Chapter 592: Paying a Visit

January 15, 1632, the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month in the lunar calendar.

For the transmigrators from another time and space who used the new calendar, the new year had already begun.

In this new year, everything seemed wonderful: the new society was thriving, countless great undertakings awaited completion every day, and the transmigrators were making history with each passing day.

Yet for the Great Ming Court far in the north, this twelfth month, on the verge of the lunar new year, was precisely a time of "national crisis" — Zu Dashou's forces, trapped in Dalinghe Fort in Liaodong, had already run out of food and ammunition over a month ago and surrendered the fort.

Although Zu Dashou later escaped alone back to Ming-controlled territory, this no longer mattered: the annihilation of the Great Ming's last field army by the Jian slaves was now a fact, and the Ming Court, its strength and spirit utterly crushed, had permanently lost strategic initiative.

So this twelfth month, the so-called hardship of the year-end threshold was real: the court was truly in dire straits.

The Emperor not only had to deal with the pile of mess left after the great defeat beyond the passes, but also had to face the increasingly aggressive northern peasant uprisings: a peasant army over 200,000 strong, formed by Wang Yong, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, Luo Rucai, and other factions, had already become a formidable force. At times scattered, at times united, they continuously attacked cities and seized territory around Shanxi, at one point breaching Daning, Xi Zhou, Ze Zhou, Shouyang, and other cities, leaving the court's armies exhausted from constant rushing about and the entire court terrified.

The one good point, however, was that the Ming Emperor was not fighting alone. At this very moment, in a distant foreign land to the south, there was likewise a court that, in this twelfth month, endured hardship after hardship, hesitation after hesitation.

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"All stations, ten rounds, sustained fire, ready... fire!"

The crude copper-wire tube sleeve and simple magnetic speaker transmission system rendered the human voice echoing through the gun deck extremely distorted, accompanied by the crackling electric current noise of shoddy electronics.

Yet none of these factors could impede the accurate conveyance of the command.

Standing beside the tin megaphone, the field commander who heard the order at the first moment, having visually confirmed all gun positions were ready, forcefully chopped down the small flag in his hand while blowing the copper whistle at his lips.

The long gun deck immediately erupted with a deafening roar. Accompanying the successive thunderous blasts were cannons, one after another, pushed back along their guide rails by recoil. At the same time, residual smoke from the muzzles began to fill the deck, and visibility dropped considerably.

However, the smoke was quickly vented out through the convection portholes. A professional gunboat had targeted designs for these issues. If the external convection environment was poor that day, negative-pressure exhaust fans could also be activated to assist with smoke extraction.

While the smoke was being vented, the artillery crews — wearing blast-proof ear covers, short and stocky in stature, composed uniformly of "third-class cripples" — were loudly shouting work chants as they intensely carried out the cannon resetting work.

Even though the three-layer gun deck, which easily caused the ship's center of gravity to become unstable, had been abandoned and improved into a two-layer gun deck equipped only with heavy cannons, it was still a ship's deck after all, with limited height and space, so the gun crew members were uniformly short men.

Short-statured gun crews were an essential "component" of the sandwiched-deck battleship.

The British Empire, facing competitive pressure at sea from all manner of rogues back in the day, thus resorted to every means possible. Within the imperial fleet, underage youths of small stature were used year-round as gunpowder carriers scrambling up and down.

Looking to the future, the Crossing Faction had no rivals to contend with, so the fleet had no establishment for "child soldiers." At present, all minors within the controlled zone were mandated to receive compulsory education and did not need to carry gunpowder kegs on warships or rapidly expend their lives in textile factories.

Fortunately, the average height of natives in this era was generally low, with adults of 1.5 meters everywhere. After the Navy recruited "height-qualified" gun crew soldiers, through training and nutritional supplementation, these men would become short, stocky "professional" soldiers.

At this moment, the professional soldiers' combat task was very arduous.

The 24-pound forged long-barrel heavy cannon had a total weight exceeding 2 tons. Even with an advanced slide rail system for braking, it still required the gun crew to expend a great deal of chemical energy and execute skilled operating procedures before the cannon would return to its firing position.

Next came another round of mechanical bore-cleaning and powder-loading actions.

The one good point was that, since this was sustained fire, the gun crews were not in a great hurry. Everyone slowed their movements, using the most energy-efficient method to go through the preparatory procedures they had practiced countless times once again.

Before long, the muzzles of ten 24-pound heavy cannons once again protruded out the portholes. The gleaming gun barrels and the suddenly quiet gun deck brought an instant surge of dense killing intent.

Less than ten seconds after all gun positions were ready, the tin loudspeaker beside the commander transmitted a call from the lower gun deck reporting their readiness. Less than half a minute later, the familiar electric-crackle voice of the fire control officer on the bridge issued the command once more: "Permission to fire!"

"Boom-rumble..."

The two-layer gun deck, with a total of twenty 24-pound heavy cannons on one side, roared in fury once again.

The cast-iron cannonballs, propelled out of the cannon barrels by the high-temperature gunpowder gas, were full of kinetic energy at this moment. The seemingly jet-black iron balls had in fact risen in temperature and become scalding hot.

One of these iron balls, after exiting the bore alongside its nineteen companions, soon merged with twenty-two of the same model fired from another warship. Together, they flew across nearly one kilometer of the Red River's surface before entering the airspace of their destination: a city possessing a rich Chinese-style aesthetic.

After crossing the thick city walls on the city's perimeter, the iron balls had already lost most of their kinetic energy, and the parabolic trajectory they traced showed an increasingly pronounced drop. Thereafter, after flying nearly 2000 meters, the iron balls' kinetic energy was finally exhausted, and so one leisurely smashed into a courtyard in the eastern part of the city.

This courtyard was paved with green bricks and roofed with green tiles, perfectly square and neatly arranged — at a glance, the residence of a well-to-do middle-class family.

At this moment, the courtyard was, for some unknown reason, empty and deserted.

The next moment, the iron ball bounced and tumbled into the backyard. Although it appeared to be moving sluggishly, utterly devoid of kinetic energy, after a loud "Bang!", the iron ball smashed through the firewood shed's wall without any hindrance. Ultimately, after traveling a distance of 2000 meters, this standard 24-pound cast-iron cannonball, produced in a distant metal casting factory in Yizhou, plunged headfirst into a pile of firewood and stopped moving.

The matter was not yet over.

After a full three or four minutes, within the firewood shed that had long since fallen quiet, a faint "crackling" sound suddenly arose... Looking closely, it turned out that a bundle of straw in the woodpile had, for some unknown reason, begun to emit green smoke.

Following that, the green smoke grew increasingly dense, and before long transformed into thick white smoke: the stored firewood in the shed had caught fire.

And so, the flames gradually grew larger and larger, until they burned through the firewood shed and began to spread to the surrounding houses.

By this time, the original white smoke had long since transformed into dense black smoke. Fueled by the readily available wood everywhere, the black smoke shot up into the sky. Anyone could see that a fire had broken out here and that rescue and firefighting were needed.

However, when the camera pulled back, one would then discover: this great city, dense with buildings and numerous houses, was already full of fires everywhere and corpses strewn across the ground, like hell on earth.

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The great southward fleet led by the Great Ming's Loyal and Brave Count Cao Chuan (fake) had already lingered in the delta region of the lower Red River for over half a month.

In fact, as early as a month ago, the great fleet had arrived at Hongji Port.

That day, after the special meeting addressing the northern situation concluded, the Cabinet immediately issued the personnel roster for the southbound fleet in accordance with the meeting's spirit.

Apart from Zhang Dongdong, who was certain to accompany the ships, this included quite a few Navy personnel, as well as various idle transmigrators preparing to survey the Indochina Peninsula.

The great fleet was swiftly assembled.

Since this was, in a practical sense, the first time stepping beyond "national borders" and it clearly carried combat duties, this southbound fleet was quite formidable. It included not only the two main battleships, the Zhenman and the Fuyuan, but also over twenty various secondary warships.

The transmigrators, this time, could be said to have committed their full elite strength.

Additionally, accompanying the great southward fleet's departure was an indeterminate number of various civilian transport vessels, forming a massive scale.

Afterward, having hastily gathered a portion of the ships at White Goose Pond and finished putting on a show before the Guangzhou natives, the fleet only then set out. Along the way, because they still needed to rendezvous with ships coming from various places, the fleet waited a full three days outside Lingdingyang.

Once the great fleet was finally fully assembled, they weighed anchor and set sail, the first stop being Qiongzhou.

After demonstrating their strength to the people of Qiongzhou, they left behind multiple transport ships to unload construction materials and various grains and sundry goods, and the southbound fleet only then formally headed south, finally stepping beyond national borders.

Unfortunately, after stepping beyond the borders, they hadn't gone three feet before the southbound fleet stopped moving. First, they conducted continuous exercises for many days in the Beibu Gulf, then the entire fleet went to the still-under-construction Hongji Port.

By this point in time, it was already late November, and the rainy season in Annam had already ended.

Next came the main event: the great fleet, shortly after stationing at Hongji Port, actually detected traces of an Annam army force numbering no less than 20,000 mobilizing on shore.

Thereupon, the marine forces carried by the great fleet, coordinating with the Hongji Port "security" troops and personally led by crossing officers, employed night raid combined with frontal assault tactics to shatter the formation of this Zheng Clan vanguard force sent to probe their strength in one stroke, inflicting over 800 casualties — the entire process taking only a single night.

Immediately after, having left a large number of personnel to assist in defending Hongji Port, the great southward fleet, on December 1st, committed its full main force and sailed straight up the Red River.

Because the river basin contained many red sandstone and shale strata, the water appeared red, hence this great river, originating in Yunnan and ending at the Beibu Gulf, was anciently called the "Red River."

And the Red River Delta at the lower reaches of the Red River was precisely where Shenglong Prefecture, the capital of Annam, was located.

On the morning of December 3, 1631, giant ships from downstream abruptly appeared on the surface of the Red River outside Shenglong Prefecture. Before the bewildered Shenglong Prefecture could send an envoy to parley, the imperialist fleet, already belching thick black smoke that foretold an ill omen, vilely launched an undeclared war, and at exactly 8 a. m., sprayed cannon fire representing death upon Shenglong Prefecture.

Caught utterly off guard, Shenglong Prefecture city sustained a bombardment totaling over a thousand shells that very day, and the lives and property of its people suffered enormous losses.

And the fleet, having emptied its shells that day, quietly withdrew from the Red River in the evening. Five days later, the resupplied fleet once again forced the pass, and at the lower reaches of the Red River, fought a "great battle" with the surface fleet urgently dispatched by Shenglong Prefecture.

The outcome was brutal: the oar-powered fleet that bravely resisted the invaders could not break through the dense, interlocking cannon fire at all. In the end, before its total annihilation, only a single fire ship managed to thrust within a thousand meters of those two "giant ships."

The battle situation continued in this manner, causing the bombardment scene described earlier to descend upon Shenglong Prefecture once more.