Chapter 26: First Experience in the Killing Field

  The final battle was under the command of Mianjiang, who had exhausted all avenues of retreat. This pampered and arrogant man finally showed some ferocity in desperation and issued a rallying cry.

  Under the shooting of crossbows and darts, the retreating Burmese soldiers, regardless of casualties, left a land of corpses, splashed countless blood, pushed open the not very strong abatis, and began to fight with the robust Mangshi people behind the abatis.

  "Kill!" The quality of the Burmese general's armor was not bad, and two crossbow arrows were unable to severely injure him. He also had some martial arts skills, swinging a long spear and furiously pulling out a hook knife that was chopping at him, countering by stabbing the spear blade into his opponent's chest.

  "Kill!" The central dancer swung the bamboo strip, like a thousand halberds stabbing together, cutting and slashing the face of a Burmese soldier until it was bloody and blurred, letting out a miserable cry as he fell to the ground.

  The white blade is killed by courage and bravery, the Burmese soldiers are struggling to death, and the Mangshan Ke clan is also unstoppable because victory or defeat affects their own family members and the fate of the whole tribe.

  The Burmese troops had to charge against the sealed-off battle array, and at the same time suffer attacks from crossbow bolts and javelins on both sides of the mountain slope. The more they advanced, the more they were killed, and the fewer men they had left to fight.

  There are no fancy moves, the combat process of cold weapons is bloody and fast; it's different from martial arts competitions, where you come and go, entwining for a long time. Many times it's just swinging blades against each other, and in an instant, the opponent is defeated, or you're defeated by the opponent.

  Zhu Yongxing's palms were sweating, his eyes fixed intently on the battlefield where blood was being spilled and lives lost. This was the face of battle in this era: blood-soaked earth, corpses scattered everywhere, severed limbs and broken arms, soldiers from both sides yelling like madmen as they charged and clashed amidst flying flesh and blood, their faces splattered with filthy blood and their eyes gleaming with a fierce and sinister light as they wildly hacked at each other with their blades.

  No earth-shaking explosions, no smoke-filled skies, no shrapnel flying everywhere, but the bloodiness and cruelty are in no way inferior, and even more test the bravery and courage. Without a strong nerve, one would have already collapsed mentally, with numb hands and feet, and be slaughtered on the spot by guns and knives.

  Pffft, a crossbow bolt struck the Burmese general in the eye, he let out a loud cry of pain, covering his face and stumbling backward. A long spear thrust forward with great force, piercing through his armor and deeply into his abdomen, then suddenly withdrew, bursting forth a brilliant flower of blood. The Burmese general fell to the ground, in a pool of blood...

  In the clear sky, the sun slowly became more intense. Zhu Yongxing endured his discomfort and walked slowly on the battlefield filled with the smell of blood.

  The battle may have ended, but the slaughter had not. The wounded Burmese soldiers were killed mercilessly, while those who lost their will to fight and surrendered were forced to strip off their armor and driven deep into the jungle, where their fate was a foregone conclusion. The Mengshan Ke clan needed to migrate over long distances, they did not need prisoners. Zhu Yongxing did not stop it, this was how things had to be, but he felt his own heart growing colder as well.

  Annihilate their army, not letting a single person escape, isn't this the effect he had planned to achieve? Zhu Yongxing walked under the shade of the tree, where it was cool and refreshing, also suppressing the nausea in his stomach. For the road of struggle that would soon be filled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood, this was just the beginning. He narrowed his eyes, and his fingers stretched out like claws.

  Will you have nightmares? Seeing the cow cry when it's being slaughtered, and yet witnessing the hellish slaughter scene with a cold-blooded reaction. Or maybe I'm just a hypocrite, feeling sorry for the cow but devouring its meat without any psychological burden.

  "Your Highness, go eat something and rest for a while!" Mengzhu had been accompanying Zhu Yongxing all along. At first, seeing Zhu Yongxing's unpleasant expression, she didn't dare to speak much. Now, seeing his demeanor seemingly more natural, she spoke up: "Fighting is like this, if the Burmese soldiers win, they won't show mercy to our tribe either."

  Zhu Yongxing smiled wryly, nodded and said: "War is like this, you actually see through it more clearly than me. I was a bit flustered in my first battle, you won't look down on me, will you?"

  "Your Highness has a kind heart, but I hope that after experiencing many bloody and cruel battles on the battlefield, you can still maintain some compassion." Mengzhu's expression was sincere, hoping that her lover would be a great hero, but also not wanting him to become stone-hearted.

  I hope that in the struggle of the mountain of corpses and the sea of blood, there will still be a few points of original heart! Zhu Yongxing nodded slightly, which was a promise to Mengzhu, and also a promise to himself. His gaze shifted, he walked up a few steps, picked up a fire lance gun and a leather bag of ammunition from an incoming carriage, returned to the shade of the tree, and studied it carefully.

  In this ambush, hundreds of Burmese musketeers hardly fired a single shot. Zhu Yongxing was originally puzzled, but after adjusting his position slightly, he understood the key to it.

  The Burmese troops had not yet adopted the use of greased leather or silk wrapping for their lead bullets, which made them difficult to load and prone to dropping out of the muzzle. Moreover, they did not have pre-packaged cartridges, so in the event of a sudden attack, it was very difficult for them to quickly and calmly go through the complicated loading process before taking aim and firing.

  Although the Burmese soldiers had many defects and shortcomings in using matchlock guns, Zhu Yongxing fiddled with them for a long time and still found something to take from them. This matchlock gun should not be too backward, because it has a sight door, and the plate mechanism uses a combination of springs and gears, rather than the original simple lever.

  The advantages of the spring-loaded pressure point fire gun are: increased trigger force, rapid firing, and a greater distance between the igniting fuse and the bottom fire plate when waiting to be fired. At the same time, the hammer is held in place by the safety catch, preventing accidental discharge due to impact. Meanwhile, this fire mechanism laid the foundation for the later flintlock and percussion cap guns, its basic structure being a prototype of modern firearms' firing mechanisms.

  This should be a European flintlock gun. Zhu Yongxing used his fingers to pull and turn the single-leaf rotating pan cover, weighed it again, and roughly measured its length. He initially judged that it should be a Spanish-style firearm that began to be used on European battlefields in the second half of the 15th century.

  It's been sixty or seventy years, I don't know what the latest style of firearms should look like now? Is it still a flintlock gun, just with some changes in weight and length? Gunpowder should be granulated by now, and there should be fixed ammunition, right? Zhu Yongxing pondered uncertainly.

  "This thing is useless." Zhong said, walking over with a few people and directly concluding about the fire lance, "In battle, it's not even as good as a fire spear."

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