Otherworld Advance Team -
Chapter 1368 - 1361: Effortless
Chapter 1368: Chapter 1361: Effortless
Moreover, the Demon Clan’s artillery, who had trained with the High-peak people, also creatively introduced the concept of a creeping barrage, by continuously adjusting the angle of the mortar to ensure shells always landed within the enemy’s formations. Therefore, as soon as the Dongsheng troops started moving, they were met with a sky filled with the bombardment of artillery shells.
For the Dongsheng army, the distance from over a hundred meters away to hand-to-hand combat range was from the rear to the front line. But in reality, for the Demon Clan army with long-range firepower, whether it is over a hundred meters away or at hand-to-hand combat distance, both were within the range of cannon fire and would be fiercely attacked by the Demon Clan army.
In this battle, the Demon Clan army placed great importance on the performance of their artillery. Before the enemy even entered the range of musket fire, they would continue to suffer relentless bombardment. Of course, once they entered the range of the muskets, they would face an even more intense onslaught.
For the Demon Clan soldiers trained to operate the cannons mechanically, these actions were just part of their routine training. Only at the moment they fired the cannons did they feel an unparalleled exhilaration.
However, for the opposing Dongsheng troops, the situation was quite different. As the party being attacked, every time the enemy’s cannons spewed out a large cloud of white smoke, they would subconsciously tense up, steeling themselves and shutting their eyes tight, secretly praying they were not the next target.
There were continual screams from their comrades nearby, but they dared not look back. Just by smelling the thick scent of blood in the air and feeling the splashes of blood on their faces, they knew just how gruesome their comrades’ fates were.
And some didn’t even have the chance to make a sound before they were silently wiped out, leaving behind an unidentifiable mess of flesh and blood.
Those hit by cannonballs and left to wail on the ground with limbs severed might be considered the luckiest, for they no longer needed to move forward. They could simply lie there and give full vent to their cries of agony from the excruciating pain.
At first, the Demon Clan’s artillery was not very accurate, but after two rounds of adjustments, the precision of the mortars improved significantly, with almost every shot landing in the densest part of the enemy’s formation, exploding on impact and toppling their ranks as uniformly as wheat before the scythe.
Not only did the Demon Clan army inherit the doctrine of creeping barrages from the High-peak people and make modifications, but they also adopted and adapted the concept of firepower superiority. By optimizing the loading steps of the artillery and musketeers, they significantly increased their rate of fire.
Before launching a charge, the Demon Clan army would bombard the enemy with saturated firepower, relying on their overwhelming force to crush the enemy’s morale. By the time the Demon Clan army charged, the enemy’s morale was basically frozen, leaving them powerless to resist.
As mentioned before, in ancient wars, the majority of casualties often occurred during the pursuit phase. A fleeing army had no power to resist the pursuing forces and could only be slaughtered at will.
The situation in modern warfare is largely the same. Indeed, cannon and musket accounted for a significant proportion of casualties, but the final pursuit phase still resulted in the majority of losses.
Elite troops are called elite because their morale is hard to shake. To engage with such troops, one can only rely on powerful firepower to inflict as many casualties as possible, and then accept a certain cost to completely overpower them.
Thus, elite troops excel because they do not break and flee. Their refusal to rout means fewer casualties, which means that defeating them comes with a greater price. Therefore, unless the Demon Clan army’s weapons and equipment could achieve a breakthrough, especially in developing rapid-fire weapons, they would still inevitably turn cowardly when facing elite Dongsheng troops.
However, it was clear that the ten thousand intercepting troops of the Dongsheng army were not any sort of elite. From the beginning of the battle, they displayed clear signs of faltering, highly intimidated by the Demon Clan’s tremendous firepower.
But the Demon Clan army didn’t care about whether the opposition feared their powerful firepower, as the artillerymen carried out the loading and firing process methodically. Their cannons used a simple red phosphorus lanyard firing system, which avoided the lengthy burning process of a fuse, requiring only a tug of the lanyard to ignite the gunpowder.
Seemingly having learned their lesson from the last time, the Dongsheng troops this time noticeably did not wear heavy armor, nor did they have shield-bearers. It seemed that they had also realized that projectiles with such powerful kinetic energy were not something that shields or heavy armor could defend against. So instead of continuing to strengthen their defense, they opted for lighter gear to increase the military’s mobility.
However, without equivalent long-range weapons, even the finest equipment was in vain, as not everyone could ensure their arrows would reach the heads of the Demon Clan’s army over a hundred meters away. In order to inflict casualties on the Demon Clan’s army, it was necessary to advance forward.
From the current situation, the advance of the Dongsheng army was exceptionally arduous. The more than three hundred cannons had them trembling with fear, and the constant barrage of Fragmentation Grenades raining down made their scalps tingle, to the point that archers even lost the courage to draw their bows.
Before the enemy got close enough for the musketeers to open fire, the Demon Clan’s Artillery began to load and fire grapeshot at the opposite side. With each explosion, pellets flew like rain toward the Dongsheng army, with soldiers screaming and falling to the ground, sometimes with entire ranks collapsing from a single shot.
This seemed to be a fuse; under the powerful bombardment, the morale of the Dongsheng army plummeted, deserters started to appear, and another round of cannon fire ensued. The soldiers at the front lines of the Dongsheng army finally couldn’t bear it anymore, threw down their weapons, and fled in a sorry state.
This seemed to be a signal, as the collapse of the front line, following the desertion of these soldiers, disintegrated completely like dominoes. The fleeing soldiers were like headless ants, chaotically scrambling, which directly affected the reserve troops behind them, who also began to fall into disarray.
Cheng Ziang and Hu Daoke watched all this speechlessly; they had originally anticipated that this battle would be relatively easy, given ten thousand men fighting against thirty thousand. But they had not expected it to be so easy that the Dongsheng army would be routed by the Demon Clan’s artillery before their infantry even came into play.
On the battlefield, once an army begins to rout, it’s essentially the end of the line. Commanders of the Dongsheng army watched this scene unfold and helplessly chose to turn and run.
With the Dongsheng army’s complete collapse, the Demon Clan began to dispatch their Cavalry to pursue. Yunji did not send her infantry to chase because it was the first battle, and she was concerned that once these soldiers of Kyushu scattered, they could not be recalled.
So, inevitably, the Dongsheng army faced a terrible defeat, with ten thousand disintegrating. After a day of pursuit, the Cavalry killed more than eight hundred of the enemy.
Counting those killed and injured by the Demon Clan’s cannons on the battlefield, Dongsheng’s casualties were around two thousand. It couldn’t be said there weren’t many deaths, but it also wasn’t to the point of immediate collapse.
Actually, if ten thousand men had fought with the resolve to die against the Demon Clan’s army, it was possible that they could have defeated the Demon Clan. Because in the era of ancient warfare, the will of men often proved stronger than the power of weapons.
Regrettably, these ten thousand were not elite warriors prepared to die; facing the overwhelming firepower of the Demon Clan’s army, they collapsed without even engaging the enemy.
Thus, Cheng Ziang noted that the level of the Dongsheng army seemed to have deteriorated a lot from a year ago. In theory, if the Dongsheng Empire wanted to hold onto West Outer Heaven, they should have bolstered the quality of their troops stationed there.
However, as they had seen in the reports, the Dongsheng Empire began withdrawing troops regularly to the interior, to counter the threats from ethnic groups in the northeast and northwest of the Empire.
Faced with the threat of foreign invasions, West Outer Heaven seemed somewhat useless; it was hard to give up, but there were neither troops to spare for reinforcement, nor enough manpower, leading to calls for further withdrawal from West Outer Heaven.
In fact, applying Luo’er’s conjectures, all these situations were understandable. The Dongsheng Empire was not unified; thus, it couldn’t simply be regarded as a formidable and aggressive force.
With foreign invasions threatening the Dongsheng Empire and strife within the court, these disputes would influence the troops deployed in West Outer Heaven.
At present, the Dongsheng Empire still occupies several cities in the southern region of West Outer Heaven. Once they lose these cities, it’s likely they would no longer hold any attachment, and withdrawal would become their only action. By then, the retreat of the Dongsheng Empire would become a foregone conclusion.
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