World-Ending Demon Emperor
Chapter 671: Zhi Wei suffers a crushing defeat! Zhi Ning has a child!

Chapter 671: Zhi Wei suffers a crushing defeat! Zhi Ning has a child!

Suo Lun’s army of over a hundred super-giant stone projectors unleashed their first simultaneous volley, pelting Zhi Wei’s giant crossbow battleground and the stone projector site with a hundred sacks of gunpowder!

"Boom boom boom boom..."

Huge fireballs and thick, rolling smoke completely enveloped the entire battlefield.

Gui Xingfu’s secret letter had not mentioned Thunder Bombs at all.

So, it was the first time Zhi Wei’s army of 150,000 witnessed such earth-shattering explosions, truly terrified to their cores.

It was as though the earth itself was shaking.

The power of 50,000 catties of gunpowder exploding was incredibly shocking!

On Zhi Wei’s battlegrounds, the gigantic stone projectors, akin to children’s toys, were directly torn apart by tremendous forces and scattered everywhere.

The giant crossbows fared even worse, being completely shattered to bits.

The soldiers near the explosion were pulverized.

And those tens to hundreds of meters away were sent flying through the air, spewing blood from their mouths.

Countless warhorses, spooked by the blasts, bolted wildly, throwing Zhi Wei’s cavalry camp into utter chaos.

With just one volley, Suo Lun’s side had turned Zhi Wei’s army upside down.

150,000 soldiers, pale as death, looked at each other in dismay.

What, what kind of weapon was this?

A Thunder Bomb? Or a Sky-shaking Bomb?

Why such a loud roar, such a staggering momentum?

Duke Zhi Wei and his color drained completely; he was not entirely ignorant about Thunder Bombs.

Although the death of Lan Shi, the Grand Duke of Night Orchid Duchy, had been attributed by the Dragon Temple to the wrath of the dragon, a thunderbolt from the heavens...

Zhi Li had directly deduced that it was Suo Lun’s doing, using an extremely special explosive to kill Grand Duke Lanshi.

Zhi Li had seen similar things before; alchemists from the Demon Continent had created a type of liquid and a crystal stone that could produce a terrible explosion.

And these crystal stones were currently being used as aerial signal flares.

But whether it was the explosive liquid or the explosive crystal stone, both were impossibly expensive and could not be produced on a large scale.

In Zhi Li’s view, Suo Lun killing Grand Duke Lanshi with explosives had depleted all the explosives made by his secret magicians.

Yet he hadn’t expected Suo Lun to use such things on the battlefield and in such large quantities?

Duke Zhi Wei felt a chill in his limbs, aware that this battle was going to be difficult, and he might have to pile up the corpses of his men!

...

The smoke cleared!

Both Suo Lun and Zhi Wei hurried to assess the damage caused by the first simultaneous volley.

Zhi Wei’s giant crossbow battleground and the super-giant stone projector site covered about half a square kilometer.

Now, they were pockmarked and cratered; both giant crossbows and super-giant stone projectors suffered a damage rate of over thirty percent.

Seeing the extent of the damage, Suo Lun was overjoyed, while Zhi Wei’s heart bled.

The accuracy of the stone projectors was abysmal; within four to five hundred meters, they could not even achieve a one percent hit rate.

But the explosion of four to five hundred catties of gunpowder was too shocking; everything within dozens of meters was obliterated.

Over a hundred sacks of gunpowder exploding across an area of about a square kilometer was almost akin to carpet bombing.

It could be said, the more super-giant stone projectors there were, the better the coverage.

Of course, the consumption of gunpowder was also extremely alarming!

Suo Lun felt that the gunpowder he had been saving for over a year might be entirely spent in this one great battle.

However, the aerial attack effects of the griffin beasts were much worse than anticipated.

First of all, dropping from a few hundred meters high was fine for attacking a castle, but hitting small to medium targets was nearly impossible due to the high margin of error.

And with only five griffin beasts, it was far too few to achieve carpet coverage.

The key issue was that during the assault on Linhai City, the enemy lacked dragon archers. But within Zhi Wei’s army, there were dozens of dragon archers, so attempting aerial drops of gunpowder to decapitate Duke Zhi Wei was out of the question.

Even if the griffin beasts flew at five to six hundred meters high, they would be shot by dragon archers.

And if they flew at one to two thousand meters, then the errors in aerial drops were too great, rendering the concept of aerial decapitation meaningless.

Just now, the five griffin beasts had conducted an aerial bombardment on the enemy’s giant crossbows and stone projectors. As a result, one was hit by a dragon archer at a distance of six hundred meters, with an arrow piercing clean through its neck. Although it did not die, it was grievously injured.

Consequently, Suo Lun immediately ordered to stop using the griffin beasts in combat and instead use them for delivering messages and observing the battlefield.

...

"Duke, we have fifty-three super-giant stone launchers damaged, nineteen of them destroyed. Out of two thousand three hundred giant crossbows, over seven hundred are damaged. The stone projector site has over three hundred casualties, and the giant crossbow battleground has over nine hundred casualties!"

Duke Zhi Wei received the casualty and damage report immediately.

His scalp tingled alarmingly.

This was just Suo Lun’s first volley.

His own side’s first volley had caused negligible damage to Suo Lun’s Fenglei Fort Defense Line.

Yet Suo Lun’s first volley had caused such significant losses.

He had to make a decision immediately, whether to withdraw all the stone projectors and giant crossbows or else, after just four or five volleys, his side’s long-range attack equipment would be completely annihilated.

And once all the long-range firepower was withdrawn, they would have to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers, at which point casualties would skyrocket.

But not to withdraw meant his giant crossbow and stone projector sites would be passively taking hits.

"Don’t withdraw..." Duke Zhi Wei ordered, "Not only do we not withdraw, but prepare the siege army immediately. Coordinate with the giant crossbows and the super-giant stone projectors and attack at once. Send the first wave of the siege army, go!"