Chapter 405: Total Annihilation

Purely in terms of spectacle, the hexagonal blue muzzle flash people often see in blockbusters is undeniably the coolest.

That mainly comes from America's M16 family.

The AK series, on the other hand, has three ports in its flash hider, so the muzzle flash normally forms a triangle.

Tonight, in the seventeenth century, with its flash hider deliberately removed, the AK47 spat out a date-pit-shaped flame — the shape that most perfectly follows airflow principles.

But this date pit was far larger than anything on TV. With no auxiliary device attached at all, the AK's muzzle erupted a thick, richly textured flame over a meter long in the night.

The continuous muzzle flashes paired with crisp, thunderous gunshot echoes would instantly set a TV viewer's blood boiling — and they also instantly seized the attention of every Hufei in the compound. Many stared in shock at those two streaks of gunfire; even the volley fire shooting from the front was overwhelmed in presence.

Wu Sanye was among them.

At this moment, he had forgotten even the pain wracking his entire body. He simply gaped, watching those two eerie bursts of flame and the meteor-like red dots slaughter his brothers on the lake.

Because the Port Authority's Stone Tower was rectangular and the first floor had been sealed shut, the majority of the breech-loader fire was concentrated at the second floor's horizontal row of windows and the rooftop: in every room on the second floor, several Action Team Members were taking turns shooting.

In this situation, the two Great Killers became the critical pivot reinforcing the weak points — the Stone Tower's left and right short sides each had only one window, and the rooftop could not hold many people; the AK's intense firepower perfectly compensated for this.

And so the eight hundred lake bandits suffered catastrophic misfortune.

From the moment the searchlights came on, the lake bandits at the Stone Tower's front were whittled down layer by layer with lead bullets, while those on the left and right sides were skewered into human meat skewers by strings of red dots.

A 7.62mm AK bullet, at the short distance of one hundred meters, can penetrate four millimeters of steel plate and brick walls. So the lake bandits crowded behind the second layer of iron wire traps were instantly pierced through in rapid succession — every single bullet could carry away two or three unlucky souls, and with good luck avoiding bone, piercing four men was not uncommon.

The roaring volley fire, the crisp AK reports, the dying howls of agony, the panicked shrieks, and those pillars of light that, like demons, left flying limbs everywhere they swept, along with the gunpowder smoke billowing in all directions... the Port Authority building, unleashing its full firepower, needed only two minutes to create a living hellscape and send vast numbers of lake bandits into the cycle of reincarnation.

And Chief Wind Scout Qiao Shiqi, hiding far behind the crowd, along with the whole crew of Wind Scouts and Shopkeepers — every one of them now wore an expression of eyes splitting with rage and utter terror: "It's a trap, it's a trap! Run, run!"

By this point, if the Shopkeepers, who had pissed their pants in fright, still could not see this was a trap, then they had to be imbeciles.

Unfortunately, the sudden realization came too late.

Of the eight hundred lake bandits who had charged in, one hundred were lost at the outer ring of iron wire traps. Of the remaining seven hundred, over three hundred had been shot dead by volley fire and AKs in just these short two or three minutes — and more losses were still to come... how could a retreat before the enemy possibly come without sacrifice?

And so, as the battered warriors, strewn with death and injury, fled back the way they came, the bullets fired from behind continued to reap their lives without pause, until the last lucky survivor, his whole body torn ragged and streaming blood from the iron wire traps, scrambled over the low wall — only then did everything seem to fall silent.

Of course, the nightmare was far from over.

When Qiao Shiqi, panting heavily, jumped down from the top of the wall and stood up, he froze again — the distant dock area was flickering with dots of red light. Though he could not hear any sound, after the impromptu crash course earlier, the Chief Wind Scout immediately realized: those were the guards' Fire Lances opening fire.

Roughly fewer than three hundred lake bandits had ultimately survived the great calamity and withdrawn from that hell. After climbing over the wall, these men had just sat down on the ground, gasping for breath, when Qiao Shiqi, secretly groaning in despair, roared at them to get up.

The survivors, who had been grumbling and cursing under their breath, then saw the red dots flickering in the distance. At this, every last man panicked completely: if the ships were captured, how would they get back?

And so an action — unclear whether it was escape or rescue — was forced to begin.

All three hundred lake bandits were wounded, every one of them panicked and disoriented. Half of them had even thrown away their knives and could only stumble, gasping for air, behind the main force as they "charged" toward the river dock.

The ones sent to cut off the lake bandits' retreat were the 150 Action Team Members Lu Cheng had brought from Hangzhou. These men had already circled around into position beforehand; at the very moment the lake bandits all climbed the wall into the compound, they simultaneously launched their offense against the ten large black-canvas boats moored at the dock.

The small defending force had no way to deal with attackers equipped with Type 38 Rifles and Night Vision Devices; it did not take long before all the boats were seized.

And it was at this moment that the main force of lake bandits had just climbed over the wall, preparing to escape.

So their fate was obvious — the group had just run past the commercial district when two volleys fired head-on cut down a hundred of them. The bandit gang, their hearts long since shattered and courage gone, utterly drained of fighting spirit, turned and fled back, wailing.

But with the situation having devolved into this wretched mess, where could the valiant warriors who had come all the way from Taihu possibly run?

So the force naturally disintegrated.

Under the constant reminder of bullets flying from behind, amid the ceaseless screaming of the survival fragments hidden in their genes, the remaining lake bandits, discovering their retreat cut off and unable to kill a single one of the enemy, finally fell into utter despair and began to scatter, attempting to flee separately into the darkness of night.

By this point, this port raid — meticulously orchestrated behind the scenes by the Gentry and executed by eight hundred lake bandits — could already be considered over.

What followed was a bonus program: a small number of guards wearing Night Vision Devices, leading squads through the dark to hunt down fleeing enemies in all directions.

Inside the Port Authority compound, the dense surrounding corpses had become tangled together with the iron wire traps; coupled with the severed limbs strewn everywhere and the thick gunpowder smoke, visibility was extremely poor. So Xiong Dao's side simply did not go out at all — battlefield cleanup work like this could perfectly well wait until daylight.

So the bosses went off to rest... staying up late is bad for the health.

The guards, however, enthusiastically remained at their posts and began a "turkey shoot": for the rest of the night, every little while, some blood-soaked, staggering bandit would crawl out from the pile of corpses and try to scale the wall to escape — and then that man would be shot in the back by several guns at once.

The night passed swiftly. When the first beam of morning sunlight fell on Wu Sanye's face, he woke.

Late the previous night, after the gunfire and screams outside the compound had gradually died down, Wu Sanye, who had lost a great deal of blood, had finally sunk into a groggy sleep.

And when he awoke, the first thing he saw was a scene of utter carnage: as far as his eyes could reach, the corpses of his brothers lay everywhere. Beside the corpses were scattered limbs and shattered blades; brown bloodstains covered the cement floor of the compound; dead-white pupils, illuminated by the golden morning light, were utterly lifeless.

At this moment, the great door of the Stone Tower — the very door Sanye and his men had been desperate to breach the day before — slowly opened on its own. Then, the compound guards, holding rapid-fire guns, walked out from the building.

At the same time, someone climbed over the compound's iron gate from the outside and used a key to unlock the iron chain, and then a large group of Civilian Laborers outside, carrying tools, filed in.

The long and grueling task of battlefield cleanup began.

The Civilian Laborers first dragged the Hufei corpses, one by one, out to the main street beyond the gate — where a string of lake bandits, bound hand and foot and kneeling on the ground, were already waiting to identify the bodies.

For the corpses of ordinary underlings, after the Civilian Laborers gleefully searched the bodies, they loaded them onto carts and pushed them to the dock. The dock, so empty the day before, now had several Fishing Ships that had been summoned by Walkie-Talkie this morning. These corpses would all be tossed onto the Fishing Ships, then taken beyond the Yangtze River Estuary to feed the sea fish.

As for the Shopkeepers' corpses, the method of disposal was to chop off the heads, cure them with Calcium Oxide, and then arrange them neatly on the sidewalk.

There were also the living to deal with.

Those who looked too gravely wounded to move were treated as dead men and hauled off together to feed the fish. Those underlings still able to move were herded into the Warehouse and locked up; in a few days, they would be sent to mine in the wildlands.

Living Shopkeepers were still beaten to death on the spot and beheaded.

After busying themselves like this for one hour, the Civilian Laborers had only managed to clean up the corpses between the main gate and the first ring of iron wire traps.

Next, the Civilian Laborers first opened a passage between the main gate and the Stone Tower — the corpses on the iron wire traps were extremely difficult to handle; they could only open a breach first and proceed slowly.

And so, after a grueling wait of two hours, the pitiful Wu Sanye finally welcomed his salvation: "Well, well, isn't this Sanye? Hey, come look, everyone — this is Wu Sanye, the original owner of Zhang Sutan!"

Liu Wang, who was leading his Intelligence Section colleagues in examining the corpses one by one, had inadvertently wandered right up to Wu Sanye. Having seen Wu Sanye back when he posed as a Land Broker's attendant, Liu Wang recognized at a glance this Sanye, tangled by the iron wire into an undignified posture.

Sticking out his rear, Liu Wang looked down at the pale-faced, utterly exhausted Sanye at his feet and could not help bursting into loud laughter: "Well now, Sanye, come back to Zhang Sutan to visit the family, have you?"

At Liu Wang's words, the several men behind him let out vicious, mocking laughter as well.

"Enough with the mockery — quickly get me out of here, we can talk properly..." Had he been a scholar with moral integrity, in such a state of shame and fury, he would likely have already burst out cursing, seeking the effect of "dying while cursing the brigands."

But Sanye, after all, was merely a major thug of the seventeenth century — no integrity, and his lower limits were very low. So without the slightest hesitation, he began begging his opponent to first rescue him from this cage... he truly could not afford to lose any more blood; if he bled any more, he would die.

"Good, good." Liu Wang, greatly amused, called over a few Civilian Laborers, and with much bustling about, they first extracted Sanye from the iron wire traps.

"Many thanks, brother!" Sanye could not even stand at this moment, but he still gritted his teeth and saluted Liu Wang and his men.

"Don't thank me just yet." Liu Wang, smiling cheerfully, said to him: "Qiao Shiqi and Niu Jinluo's heads have already been chopped off and will be handed over to the authorities tomorrow. Sanye, tell me — why should we fellows let you, the guide, off?"

Third Lord sighed inwardly. With things having come to this, he could only resort to an unorthodox move and seek life within death. He raised his head and said slowly, "Master Xiong owes me. Kill me, and I won't accept it!"

"What does Master Xiong owe you?" Just as Third Lord finished speaking, a voice came from behind the crowd. One Moment later, people parted, and Master Xiong, Wearing a cotton robe, strolled up before Third Lord.