Illumine Lingao (English Translation)
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Chapter 2117 - Leaving the City

He summoned Zhu Quanxing, commander of the Third Battalion designated to spearhead the main assault, and posed the critical question:

"How long to capture Wuzhou?"

"That depends upon when dawn arrives," Zhu Quanxing replied pragmatically.

"And after dawn breaks?"

"Including preliminary artillery preparation, one hour to secure complete occupation." Zhu Quanxing consulted his timepiece. "The troops are fully deployed currently. They're maintaining rotation rest schedules now."

"Excellent. Await my order. Depending upon developing circumstances, we may be compelled to assault tonight."

"Night operations present severe coordination difficulties. Mobilizing the entire force carries substantial risk."

"I fear we cannot afford the luxury of deliberate pacing." Zhu Mingxia handed him the intelligence summary compiled from prisoner interrogations. "Xiong Wencan may very well attempt to incinerate everything in a final act of destruction—should he succeed, we'll have no alternative except complete withdrawal."

"Very well. I'll return and prepare contingencies," Zhu Quanxing acknowledged. "But a nocturnal assault carries extraordinary peril. These past several nights have shown merely a crescent moon—nighttime visibility is catastrophically poor. Both observation and fire control will prove exceptionally difficult. Initiating the assault at dawn would be significantly safer."

Organizing large-scale troop movements for night combat operations was indeed extraordinarily hazardous. Even for the Fubo Army—this timeline's foremost "elite force"—every nighttime combat exercise invariably produced unforeseen complications. Becoming lost represented the most frequent occurrence.

Zhu Mingxia weighed competing considerations repeatedly but couldn't settle on a definitive decision. Capturing Wuzhou under darkness carried profound risks: penetrating the city itself would be straightforward, but once troops deployed within the walls, complications would multiply exponentially. The streets were shrouded in pitch darkness without signposts; the troops lacked adequate lighting equipment, while entering with torches would dramatically elevate the probability of accidentally igniting fires. They possessed only maps provided by the Intelligence Bureau for reference. Friend-from-foe identification at night would prove exceptionally difficult, and the city teemed with routed, desperate soldiers...

Should Xiong Wencan seize the opportunity to implement arson, they would possess no time to evacuate.

Precisely as Zhu Mingxia wrestled with this dilemma, a runner arrived bearing urgent intelligence: scouts had discovered that enemy forces in Wuzhou had opened the eastern and western gates.

"What?! Are they attempting a breakout?"


Although the scheme to ensnare the city's notables at a fatal banquet had collapsed, the operation to expel women, children, and elderly commenced nonetheless. Garrison troops began systematic house-to-house sweeps, forcibly driving out the population. According to prior directives from command authority, able-bodied men were to be segregated aside, while women, children, and elderly were driven toward the eastern and western gates.

Initially, they maintained this segregation protocol; but rapidly the soldiers assigned to expulsion duties, intent upon looting opportunities along their routes, abandoned such "trivial details" and simply herded everyone—men, women, and children alike—toward both gates. The men, fearing for the safety of wives, children, and parents, dared not cling to possessions and joined the exodus streaming outward.

Expelling the common populace served merely as pretext for guest troops to plunder systematically; thus civil order disintegrated with frightening rapidity. Some soldiers raped women openly; others committed casual murder for valuables. Many civilians carrying their modest life savings were stopped and subjected to violent searches by rampaging troops. Certain soldiers, finding methodical searching too tedious, simply planted their swords in the street and demanded passing civilians "offer tribute." Those refusing to surrender valuables were cut down where they stood; young women were dragged into alleyways for public rape. The streets reverberated with wailing; anyone hearing it was moved to profound sorrow.

The Governor-General's yamen stood already abandoned. Once the staff advisers learned that Governor Xiong had long since fled the city, they scattered like frightened birds. The servants and clerks left behind in the yamen ransacked whatever meager valuables remained. Through the wide-open gates, rampaging soldiers and urban criminal elements openly circulated, plundering the few residual goods.

Only scattered districts within the city still maintained precarious order. Street barricades had been sealed shut, guarded by grimly

determined militia. They refused passage to anyone—official, civilian, or soldier alike—and anyone who approached faced volleys of arrows. Bloody severed heads were impaled haphazardly atop barricades, warning all strangers who dared approach.

Around several public granaries and government compounds, local constables, the Wuzhou Naval Camp garrison, and remaining loyal troops had established security cordons, driving off rioters and looters with ruthless efficiency.

Most Wuzhou Naval Camp soldiers were native to Wuzhou, many maintaining homes directly within the city. When women, children, and elderly were forcibly expelled, substantial numbers of naval soldiers' own families were swept into the exodus. Ever since hostilities commenced, Chang Qingyun—recognizing the Wuzhou naval forces stood no realistic combat chance—had recommended scuttling all the naval camp's warships, loaded with sand and stones and sunk at the Gui River mouth, retaining only minimal vessels for provisions transport from Guilin Prefecture. Thus the Wuzhou Naval Camp existed as navy in designation only, redeployed instead as improvised infantry.

Within Wuzhou, Xiong Wencan had relied exclusively upon guest troops imported from Guangxi—especially the notoriously ill-disciplined Wolf Soldiers, whom he favored disproportionately. The local garrison he dismissed contemptuously as "useless," compensating them poorly and assigning them constantly to arduous labor. Consequently, tensions between local and guest forces had always simmered at explosive levels; armed confrontations between host and guest armies erupted with increasing frequency, the factions practically at each other's throats. This latest expulsion operation, which directly endangered their own families, instantly ignited the already volatile tensions. Violent clashes erupted throughout the city.

This festering hostility from local garrison forces was systematically exploited by the merchant magnates. These local military units became the operational backbone of the "restoration" the magnates had been planning. Thanks to their allegiance, civil order held in strategic districts, and substantial numbers of civilians escaped expulsion. Locations that Luo Yangming had quietly "reminded" them the Australians would certainly value—prefectural and county administrative compounds, public granaries, and critical government buildings—were also defended zealously and preserved from systematic looting.


Yi Haoran navigated the chaotic streets with a dozen retainers and guards, swords drawn, firearms primed. No one dared create trouble as he passed. Witnessing the surrounding devastation, his heart ached profoundly. Yet at this critical juncture he remained utterly powerless. The entire administrative hierarchy within Wuzhou had collapsed catastrophically; no authority remained to direct any coherent defense. Rumors circulated that the Cangwu County Magistrate had hanged himself in despair upon his dais; the Wuzhou Prefect had vanished entirely. Numerous mansions, temples, and monasteries had been systematically ransacked by rampaging soldiers and criminal mobs. Yi Haoran held merely staff adviser status—apart from Jiang Suo and the dozen men immediately surrounding him, he commanded not a single soldier.

At present, the sole viable option was fleeing the city with maximum speed. Chang Qingyun had already departed ahead; Yi Haoran himself could only flee with all possible haste.

The expelled civilians stretched in a dark, undulating mass from the Xijiang Gate along the main thoroughfare all the way to Wanshou Temple at the city center. Yi Haoran understood from bitter experience that mishandling such massive crowds could easily trigger catastrophic stampedes. Back in Liaodong, he had personally witnessed panicked refugees trampling scores to death or critical injury. But at this moment, he possessed zero capacity to maintain crowd control. He could only instruct his men to walk close against the walls, avoiding being swept away by the human tide.

Along the street, rampaging soldiers with bloodshot eyes watched the column, hunting for any remaining plunder opportunities. Though Yi Haoran wore shabby garments, the retainers and guards surrounding him inevitably drew predatory attention. By threatening rioters with drawn swords and loaded firearms, they managed to avoid being dragged aside and forced to "offer tribute."

The crowd inched forward with agonizing slowness, eventually squeezing through the gate that had been opened only partially. Nearly twenty thousand civilians required approximately ninety minutes to file completely outside. The moment everyone had cleared the threshold, garrison soldiers immediately sealed the gate shut.

Some expelled civilians had relatives in surrounding rural villages and dispersed to seek refuge. But substantial numbers possessed nowhere to go—especially the women and children, many of whom had never departed the city; some had never even ventured outside their homes after dark. Now, in the dead of night, they had been forcibly driven beyond the walls, surrounded by pitch darkness, utterly unable to distinguish north from south. They had also heard terrifying accounts of numerous "Hair-Bandits" lurking outside. Some had been separated from husbands, fathers, or brothers. Terrified and completely disoriented, they could only huddle miserably outside the barbican. When night winds gusted, infants began wailing, and soon lamentation rose to the heavens beneath the walls.

The garrison soldiers manning the walls observed that substantial numbers of people lingered outside the Xij iang Gate—perhaps several thousand individuals, stubbornly refusing to disperse. A company commander began shouting downward:

"You below! Depart the gate environs immediately, or we'll open fire!"

After bellowing these threats multiple times without eliciting response, a dozen archers released a volley at the crowd immediately below. Several civilians were instantly killed or wounded, and amid a cacophony of wailing and screaming, the crowd finally began gradually dispersing.

The observation post atop Bangshan monitored events through night-vision binoculars, witnessing the entire scene. They spotted over ten thousand civilians pouring from the Xijiang Gate. These elderly, frail women, and children were now homeless refugees, strung out for over a kilometer along the Gui River beneath Wuzhou's western walls. The pontoon bridge spanning to the opposite bank had long been destroyed by Fubo Army artillery bombardment; the plank bridges crossing the moat south of the city had also been systematically dismantled before hostilities commenced. With no river crossing available, the refugees could only drift northward.

"Sir, significant movement!" A soldier stationed at Dayun Gate, maintaining standoff positions with Ming forces, noticed unusual activity beyond their lines and immediately ran to report to Zhu Quanxing.

Through his binoculars, Zhu Quanxing initially tensed at the dark mass of people—the sight startled him profoundly. Could the Ming soldiers have lost their collective sanity and decided to launch an attack? But upon closer examination, he realized these were unarmed civilians, predominantly elderly, women, and children. Attempting a more precise count, he roughly estimated at minimum ten thousand individuals.

Though Zhu Quanxing hadn't yet formulated how to process them, the forces deployed near Dayun Gate proved woefully insufficient to manage this many refugees. He also had to consider whether Ming soldiers might be concealed among them, prepared to launch surprise attacks.

"Signal immediately—summon the battalion reserve forward!" Zhu Quanxing ordered crisply. "And transmit report to Forward Headquarters!"

When would Dr. Zhong finally unlock functional radio technology? He desperately needed communications equipment right now.

Compared to Zhu Quanxing at the northern perimeter, momentarily at a loss, Zhu Mingxia—though he hadn't personally witnessed the dark refugee tide—received intelligence of the mass exodus with remarkable speed, thanks to the efficiency of the signal corps.

At the Wuzhou battlefield, the Fubo Army was systematically testing numerous innovative tactics and technical procedures. Battlefield communications represented one of the critical experimental projects.

The Council of Elders certainly possessed communications technology from another timeline, but practical application demonstrated these otherworldly items were too precious and extraordinarily difficult to replicate. Apart from the Navy—which displayed somewhat greater lavishness, equipping capital ships with radio sets—Army communications had long relied predominantly upon physical runners and shouted commands.

(End of Chapter)

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