Chapter 40 Ancient Artillery Combat

Carrying a large amount of captured equipment, and having lost their leader while needing to detour around the terror-demons roaming the surrounding area, the party of eight took much longer on their return journey than they had on the way out.

After spending nearly four hours, they finally reached Junshan Bridge once again. At this moment, fierce combat was still raging across the bridge.

A massive horde of terror-demons crowded the western side of the bridge, while the Hanshui City garrison was lined up on the eastern side. Dressed in vine-armor and wielding various weapons, the garrison soldiers formed three distinct ranks. Whenever the terror-demons attempted to charge across the bridge, they were beaten back by a coordinated volley of gunfire.

After completing their shots, the front-rank soldiers quickly retreated to the rear, reloading while the newly positioned front ranks continued to fire, maintaining relentless suppression.

Through this cycle, the unit largely compensated for their lack of automatic firearms, pinning hundreds of terror-demons in place, unable to move.

"The tactical doctrine of the Adeptus Mechanicus remains quite advanced... If the Blood-Sanguinators were fighting this, they'd probably just charge in for melee combat."

Hiding in the distance to observe, Xu Lie let out a sigh of admiration. Chen Jian nodded impassively and replied:

"Indeed, advanced."

"With this rate of fire, it's almost catching up to the Divine Machine Camp of my Great Ming..."

"Great Ming? Divine Machine Camp? What are those?"

Xu Lie could not understand Chen Jian's teasing remark at all, assuming that the Divine Machine Camp was truly a powerful combat force belonging to the "Chosen Ones" in his eyes.

Chen Jian couldn't be bothered to explain and simply answered:

"Anyway, it's... a pretty strong unit from the same era."

"Forget about that for now, though. With both sides blocking the way here, how are we supposed to get back?"

"Weren't they fighting near the city wall during the last terror-demon attack? Why have they pushed all the way up here this time?"

"Who knows."

Xu Lie shook his head and replied:

"The garrison of Hanshui City is primarily controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus, with only a small number of Blood-Sanguinators serving as scouts and sentries, so we don't have much say in their combat methods."

"But I reckon the sentries must have discovered large-scale terror-demon activity and urgently organized a force to intercept them."

"If we want to get past, we either take another route, or wait for them to finish fighting and the terror-demons to retreat."

"Honestly, though, waiting like this is no solution."

"The Blood-Sun General is dead, and the bloodthirsty instincts of these terror-demons are no longer restrained. They will definitely attack at all costs until every last one of them dies."

"Then there's no telling how long this fight will drag on."

"Terror-demons aren't completely mindless; they will attack in waves, looking for ways to exhaust the garrison's stamina before making a breakthrough in one fell swoop."

"Very clever."

Chen Jian nodded and said:

"Yes, although these terror-demons are cruel and bloodthirsty, in a sense, they aren't truly monsters; they retain more human traits..."

As they were speaking, the sound of war drums suddenly erupted from the eastern bank of Junshan Bridge.

Chen Jian raised his binoculars to observe. Under the setting sun, billows of dust were kicked up along the road.

A steam locomotive chugging black smoke emerged from the rear, its massive front engine dragging a comparatively tiny carriage. Mounted atop the carriage was a massive...

Muzzle-loading cannon.

A muzzle-loading cannon mounted on an advanced six-legged carriage equipped with traverse gears, elevation gears, and a trail-spade recoil mechanism.

Over a dozen members of the Adeptus Mechanicus, clad in pure black cloaks, swarmed down from the vehicle, rapidly uncoupling the engine from the carriage. Then, shouldering heavy iron hammers, they drove steel anchoring pins deep into the ground.

"What the hell? This is some ancient spade-anchoring method—can they even antiquity-craft this?"

Chen Jian was awestruck, while Xu Lie beside him explained:

"These are artillery priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. They still have to perform rituals to appease the machine spirit, but I reckon those are just self-deceiving tricks..."

True to his words, as his voice trailed off, the "priests" had already commenced their work.

Accompanied by solemn sacred chants, someone scrubbed the cannon barrel clean with fresh water, and then shoved a terror-demon, dragged from goodness knows where, in front of the muzzle, severing its head with a single blade stroke.

A priest grabbed the dripping head, soaked a prepared rope in the blood, and wound the rope tightly around the cannon body.

Xu Lie clicked his tongue and said:

"They believe the nourishment of blood will ensure the cannon never bursts its breech, but at least from my experience, the number of ruptured barrels is still quite substantial..."

Well, duh!

While the fault tolerance of this kind of old-fashioned muzzle-loading cannon was still quite high, mixing all sorts of miscellaneous junk into the firing environment would inevitably increase the probability of a breech explosion.

Sigh.

Sacrilege, what utter sacrilege.

If cannons truly possessed machine spirits, they'd probably be spitting right in the faces of these heretic cultists.

However, Chen Jian could also tell that their ritual of "appeasing the machine spirit" had most likely evolved from some standard cold-firing artillery procedures.

Such as clearing the bore, dry-firing tests, and so on.

It was just that somehow, as it was passed down through generations, it turned into this absurd mess...

Chen Jian continued his observation. At this point, the ritual to appease the machine spirit had finally concluded entirely.

The priests retrieved the gunpowder, scooped a sufficient amount using a designated container, poured it into the bore, tamped it down firmly with a wooden rod, and wedged in a cloth sealing bag.

The next step was loading the shell.

Chen Jian stared expectantly at the priests' movements, but instead of hoisting a shell, they scooped a handful of something out of a crate...

Bearing steel balls.

Good grief, you guys hoarded this stuff just to use it like this??

The priests mixed the bearing steel balls with some kind of adhesive material of unknown composition and stuffed the concoction down the cannon barrel.

At last, all pre-fire preparations were finally complete. Chen Jian checked his watch—ten minutes had already passed...

Even discounting the time spent on the prior ritual, it had taken them a full five minutes just to finish the preparations.

At this speed, back in his era, the entire gun crew would have been forcibly retired or court-martialed...

While Chen Jian inwardly lamented their incompetence, the three ranks of line infantry in front had already cleared a gap.

As everyone knew, a cross-river bridge was often an inclined plane; from the bridgehead on one side, one could not see the bridge-tail on the opposite side.

The terror-demons, still attempting to assault, thought they had finally found an opening and instantly swarmed forward.

The infantry kept retreating until they fell back behind the cannon.

The muzzle angled slightly higher than direct-fire level. When the terror-demons charged close enough to spot the already-burning fuse, it was far too late.

"Boom!"

A simplified version of anti-personnel canister shot swept across with a deafening roar, mowing down the frontline terror-demons like harvested grass.

Immediately afterward, a dense storm of projectiles continued flying backward, sweeping away yet another massive crowd of terror-demons packed tightly onto the bridge deck.

The terror-demons' charge was instantly checked. Following a brief moment of chaos, the vast majority of terror-demons began retreating in panicked disarray, with some even forgetting they weren't water-demons as they vaulted over the guardrails and plunged straight down into the Yangtze River.

Chen Jian keenly seized upon the enemy's intent to retreat and immediately said:

"Xu Lie, send up the signal to identify ourselves!"

"Let's use this opportunity to charge through!"