Wang Guozhong's army pressed forward in steady formation.
For former bandits, this moment was intoxicating.
They had robbed caravans.
Burned villages.
Fought barefoot in the mud with rusted blades.
But siege weapons?
This was another level entirely.
Fifteen massive shield carts rolled forward in a single line, iron-reinforced wood creaking as they crushed stones beneath their wheels. The men pushing them felt their chests swell until they nearly burst.
Someone actually laughed out loud.
Another man began humming a marching tune, off-key and shameless.
"So what if they've got muskets?" one of them shouted, slapping the side of a shield cart. "Come! Shoot us! Let's see if you can chew through this!"
Cheers erupted.
They felt invincible.
And that—
was the problem.
If anyone from Old Zhang Fei's faction had bothered to warn them that Xing Honglang also possessed cannons, this confidence would've evaporated on the spot.
But Old Zhang Fei's remnants reported only to Bu Zhan Ni.
And Bu Zhan Ni, still bitter over Wang Jiayin's unilateral "recruitment" of Xing Honglang back in the day, had chosen silence.
Let Wang Guozhong eat the consequences himself.
The Waiting Game
The shield carts rolled closer.
Closer.
The riflemen hidden in the foxholes began to stir.
Fingers tightened around triggers.
Breaths grew shallow.
Several men glanced instinctively toward Lao Nanfeng.
He didn't even turn his head.
"Hold," he roared. "They're not in smoothbore range yet."
The word yet stretched painfully.
The enemy was right there. You could see their faces now. Hear their laughter.
For ordinary troops, discipline would have snapped.
But Gao Family Village's militia had been drilled into obedience the hard way. Orders weren't suggestions—they were iron law.
So they waited.
Every second felt like it dragged a knife across their nerves.
Catapults
Then the enemy catapults rolled to a stop.
Four of them.
Several hundred paces out.
Bandit soldiers swarmed around them, hauling ox-hide ropes, tightening torsion arms, heaving fist-sized stones into the scoops.
The moment Lao Nanfeng saw that—
He knew.
If those stones flew, people would die.
And Dao Xuan Tianzun hated casualties.
"Artillery," he said flatly, voice like iron.
"Fire."
Thunder
The artillery crews had been waiting for this sentence their entire lives.
Firing ports slammed open.
Black cannon muzzles slid forward.
Matches touched powder.
The world exploded.
BOOM—!
BOOM—!
BOOM—!
Wang Guozhong was grinning at his catapults—
When the sound punched the breath out of his chest.
"Cannons?!"
Before the word even finished leaving his mouth—
CRACK!
The foremost shield cart disintegrated.
Not cracked.
Not split.
It ceased to exist.
A solid iron ball tore straight through it, shredding wood and iron alike, then continued onward, smashing into the soldiers behind like a god's fist.
Men flew.
Blood sprayed.
Another cannon roared.
Then another.
In the space of a breath—
Five shield carts were gone.
The proud wooden wall that had advanced moments ago now looked like a rotten fence kicked apart by a drunk ox.
The soldiers behind it screamed.
Firearms Answer
"Musketeers!" the militia commanders roared in unison.
"Fire!"
Hundreds of gunports snapped open.
Barrels emerged like the fangs of some colossal beast.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
White smoke erupted.
Lead tore into the exposed gaps.
Men dropped in rows. Some didn't even have time to scream.
Those still alive threw themselves behind the remaining shield carts, clawing at the ground like terrified animals.
Wang Guozhong Breaks
Wang Guozhong felt his scalp crawl.
Cannons?
Five of them?
Five.
When he followed Wang Jiayin—the so-called supreme bandit king commanding hundreds of thousands—
they'd had two.
And those were stolen from the Shanxi Grand Commander.
Xing Honglang was just a salt smuggler.
So how?
The answer didn't matter.
One word surfaced, clear and cold:
Run.
Wang Guozhong trusted his instincts.
They had kept him alive through countless disasters.
If a fight felt unwinnable—
You left.
Immediately.
He yanked his reins hard, turning his horse—
The Earth Opens
The ground on both flanks exploded.
Trapdoors burst upward.
Dirt flew.
Dozens of foxholes revealed themselves as soldiers surged out in perfect synchronization, muskets already leveled.
Time slowed.
Wang Guozhong's vision went white.
If thoughts could scream, his did.
Before he could even curse—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Two hundred Chassepot riflemen.
One hundred line infantry riflemen.
Every barrel pointed at him.
Horse and rider vanished beneath a storm of lead.
Wang Guozhong never even hit the ground whole.
Collapse
"The boss is dead!"
"He's a general, idiot!"
"What difference does it make now?! He's dead!"
Panic detonated through the formation.
Some men threw down their weapons immediately, sobbing, kneeling, begging.
Others—true desperadoes—howled and charged toward the foxholes, blades raised, faces twisted with madness.
A head popped out of one of the pits.
It was flat rabbit.
He cupped his hands and shouted cheerfully:
"Free fire!"
Whack-a-Mole
The battlefield became absurd.
Musketeers popped up.
BANG!
Down again.
Another popped up five paces away.
BANG!
Smoke swirled.
Shots overlapped.
Heads rose and fell in chaotic rhythm, like a grotesque game played with real bullets and real death.
Reload times varied.
Fast hands fired twice before slower men finished once.
But it didn't matter.
Anyone who charged died.
Anyone who hesitated died.
Within moments, resistance ceased to exist.
Surrender
The remaining enemy soldiers didn't dare flee.
Three sides were sealed.
The east was a killing corridor.
They dropped flat, pressed their faces into the dirt, weapons flung away.
"We surrender!"
"We were blind!"
"We were misled!"
"We're all rebels anyway!"
"Chief Xing—spare us! For old times' sake!"
Silence
"Cease fire," Xing Honglang ordered.
The guns fell quiet.
Smoke drifted.
Bodies lay scattered.
Outside the diorama, Li Daoxuan stopped his stopwatch.
He looked down.
From the first cannon blast to total surrender—
Less than ten minutes.
He exhaled slowly.
"So," he murmured, half-amused, half-awed,
"this is what modern warfare looks like in the Great Ming."
Preparation for days.
Slaughter for minutes.
He smiled faintly.
The era had arrived.