Chapter 60: Fellow townsman, it's time to thresh the wheat

The bandits opposite paused for a moment, then suddenly accelerated and charged forward.

They knew very well that the enemy had fire-lance muskets, so they needed to rush over quickly rather than stay put and take a beating.

Loading those firearms was laborious, and if they sprinted across these forty to fifty paces immediately, the enemy probably wouldn't have time to reload for another shot.

"Brothers, charge together! Their muskets are empty! Anyone who doesn't want to die, run fast and don't let them reload!" shouted the One-Eyed Dragon at the top of his lungs.

"Hurry! Whoever gets into the city first gets to pick the maidens and young brides first!" shouted the Chief Leader Du as well.

"Faster, run faster! If you're slow, all the silver will be snatched by others. You won't even get to eat shit while it's still warm—ah!" Before a subordinate leader could finish yelling, another puff of smoke rose from the opposite side.

A lead ball struck his cheek, embedding itself in the flesh, and his shouts abruptly ceased.

At such a distance, the lead ball had long since lost its momentum. He reached up and plucked it right off his face. Despite his face being covered in blood, the subordinate leader laughed fiercely, "Hahaha! What kind of worthless junk is this? These crappy fire-lances can't kill anyone at all! Charge, brothers! Hahaha!"

A burst of wild laughter broke out among the bandits, and they charged forward even faster.

Bandits were always like this: when winning an easy battle, they were unbearably arrogant; the moment they suffered a defeat, their morale vanished completely, throwing away their armor and scattering like birds and beasts.

"Damn it! Stop, all of you stop! No firing without orders!" Mo Zhuo cursed furiously.

Unfortunately, amidst the gunfire, very few people could hear his voice.

Yang Fan was filled with crushing anxiety. At this rate of fire, the five rounds in the barrels would be completely expended in no time. When the bandits charged up, there would be no ammunition left to fight them off.

He watched with his own eyes as several soldiers, their faces distorted, sweat soaking their entire bodies through, legs trembling and teeth clenched, kept taking their slow matches and repeatedly trying to ignite the touch-holes.

Clamping the stock of the divine gun under one arm, they didn't even level the musket, pointing it diagonally toward the sky instead, and thus fired off all five rounds in a flurry of panic.

The soldiers who were already out of ammunition still stubbornly kept lighting, lighting, lighting, incessantly jabbing their matches against the touch-hole.

Yang Fan suddenly understood why people always said new recruits were merely cannon fodder.

Some stared with blank, uncomprehending eyes, while others frantically ignored everything and kept trying to ignite their pieces without even looking at where the muzzle was pointed.

Some closed their eyes and refused to look, trembling all over or even wetting their trousers.

The only comforting thing was that the officers performed relatively well; not a single one opened fire without authorization. Of course, the officers had also received much more training than the ordinary soldiers.

The gunpowder smoke finally settled; all the firearms had been discharged.

Aside from that one scraped cheek, the battle results were practically zero.

"All officers, move to the front!" Yang Fan shouted the order.

Finally, Yang Fan's voice was loud enough for everyone to hear.

Among the five hundred men, the one hundred squad leaders and fifty platoon leaders instantly stepped forward, squeezing into the very front of the formation.

Disregarding the attempts of Mo Zhuo and Lü Dan to stop him, Yang Fan walked right to the front line.

Six personal guards also rushed forward to form a protective ring around Yang Fan.

"On my command, level your muskets," Yang Fan ordered.

By this time, the bandits had closed in to a distance of twenty paces.

"Fire!" Yang Fan gave the command.

Bang! The muskets of the officers and guards roared, erupting with a burst of white smoke.

Dozens of bandits in the very front jerked violently as if struck by heavy sledgehammers, then stumbled and collapsed to the ground.

Twenty meters. At this close range, the hand-cannon muzzle velocity propelled the projectiles at about 150 meters per second. Bodies without armor were pierced straight through. Due to the irregular shape of the bullets, they rapidly carved out massive cavities within the flesh and minced the internal organs.

"Fire!" came another command. Bang!

Another volley rang out. The bandits, who had now rushed to within fifteen meters, fell in heaps once more. Many who were still alive writhed and wailed on the ground, only to be trampled by the countless heavy feet surging up from behind until they finally went still.

The bandits in the front rows stared in wide-eyed horror. These firearms could actually fire consecutively! They wanted to halt, but the men behind kept shoving them forward, making it impossible to stop.

The hand-cannons were extremely crude; neither the internal ballistics nor the chambers were rifled, and the bullets were irregular, causing the lethality of the projectiles to drop drastically beyond thirty meters—virtually negligible.

Beyond ten meters, the bullets of a hand-cannon ceased to travel in a straight line. Westerners had conducted precision tests using replica hand-cannons and excavated fifteenth-century English hand-cannons, determining the effective direct-fire range to be a mere 9.1 meters.

No one could predict where it would fly. But every battlefield in this era featured densely packed formations; you could hit some unlucky bastard even with your eyes closed.

"Fire!"

"Fire!"

"Fire!"

All five lead balls were spent. The closer the distance, the greater the lethality; the final volley even resulted in multiple men being skewered like candied haws on a stick.

A carpet of corpses littered the front of the bandit lines, accompanied by a large number of survivors rolling, crawling, and wailing in pools of blood.

After over two hundred bandits went down, the remaining brigands stood frozen like fools, staring stupidly at the carnage littering the ground ahead.

Had he known so many mistakes would happen today and allow the bandits to close to twenty meters, he should have ordered nine loads prepared instead. At this close range, even the loaders in front would have possessed lethal stopping power.

Yang Fan sighed, then shouted loudly, "Switch to spearheads!"

He no longer dared to bark formal drill commands.

Today, he had been utterly defeated by these blockheads; it was better to use a language they could actually understand.

With that, he yanked out the heavy weapon he had brought from the construction site. Whirling it around fiercely, the heavy flail emitted a shrill, piercing whistle, and Yang Fan felt his strength surge slightly once more. He brought it crashing down directly onto the head of Chief Leader Du, who was still standing there in a daze.

Chief Leader Du hadn't yet recovered his wits or figured out why the space in front of him had suddenly cleared of all people, when he saw only a massive dark shadow rushing toward his face.

With a resounding *crack*, the blow landed.

Absolute darkness flooded his vision.

As Chief Leader Du's head burst like a rotten watermelon with fluids splashing everywhere, the officers snapped back to reality, swiftly attaching their spearheads, forming a tight line, and thrusting forward in unison.

"Ah—!" A chorus of miserable screams rang out as rows of bandits were run through by the lances.

A minor subordinate leader grabbed the spear piercing his abdomen in grief and fury, attempting to hack the shaft in two with his saber. *If I can't live, you won't either. Once the lance breaks, you'll be waiting to be killed by others!*

With a sharp *clang*, sparks flew in all directions.

Damn it, the iron reinforcement on the spearhead actually went down that far! The minor leader died with his eyes wide open in everlasting regret.

Ten days of close-order drill finally paid off. Under an organized mass spear thrust, the difference between disciplined troops and a disorganized mob was monumental.

The neat, dense formation stood shoulder to shoulder, one hundred and sixty spears advancing and retreating as one.

Mo Zhuo chanted the cadence: "One! Two! Thrust!"

"One! Two! Thrust!"

The bandits' formation was far too loose, everyone fighting for themselves; a single bandit had to face several militia soldiers simultaneously.

Three or four spears thrusting forward were impossible to parry, and they were impaled in droves.

Yang Fan led by example. He was the only one wearing full armor among all these men, and he decided to set a benchmark for everyone.

Whirling his flail, he charged into the enemy formation like a tiger entering a flock of sheep, swinging and smashing wildly.

The twenty-pound cement-filled iron ball was spun around him like a windmill, sweeping the area. A chorus of snapping bones and miserable screams echoed all around. These mountain bandits wore only ordinary cloth clothing without a single piece of armor, and even if they had worn armor, being struck by such a heavy weapon would have shattered their bones directly.

"Mighty is our master!"

The personal guards were filled with high spirits; they too pulled out their wooden shafts, transforming their divine guns into flails and smashing fiercely in all directions.

With Yang Fan as the core and the guards acting as the backbone, the surrounding area was turned upside down with bodies flying.

By this time, the soldiers in the rear finally snapped to their senses.

Watching the Hundred-Man Commander and the officers at the front hacking and charging their way forward, they hurriedly scrambled to attach their spearheads and join the fray.

"Where is my spear?!" Many men found they had lost their spearheads.

"Don't take my spearhead! This one is mine!" Some started squabbling. Only then did they remember that failing to follow orders meant taking military beatings with wooden staves.

In their dazed panic earlier, they had yanked off their spearheads and completely forgotten where they threw them.

Several men clutched spearheads in their bosoms while wrestling with others over spearheads on the ground, and some even started throwing punches.

Without the officers present to maintain discipline, complete chaos threatened to break out.

Zhao Shuigen had fared relatively well just then; he had tucked his spearhead safely into his tunic.

Looking at the chaotic scene, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him. He quickly screwed his spearhead back onto the shaft, then roared at the top of his lungs, "Lads, it's time to thresh the wheat!"

With that, he promptly unscrewed the spearhead again, ignoring the business end, and pulled out the connecting iron chain, converting his divine gun back into a threshing flail.

Waving the flail, he charged straight into the fray.

This single shout woke everyone up. With the crisis staring them right in the face, what was the point of searching for spearheads? Besides, could you even use a spear properly? Those with natural talent during training and those who knew how to use them had all become officers anyway. But threshing wheat? That was a job they were intimately familiar with!

They could do it blindfolded without a single problem.

Didn't they work through day and night during the autumn harvest?

A sudden realization dawned on everyone. In a swarming rush, they all unhooked their iron chains, swung their flails, and charged into battle.