Munitions Empire

Qiumuluo had previously joined the troops in their assault because Gis promised him many slaves should Shireck be victorious.

However, when Qiumuluo, the corpulent human trafficker with his fat ears, saw the flames from the grenade explosions in the dim corner, illuminated by the flare’s light, he was thoroughly frightened.

He quietly retreated, taking a few of his trusted associates with him and slipped away from the battlefield under cover of darkness, ready to rush off after grabbing the luggage he had prepared.

As he was fleeing, a stray bullet hit his arm. It was purely luck that got him hit.

Even so, due to the darkness, it was unclear whether the bullet had been fired by Tang Mo’s troops or Gis’s.

Indeed, the mentally shattered troops of Shireck couldn’t hold on any longer. They fired wildly, even turning their guns on the commanders who were preventing their retreat.

In the chaos, bullets flew everywhere, and the utterly irrational people, like wild beasts, slaughtered each other in a frenzy.

Not the enemy, but their own! The darkness and chaos sent the undisciplined troops of Shireck into utter disarray.

Night combat in this era was something that all the great commanders tried desperately to avoid, as most militaries in fact lacked the ability to fight at night.

And the Shireck troops, foolishly relying on their numbers hoping to gain an advantage in the melee, plunged into the abyss of collapse due to their very numbers.

The densely packed crowd trampled each other, mixing screams and gunfire; some soldiers, in their haste to retreat, stabbed with their bayonets the unsuspecting comrades behind them.

The reserve troops who hadn’t yet joined the fight were unaware of what was happening until they were scattered by the retreating troops.

The officers responsible for maintaining discipline were shot dead by their own men, and those officers who took advantage of the chaos to run were then shot dead by the troops enforcing the retreat from behind.

In this immense chaos, the deep rumble of cannon fire rolled in from the darkness. The 75mm field guns of the Great Tang Group security troops fired, their shells falling like rain in the darkness, then sparking blindingly in the night.

The Shireck soldiers huddled together in retreat were immediately sent reeling by these terrifying explosions, making their rout even more complete.

No one harbored illusions of counterattacking or continuing the fight anymore; all were chilled to the bone, with a single thought lingering in their minds, "Flee! Flee at all costs!"

The machine guns of the Great Tang Group roared relentlessly, their bullets as dense and lethal as ever. These huddled Shireck soldiers became the perfect shooting targets.

Only when the enemy had totally collapsed, retreated more than a hundred meters, and left hundreds of bodies behind, did the Maxim machine guns of the Great Tang Group cease fire.

They had to stop—the continuous firing had boiled the cooling water in the water jackets around the barrels.

The cooling water, nearly boiling, lost its ability to cool the barrels, so the gunners and assistant gunners, concerned about potential machine gun malfunctions, had to stop shooting to replace the water.

However, changing cooling water under such lighting conditions was no easy task, so the Maxim guns ceased their fire, leaving only the sound of the Kar98K rifles on the field.

Gis stood in his camp, gazing at the distant flames on the battlefield, unwittingly taking a step back.

As he stepped back, he seemed to have tripped on something, stumbled, and almost didn’t catch himself before falling to the ground.

Fortunately, he grabbed onto the tent’s framework beside him, managing to avoid the embarrassment of falling to the ground. He didn’t bother to look at what had tripped him; his eyes were still fixed on those rolling flames.

As the head of a weapons and munitions group, he certainly understood weapons. Yet this was the first time he had seen such a battlefield, the first time he had witnessed such unfamiliar combat.

He didn’t know what those terrifying, continuously-firing weapons were called, nor did he know the names of those exploding things...

It seemed he knew nothing about his own profession, so he was scared. For the first time, he realized that the Great Tang Group standing before him wasn’t just anybody, but a behemoth blocking Shireck Corporation’s way.

Almost instantly, he felt a sense of powerlessness he hadn’t felt in many years—the sense that he couldn’t beat his opponent.

Similarly, he had an unnerving thought, even frightening to himself—that the monster known as the Great Tang Group lying in their way was an unbeatable existence for Shireck!

Finally, the relentless sound of machine-gun fire ceased, which let Gis’s heart settle.

Suddenly, he realized something, and his face turned deathly white—the other side ceasing fire might not mean a malfunction or that they had run out of bullets. It was entirely possible that their target... had been completely wiped out!

This sudden silence did not mean there was an issue with the enemy! This possibility made Gis feel even more desolate.

By the light of the campfires, he saw an officer, flanked by a few battered survivors, hurry back into the camp.

The officer only glanced at Gis from a distance before his gaze shifted, leading a few men toward their own camp.

It seemed that the other party was going to fetch their luggage. Gis bitterly averted his gaze, standing motionless on the spot.

Who knows how long had passed, it could have been just a minute, or maybe ten minutes. At any rate, when Gis once again noticed people bustling at the entrance of the camp, a horde of fleeing soldiers rushed in front of him.

Even the most advanced conventional weapons couldn’t possibly slaughter 4,500 people, nearly three legions of soldiers, to the last man.

In fact, on the battlefield during direct combat, the security forces of the Great Tang Group had slaughtered about 2,000 members of Shireck’s private army who attacked during the night.

The remaining Shireck soldiers, more than 500 of them, were trampled to death or killed by their comrades during their own disarrayed retreat.

The remaining 2,000, in fact, were already stricken with panic; they fled back to their main camp like a landslide, running riot without an established route, having lost all discipline.

Gis had no intention of corralling these scattered forces; he just stood among the flow of people, watching as they knocked down one of his guards, watching as they stormed into his tent.

He heard the screams of several women who had been tortured by him along the way; he also heard the sound of soldiers shooting over the looting of the treasures in his tent.

And then, he heard… more terrifying still… the sound of artillery fire!

Clearly, he had never heard these artillery sounds before. In the not-so-quiet night, the sound of this new type of cannon, obviously of a larger caliber and with heavier shells, mixed with the familiar sound of the 75mm field artillery he was accustomed to, pounding his heart over and over again.

An artillery shell fell not far behind a tent, then exploded, lifting a blaze so immense that even Gis felt a chill.

The horrifying explosion devoured the tent, even flinging the people inside into the air. In an instant, sand and stones flew everywhere, striking people’s faces and inflicting intense, palpable pain.

Even in Gis’s mind, a term called "earth-shattering" emerged — before him, the world was indeed turned upside down.

The loud explosion from the blast made his ears ring; the blast wave blew so strong he couldn’t open his eyes; his hair was messed up beyond recognition.

For him, the mood this night was like a roller coaster ride: the first half of the night he plotted an attack that seemed certain to win with great anticipation, the later half was filled with expectation, now it was despair and collapse.

Dawn had arrived, and according to his plan, Shireck’s troops should have already breached the enemy’s lines by now.

But now, his troops were being attacked by a type of large-caliber cannon he had never seen before, and even his own camp could no longer be held.

Explosions everywhere, bodies tumbling chaos, screams of agony, and the smell of gunpowder that drives one to despair.

"Sir! It is no longer safe here! We should retreat," advised a Shireck officer, who had finally found Gis.

"You go, take your men and retreat quickly... Leave the wounded and scattered forces, just go! Hurry up and leave!" Gis looked at him, commanding with a tone of despair.

The officer was stunned for a moment, then nodded slightly, and immediately returned to the muddled crowd, disappearing from view.

The number of guards around Gis seemed to have diminished, many were scattered, and some took advantage of the confusion to leave, never to return.

After a brief silence, the second round of artillery began. 10 massive shells fell within the camp, lifting many tents and blowing many people away once more.

This time no shell dropped near Gis, but those explosions farther off, which blasted away many limbs and body parts, seemed even more despair-inducing.

With a wooden expression, Gis walked to the edge of his now chaotic tent, looking at the collapsed tent and the scattered maps and other items on the ground, his mouth filled with bitterness.

He grabbed a stool from the ground, dragged it to an open space, and sat down with a slump. He just sat there, waiting until the shelling from the Great Tang Group ceased, until the entire camp was no longer in chaos.

The air was filled with the smell of blood; soldiers’ corpses were scattered everywhere. Behind Gis, several naked women lay on the ground, long silent.

The wounded groaned in agony, while some soldiers gathered to clean up the scattered supplies.

The losses had not yet been tallied, but everyone knew that in this battle… Shireck had utterly failed.

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