forces entered the city, they were not welcomed by the people.

Even the streets were deserted; there were no welcoming crowds, and hardly any passersby. The whole city was empty.

It wasn't until the third day after Phnom Penh was recaptured that the city began to regain some vitality, and shops on the streets started to open for business.

Meanwhile, soldiers were everywhere on the streets of Phnom Penh, and order was being restored in the city. The interim government had announced that it would return to Phnom Penh soon.

In short—Cambodia is about to be reborn.

Do you believe it?

Looking at the people on the street, Zheng Haifeng suddenly asked:
"what?"

"I mean, the speech by the provisional government."

Zheng Haifeng said:
"Don't they claim that Zhenla is about to be reborn? Do you believe them?"

"That's inevitable, Lieutenant. You need to understand that our assistance to them doesn't just stop at helping them drive out the invaders. There's a series of follow-up plans to help them develop their economy and recover from the wounds of war..."

As Ding Hai, who was driving the car, said these things, he added:

“This city used to have a population of over a million, but now it only has a population of two hundred thousand. But I believe that with our help, it will soon prosper again.”

Hearing his comrade say this, Zheng Haifeng nodded and said:

"Yes, that's why they're lining up to see off those invaders."

Ding Hai asked, puzzled:
"Lieutenant what?"

Have you ever imagined the scene of occupied people bidding farewell to invaders?

Zheng Haifeng looked at the people on the roadside and said:

“A few days ago, after the Thang Long army announced its withdrawal from Phnom Penh, an extremely bizarre and even mind-blowing scene unfolded here. The wide streets were already packed with hundreds of thousands of Phnom Penh citizens, men, women, and children, shoulder to shoulder. This is an extremely rare scene in human history—the people invaded by a foreign army actually regarded the invaders as liberators, and showed no pretense of gratitude and reluctance as the invaders hastily withdrew.”

With a sigh, Zheng Haifeng added:
"That's why we didn't bomb them, because there were too many civilians. Everywhere were civilians seeing them off..."

"Boss, this is indeed rare, but this unusual gratitude has never been because the Rising Dragon Army is so righteous, but simply because the rule of the Red Army was too cruel. In those years, the people here experienced massacres, famine, and endless fear; they lost loved ones and their homes were destroyed. The arrival of those guys just happened to pull them out of that hell on earth. That's why they are seen as liberators..."

"I know it's not that the invaders were so good, but that the rulers were too cruel."

Zheng Haifeng nodded, and then said:
"So that's why we weren't welcomed when we arrived."

In fact, Zheng Haifeng's helicopter unit had only just arrived, but they could already feel the coldness of the people here, which was completely different from the enthusiasm they had shown in other areas.

As they were talking, they saw a group of civilians confronting soldiers in the city center, and Zheng Haifeng said to Ding Hai:

"Let's go over there and see what's going on?"

When they got closer, they saw that the citizens were surrounding a monument, blocking the approach of the Khmer government troops, and the two sides were arguing loudly.

Because he couldn't understand the Greek language, Zheng Haifeng had no idea what was going on. After the car stopped, he tried to ask the people on the roadside in English what was happening. Most of the people on the roadside didn't speak English. After all, in the past, even if someone was knowledgeable and wore glasses, they would be regarded as an enemy and executed.

Therefore, very few people in Phnom Penh speak English, and as for Mandarin... very few speak it either. However, in the end, a man in his forties came over and answered in broken Mandarin:
"Changguan, the authorities want to demolish this friendship monument, but the citizens won't allow it, so they've surrounded it to protect it."

Friendship Monument?
For whom was it erected?

Then Zheng Haifeng and his group learned that the monument was actually erected by the Zhenla people for the Thang Long region. After the invaders left, the local people actually took the initiative to protect the monument; this was simply...

This mind-blowing scene left Zheng Haifeng and the others speechless. As they watched the excited crowd, filled with doubt and deep thought, Zheng Haifeng spoke up:

"Actually, they should have left this monument, not as a memorial, but as a reminder of what a brutal rule can bring..."

After he finished speaking, Zheng Haifeng looked at the people in the distance who were arguing with the soldiers in front of the monument. He knew that Phnom Penh may have been recovered now, but the country still had a long way to go to recover from the trauma of the past.

While they were lost in thought, even more people arrived, and soon the monument was packed with tens of thousands of citizens...

(End of this chapter)