Chapter 518: Less than Ten Minutes
Wang Guozhong's army pressed steadily forward.
As former bandits, the sheer delight of now possessing large-scale siege weapons was indescribable.
Pushing the shield carts forward, a surge of pride threatened to burst from their chests.
They almost wanted to break into song!
"So you have musketeers? Big deal! Come and get us!"
However, their intelligence was clearly lacking. If the remnants of Old Zhang Fei's forces had informed them that Xing Honglang also possessed cannons, they certainly wouldn't have been so self-assured.
But Old Zhang Fei's subordinates reported to Bu Zhan Ni, and Bu Zhan Ni, displeased with Wang Jiayin's "recruitment" of Xing Honglang's forces, naturally kept such vital information to himself.
Soon, the shield carts entered the range of the riflemen, and some of them began to stir, eager to open fire. But Lao Nanfeng immediately roared, "Hold your positions! They haven't entered the smoothbore musketeers' range yet. Wait a little longer!"
The wait was truly nerve-wracking!
Just then, Wang Guozhong's catapults also entered firing range. There weren't many, just four, and they halted several hundred paces away. A group of bandit soldiers began to busy themselves, pulling back the ox-hide ropes, tightening them, then hoisting stones, preparing to load them into the arm's scoops...
Seeing this, Lao Nanfeng knew they couldn't wait any longer.
If they waited for the enemy to start slinging stones, casualties were inevitable, and the Heavenly Lord abhorred the sight of casualties.
"Artillery, open fire!"
"Understood!" The artillerists, already impatient with anticipation, immediately flipped open the firing port covers on the stockade walls, extended their dark cannon barrels, and lit the pre-prepared match cords...
At that moment, Wang Guozhong watched his catapults being loaded, his heart brimming with joy, eager to see the massive stones smash the wooden stockade walls to splinters.
However, before those large stones could even be loaded into the catapult arms, a series of thunderous roars erupted: "Boom, boom, boom!"
"Cannons!"
The sound made Wang Guozhong jump out of his skin.
He quickly glanced towards the front lines, only to see the foremost shield cart shatter with a deafening "CRACK!" A dark iron cannonball flew onward from the broken cart, scattering the soldiers hiding behind it, sending them tumbling in disarray.
Then another, and another...
In the blink of an eye, five shield carts were destroyed!
The colossal wooden wall formed by fifteen shield carts suddenly had five massive holes ripped through it, no longer able to protect the soldiers behind.
"Musketeers! Open fire!"
The commanders of the Gao Family Village Militia roared almost simultaneously.
The firing ports on the stockade walls simultaneously swung open, hundreds of dark gun barrels protruding.
"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!"
Huge plumes of white smoke billowed forth, and bullets rained down, blasting into the gaps where the shield carts had collapsed. The bandit soldiers behind the carts immediately suffered heavy casualties, the survivors shrieking as they scrambled to hide behind the remaining shield carts.
Wang Guozhong watched the scene, his scalp crawling with dread.
The enemy actually had cannons?
And not just one, but five, judging by the volleys he'd just heard! *Damn it!* Were these still just bandits? When he'd followed Wang Jiayin, that supreme bandit chieftain commanding a colossal army of three hundred and sixty thousand, even *he* only had two cannons, stolen from Wang Guoliang, the Shanxi Grand Commander.
How had Xing Honglang, a mere salt smuggler, managed to acquire five?
This was absolutely infuriating!
In that instant, Wang Guozhong's mind, previously buzzing with wild notions, settled on a single word: "Flee!"
Years of living as a bandit had given him a wealth of battlefield experience.
It took only a moment of engagement with the enemy for him to assess who would win! In the past few years, he had never once misjudged, because the outcome was always the same: "I'm going to lose."
Given that, of course, he had to make a swift getaway.
Wang Guozhong upheld the fine tradition of bandit chieftains, reining in his horse with a yank, intent on retreating first.
But in that very instant...
On both sides of the battlefield, several hidden trapdoors suddenly sprang open. Dirt and dust flew everywhere as dozens of earth pits were revealed. From each pit, five or six soldiers emerged, simultaneously raising their muskets.
A giant exclamation mark practically materialized above Wang Guozhong's head.
Before he could even process a single thought, the musketeers on both flanks opened fire simultaneously.
"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!"
The musketeers' primary target was Wang Guozhong.
Two hundred Chassepot riflemen and one hundred line infantry riflemen were all firing at him. Even if not a single one of them was a sharpshooter, the outcome was no longer in doubt.
Wang Guozhong, man and horse, was instantly riddled with bullets.
Chaos erupted within Wang Guozhong's main formation.
Someone shouted, "The boss is dead!"
"Damn it, he's a general, not the boss!"
"What's the difference between a general and a boss now? He's dead either way!"
"Screw this! These musketeers ambushed us!"
Some were instantly terrified, ready to surrender, but a few hardened desperadoes, even knowing their leader was dead, had no intention of dropping their weapons. They grabbed their knives and charged towards the earth pits on the flanks of the battlefield.
Padi Tu poked his head out of an earth pit and bellowed, "From now on, free fire!"
The musketeers immediately switched to free fire mode. While the Chassepot rifle averaged ten seconds for a reload, that was just an average; the actual speed varied from person to person. Some were faster, reloading in a few seconds, firing with a "BANG!" and retracting their heads back into the pit.
Meanwhile, those who were slower had just finished reloading, raised their weapons, fired with a "BANG!", and then likewise ducked back into their pits.
In that cluster of "skirmisher pits," the militia soldiers' heads popped up and down like a game of whack-a-mole. One moment, a man emerged from one pit to fire a shot, the next, another man popped out of a different pit to do the same.
White smoke swirled, and lead bullets flew thick and fast.
Within moments, all enemy soldiers who still harbored any will to resist had fallen.
The remaining enemy soldiers not only dared not resist, but they didn't even dare to flee. They knew they were surrounded on three sides, and to escape, they would have to charge headlong east, directly through the crossfire of the musketeers on both flanks.
How could anyone possibly get out of that?
It was better to just surrender cleanly!
The bandit soldiers lay prostrate on the ground, throwing down their weapons and shouting loudly, "We surrender! We surrender! We're all just rebels here! We only joined the Ming soldiers because we were momentarily misguided! Please, Chief Xing, spare our lives, for the sake of our past rebellions together!"
"Cease fire!"
At Xing Honglang's command, the militia stopped firing.
Li Daoxuan, who had been watching the battle from outside the box, quickly stopped his stopwatch. He scrutinized the results: from the first cannon shot to the battle's conclusion, it had taken less than ten minutes.
Well, the era where battle preparations took days, but actual combat lasted mere minutes, had finally arrived.
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