Chapter 61: Suhetai Falls from Power

With the addition of more than three hundred soldiers, the tide of battle turned decisively.

The bandits completely collapsed.

They fled backward like an avalanche. Across the entire battlefield, pursuing local militia soldiers were everywhere.

When Suhetai heard the gunfire, he felt a twinge of unease and worried that the bandits might not be a match. When he saw that those trashy firearms, known as divine guns, were actually capable of continuous firing, he was extremely shocked. However, when he saw those fools actually shooting up into the sky, a contemptuous smile crossed his face. Giving anything to this bunch of raw recruits was a waste; once he captured this batch of divine guns and presented them to the Emperor, it would be a major meritorious deed.

Yet, the subsequent reversal plunged him once again into the abyss of terror.

The well-trained officers neatly re-formed into a single horizontal line. Then came a deafening five-round volley, and bandits lay dead all over the ground. Finally, when the centurion wearing scale armor charged forward wielding a flail, he knew the mountain bandits were doomed.

He hurriedly waved his hand, and fifty cavalrymen immediately surged forward, using lances to stab and prod the retreating routed soldiers, driving them back into desperate combat against the militia.

Driving them proved useless. The remaining mountain bandits simply streamed in a frantic frenzy around him and his cavalry. Suhetai dug his heels into his horse's flanks, charging forward against the rushing torrent of defeat.

Yang Fan glanced at the backs of the new recruits, who were excited beyond measure and chasing after the enemy like junkies high on adrenaline. He sighed; they had scattered completely and were past calling back.

A moment ago, they had been frightened out of their wits; now, they were ecstatic as if hopped up on stimulants. Such were raw recruits.

It was as if they had discovered a new world. War turned out to be quite simple: all you had to do was chant the mantra, "I am threshing wheat, I am threshing wheat." Every enemy was merely a stalk of wheat, and you simply applied the familiar, well-practiced motions of wheat threshing.

If the enemy refused to submit, you beat them. Treat them just like wheat.

A ten-pound gun barrel made a remarkably effective flail. Strike a leg, and the bone shattered. Smash a head, and brains splattered. Even if opponents tried to parry with weapons, under the fierce blows of the heavy weapon, single-sabers were knocked flying from their grips and pole-arms were snapped in two.

"Quick, sound the gongs to recall the troops," Yang Fan said to Mozhuo. These young pups had gone mad. He needed to pull their reins tight.

"Order the Earth Battalion out to cover them, quickly!"

Just as Yang Fan anticipated, the moment the gongs sounded for retreat, the fifty cavalrymen charged. The cavalry on the rear and flanks also began to maneuver. The retreating mountain bandits streamed through the gaps between these cavalry units, and the horsemen converged, reforming into a massive horizontal line of a hundred men wide and five ranks deep.

"Gongs are sounding! Gongs are sounding! Fall back quickly!" squad leaders and association heads shouted at the top of their lungs. Yet these excited recruits, unable to restrain their impulse, turned a deafening ear and continued charging forward. Only half of them, kicked and beaten by their officers, reluctantly retreated.

Seeing that the Earth Battalion had emerged, Yang Fan shouted urgently, "Pick up the shields and large pot lids on the ground—one for each man! Form ranks immediately!"

Watching those blockheads rush headlong toward the cavalry formation, Yang Fan cursed angrily, "Idiots!"

The pursuing recruits suddenly found that after the routed enemy scattered, fifty cavalrymen had appeared in front, charging straight at them.

These horse bandits each had a lance tucked under their armpits, kicking up clouds of dust. The lance tips trembled with the undulations of the horses, swirling continuously so that it was impossible to tell from which direction a thrust would come. The lances on horseback were fifteen feet long, far outmatching the flails in the hands of the recruits. Instantly, the militia formation was thrown into disarray and scattered in all directions.

Suhetai galloped past, his loosely gripped left hand opening slightly as his lance pierced clean through the chest of a militia soldier. The cavalry behind him accelerated and charged with Suhetai, instantly scattering the infantry and knocking down rows of militiamen with their lances.

Under the cavalry charge, the militiamen reverted to their original state, terrified out of their wits once more. They broke up in utter chaos and turned tail to run back.

Exposing one's back to enemy cavalry was the most foolish act possible. Yang Fan no longer felt like cursing them. He simply waved his hand. More than fifty archers on the city wall immediately fired upward, sending arrows soaring into the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.

Suhetai's cavalry was blanketed by a volley of random arrows, but beneath their outer robes, they wore triple-layered armor. Seeing the falling plunging fire, they merely used the small round shields on their arms to guard their eyes. Though several arrows pierced their bodies, they ignored them and continued to chase the scattered militia, running them down one by one and spearing them to the ground.

Watching the routed troops running back toward him, Yang Fan shouted, "Run along the sides! Anyone who disrupts the formation will be beheaded!"

The routed soldiers, seeing the dark muzzle of the guns ahead, instinctively veered off to the flanks.

Seeing another horizontal line ahead, a mass of dark shields—no, they looked like pot lids, yes, exactly those things—Suhetai shouted, "Braves, charge through them!"

Although the soldiers of the Lower Battalion were also nervous, they had just observed the entire process from the South City Wall: how the Upper Battalion went from defeat to victory, only to suffer a tragic reversal and be cut down by cavalry. The mistakes made by the Upper Battalion were crystal clear to them, keeping them relatively calm.

"Prepare firearms!" Yang Fan ordered.

The front rank of the Lower Battalion instantly pulled the spearheads off their divine guns and hooked them onto their waist belts. Finally, they strictly followed the manual's requirements.

Seeing the firearm and shield formation thirty meters away pointing their dark muzzles straight at them, Suhetai felt a shiver run down his spine. Countless gun barrels stared at him like countless eyes emitting a gaze of death.

"Accelerate! Accelerate! Charge through!" Suhetai roared, brandishing his waist-saber.

Immediately afterward, a strange thing happened. The horse beneath him suddenly dipped on its right side, followed by a sharp snap. Its leg broken, the warhorse neighed and rolled onto the ground, throwing Suhetai clear.

The fifty cavalrymen behind him were running too fast to stop, and one after another, their horses' legs plunged into hidden pits, snapping instantly.

Seeing a large swath of the fifty cavalrymen go down and the rest frantically reining in their mounts, daring no longer to charge forward—for cavalry without speed were like tigers stripped of claws and teeth—Yang Fan gave his order.

"First volley, target the horses, fire!"

Bang! Bang! Bang! A sheet of white smoke erupted. Among the twenty-odd mounted men still standing, blood splattered everywhere, and another half collapsed.

"First platoon, charge!" Yang Fan ordered. One hundred militiamen holding divine guns rushed forward.

Bang, bang, bang! A round of gunfire rang out, and the remaining cavalrymen were blasted off their horses by the firearms.

"Second platoon, lower your guns and drag all the living bastards back into the city. Finish off the horse bandits with a blade each," Yang Fan commanded.

When Alinbao saw the mountain bandits routed, he hadn't taken it too seriously. Mountain bandits were merely cannon fodder; could anyone really expect them to win a battle? When he watched Suhetai charge forward with fifty cavalrymen, he thought that these raw recruits who knew nothing of warfare—despite their sharp firearms and superior numbers—were ultimately useless and would be crushed in a single charge.

Not until Suhetai was unseated did Alinbao receive a profound shock. Just as he was about to order an all-out charge, his deputy, Nalantan, grabbed his reins and held him back. "My Lord, you must not charge."