Chapter 265

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Protagonist:

Chen Yi

The heavy machine guns inside the fortified bunkers, and those on the east and west walls, were all frantically spitting tongues of fire. Sang Chengqiang, Song Zhuang, and the other students scrambled out of bed, grabbed the heavy machine guns from the storage room, and ran for the riverbank. Yu Weichao organized a large number of natives to ferry ammunition. Money-devouring monsters with a rate of fire of four to five hundred rounds per minute; at the current pace of firing, they would burn through over ten thousand rounds in two minutes.

Whether native soldiers or Martial Arts Hall students, none had experience with modern firearms combat. They squeezed the heavy machine gun triggers and sprayed entire belts, not stopping until the ammo chain was empty. At the start, very few understood long bursts and short bursts; bullet consumption was extremely rapid.

The people inside the water fortress were still worrying whether the copper bullets in the heavy machine guns could penetrate all types of mounts and their knights — they hadn't even seen the attacking soldiers yet — everyone hoped so. If the heavy machine guns couldn't do their job, then who would resist the attack of tens of thousands of soldiers?

Inside the fortified bunker.

Li Changning stared at the fire dragon, letting the red beam sweep from the left side of the phalanx to the right, then from the right back to the left. He paused slightly, waved his hand, and naturally the assistant machine gunner beside him swapped out the hot barrel for a fresh one. In just a quarter of an hour, their proficiency had already improved considerably — more effective than three days on the training ground.

"You shoot." Li Changning sat back in the rear. He suddenly wanted to light a cigarette, but the sound of heavy machine guns rang in his ears, and he couldn't help laughing bitterly — where would there be cigarettes in this place?

On the riverbank two thousand meters away, blood flowed like a river.

Ever since the first tongue of fire swept across, the heavy infantry phalanx had not advanced a single step. Kaman pressed his face dead against the ground, his whole body overflowing with Pocket Qi, not daring to relax for a single instant.

It was simply too tragic!

When the first bullet flew over, Kaman still wore a dismissive expression. In the history of the heavy infantry phalanx, ranged weapons capable of piercing multiple layers of thick leather armor could be counted on one hand. He was a Pocket Qi Level 6 expert; just from the scope of the muzzle flash, he could estimate the volume of the ranged weapon.

A projectile the size of a fingernail? Might as well call it a slingshot. Although the quantity was greater, and the distance was far enough...

When the distance issue occurred to him, Kaman lifted his head for the first time, wanting to shout something, but no sound came out. He just watched helplessly as a bullet punched out through the chest of a front-rank heavy infantryman.

That was a layer of shield plus a layer of armor!

Heavy machine guns followed in rapid succession, making "pu pu" penetration sounds, knocking the front-rank heavy infantry into disarray. Some bullets buried into shields, some ricocheted off the ground, some not only pierced shields but punched through soldiers' chests, and still others struck the land front and back, the water, the deck planks...

If Kaman knew anything about firearms, he would be laughing through tears right now — the grouping was terrible, completely amateur level. But even if the men were amateurs, four hundred rounds per minute was not amateur.

. 50 caliber bullets — at two thousand meters their power was still far greater than an AK-47. Hitting an unprotected human body, they could blow it in two. Even tracer rounds with reduced kinetic energy could punch through multiple layers of armor on a direct hit; armor-piercing incendiary rounds were even more unstoppable, often boring through one or two bodies before stopping.

The heavy machine guns sweeping from the distant walls posed the greatest threat and also the least. Greatest, because they attacked the phalanx's flank, where soldiers had no shields and their chest armor's main protection wasn't oriented. Least, because the farthest heavy machine guns there were a full four kilometers away; without the height advantage they couldn't even reach the riverbank, and their kinetic energy fell far short of the frontal damage. Kaman was in the rear; he took two stray bullets, both blocked by his Pocket Qi — by their power they counted as spent rounds.

However, even spent rounds, while lacking penetration, still possessed kinetic energy — unable to serve as blades, each bullet was at least a blunt hammer blow. They might not kill by piercing, but they could crush a man to death.

To the front, left, and right of the dense phalanx, rows of soldiers died, like rice stalks cut down.

Even on the war-torn West Continent, it was rare to see an entire formation wiped out so completely.

When the concentrated fire of the three bunkers converged on the phalanx, no one doubted the West River Water Fortification's defensive power any longer. Kaman finally understood — not building walls on the riverbank wasn't stinginess, but for a broad field of fire. Only the price of this understanding was too great, so great he couldn't bear it.

Every sound of a bullet entering flesh cut Kaman's heart like a knife. These were brothers and nephews who grew up together in a clan in one place, comrades who had rolled through wind and rain, arrow storms and knife mountains for years, good partners who ate meat together, raped together, sacked cities together, made money together... They were the Standard Bearer's only support; without the infantry battalion, where would his string of fine titles come from?

"Bang!" A bullet from who knows where struck the metal piece on his pointed helmet and ricocheted. But Kaman felt not the slightest relaxation.

He didn't even know what he was facing.

The unknown inspires more fear than blood.

Three or four fire dragons from the bunkers abruptly halted — the machine gunners were reloading. Due to poor training, their movements were clumsy and slow, one by one.

"Could it be they're out of ammo?" Kaman swallowed hard, hesitating between advancing and retreating. Advance — if they could seize the water fortress, the benefits would be enormous. He had also figured it out: these glowing, some bright some dim, hidden weapons were launched by equipment. Retreat — seemed still possible, yet he didn't know how many of those forcibly landed ships were still usable; some of them had already been set on fire...

The deliberation lasted only three seconds.

"All forces, prepare!" Kaman finally roared. He wanted revenge, he wanted to advance, he wanted to loot and massacre the water fortress. Otherwise, just the hundreds and thousands dead before his eyes would cost him his life at the Temple's hands.

Crisp "ding ding ding" copper sounds, like death-summoning talismans, rang across the riverbank once more.

Countless soldiers' faces changed instantly.

Even the slowest loader wouldn't need a full minute; they wouldn't delay the heavy infantry's harvest ceremony.

Red fire dragons once again swept over the phalanx. And in greater numbers. Before coming to the West Continent, Li Changning and the others had each received some basic training — driving engineering machinery, blasting and using explosives, operating diesel generators and small hydropower, simple mechanical maintenance and upkeep — but every single one of them had learned heavy machine gun usage, the top priority. However, time was tight and the subjects many; in the end they all only half-mastered it. The three-and-a-half-level gunners they trained were even worse — keeping the beaten zone within five meters counted as good; three minutes to change a barrel, thirty seconds to change an ammo belt, such embarrassing things were commonplace. As for displacing positions, avoiding exposing the machine gun emplacement, and other advanced requirements — even Li Changning, Sang Chengqiang and the rest only half-understood, so how could they demand it of others?

But not moving the machine gun positions, all guns firing, still dealt maximum casualties to the infantry phalanx. Counting barrel and belt changes, a three-thousand-man phalanx couldn't withstand ten-odd machine guns sweeping for ten minutes.

However, the Third Infantry Battalion's soldiers were not wiped out to the last man.

The tight formation made them suffer maximum damage, but also saved the remaining several hundred to over a thousand. Those inner veterans braced their shoulders against the recruits in front, preventing them from retreating, until they turned into corpses. The front corpses were shot through; the men behind became corpses, became shields. Three to five rows of dead couldn't stop. 50 caliber penetration; seven to eight rows, eight to nine rows could.

Bracing shoulders against the man ahead is a crucial order in field battle, the primary manifestation of phalanx discipline and collective combat effectiveness. Only this time, there were no long spears for the recruits to fend off; the recruits ahead had long since turned into clusters of pink or black human shields, rotten as mud, blocking the phalanx's foremost segment.

On a riverbank without even jagged rocks, besides using corpses as shields, there was no other way.

Kaman clamped his hands tightly over his ears, face ashen.

The first and second ranks' corpses were quickly shot to shreds, scattered on the ground, left to the ravaging of flying bullets. The third rank's corpses had chests riddled with holes, the flesh inside unrecognizable; they were clearly about to be beaten into meat paste as well.

"Puchi!" Another armor-piercing round passed through the chest of a front corpse and struck a veteran.

Kaman could endure no longer. Expending every ounce of his strength, heedless of his own safety, he charged toward the rear. He crashed headlong into the nearest large ship.

The ship's interior was likewise a mess of blood water.

In terms of slaughter efficiency, even cannon shells can't compare to heavy machine guns, unless siege-breaking capability is needed.

"Where is Liski?" Kaman barely found a group of surviving sailors. Unlike the deck crew, these oarsmen were mostly slaves, worked to the point of breakdown, in conditions deteriorated beyond measure.

"Dead." A sailor scared witless answered thus.

The fleet Standard Bearer dead? Kaman froze for a moment, but still ordered: "Everyone assemble, get out for me."

He searched ship by ship, trying to find enough large vessels to ferry the surviving infantry back. Now, the only one who could break out of the phalanx was him.

And on the shore, the machine gunners also showed no interest in the ships. Most didn't even believe those tiny grains of bullets could have any effect on ships; most people don't really understand the concepts of explosion or kinetic energy. The machine gunners just fired bullets into the phalanx, over and over, again and again.

One layer of soldiers' flesh and blood vanished, then another vanished. Under the fire dragons' onslaught, the defense made of corpses seemed like ice blocks meeting water, slowly melting, dissolving into the water, merging into the soil.

The fifth rank's corpse obstacle was shot to fragments.

The eleventh, twelfth ranks' veterans began dying in batches.

Then the thirteenth, fourteenth ranks' soldiers.

Kaman finally found six large ships still usable. He wanted to approach the shore to gather the routed soldiers, yet he had no idea his soldiers were already dead to the last man.

The sailors firmly refused the order to approach the bank, even though they faced a "Temple Warrior" while they were merely slaves.

When Kaman issued his furious threat, the sailors began fleeing from that large ship. And the other five large ships also steered crookedly toward the river center.

Kaman stood on the ship that was no longer moving, a layer of mist veiling his vision.

……(Unfinished, if you want to know what happens next, please log in to www. qidian. com, more chapters, support author, support genuine reading!)