Chapter 348: The Test

A distant roar was punctuated by a sharp bang nearby, like a leather ball kicked until it burst — the earthen soldier's head in front of him was smashed to pieces by a cannonball, brains splattering all over Li Tianyu's face.

Li Tianyu's throat felt as if it had been suddenly seized; his unfinished words were abruptly choked off, and the hand he had raised to rally spirits froze in midair.

It was a Frankish cannon from the city wall — more precisely, a stray Frankish cannon shot that had traveled beyond its normal range.

That stray shot had nearly taken Li Tianyu with it from five hundred paces away. Still shaken, he cursed as he wiped his face, but instead of cleaning it, he only smeared the blood and brains evenly across his features, making his expression look exceptionally savage. Raising his arm again, he continued shouting his unfinished words to the earthen soldiers.

"From this day forward, Hehuang is turned upside down. The survival or ruin of the thirteen Tusi clans rests entirely on how we strive for merit today! Earthen soldiers of every house — those who fall in battle shall be buried in the Li clan cemetery, with incense offerings unbroken year after year. Their widows and children shall receive ten taels of silver and ten dan of grain; one child shall be admitted to the Li clan school. Officers of every formation, follow me to fill the moat and storm the city!"

The cannons on the city wall opened fire on the ground below, and Huang Shengxiao in the rear no longer held back either, immediately ordering his twelve heavy cannons to bombard the city wall.

Originally, Li Tianyu had requested that Liu Chengzong order the artillery not to fire on the city wall — after all, both attackers and defenders were earthen soldiers, and Li Tianyu did not believe the earthen soldiers on the wall would truly go for the kill against them.

But now it seemed that war must look like war. No matter who you are, once you are swept into the vortex of war and true fury is ignited, there is no room left for warmth or mercy.

Or rather, before these men were released by Ye Guoqi, the defenders in the city might still have been capable of soft-heartedness. But now, after nearly half the city had been purged, those who remained knew exactly what they were doing.

Liu Chengzong immediately waved his command flag. The artillerymen, who had long been barely able to contain their excitement, pushed their cannons forward fifty paces, moved the heavy guns into the prepared positions, and began adjusting their firing angles.

The artillerymen liked siege battles like this. Although the closer distance this time put them within the threat range of the enemy's cannons, their position had protective earthen slopes against cannon fire, and since the two sides used different types of artillery, the odds of being hit were actually not high.

In truth, they were not the most skilled gunners in the Marshal's headquarters. Just two years ago, they had been infantrymen carrying wooden cannons to clear defenders out of fortresses.

The most skilled gunners in the Marshal's headquarters all served under Cao Yao. Huang Shengxiao's artillerymen were merely infantry who had undergone artillery training.

Yet this cannon company, composed of twelve thousand-jin cannons and one hundred forty-four gunners, far surpassed their colleagues in Nangqian in experience with heavy artillery.

At the Battle of Eight Corner City, they had relied on their cannons to neutralize the defenders' fortification advantage to the greatest extent. Now they were employing the same tactic again, bombarding the city wall from an even closer distance and with more practiced skill.

In fact, a single cannon required only four soldiers to operate. Even with two substitutes, a six-man gun crew was sufficient.

Huang Shengxiao had organized the gun crews into twelve-man units in order to train gunners. If the Grand Marshal had not been reforming the Armory Bureau's system and planning more efficient workshops — which delayed cannon casting — he would have had twenty-four heavy cannons by now.

Still, things were not bad as they were. He had enough gunners to operate twenty-four heavy cannons, and it would not be long before he had twenty-four heavy cannons.

With these thoughts, Huang Shengxiao raised his arm and gave the firing order to his artillery: "Ignore the cannons on the wall — knock down every last crenellation!"

A single volley from the heavy cannons blasted four gaps into the crenellations in front of the west gate tower. The twelve heavy cannons were then divided into two squads, firing in succession at the crenellations to the left and right.

Shrieking iron shot hurtled across the sky above the battlefield, collapsing crenellations time and again, killing and wounding entire rows of defenders along the wall through the breaches.

The gunners on the wall seemed to go mad as well, straining every nerve to fire their Frankish cannons in rapid succession, spraying iron shot toward the far side of the moat as if the ammunition cost nothing.

At first they tried to target the enemy artillery position, but at a distance of three hundred fifty paces, any gunner's hit rate was deeply moving — in the worst sense.

In defensive warfare, this was an extremely awkward distance for gunners.

A little farther, and even failing to hit the target would seem forgivable. A little closer, and whether loading grapeshot to compensate for the gunners' inexperience or using solid shot for direct aimed fire, they could have achieved decent results.

But at this exact distance, solid shot could not hit accurately and grapeshot could not reach at all.

Because their cannons were Frankish cannons. A five- or six-hundred-jin Frankish cannon was an excellent rapid-fire artillery piece, capable of sustaining relentless fire in defensive warfare thanks to its rate of fire — but its range was a little short.

Just that little bit of shortness was enough to produce an immense sense of frustration in the earthen soldier gunners on the wall.

Ye Guoqi quickly recognized this problem and ordered his gunners to stop aiming at the enemy artillery position and wasting powder and shot. Instead, he ordered them to fire in rotation at the earthen soldiers arrayed and waiting to fill the moat.

Although the artillery position had advanced close, it was protected by earth and stone works. Their cannonballs could hardly hit the cannons directly, and killing a couple of gunners would not silence the guns.

Bombarding those earthen soldier formations, by contrast, was far more likely to instill fear in the besieging army.

In truth, the hit rate against troop formations was even more movingly bad, but the Frankish cannon's rapid-fire efficiency was high. A blind cat bumping into a dead rat — they were bound to hit a few men eventually. Some shot even flew all the way to the foot of the earthen mound, startling the bodyguards into hastily raising their shields and surrounding Liu Chengzong in a tight circle.

Liu Chengzong, telescope in hand, shouted the men away. He cared nothing for such threats. When you go out to contend for the realm and seize the land, there is no absolute safety once you step into war. Letting people surround and shield him would only deal a blow to the army's morale.

Men would rather fight under a lion-like leader than a quail.

Besides, if his destiny was truly so soft that he could catch a cannonball at eight hundred paces, the odds of that cannonball slipping through a gap in the shields and killing him were probably about the same as if no one were standing in front of him at all.

Huang Shengxiao's strategy was extremely effective. The defenders' cannons were arrayed in a line along the west side of the wall. Bombarding the crenellations conveniently suppressed the cannons one by one from near to far. Three volleys cleared the crenellations in front of the gate tower, then swept outward to both sides.

The defenders also noticed the pattern of the crenellations collapsing from the center outward. These earthen soldiers, who had been routed earlier and had lost their respective leaders, behaved with extreme unprofessionalism in the defense — they actually started pushing their cannons toward the two wings to evade the incoming bombardment.

Seizing this moment, Liu Chengzong waved his command flag. War drums alerted the officers at the front, and Li Tianyu immediately ordered the ranks to form up. The earthen soldier formations pushing the Lele carts advanced rapidly.

Scattered cannonballs hurtled toward them, but the results were negligible. The earthen soldiers worked in teams of three — two men pulling from the front with shields raised, one pushing from behind — covering three hundred paces at extreme speed, desperately dumping earth and stone into the moat.

This was also the most dangerous moment. The Frankish cannons on the north and south of the wall, loaded with grapeshot, sprayed a vast swath of projectiles across the moat. Lead pellets from bird guns and three-eye guns clanged and clattered against the shields. From time to time, a lead ball pierced through a shield and wounded an earthen soldier.

But this lasted only a brief moment. Several wounded earthen soldiers were pulled up by their comrades, some even tossed onto the Lele carts. Lead pellets kicked up at their heels as more earthen soldiers seized the carts and sprinted for their lives back toward their own lines.

By the time Ye Guoqi stopped the mass movement of cannons on the wall, over a thousand earthen soldiers had already completed one round trip. They sat behind the lines taking a brief rest, waiting for the women and children to reload the Lele carts with earth.

Watching these little Mongolian two-wheeled carts from the city wall, Ye Guoqi ground his teeth in hatred. Liu Chengzong, that old bandit from northern Shaanxi — where had he gotten so many little Mongolian carts?

But then he let it go. That western bandit chieftain had twelve or thirteen thousand Mongol soldiers fighting as auxiliaries; getting a few thousand little Mongolian carts did not seem so strange after all.

Seeing that as soon as the cannons on the wall moved into firing position, the enemy's cannonballs were already striking the adjacent crenellations, Ye Guoqi steeled his resolve. Rather than watch his cannons be suppressed and destroyed on the wall, he might as well simply withdraw the artillery to the north and south walls and focus solely on bombarding the enemy's assault troops.

After all, once the scaling ladders went up, the enemy could only ascend at those few points. With cannons in place, the chance of repelling them with rotating fire was still greater.

The moment this order was given, the defenders felt as if they had been granted a great reprieve, and they hurriedly pushed their four-wheeled gun carriages toward the north and south walls to take cover.

A smile spread across Liu Chengzong's face on the earthen mound. If they could retreat one step, they could retreat a second. He immediately waved his command flag, and Li Tianyu once again led the earthen soldiers in a second wave of cart-pushing to fill the moat.

With the artillery threat gone, the earthen soldiers worked with full vigor. Li Tianyu also adjusted the deployment, splitting the single horizontal line of earthen soldiers into two columns to fill the moat along a narrower frontage.

Although the arquebusiers on the wall kept up their fire without pause, weapons in the northwest were replaced slowly. Nowadays, in the northeast and southeast, even commoners in a county town could get their hands on dozens or even hundreds of bird guns and could select a group of skilled marksmen from among the populace. But among the earthen soldiers of the northwest, the most commonly used firearm was still the old fire lance that had been in use for centuries.

At a distance of several dozen paces, even a shield could block that thing.

With the cannons withdrawn from the wall and most of the crenellations destroyed, Liu Chengzong immediately ordered further suppression of the defenders. Eight hundred heavy arquebusiers and sixty musket-rest carts deployed in a line a hundred paces from the moat.

Not only did the musket-rest gunners fire at the city wall, but the heavy arquebusiers also took turns standing on the carts to shoot, then stepping behind the carts to reload, sending volley after volley of shot at the wall until the defenders could not even lift their heads.

At times like this, not being able to lift their heads did not mean they were standing — they were lying prone on the wall, unable to raise their heads. Many three-eye gunners had long since flattened themselves on the wall, sticking their three-eye guns out and firing blind.

Some tried to use shields to protect the gunners while they fired, but against heavy arquebuses and musket rests, shields only mattered when the shot missed. If the shot was on target, a shield made little difference — in fact, having a shield could get you killed faster.

If the shot missed the bone, you might originally have had a chance of suffering a through-and-through wound. But once the lead ball had punched through a shield, it had little force left, just enough to tear a big hole in your body while the lead remained inside — you were basically as good as dead.

Once the defenders were suppressed, Huang Shengxiao had far more room to maneuver. The man directly ordered that the mortar be pushed to the edge of the moat. He personally picked up a slightly deformed explosive shell, fitted it onto the wooden sabot, and handed it to the gunner with the utmost gravity.

This explosive shell had been consecrated by the battalion commander of the Bannuan Sanchuan Camp. Since it had not detonated, it had been retrieved and fitted with a new fuse. Huang Shengxiao guaranteed the gunner: fire it into the gate tower — this time it will definitely explode.

Huang Shengxiao had deliberately refrained from letting the solid-shot heavy cannons collapse the gate tower earlier, because they would need that structure as cover when they scaled the wall.

But the inside of the gate tower had to be blasted with an explosive shell first, to prevent defenders from hiding inside.

Thud—a muffled boom. A large black shot, visible to Liu Chengzong's naked eye, arced through the air on a lazy trajectory. It was not moving fast. Then it plunged heavily from above, smashing straight through the tiled roof of the gate tower.

Liu Chengzong frowned. He knew the odds of an explosive shell being a dud were high.

If the dud rate for explosive shells weren't so high, he would have been blown to pieces by a flying-rocket cannon years ago.

But a single shell dudding multiple times… Liu Chengzong was still mulling it over when—BOOM—a burst of fire blazed inside the gate tower. Iron shards shot through windows, punched through doors, splintered beams, and shattered tiles. A great cloud of smoke and powder billowed out from the tower.

Only then did he nod with satisfaction.

Right on its heels, the native soldiers made their third, fourth, and fifth earth-filling charges toward the moat. Each time their formation grew narrower, and each time they pushed farther forward, gradually filling a path across the moat that was wide on the west and narrow on the east.

By the sixth charge, Li Tianyu's native soldiers were carrying the long ladders the Mongol troops had thrown together the night before. One after another, the ladders were laid across the last few paces of the moat that remained unfilled. The native soldiers swarmed over the ladders and massed beneath the city wall.

When the second thousand-man native-soldier unit arrived pushing carts, they retrieved the long ladders, set them up directly in front of the gate tower, and began clambering upward in droves.

Outside the wall, the musketeers and jingal gunners also intensified their fire, pouring a torrent of lead balls like a downpour onto the native soldiers rising up on either side of the gate tower.

Amid puff after puff of blood mist, a row of native soldiers braced a ramming pole against a long ladder and shoved it outward, while others snatched up shattered crenel bricks and hurled them blindly down. For a moment, timber and stone rained down together, and lead balls flew thick.

Below the wall, native soldiers clung to the ladders for dear life, while still others climbed up from the back side, using their own body weight to drag the ladders down and hold them in place.

Liu Chengzong fixed his eyes on the walltop until one scaling ladder, stubbornly pushed by the defenders, gradually lost its perch on the wall. The native soldiers on it scrambled to jump off, and then the ladder was shoved over and slammed heavily onto the ground.

He let out a slow sigh. This was precisely where long ladders fell short of cloud-ladder carts. When a cloud-ladder cart hooked onto the walltop, iron grapples bit into the tail end, and the cart body, ladder body, and wall formed a stable triangle—very hard to push away.

It was a pity he had no time to invest the city and build siege engines; otherwise, this battle would have been far easier to fight.

Even so, the defenders could only topple a single long ladder. More native soldiers scrambled up the rest, closing to hand-to-hand combat with the defenders near the gate tower.

After that, the native soldiers spread along the western wall. At every moment, artillerymen from the northern and southern walls were bombarding the walltop at will. Only by sprinting to the flanks of the wall and engaging the defenders in melee could the men avoid even heavier casualties from the cannon fire.

But this predicament of passively taking a beating did not last long. Soon, Basang's Marksmanship Camp had set more long ladders onto the walltop. In the next moment, a group of Han heavy-musket gunners shed their armor, lifted their muskets, and climbed the wall. Using the gate tower as cover, they fired their heavy muskets in volleys, sending cloud after cloud of gunsmoke rolling across the walltop as they picked off the artillerymen one by one.

When Basang planted a fluttering "All Under Heaven at Peace" banner at the side of the gate tower, Liu Chengzong finally relaxed. From this point on, the fall of this small city was only a matter of time.

There were still strong cities in the Hehuang Valley, but none that could stop his army any longer. Now only one trial remained before him: preventing smallpox from entering the valley.