Chapter 662: Suppression

"Enemy attack, enemy attack."

The tranquil morning was shattered by the roar of artillery, and the Qi soldiers were startled from their sleep.

While shouting, they ran out of their barracks and entered the Fort.

Before the second alliance meeting at Lu City, they had remained highly vigilant, staring fixedly at the opposite bank of the river.

But after the alliance meeting, they had relaxed somewhat.

In their view, facing the powerful Anti-Yan Alliance, Yan Wang could only defend passively and could not possibly take the initiative to launch an attack.

Next, they only needed to wait for the various armies to arrive in Qi and launch an attack on Yanzhou.

But they did not expect that this morning, the Yan King Army on the other side of the river would suddenly launch an attack.

"Aim at the warships in the river, hit them hard for me," a Qi Artilleryman squad leader pointed forward and roared loudly.

But just as his words fell, a cannonball tore through the air, accompanied by a shrill whistle, and smashed into him.

Flesh and blood splattered, and the Artilleryman squad leader died miserably on the spot, not even having time to let out a scream.

At the same time, cannonballs fell like raindrops onto the other Forts as well.

Qi soldiers who were moving cannonballs were hit, their arms torn off, and they crouched on the ground crying and screaming.

A soldier who was tamping ammunition had his face grazed by a cannonball, which tore off half his face, leaving it a bloody mess.

Screams of agony came continuously from the Forts.

Some artillerymen had not yet run out of their tents when the entire tent was hit by an Incendiary Shell fired by a warship, igniting a great fire.

The soldiers turned into human torches, letting out miserable howls.

Twelve warships, with forty-two Artillery pieces on each side, added up to nearly five hundred.

Yet the Forts that Qi had built at the ferry crossing numbered no more than one hundred and sixty.

Under the bombardment of the warships' powerful Artillery, the Qi artillerymen were beaten so badly they could not even lift their heads.

There were also a small number of Forts that, despite suffering huge casualties, fired back at the river surface.

But the power of their Artillery was small; two or three cannonballs hitting a warship were, to the warship, no more than a tickle, merely splashing up some wood chips.

Furthermore, because the ammunition for this fleet was all Yellow Gunpowder, the power of the Naval Cannons had doubled, and the flying cannonballs were even more fierce and violent.

A cannonball struck the stone wall of a Fort head-on, and the stone wall collapsed instantly.

Under the bombardment of such cannonballs, the Qi soldiers were naturally miserable.

In every captain's Telescope, there were scenes of flesh and blood flying.

Under the suppression of the warships' artillery fire, the Qi Forts quickly fell into chaos.

At the same time, the warships drew the aggro, causing the few remaining Qi Forts to fire their cannonballs at them.

Taking this opportunity, the troop ships moved forward at full speed.

Originally, they had been anchored in the middle of the river, only about three hundred meters from the opposite bank.

During the artillery battle, they reached the shore in less than a quarter of an hour, and a wooden plank slanted from the deck of the Troop Transport Ship to the ground.

At this moment, soldiers wearing new-style military uniforms, carrying muskets on their backs and Hand Grenades hanging from their waists,

quickly disembarked from the Troop Transport Ship.

Upon reaching the shore, they did not immediately launch an attack on the Fortress not far away.

Instead, in groups of three, they formed a Skirmish Line and crept toward the Forts that were still returning fire.

Reaching a position thirty meters from a Fort, the soldiers unhooked the Hand Grenade from their waists, pulled the fuse, and threw it directly over.

With a "Boom," the Fort erupted in a flash of light, several screams rang out, and the Fort suddenly went quiet.

Under the attack of the five hundred soldiers from the first ship, the remaining Forts were cleared out one by one.

In less than half an hour, all the Forts had gone silent.

At the same time, thirty Troop Transport Ships docked one after another, and a large number of Yanzhou soldiers boarded the south bank of the Jin River.

Under the orders of their commanders, they did not form tight formations, but all formed a Skirmish Line and surrounded the Fortress, which was only one thousand meters from the ferry crossing.

Doing this was naturally to reduce casualties from artillery fire; after all, besides the Forts scattered along the riverbank, this temporary Fortress built by Qi was also covered in Artillery.

At the same time, the Qi soldiers on the south bank were mainly concentrated in the Fortress.

The front of the ferry crossing was mainly Qi artillerymen.

At this moment, it seemed that because the Forts had fallen too quickly, the Qi soldiers in the Fortress seemed to have no intention of coming to support.

Or perhaps, they were frightened silly by the sudden attack.

"Hehe, the General is still the most thoughtful. If this Fortress had been built any closer, crossing the river this time would have been quite troublesome," said Lv Chang.

He had boarded the riverbank with the first Troop Transport Ship.

During the standoff between the two banks, Qi had once wanted to build the Fortress only three hundred meters from the river.

Discovering this, Chang Wei ordered them to bombard the direction of the Fortress every day.

Because their Artillery had a long range and great power, under the frequent bombardment, the Qi craftsmen were unable to build the Fortress at all.

After all, the Forts were low, and they had no good way to deal with them, but the walls of the Fortress were built higher and higher, naturally becoming their best targets.

As long as they built the walls high, their Artillery could blast them down.

Unable to endure the harassment, Qi had no choice but to move the location of the Fortress to about one thousand meters away.

Seeing that the Fortress at this distance would not affect the attack when moving south, they stopped the bombardment.

At this moment, facing the Yanzhou soldiers who were continuously boarding the south bank, the Qi generals on the Fortress could only worry in vain.

Their Artillery only had a range of eight hundred meters and could not bombard the Yanzhou soldiers on the bank at all.

And as soon as the Yanzhou soldiers got ashore, they moved forward in a flanking maneuver along both sides.

Most importantly, they walked in a scattered manner; using Artillery to hit them was simply like throwing sand into a fishing net, unable to catch more than a few people.

Now, they could only watch helplessly as the Yanzhou soldiers landed calmly.

"He's mad, he's mad, Yan Wang must be mad. Why would he head south now?"

On the wall of the Fortress, a Qi general's face was ashen.

Although spring had arrived and it was already the third month, the weather remained cold.

Yet the general's forehead was covered in beads of sweat; he was clearly terrified by the scene before him.

The Yanzhou soldiers were destroying the one hundred and sixty Forts distributed along the riverbank as if crushing dry weeds and smashing rotten wood.

The things they had been busy with for half a year were now as good as useless.

Now, dense crowds of Yanzhou soldiers were approaching the Fortress, looking very much like they intended to surround it.

"Reinforcements! Send for help from the other two Fortresses!" the general shouted immediately, realizing his own Fortress was about to be surrounded.

Among the generals of Qi, he could be considered one of the best.

It was precisely for this reason that he had been sent to guard the Nan'an of the ferry crossing.

If he were facing any other Shizu Army, he believed he could handle them with ease, or even repel them.

After all, there were thirty thousand Qi soldiers stationed within his Fortress, and there were two hundred Artillery pieces on the walls.

But the Yanzhou soldiers' offensive was too illogical, and the massive Warships in the Jin River were a thousand times more terrifying than their Forts.

Looking down from above, it was truly wave after wave of shellfire flying toward the shore.

Furthermore, what kind of tactic was it to spread their soldiers out so thinly?

A foolish general would surely be ecstatic right now, sending soldiers out of the city to shoot down these Yanzhou soldiers in line formation.

But he knew that the Yanzhou generals were all formidable fighters, and they would never make such a foolish mistake.

This loose formation was surely a trap.