Munitions Empire

Chapter 629: Traveling 588 miles to deliver a gift

"Boom!” A earth-shattering explosion, Shenwu Liang couldn’t hear anything at all. The bomb had hit the high ground where he was, leveling the area to the ground.

Or rather, turning the small mound into a large crater would be a more accurate description: Shenwu Liang’s body was nowhere to be found, and not even the corpses of the guards beside him could be located.

A bit further away, the Qi Country guards who had already moved some distance were knocked about, many of them shaken to death.

The Second Prince of Qi Country, with blood seeping from his ears, staggeringly rose from the ground, the world seemingly devoid of sound.

"Ah! Ah!” He screamed in terror, his head spinning as he tried to stand by feeling for the trench wall.

A continuous buzzing was all he could hear in his ears, the air filled with the suffocating smell of dirt, and his eyes clouded by dust and ash, unable to see the path below his feet.

...

But no one bothered about the prince anymore, as all the guards were too preoccupied with their own disarray.

The Shenwu soldiers inside the trenches lay on the ground, some of the softer trench walls had collapsed, and before the Second Prince could even stand, he tripped over a guard curled up at his feet and once again fell to his knees.

"Save me! Help me!” he called out loudly, but he couldn’t be sure if he was truly making a sound. He thought he couldn’t hear his own cries, couldn’t hear anything at all.

The recent explosion had temporarily halted the functioning of his eardrums, and also disoriented his sense of balance. And everyone around him was in a similar state.

"Buzz He still couldn’t hear anything, he rubbed his hands, propped himself against the trench wall, and with a struggle, relied on his legs to stand. The Second Prince touched his body with his other hand and was relieved to find no gaping holes.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” finally, a guard approached to help steady the swaying Second Prince. But the prince couldn’t hear his calls, nor could the guard hear his own shouts.

In some ways, not being able to hear the terrifying howl of the Stuka Dive Bombers in the sky anymore was a stroke of luck for them.

Because the bombing hadn’t stopped, the Stukas were still diving relentlessly. The Shenwu soldiers cowering in the trenches were still being tormented.

Little did they know, the retribution for driving Qi Country civilians to build defenses, indifferent to their deaths, slaughtering and maltreating these civilians, would come so swiftly.

The Tang Country planes, like messengers from hell, executed their revenge in the most direct and ruthless way.

That sound rose again, and finally, the Shenwu troops broke free from their fear, snapping out of their dazed state. They didn’t perform any better than the Qi Country soldiers, quickly succumbing to panic.

In the trenches, some soldiers screamed along with the howling Stukas. Scared out of their wits, they clutched their heads, screaming incessantly, instantly spreading fear throughout the entire trench.

"Spare me!” Some Shenwu soldiers knelt on the ground, praying to the sky, unsure if the Tang Country pilots could see their piety.

Other soldiers abandoned their weapons and fled, disregarding the calls of their superiors, leaving their positions.

The Shenwu heavy artillery positions became the hardest hit area by the Stuka Dive Bombers, virtually devoid of any anti-aircraft weapons, the Shenwu gunners could only despair at their fate.

These heavy guns, transported from within Shenwu Country using precious resources, had not fired a single shot before they were blasted to scrap metal, causing great anguish to the Shenwu artillery commanders.

Each piece of artillery was a treasured asset to the already finances-strapped Shenwu infantry, and now all that treasure was gone!

Ammunition piled next to the guns detonated in a spectacular secondary explosion. The hard-trained gunners were sent flying into the sky.

Because Shenwu soldiers were generally short, the caliber of Shenwu artillery wasn’t very large. Even the so-called heavy artillery was just the 150mm howitzers developed by Shireck.

This suited the needs of Shenwu as an island nation: transporting weapons across the sea demanded mobility, and heavy, super-large caliber guns weren’t easy to ship.

Unfortunately, these 150mm artillery pieces were now blasted into parts, leaving no way to provide fire support for the Shenwu infantry.

In an instant, the carefully constructed defensive ring of Shenwu was exploding everywhere, rolling with thick smoke, filled with the screams of soldiers.

The Shenwu troops, unaware that they had lost their commander, still struggled at their respective defensive lines.

Just when everyone thought this was all the Tang Air Force had, fighters carrying small bombs also joined the feast.

The bomb-less Stukas and Butcher Fighters armed with bombs began non-stop diving and strafing runs, attacking all visible ground targets.

They were like vultures, circling in search for prey, swooping down, and then hunting the hares hiding on the ground.

On the ground, the Shenwu military became even more desperate: we’ve already been bombed so miserably by you, and you still have the nerve to come down and finish us off?

Are you even human?

You’re really dogs!

Of course, what they didn’t know was that the Flying Fortress Bombers that had left would actually return; they were simply going back to reload.

If these Shenwu soldiers knew that a total of 500 aircraft were mobilized in one go, meaning that over 1,500 sorties could be launched in a single day! If they knew that the ordeal they just had would happen three more times within the day, they might have collapsed even further.

Soon, the Stuka Dive Bombers that had run out of ammunition and fuel began to return to base, and the Butcher Fighters returned as well.

The sky above the battlefield suddenly became quiet, leaving only the corpses on the ground and the Shenwu positions, which were bombed beyond recognition of their original form.

The once impregnable bunker positions were now unrecognizable, and the Shenwu soldiers stationed there had suffered heavy casualties without even seeing the shadow of an enemy.

Only one out of ten precious heavy cannons survived, while the losses of light cannons were not significant. However, whether these small-caliber cannons could threaten the attacking Tang Army lines, only heaven knew.

Just when the people of Shenwu thought they had survived the hardest moment, the sound of heavy artillery came from afar.

The northern Tang troops had gathered all the artillery captured from Qi Country, along with their own reinforcements, deploying them together to shell the distant Shenwu positions.

After all, the artillery from Qi Country mainly consisted of 130 mm caliber, with some 200 mm caliber fortress cannons and siege cannons. They were all products of Shireck, not compatible with the Tang Army’s weaponry at all.

Destroying them would have been a waste, so the Tang Army sent all the Qi artillery shells they could find to the front line, pouring them onto the Shenwu military positions.

The Qi Country cannons, which had not had a chance to demonstrate their power in the Qi-Tang war because they were not deployed in time, finally asserted their might in these barrages against Shenwu.

The captured Qi artillerymen also finally had a chance to manipulate their weapons: one shell after another was pushed into the chambers and then fired from the barrels, charging towards the still-smoking Shenwu positions.

For a while, the whole battlefield boiled over again, with columns of smoke rising thickly and densely, to the extent that, viewed from a distance, the entire Shenwu positions seemed to be engulfed in black smoke.

For the Tang Army, such artillery fire was entirely free, so they didn’t mind prolonging the bombardment, expressing their dissatisfaction with Shenwu.

But the recently bombed Shenwu defenders were truly in despair: they had come from afar, supposedly to seek revenge and settle scores.

Little did they expect that after crossing oceans to come here, they were actually delivering their own heads on a platter!

Having never experienced such tactics before, the people of Shenwu completely collapsed. They finally understood what level of firepower density war could involve!

The war they had imagined, where each side exchanged a few shots, did not occur. They had just arrived and had firsthand experience of the cruel reality of war.

Sadly, their artillerymen didn’t even have a chance to fire back, as most of their artillery positions were already paralyzed.

The few cannons that managed to return fire, which should have bolstered their own morale with their roar, were drowned out by the continuous explosions of the enemy’s shelling.

"We can’t fight this war at all!” a Shenwu officer complained, cowering inside a shelter constantly being dusted with falling ash and dirt.

His brother had been taken prisoner during the battle of Dongwan Island and was said to have died in the mines there. His younger brother had been given away as war indemnity and sent to Linshui to become a slave; his fate was still unknown.

That’s why he had wanted revenge, that’s why he had come here. But he desperately realized that everything happening before his eyes had nothing to do with revenge.

"They should really make those government bigwigs come have a look!” another officer, equally downcast, stared at the kerosene lamp hanging and swaying above his head, nodding in agreement with his companion’s words.

Before he could finish speaking, an artillery shell struck the shelter they were in directly. The beams broke instantly, and the wood that served as the roof, along with the thick layer of earth on it, buried everything in the room.

A Shenwu messenger sprinted along the trench, passing one uncollected body after another, treading on the blood-soaked earth, and rushed into a shelter built on the reverse slope.

Gasping for breath, he handed a note to the Shenwu division commander before him: “Sir… General Shenwu Liang… the general has… unfortunately, perished. You are now the highest… the highest commander here.”

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