Chapter 2104 - The Riot

The bombardment had ended, at least for the moment.

Chang Qingyun lay limply in the shelter, his mind dazed. How much time had passed, he couldn't tell; all he knew was that it was finally quiet.

He looked around—living things still stirred. Sunlight poured through the shelter's entrance, and the screams and wails that had filled the air moments ago had faded. Chang Qingyun pulled himself up with effort. His body ached, and tremendous thirst seized him. It seemed he had been terrified into heavy sweating.

"Advisor Chang, the bombardment has stopped." Yang Erdong's voice came from nearby. He had protected Chang Qingyun during the barrage—having once been a horse groom, he understood the terror of loud noises and had kept up a soothing patter throughout.

"We... we're not dead?" Chang Qingyun asked hoarsely.

"We're alive, Advisor."

Chang Qingyun scrambled to his feet and lurched toward the shelter's exit. Outside was a scene of devastation. The rampart looked as if ravaged by a cataclysm—rubble everywhere, smoke still rising. Bodies lay scattered, some torn apart by shell fragments, others crushed under fallen stonework. Blood pooled in the cracks between flagstones.

The soldiers who had survived huddled against walls or in corners, many still trembling uncontrollably. Some wept silently; others simply stared blankly ahead. Their fighting spirit, if any had existed, was utterly shattered.

Chang Qingyun suddenly understood Xiong Wenchan's decision to burn the city rather than defend it. There was simply no defending against this. The Australians' firepower could annihilate an army without risking a single man in close combat.

"Advisor Chang, what do we do now?" Yang Erdong asked.

Before Chang Qingyun could answer, shouts and screams erupted from deeper within the city. The soldiers atop the wall looked toward the sound—smoke was rising from several points inside Wuzhou. A different kind of chaos had begun.

The bombardment had shattered what remained of military discipline. Throughout the city, soldiers who had been waiting for the assault—or waiting for orders—suddenly realized that no orders were coming and no assault was imminent. Some concluded that officers had already fled; others simply decided that if the walls couldn't be held, there was no point in dying for nothing.

What followed was predictable. Soldiers began deserting their posts, flooding into the streets. With weapons in hand and desperation in their hearts, they turned to plunder. Shops were broken into, warehouses ransacked, homes invaded. Anyone who resisted was cut down. Women were dragged away screaming. The thin veneer of order that Xiong Wenchan's household guards had maintained evaporated within an hour.

The local garrison—soldiers whose families lived in Wuzhou—attempted to resist. Skirmishes broke out at street corners and intersections as they tried to protect their neighborhoods from the rampaging guest troops. But the client soldiers outnumbered them and were better armed.

Only in a few districts did order hold. These were neighborhoods where local gentry and merchants had organized their own defense. The zhuangding—armed militia recruited from able-bodied men—stood behind hastily erected barricades, arrows nocked and matchlocks lit. Severed heads were impaled on spears as warnings to would-be looters.

Luo Yangming—the intelligence operative whose cover was that of a rice merchant—watched the chaos unfold from behind one such barricade. He had spent days building this network of resistance, bribing and cajoling local strongmen, coordinating with sympathetic minor officials. Now, as fires broke out across the city and gunshots echoed through the streets, he wondered if any of it would matter.

The real question was whether the Fubo Army would move before Wuzhou tore itself apart.

Yi Haoran had been trying to reach the Governor-General's yamen when the riots began. Now he found himself trapped, his small escort insufficient to force a path through the chaos.

"We have to get out of the city," Jiang Suo said, his voice flat. The two of them—along with a dozen surviving members of the new army—had taken shelter in an abandoned temple.

"I know." Yi Haoran's face was haggard. He had aged years in the past few hours. "But how? The streets are full of looters. The gates are either sealed or controlled by deserters demanding bribes."

"The west gate—Xijiang Gate—may still be passable. The local garrison was holding it when I passed through earlier."

Yi Haoran nodded slowly. His grand ambitions had come to this: slinking out of a burning city like a thief. Everything he had worked for—the new army, the reformed tactics, the dream of stopping the Australians—all had collapsed in a single day.

"What about the new army soldiers?" he asked.

Jiang Suo's expression didn't change. "Most are dead or scattered. The survivors"—he gestured at the men huddled in the temple courtyard—"are what's left. About thirty, maybe forty."

Thirty men. From five hundred. Yi Haoran closed his eyes.

"Then we move at nightfall. The darkness may give us some cover."

Jiang Suo nodded and went to brief the men. Yi Haoran remained where he was, gazing up at the smoke that now rose from a dozen points across the city. Somewhere out there, he knew, Australian observers were watching. Recording. Preparing their assault.

He wondered if the Australians would appreciate the irony: that Wuzhou's defenders had destroyed themselves more thoroughly than any bombardment ever could.

(End of Chapter)