Chapter 76: Lingao's Counterattack (Part 3)
"I'm out of ammo!"
"Bullets—where are the damn bullets!"
Before the battle, each man had been issued ninety rounds. The SKS-D rifles used AK-pattern thirty-round magazines, and everyone had been confident that such firepower could shatter even the legendary Manchu Iron Cavalry. They weren't wrong about the weapons—but they had vastly overestimated the men wielding them. When the enemy refused to fall dead at the first shots like they did in movies and video games, when they didn't simply disintegrate as expected but instead ground their teeth and howled and kept charging forward, panic took hold. Some forgot to grab their spare magazines entirely. Others fumbled at their belts, their trembling fingers unable to yank out perfectly functional magazines from their pouches.
"Don't panic—hold steady!" He Ming sprinted along the earthen berm, shouting himself hoarse. He knew these men had less military training than raw recruits and had never seen real combat. A momentary loss of composure was inevitable, so he ran back and forth desperately, trying to shore up what remained of their morale.
During this lull in fire, the militia seized their chance. They pushed sandbag-laden handcarts up to the base of the berm, and bowmen used the carts as cover to loose volleys of arrows into the defenders. Someone took an arrow and fell howling. Hippo and the medical team rushed to help, but someone shoved him hard from behind. Something struck his head, and he spun around to discover that one of the defenders had hurled his rifle at him and was now fleeing in a blind panic.
"Come back, you coward!" Hippo roared. It was fortunate he wore a steel helmet—otherwise that eight-and-a-half-pound rifle would have cracked his skull open.
Mid-shout, white smoke suddenly billowed from beyond the barbed wire. Cannons thundered. Hippo threw himself flat as something clattered against his helmet and stinging fragments peppered his body. When he looked up, a man had tumbled off the berm right in front of him, his face a mask of blood. Hippo grabbed him by the collar and dragged him clear—the man was still moaning. Still savable.
The volley from the two huzhun cannons proved devastating to the already-panicking defenders. Though these weapons had limited range and stopping power, firing simultaneously from less than fifty paces away turned even stone chips and scrap iron into lethal shrapnel. Men fell wounded all along the line. Facing real combat for the first time, not a single transmigrator displayed any sort of protagonist's aura—no one coolly drew a sword and charged into the fray. The roar of those two ugly little iron cannons became the final straw that broke their fragile spirits. Watching companions beside them scream and writhe blood-soaked on the ground, some men finally snapped. They shrieked, scrambled to their feet, and fled.
He Ming's hand twitched toward his pistol. He almost wanted to execute a few of them on the spot. If only we had one platoon of PLA soldiers, he thought bitterly. Even armed with nothing but old Sanba rifles, they could break this rag-clad militia in under a minute. They had underestimated the enemy's fighting spirit and catastrophically overestimated how much psychological resilience modern civilians actually possessed.
"Shoot! Keep shooting!" He Ming grabbed a man who was struggling with his magazine, yanked it free, and slammed it home for him. "Fire!"
Some of the boldest militiamen had already scrambled over the berm. He Ming gathered seven or eight Military Group members and concentrated their fire on the breach. The SKS-D's thirty-round magazine gave them an enormous advantage. Scorching brass cartridges rained down around their feet, littering the ground. The militia massed at the breach fell in waves; the survivors broke and fled back down the slope.
This small counterattack stabilized the line. Fire intensified from all sectors, and He Ming used the moment to rally the defenders alongside other Military Group members, talking down those who had panicked. Li Jun physically kicked and shoved the fleeing men back into position. The medical team worked quickly to drag the wounded into nearby buildings, getting them away from the blood-soaked scene that was destroying morale faster than any enemy weapon.
"Don't panic—keep your heads down—don't stop shooting—they can't get up here..." He Ming walked the length of the berm, repeating the words like a mantra.
Huang Shoutong wanted to try one more push. His militia had surged all the way to the base of the berm, but now they found themselves caught in murderous crossfire from multiple camps. Men kept falling. The casualties were horrendous. Fire seemed to come from every direction at once—the pirates' firearms clearly outranged anything the Ming forces possessed. Occasionally a shot cracked down from the heights above, and men's skulls simply vanished in sprays of red mist.
The cannon crews drew concentrated fire and died within moments. Bowmen preparing to support the climb never got a chance to loose a single arrow before being cut down; the smarter ones dove for cover beneath the sandbag carts. Bullets rained on the militia like a monsoon downpour. They held their position at the base of the berm only briefly before scattering under the relentless fire. They had never accurately gauged the range of an SKS rifle, and many were shot down while still fleeing across what they had assumed was safe ground.
Watching the militia rout, He Ming quickly radioed a ceasefire order. Even so, ragged shooting continued for a while before finally sputtering out.
"Why'd we stop firing?" Someone came running over, clutching an SKS. "I was just getting into it!"
He Ming turned and recognized the man—the same coward who had thrown his rifle and fled, only to be dragged back into line by Li Jun. His nostrils flared with excitement now, his face flushed and glowing. Remembering how this same man had been paralyzed with terror just minutes ago, He Ming could only shake his head.
"We want prisoners, not corpses." He turned away to radio the mobile team, ordering them to intercept the fleeing militia.
The appearance of the farm vehicles on the riverbed terrified what remained of the enemy force. They had prepared bottles filled with oil, gunpowder, and chicken blood for fighting the "demon carts"—but who could remember such things now? They simply ran. But how could men on foot, crossing flat riverbed terrain, hope to outrun four-wheel-drive farm trucks? Soon enough, after the vehicles encircled them and shot down a few who refused to stop, most of the survivors huddled together in a defeated mass. Xiong Buyou kept shouting "Surrender and live!" from one of the trucks, and one by one they dropped to their knees. Only a handful of fast runners or strong swimmers managed to escape.
The rout happened so swiftly that the attackers couldn't even send up a smoke signal for retreat. He Ming left a contingent behind to secure the battlefield and took eight farm vehicles with fifty-odd men to cut off the Bopu enemy's escape route.
The attack on Bopu had begun at noon. Forewarned, the logging teams and workers harvesting laver and oysters in the area had already withdrawn into camp. Fu Bowen had his militia wave flags and fire three-eyed guns repeatedly while drums and gongs raised an enormous commotion—more theater than warfare.
He was directing operations from a hill he believed to be safely out of range when a retainer beside him suddenly developed a hole in his chest and collapsed without a sound. Terrified, Fu Bowen bolted. His militia, seeing their master flee, threw down their weapons and scattered—running even earlier than Huang Shoutong's forces. Naturally, no retreat signal was sent.
But signal or no signal, it made no difference now. Liu Dalin and Huang Shoutong's planned left and right columns had both completely routed. If anyone showed any tactical sense at all, it was Fu Bowen—his timely flight at least saved most of the right column from capture. He Ming's pursuit vehicles caught only stragglers.
After the battle, Bairrentou Beach reeked of blood and gunpowder. From the administrative zone's berm to the trench beyond, bodies lay strewn everywhere. The homebodies who had somehow survived what they now thought of as "intense combat" wandered about dragging their rifles, looking dazed. Did I actually kill people? It seemed impossible, and yet the bodies scattered across the ground proved otherwise. Some vomited. Some wept. Some laughed strange, baffling laughs that had nothing to do with humor.
Psychological intervention for transmigrators needs to go on the agenda, Xiao Zishan thought as he walked toward the administrative zone. He had watched the battle from the vehicle-storage area—lately, the transmigrators had implemented an emergency protocol requiring that several Committee members always remain at each camp, never gathering in one place. No sense getting wiped out in a single stroke.
Out on the battlefield, Military Group members with bayonets fixed to their SKS rifles moved among the fallen, checking each body. Those still moving or showing signs of life were set aside for the medical team. Unless their wounds were minor, they wouldn't receive immediate treatment—only those who could survive long enough would be saved. Besides, many transmigrators had been wounded too, and they took priority.
"Casualties?" Xiao Zishan asked, spotting Shi Niaoren nearby.
"No deaths so far, but plenty of wounded," Shi Niaoren replied. "Most of them from the huzhun cannons—lots of face and limb injuries."
"Oh?"
"Everyone had stab-proof vests and steel helmets—what could those little iron cannons really do?" Shi Niaoren gestured dismissively toward the overturned cannon carts near the berm. Two short, ugly iron tubes lay on the ground. Their crude construction and graceless shapes made it hard to associate them with the word "cannon."
"Initial review looks lucky—no eye injuries. The most serious case is an arrow wound to the arm." Shi Niaoren traced a line across his own forearm. "His arm won't work properly again."
Xiao Zishan was silent for a moment. Better than total disability, he thought—but he couldn't say that aloud.
The full casualty report came quickly:
Transmigrators: twenty-one wounded—including one burn from touching a hot SKS barrel.
By comparison, the attacking militia had left over a hundred bodies across both battlefields. More than thirty wounded had been abandoned—severely injured men, most of whom would die within a day or two. Over a hundred and thirty prisoners had been taken and now sat detained on the riverbed, their spirits utterly crushed.
The captured materiel proved considerable. Besides the abundance of blades, spears, bows, and crossbows, they had seized two huzhun cannons, drums, banners, crude handcarts, and even several carts loaded with gunpowder and scrap-iron shot. The Planning Committee catalogued and stored everything. The weapons could later arm native auxiliary forces, or at worst be melted down for raw material. The cannons and scrap iron were useless as weapons but would serve the future Steel Group well enough. The handcarts would prove useful at the construction site. As for the gunpowder—though the Chemistry Group sneered at its quality, it was stored all the same.
The transmigrators' greatest prize, however, consisted of three captured horses. Hainan didn't produce horses; these had been imported from the southwest. They were small animals, probably unsuitable for cavalry work, but they would serve well enough as draft animals. Another five or six dead horses were handed over to the Agriculture Group for butchering.
(End of Chapter)