Chapter 1111: On the Sea

"Boom, boom, boom..."

The bombardment of the artillery and the bombing from the airships continued.

At night, Guan Tong immediately organized a night raid.

Just like the previous several night battles, the soldiers responsible for the night raid used the darkness to sneak up to the trenches of the Coalition.

To reduce casualties during the shelling, the soldiers responsible for the night raid kept a wide distance between each other, and the skirmish line was very sparse.

Everything was ready, and an illumination flare suddenly flew into the sky, lighting up the trenches of the Western Lands Allied Forces.

Because they had witnessed the illumination flares of Great Song in Malacca before, the Coalition soldiers at this moment were no longer as terrified as they were when they first saw them.

Soldiers who hadn't seen them before were also not greatly affected, despite their surprise, because of the accounts from other soldiers.

But there was one thing they were very clear about.

Once the Great Song army launched an illumination flare, it meant they were preparing for a night raid.

Immediately, the sound of gunfire and explosions from in front of the trenches confirmed their guess.

The officers in the trenches immediately went to Hariman's tent to request whether to use the field artillery.

"Counterattack immediately, use everything you can, including the artillery! Just like last time, don't expose everything," Hariman shouted.

Wesley did not object either.

Because they were both unsure whether the Great Song army was probing or truly attacking.

If it were a real attack and they continued to dawdle, the Great Song army would soon occupy their trenches.

Their rifled muskets were at a great disadvantage when exchanging fire with Great Song's rear-loading rifles in the trenches.

Moreover, they also had firearms capable of continuous fire.

But if the Great Song army was just probing, they would be falling for a trap if they exposed everything.

Therefore, they would make their decision based on the situation on the battlefield.

After receiving the order, the officers immediately returned to the trenches.

Before long, some howitzers launched a bombardment toward the front.

However, only after they fired a single cannonball, their artillerymen suffered from the coverage of Great Song's artillery fire.

After a while,

The Great Song army suddenly withdrew.

Hariman and Wesley gnashed their teeth in hatred.

Clearly, they had suffered a loss again.

The next day was still another day of shelling and aerial bombing.

The night was still a night raid.

Qin Shan was always cautious; considering that the opposing generals had hidden their artillery from the start, they certainly would not expose all their artillery at once.

Thus, he decided to keep probing.

"Make the scale of this attack even larger; we will play a game of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' with them," Qin Shan instructed Guan Tong.

In his view, if the scale of the attack were the same as last night, the other side would definitely not take it seriously.

In that case, they would have no need to use their artillery.

Therefore, he wanted to make every night raid look like the real thing.

Until the other side believed that no matter how large an attack they launched, it was only a feint.

By then, once their artillery had been cleared out, they could use the Western Lands Allied Forces' complacency to launch a real night raid.

So, in the following ten-plus days.

During the day, they conducted normal shelling, coordinated with airship bombing of the Coalition trenches, to eliminate their effective strength.

At night, they lured the Coalition into exposing the locations of their artillery and secret defensive fortifications.

Using the airships' ability to observe the battlefield with a panoramic view, they sent the battlefield intelligence back and then used artillery to destroy them.

And while the Army was fighting in full swing.

The telegraph sent from Yangon also arrived at the Malacca Strait.

At this time, the naval generals and soldiers were living a vacation-like life near the naval base in Singapore.

When they received the telegraph, Zhou Yi, Gong Ying, and other generals were foraging for seafood by the sea.

Besides teaching them how to sail on the sea and operate warships, Yan Wang also taught them how to identify fish and shellfish in the sea.

They knew clearly what could be eaten and what could not.

This knowledge also spread among the fishermen.

Now, the Great Song fishermen were catching more abundant seafood when they went out to sea.

This seafood was then sold to restaurants all over Great Song, allowing the fishermen's lives to gradually become more prosperous.

Of course, there was a reason they were so leisurely.

Now, the forts on both sides of Malacca were all controlled by the Great Song army.

The artillery inside had also been replaced with Great Song's rifled cannons.

Not to mention the fleet of the Western Lands Allied Forces, even their own fleet would not have the ability to pass through the strait targeted by the fort's artillery.

"Hahaha, waiting during the day, waiting at night, finally received the Emperor's order," Zhou Yi laughed uncontrollably after taking the telegraph.

Then he shouted to Gong Ying, who was thirty meters away from him, "That's enough, that's enough, eat your fill tonight, we are going out to fight tomorrow."

"Fighting?" Gong Ying stuffed a basin-sized green crab into a wooden bucket, thinking he had misheard, and asked again.

Seeing Zhou Yi nod, he carried the large wooden bucket and headed toward Zhou Yi.

After reading the telegraph, he laughed just like Zhou Yi.

These leisurely days were certainly comfortable, but they hoped even more to destroy the Westerners' fleet immediately.

The longer they served in the navy, the less they could tolerate the navies of other countries running rampant in their own territory.

Not only that, they were filled with surging ambition for the entire ocean.

Looking at the Ironclad Warship anchored in the harbor, which resembled a steel behemoth, Gong Ying could not help but curl the corners of his mouth upward.

Having waited for so long, they had finally ushered in the moment to end the Westerners' maritime hegemony.

After this battle, the entire ocean would be the backyard of the Great Song Navy.