Chapter 881: Fear

You Shiwei watched the rocket launches in astonishment. He had long heard of the Jingbian Army's mysterious weapon, the rocket, and had even seen the actual objects during military parades, yet doubts had always lingered in his heart. Now, witnessing a real launch, he was left utterly awestruck, his spirit shaken.

He watched as rockets soared up one after another from in front of their own formation, then howled as they pounced on the enemy. The range alone already filled him with wonder, and then there was that power — wherever a round fell, the bandit army's formations around it descended into chaos and collapse. Not a single bandit soldier could withstand the rocket's might.

The men around him also gasped repeatedly. Guyuan Regional Commander Zheng Jiadong murmured, "Son of a donkey, hitting that far — how do you even fight that?"

Gao Jie and his subordinate officers Hu Maozhen and Li Chengdong stared blankly. Hu Maozhen in particular gaped wide-mouthed, watching rocket after rocket shriek through the air. After a long while he said, "It's good, all right — I just fear it costs too much money."

Chen Yongfu let out a sigh of deep satisfaction. Wang Dou's strength kept refreshing his senses time and again, but he had already resolved to follow Marshal Wang Dou closely. The stronger the Jingbian Army's power, the more he felt honored to share in its glory.

He said to Gansu Regional Commander Ma Kuang beside him, "With rockets, the way battles are fought will likely be different from now on."

Ma Kuang nodded emphatically. He was the grandson of the famed general Ma Fang and had been steeped in his family's teachings from childhood — a true scion of a military house. In his view, battles were always fought by gradually hammering in from the outside, then striking at the central army; only then was the enemy in grave peril.

That was also the advantage of the red-barbarian cannon: it fired far, sometimes even reaching the core of the enemy's forward formation, sowing immense panic and shaking their morale.

Yet now the rocket fire was bursting open directly inside the bandit enemy's core, even bypassing their forward formation to strike straight into their rear formation — this was truly inconceivable.

Ma Kuang personally saw several rockets howl down into the core of the roving bandits' central army. Perhaps the casualties were negligible compared to the bandits' vast numbers, but Ma Kuang could imagine the panic among the bandits, that sense of insecurity. Even Ma Kuang himself, faced with such a situation, would not know what to do.

In short, even these veteran Ming generals, witnessing the overwhelming power of this new weapon, all felt their hearts tremble. They sensed that a wholly different era had arrived.

Wen Fangliang watched the rocket-launch results with satisfaction. The officers around him were also beaming with delight — these rockets were simply too devastating.

They saw with their own eyes: moments ago, a hundred rockets had fired in a volley and fallen upon the bandits' wagon camps and musket camps. Instantly, vast swaths of terrified, despairing screams and rout erupted there. Countless bandit soldiers fled wildly like wolves and boars, shouting in panic; their officers could not suppress them no matter how hard they tried.

Their panic was inevitable. The bandits' wagon camp, needless to say, consisted entirely of surrendered Ming troops — no matter how fine their equipment, they had no will to fight. Many in their musket camp were former surrendered New Army men, but they had long since rotted and degenerated. Faced with the ferocious rockets — even light rockets — they were equally unable to resist.

There were also heavy rockets, howling forth just the same. Unlike the light rockets, they needed to seek out more valuable targets, so the wagon troops and musket men of the forward formation were beneath their consideration. Even the mounted units on the two wings of the bandits' central army were largely beneath their consideration.

They struck directly at the core of the central army — the Three-Wall cavalry, the areas around the great banners. Though the range was long, they still generally fell in that direction. Whether they could blast a valuable target depended on the luck of both sides.

At this moment they had halted four li out; the army formation had already stopped. The rockets, along with the heavy cannons that had been hauled over with desperate effort, would follow the established battle plan: first strike the bandits' artillery camp and wagon camp. Otherwise, if the bandits' forward-formation cannons and muskets remained intact, pressing their own infantry formation forward might cause unnecessary losses.

Twenty red-barbarian heavy cannons and thirty heavy mortars were already being hauled by mules and horses up onto the various gun platforms and would soon open fire, while those rockets continued to howl without pause.

Wen Fangliang's Azure Dragon Army position had two light-rocket battalions, each with one hundred launch racks — two hundred in total. They were arranged in two tiers, staggered front and rear: one hundred in front, one hundred behind, twenty paces apart. The front fired dispersed shots; the rear fired in volleys.

There was also one heavy-rocket battalion with twenty rocket carts; these mounted the various gun platforms.

Those were piled-up great earthen platforms roughly one zhang high. They were grouped in clusters of five, firing mainly in dispersed mode. But if a valuable target was spotted, they would load three rockets into one cart, or even fire an entire cluster in volley — launching fifteen heavy rockets at once.

Smoke churned; the dense fumes from the rocket launches shrouded the area before the rocket formation in a haze of gunpowder smoke. Yet the ammunition handlers kept bringing spare rounds from the wagons and placing them into the launch racks.

The observation officers of the rear-row battalion set up their artillery scopes and finally calculated the target's distance range: "Range four li and one hundred sixty paces, elevation five fen three du — volley!"

All cluster observation officers, observers, and rocket chiefs of that battalion shouted in unison: "Elevation five fen three du — volley!"

The rocket handlers moved the bipods, adjusting to the corresponding scale markings on the rocket bodies. Each rocket chief trimmed the appropriate fuse and inserted it into the fuse port at the head.

This was a delay fuse; once ignited, it burned at a predetermined rate. In battle, the fuse length was cut according to the corresponding data so that it would explode as close to the intended distance as possible.

At this time, explosive shells often suffered from premature or delayed detonation. Wang Dou and his men, however, held that it was better for a fuse to be too long than too short — a delayed explosion was better than an early one.

If it exploded early, it was merely a brilliant firework in the sky. If it exploded late, the enemy might have fled — but what mattered here was the rigid military formation. Fleeing was not the problem; the entire formation collapsing might be even more effective than having them stand and take the blast.

The rockets were over one meter long. The rear section was ****** propellant; the forward section was cast from brittle pig iron, filled with seven to ten jin of gunpowder. Heavy rockets carried as much as twenty to twenty-five jin — a staggering figure.

Black powder was actually quite powerful; it mainly depended on the quantity. Later generations said the Eighth Route Army's grenades burst into just two halves — that was because they used captured Japanese grenade casings for reloading, which had excessively high strength. When they switched back to pig-iron casting, the effect was quite good, apart from the larger size.

Moreover, the forward section of the rocket was cast with pre-formed fragmentation grooves on the inside. Rocket launches did not need to account for bore pressure, so there was no worry that the pre-formed fragments would compromise the projectile's structure and cause it to explode inside the barrel. There was also no recoil; they could be launched anytime, anywhere — truly an exceptionally fine weapon.

Unless firing large-caliber solid shot, the Jingbian Army was already considering gradually replacing mortars with rockets. Because even in a low-bore-pressure cannon like a mortar, using explosive shells with pre-formed fragments had negative effects — the shell might prematurely explode inside the barrel.

Once the line of thinking was opened, the only constraint on rocket development was cost. After all, neither black powder nor iron stock was cheap at this time. Many old-style military commanders even used extremely primitive formulas for making gunpowder, requiring large quantities of eggs for purification — one jin of gunpowder cost nearly one tael of silver.

The way Wang Dou was firing, each rocket meant at least ten taels of silver gone. No other military commander could afford to use them.

That battalion's next rocket volley was fully prepared. The battalion observation officer shouted: "Launch!"

All observation officers, observers, and rocket chiefs shouted: "Launch!"

The ignition men for each rocket lit the fire. They first ignited the fuse, then the tail fuse. The fire lines hissed and burned; suddenly, flames nearly one zhang long burst from each rocket's nozzle. Thick gunpowder smoke blanketed the area around the rockets, and then each rocket soared into the air.

They trailed long red tail flames, flying with a piercing, mournful shriek. At the same time, under the action of three angled spiral fins mounted on the tail, the rockets continuously spun, achieving a degree of stability in flight and preserving accuracy.

Another great swath of rockets streaked through the sky. Trailing flames as brilliant as fireworks, they emitted an indescribable howl in the air, like a sky full of falling meteors, racing toward their targets.

Inside one of the Shun army's artillery bastions — this was their typical three-tier bastion: at the very top, five four-wheeled millstone cannons; on the next tier, fifteen ordinary red-barbarian cannons; at the bottom, thirty grand-general Frankish cannons. To guard against the Jingbian Army's artillery, they had also placed large numbers of earth bags and bamboo baskets around the perimeter. Yet at this moment...

An artilleryman fled, his whole body ablaze. He screamed piteously, running and crashing about wildly. Those around him either failed to dodge in time or fled for their lives in equal panic. The flames on that artilleryman surged higher and higher, until at last his entire body became a great fireball.

This great fireball staggered and reeled, emitting an indescribable wail. Everywhere it passed, things around it were continuously ignited. Abruptly it crashed into something — and then came an earth-shattering explosion, a chain detonation.

Finally, the entire artillery bastion erupted in a huge mushroom cloud. The violently surging flames blazed as fiercely as the sun. Wave after wave of dense smoke coiled into the sky, and then everything inside the bastion was hurled upward, sent flying. Cannon barrels, wheels, iron stock — propelled by the immense force of the gunpowder — swept out in all directions. The blast wave surged ferociously outward.

Yang Shaofan and Gao Yigong clambered up from the ground where they had been thrown. Their horses had been so terrified they had fled who knew where. When the smoke cleared and the sounds of collapsing ceased, they looked again at that artillery bastion: it had been blasted into a bare, smoking, cratered wasteland of scorched earth. From the pit, charred, blood-reeking black smoke still rose ceaselessly.

And the soldiers of the Shun army's wagon camp and musket camp arrayed around it — they lay strewn in heaps over a vast area, piled in death and injury. Everywhere were the corpses of men and horses, overturned war wagons, scattered weapons and banners.

They stared blankly at all this, letting the various acrid smells stab straight into their nostrils. They saw the men all around them crying out and fleeing in panic, yet they were powerless to stop them. Earlier they had already quelled one such panic — that hundred-rocket volley had triggered immense terror, and only through the two men's desperate suppression had a fragile calm been restored. Now, it was truly beyond stopping.

Yang Shaofan staggered a few steps. The ground beneath his feet was blackened, soaked with blood. He looked blankly at the shouting, fleeing crowds around him. Could his ambitions truly end like this?

No — I refuse to accept this!

Yang Shaofan forcibly rallied his spirits. He was about to speak when, amid a piercing shriek, another "Divine-Fire Flying Crow" came hurtling in. Instinctively he wanted to run, but he saw that this "Divine-Fire Flying Crow" landed a hundred paces away — and stuck in the ground without exploding.

Yang Shaofan let out an enormous sigh of relief. These accursed Jingbian Army "Divine-Fire Flying Crows" were truly terrifying. Then, abruptly, that "Divine-Fire Flying Crow" suddenly detonated. Another wave of piteous screams erupted around it as a multitude of men were hurled in all directions.

Then Yang Shaofan's hair stood on end — a long, dark, shadowy line was hurtling toward him from that direction, emitting a fierce howl, spinning rapidly through the air.

This thing was actually two iron balls, one large and one small, linked by an iron chain. It came on with a whirring sound, lashing and flailing rapidly forward. Those struck by this thing invariably had sinews snapped and bones broken, heads split and blood streaming, white brain matter splashing forth — the scene was horrifying in the extreme.

Yang Shaofan watched as this chain-shot came spinning and whirring over. Suddenly it swept past Gao Yigong's head. In his terror-stricken eyes, Gao Yigong's head was ripped clean off while he still lived. Then, tangled by the hair or something, Gao Yigong's horrified, despairing head hung there, spinning along with the chain-shot.

Then this chain-shot, with the human head, slammed into a man's body, wrapping around his chest and nearly cutting him in two. Everything inside came gushing out in a riot of colors.

Yang Shaofan watched, trembling. He especially watched as Gao Yigong's head tumbled to the ground, eyes bulging, its expression one of utter terror.

Yang Shaofan could no longer suppress the terror in his heart. Seeing a battalion commander beside him gallop past, shouting, he chased after him, cut him down with one stroke, seized his horse, and fled toward the rear formation.

Dense masses of mounted troops were massing in the rear formation of the central army. They watched in horror at the skyful of meteoric flames ahead, and with lingering fear they glanced at the "Great Divine-Fire Flying Crows" that occasionally flew overhead. The Jingbian Army's fire-weapons could actually strike six or seven li — perhaps even farther. It was truly terrifying.

Suddenly a "Great Divine Fire Crow" came flying over; the old-camp horse troops on this side did not know how to react, though some quick-witted men shouted and spurred their horses, trying to get far away.

But they saw that this "Great Divine Fire Crow" had not yet landed — it exploded roughly at neck-height of the men mounted on horses, and then dense flesh and blood flew everywhere; the men and horses around screamed and tumbled in a great swath, and farther out blood mist billowed up; thousands of small iron pellets sprayed out with the force of the gunpowder explosion, carrying ferocious lethality.

Not only that, four or five larger iron balls also howled and shot out in all directions, punching through many men and horses along their path with such momentum that it was like bombarding these men with cannon at close range.

……

On Dongsheng Ridge, Li Zicheng, Liu Zongmin, Li Guo, Liu Xiyao, Yuan Zongdi, and the others stared dumbfounded at the scene in the forward formation; the skyful of falling meteors left them not knowing what to say. Under the strike of the strange weapons of the Jingbian Army, many parts of the forward formation were already showing signs of collapse, and many soldiers were shouting and fleeing toward the rear formation.

And their cannons began to boom and roar; listening to the howl of their shells, the places the cannon struck were likewise hit by heavy cannon that could fire three or four li — their judgment and estimate had been wrong once again.

In particular, among their strange weapons, some could even strike their rear formation, reaching their central army core; not long before, one round even struck below the ridge, directly blasting and overturning a large swath of their old-camp elite riders, giving Li Zicheng and the others a great fright, every one of them shuddering in terror.

What kind of weapon was this, that could fire so far — this was seven or eight li, wasn't it?

Watching the chaos in the forward formation, Li Yan's expression was anxious. He said, "Great King, we cannot let Wang Dou's army keep striking like this. Our forces taking hits without being able to strike back — that damages morale far too greatly. We must immediately pin them down; perhaps we can attack them from both wings."

Li Zicheng clenched his teeth. Indeed, they could not let the Jingbian Army keep striking like this; the troops on the two wings of the central army should move, and even the three walls of the central army's rear formation must prepare.

In truth, after steadying himself he also saw that although the Jingbian Army's weapons were sharp and could strike very far, compared to the vast numbers, the casualty ratio they caused was still small; as long as they endured the fear and dared to fight to the death, it was not impossible to salvage the army's morale.

But they simply could not stand there taking hits like that; the earlier strategy of attacking with both wings while the central army defended clearly had to be adjusted.

In his heart he also inclined toward Li Yan's strategy of attacking with both wings of the central army; although the Jingbian Army's frontal battle line looked thin, the situation was unclear, so it was better to probe from both wings first — perhaps they could even outflank and envelop them from behind their formation.

He passed orders for some horse troops from the two wings of the central army to move out; at the same time, Li Zicheng also sent Marquis of Mian, Yuan Zongdi, to the right wing to oversee the attack. Earlier, Marquis of Ci, Liu Fangliang, had already gone to oversee the left wing; Li Zicheng felt the right wing could also begin.

Li Yan hesitated to speak; he was somewhat worried about that Great Qing state. However, scout reports said the Jingbian Army was simultaneously launching an attack on that Great Qing state — it seemed the two of them were indeed not on the same side.

Thinking of the Jingbian Army's heroic spirit and boldness in fighting one against two, Li Yan sighed heavily in his heart once more.

He watched Yuan Zongdi receive his orders and, surrounded by several dozen personal guards, prepare to descend the ridge, when suddenly amid a shrill howl, a large rocket landed on the slope not far from Yuan Zongdi and the others; in the surging roar of flame and explosion, those several dozen riders immediately tumbled in a great swath.

In particular, the dense mass of small iron pellets sprayed out with the explosion; everywhere mud, dust, and blood mist rose. Even not far from Li Zicheng, an elite cavalry guard was struck in the head by a flying iron pellet; his skull shattered on the spot, brains splattered, and he rolled off his horse without a sound.

Li Zicheng shuddered in terror; he fought desperately to control his startled horse beneath him. From the corner of his eye he saw several long black shadows twisting and flying wildly; among them, one lunged toward Yuan Zongdi's group. That black shadow howled and spun whistling, lashing along its path; Yuan Zongdi's face was struck once, and he tumbled off his horse.

After everything stopped, that area was a chorus of groans and miserable cries; Li Zicheng and the others rushed over urgently.

"Marquis of Mian."

"Brother Yuan…"

Then their voices stopped abruptly; the sight before them made boundless terror surge in their hearts.

……

Watching as, amid shrill howls, rocket after rocket soared into the air from the Jingbian Army and then plunged into the great central formation of the Manchu-Mongol army, and watching the panicked scene over there, the people on this side were still gripped by lingering fear, yet also felt relief. Fortunately, the Jingbian Army's target was not them; not a single rocket fell their way.

Watching the skyful of flames and dense smoke, and then the brilliant trails falling one after another, Tang Tong murmured, "Meteors in broad daylight."

Wu Sangui's face was pale; beside him, Zu Dale and the others were also speechless.

Zu Dabi was silent for a long while, then sighed, "Ah, we bet on the wrong horse."