Chapter 130: Beheading the Prince

After the musket formation broke through the Qing camp from the front, the Tianxiong Army led by Lu Xiangsheng also broke through the camp from the flank and began its own performance.

The Tianxiong Army was fully equipped—a fierce force armed with firearms, strong crossbows, and cavalry, combining long-range and close-quarters combat excellently. With years of constant campaigning and rich experience, they had no fear whatsoever when facing the Jianzhou barbarians.

In this joint operation with the Capital Camps, every man of the Tianxiong Army fought with savage determination, pressing forward relentlessly, eager to win themselves glory.

With Ming musket formations pushing from the front and the Tianxiong Army striking from the flank, Abatai's Qing troops were in a truly miserable position, every man's heart filled with panic.

"Beile! The Ming army has sent cavalry to the pass!" a niru janggin shouted, looking very flustered.

Abatai frowned deeply: "How many of our men still haven't left the pass?"

Ashan, the gushan ejen of the Plain Blue Banner beside him, said with a mournful face: "Beile, only our few thousand men of the Plain Blue Banner remain. There's too much loot—there's simply no time to haul it out of the pass now!"

Abatai said: "What about Prince Wuying? Doesn't he still have tens of thousands of men? Didn't he send anyone to guard the pass?"

Ashan said bitterly: "Prince Wuying led his main force out of the pass long ago, leaving only some brothers of the Plain Red Banner to drive along Ming commoners. Now the pass is completely blocked by crowds of civilians—we can't retreat even if we wanted to!"

Abatai's face instantly turned ashen. He gnashed his teeth and cursed: "Ajige! You bastard!"

The generals of the Plain Blue Banner were frantic but helpless—the Ming army had already surrounded them. The only thing they could do was obey the arrangements of their commander Abatai.

After a moment of silence, Abatai's expression shifted continuously as various outcomes flashed through his mind. Finally, he said in a hoarse voice: "Pass the order—fight to the death!"

The hearts of the several Tartar generals sank halfway. They had thought the Raoyu Beile would order a breakout, never expecting him to command them to fight to the death.

Built on strict military discipline, Qing soldiers appeared brave and invincible—but who truly fears not death? Especially dying on enemy soil, only to have their heads chopped off by the enemy for bounty afterward.

Though reluctant at heart, the several Tartar generals still ordered their subordinates to begin counterattacking the Ming army.

The several thousand elites of the Plain Blue Banner steeled themselves, pitting their skulls against the Ming army's muskets in a frenzied counterattack—a battle to prove which was harder, the human skull or the bullet, had begun.

Zhao Jinglin, Battalion Commander of the Yongwei Camp, gripped his heavy rifled musket and squeezed the trigger at a Qing niru janggin in the distance.

"Crack!" After a crisp sound, the niru janggin eighty paces away fell to the ground.

After pulling the trigger, Zhao Jinglin immediately sidestepped behind the stockade wall. Sure enough, several arrows flew over just a few breaths later.

"This gun is really something! Far better than the Rumi musket!" Zhao Jinglin couldn't help but exclaim.

Ever since Zhao Jinglin had killed Yangguri from a hundred paces in the Battle of Xincheng, Zhu Cilang had personally summoned him. Through their conversation, Zhu Cilang discovered that Zhao Jinglin's marksmanship was first-rate—he had long held first place in every musketeer marksmanship examination.

From the matter of Zhao Jinglin killing Yangguri from a hundred paces, Zhu Cilang conceived the idea of forming a sniper unit, dedicated to assassinating enemy generals.

Zhu Cilang had always been one to act on his ideas. He made Zhao Jinglin captain of the sniper unit and, based on past marksmanship examination results, selected the ten best musketeers to serve as snipers.

Zhu Cilang also sent men back to the research institute of the Armory Bureau in the capital to fetch ten rifled muskets for the sniper unit. Though these rifled muskets were still experimental products in Sun Heding's testing phase, their range and accuracy far exceeded the self-igniting Rumi muskets used by the Yongwei Camp's musketeers.

After killing several Qing niru janggin, Zhao Jinglin relocated his sniping position. He looked toward a watchtower not far away—one the Qing army had hastily erected beside the stockade wall.

Zhao Jinglin crouched low and climbed up the watchtower. Once at the top, he lay prone and pulled out a telescope to survey the battlefield around him.

By now the Ming army had fully flooded into the Qing camp, locked in close-quarters slaughter with the Qing troops. From his elevated position, Zhao Jinglin could spot the Qing generals' positions at a glance.

Among the Qing forces, the various gushan, jalan, and niru officers—even the lingcui, white-armored soldiers, and cavalry—had clear differences in their helmets and back banners, making them easy to distinguish. This provided great convenience for the Yongwei Camp's snipers.

Zhao Jinglin locked onto a Qing jalan janggin, then deftly took a leather-wrapped fixed cartridge from his satchel, wrapped the bullet in a small piece of oil-soaked cloth, and used a wooden mallet to tap it down the barrel, packing it tight.

The whole process was troublesome—it took a full minute to load the bullet. After finishing, Zhao Jinglin rested the musket on the watchtower's wooden frame, aimed the muzzle at the jalan janggin he had selected earlier, and gently squeezed the trigger.

"Crack!"

The bullet flew over in an instant. A spray of blood burst from the jalan janggin's left chest. Though he wore three layers of armor and stood a hundred paces away, the shot pierced clean through, and he toppled straight down, never knowing what had happened even in death.

Zhao Jinglin silently cheered, quickly ducking down to avoid the Qing archers below, then unhurriedly began reloading. His technique was practically comparable to a prone-camping, bush-hiding player in some video game of later generations.

Zhao Jinglin occasionally poked his head out to check the situation below. He noticed that the other snipers had barely fired one shot each before drawing heavy attention from the Qing archers. He couldn't help but shake his head—sniping really required finding a good position!

After finishing reloading, Zhao Jinglin surveyed the battlefield below once more. He spotted the Tartar command banner roughly a hundred and fifty paces away.

Zhao Jinglin took out his telescope from his pack and looked carefully. He saw an elderly Tartar general beneath the banner, dressed very finely, surrounded by a cluster of Tartar officers and bodyguards.

"Could that one in the blue armor be some damned Beile of the Tartars, Abatai?" Zhao Jinglin guessed.

"Whether he is or not, kill him first and ask later!" Zhao Jinglin muttered to himself, then began his decapitation operation.

He calmed his mind and breath, lightly closed his left eye, and peered through the rear sight with his right eye, aligning the front sight on that Tartar general in blue armor.

A hundred and fifty paces was a long distance—his personal record was only a hundred and thirty, and he'd never tried farther. But as a sharpshooter personally selected by the Crown Prince, Zhao Jinglin felt a strange confidence in his heart.

With a "crack," Zhao Jinglin squeezed the trigger—but he saw the Tartar general in blue armor show no reaction, still standing there.

There was too much gunfire around, drowning out the sound of Zhao Jinglin's shot. The bullet had flown who knows where, so the Tartars had no idea someone was preparing to kill their big boss.

Zhao Jinglin let out a light breath, adjusted his position, aimed carefully for a while longer, then decisively squeezed the trigger again.

"Crack!" After the crisp sound, the general in blue armor staggered, stumbled back several steps, and finally toppled straight down.

"Got him!" Zhao Jinglin waved his fist excitedly, then blew on the muzzle still wisping with thin blue smoke.