Otherworld Advance Team
Chapter 1382 - 1375: Loud Thunder, Little Rain

Chapter 1382: Chapter 1375: Loud Thunder, Little Rain

On the tenth day of the standoff, the Dongsheng army launched another attack. This time they deployed just over five thousand troops, but their method of attack was quite interesting.

Outside the range of direct fire artillery, they were setting up a strange device. Cheng Ziang looked through his binoculars and saw that the gadget was somewhat similar to a rocket nest, filled with densely packed arrows. The Dongsheng army was making adjustments, setting the angle of the device.

Noticing this, he immediately reported it to Yunji. After some deliberation, Yunji ordered the shield bearers to advance to the front line, while the rear units prepared for the chaotic onslaught of arrows that might come.

Meanwhile, the Demon Clan artillery troops were making their protective preparations while aiming at the distant enemy. In the past ten days, they had collected a large amount of battlefield shooting data, and they could almost hit their targets on the first shot.

Quantitative knowledge was a capability the Demon Clan had learned from the High-peak people and the Earthlings that could usher in a new era. Through complex calculations, all experiences and events were turned into data, which was then used to derive corresponding results.

Specifically, in the war, the artillery was continuously calibrated to divide shooting areas and calculate the proper amount of gunpowder to ultimately achieve accurate first shots.

After about ten minutes of adjustments, a series of sharp whistling sounds filled the air as rockets launched into the sky, tracing a clear arc before aiming at the Demon Clan’s military formation.

This was, in fact, a rocket similar to the Divine Machine Arrow, made using the Demon Clan’s gunpowder technology. The gunpowder propelled the arrows to give them greater range and power.

The Dongsheng army had set up over a hundred such rocket nests. Those rocket nests fired arrows in succession, with more than eighty successfully launched, while the rest suffered various malfunctions. It must be said, as a rare new weapon of the Dongsheng army, these devices made quite an impactful debut.

Hundreds of arrows screamed towards the sky, forming a noticeable arc before shooting towards the Demon Clan army. The sight was indeed stunning. If one disregarded the lethality, Cheng Ziang would have admired it as a spectacular fireworks display.

But while the spectacle was impressive, the actual effect was rather disappointing. Without the quantitative calculations of shooting experience like the Demon Clan’s, their accuracy on the first shot was extremely low, most of the arrows flying over the Demon Clan army and landing even further back.

Only about a hundred arrows fell into the Demon Clan’s formation, but they were quickly blocked by shields and various covers, lacking any penetrative power.

Feng quickly grabbed an incoming arrow, inspected it for a few moments, and passed it to Cheng Ziang, who was hiding behind a cover. Upon examining it, Cheng Ziang noted the arrow was quite rudimentary, simply a paper tube tied to an arrow, propelled by the reactive force from the gunpowder blast.

The destructive power of such arrows relied primarily on the tip of the arrow. Cheng Ziang originally thought these arrows might explode, perhaps like a secondary explosive chamber, but it turned out he had overestimated the creativity of the Dongsheng army – crafting such a device might have been their limit.

The arrow rain lasted for five minutes, but not a single Demon Clan soldier died; only a few unluckies were slightly injured, one even burned his hand while foolishly grabbing an arrow.

As the last arrow whooshed over their heads, the Demon Clan’s counterattack began. Continuously firing, their mortars launched fragmentation grenades that landed precisely at the recently deployed Dongsheng rocket nests.

Unlike the Dongsheng army, where there was more noise than harm, the Demon Clan’s artillery was not only loud but also devastatingly effective. Soon, the Dongsheng rocket nest positions were fiercely bombarded. Facing such ferocious artillery, the Dongsheng soldiers had no chance to react, abandoning all their rocket nests and leaving behind over a hundred corpses as they fled in a disarray.

The Dongsheng army’s attack once again ended in failure,, this time feeling perplexingly defeated, akin to the saying "Trying to steal a chicken, but losing the rice instead." The enemy had no issues, yet they had senselessly lost over a hundred lives.

Such losses were not too severe for the size of Dongsheng’s army, but the continuous failure of three battles severely demoralized them. They urgently needed a victory to recover the rapidly waning morale.

In contrast, although the Demon Clan’s army had achieved victory in three consecutive battles, Yunji was not complacent at all. She was acutely aware that the Demon Clan’s army only had these 30,000 combatants capable of fighting,, and once lost, it was uncertain when they could be reassembled; thus, her strategy was extremely cautious, never acting rashly unless absolutely necessary.

As Dongsheng’s army campaigned in West Outer Heaven, and although currently in decline, they were still supported by the private soldiers of the Nine Thousand Battalion from the nobility clans at their rear. In other words, even if they were defeated again, they still had room to retreat, while the Demon Clan’s army had no such opportunity, meaning they could only afford to win, not lose.

Facing Dongsheng’s fifty thousand-strong army, Yunji was waiting for an opportunity. At present, she was actively preparing weapons, ammunition, and other war supplies, getting ready for a large-scale proactive assault to annihilate this massive army.

However, such preparations needed at least twenty days, so during this period, the Demon Clan’s army maintained a defensive stance, daring not to launch any attacks.

The frontal battlefield had reached a stalemate,, and the contention between the two sides once again shifted to other battlefields. Compared to Dongsheng’s army, which possessed over five thousand cavalry, the less numerous Demon Clan cavalry proved to be more active.

Relying on the mobility afforded by horses, they roamed between hills and plains, using their rifles to accurately snipe Dongsheng soldiers from a distance.

Demon Clan cavalry typically operated in groups of five, riding deep behind enemy lines, sometimes even penetrating over a hundred kilometers into the enemy’s rear to carry out raids. The Dongsheng soldiers became so fearful of them that they eventually habituated to hitting the ground whenever they heard gunshots.

Dongsheng cavalry attempted to encircle them, but their seamless cooperation often led Dongsheng’s men into traps, where they couldn’t escape without leaving behind several corpses.

In fact, the initial concept of these cavalry was akin to Europe’s hunters on Earth during the same period. Influenced by West Outer Heaven’s environment and enemies, it ultimately evolved into the roving snipers of the Demon Clan.

Overall, the Demon Clan cavalry’s main mode of combat was dismounted shooting; horses were merely their means of roaming and escaping. Of course, among them were elites, especially those equipped with lever-action breech-loading rifles.

These individuals could even engage Dongsheng cavalry in shootouts from horseback. One of the most spectacular battles involved over a hundred Dongsheng cavalry chasing five such elite Demon Clan cavalry equipped with lever-action breech-loading rifles. The outcome was that none of the five Demon Clan elites were harmed, while over thirty Dongsheng soldiers fell, forcing them to abandon the pursuit.

It can be said that in the mid to late stages of the West Outer Heaven war, the firepower of the Demon Clan’s army had greatly developed, creating an almost crushing momentum against Dongsheng’s forces. Especially in the absence of generals, the traditionally melee-weapon equipped Dongsheng army simply could not withstand those equipped with firearms from the Demon Clan.

Thus, under such influences, Dongsheng’s forces also began a reform in arms equipment, a prime example being Dongsheng’s previously tested rocket nests.

Although Dongsheng’s development of firearms was still in its initial stages, Cheng Ziang was very clear that this process was virtually irreversible, and in a few decades Dongsheng’s forces would also achieve full armament modernization.

To some extent, the development of Demon Clan firearms was not only assisted by the people of the Western Continent, but more so due to the scarcity of manpower among the Demon Clan itself, as well as the asymmetric combat power of cultivators, which made it imperative for the Demon Clan’s army to need a weapon that could create a crushing momentum and change the form of warfare.

Over a hundred years ago, the arrival of Transcenders fostered the embryo of firearms within the Demon Clan’s army,, and a hundred years later, the distressed people from the Western Continent who fled to the Eastern Continent brought with them a complete modern combat system, allowing their firearms to be greatly enhanced.