Chapter 67: The Chariot’s Tragedy

Dong~ dong dong~ dong dong dong~

The anxious war drums thundered all at once, while a great banner waved ceaselessly in the air.

Heavy blasts from the horns, their deep notes piercing through the tumult of the drums.

"Hey!"

"Kill! Advance! Ram them to death with the siege engines!"

The order was as immutable as a mountain. There was nothing more to be done. Qing Qin could only rise and roar his command.

The war drums stirred blood, the horns mourned, and the command was merciless. The panicked chariot soldiers began to grow calm.

"Drive~ drive~"

"Kill~ charge~ charge~" The chariot drivers lashed the horses brutally, shouting madly as they urged them on.

"Kill! Kill!" The cries of slaughter surged like waves.

Neighing~

Rumbling~ Over a thousand war chariots started up once more, even the hundreds behind that had not yet joined battle began to charge.

The Yan army fought bravely, and even the northern troops applauded their courage.

Bang bang~ bang bang~

Boom~ boom~

The sounds of machine guns and artillery roared without pause, as if encouraging the chariots forward.

The steam tanks lined up in a row, advancing slowly as their machine guns and cannons fired in full force. With the chariots packed so tightly, precision was unnecessary.

Five Black Tigers advanced step by step, pounding the chariot formations before them.

Wei Qianqian's mech was towering, but seeing the dense ranks of chariots charging, she hesitated and stopped, anxious.

"Raise the heavy shields, prepare all crossbows."

Xuan Xian no longer worried about his distracted young wife. Even if the giant mech fell, the massive iron spears that struck the chariots could not pierce the thick reinforced glass of the pilot's cabin.

But he was now the army's chief commander and could not leave the formation to protect her.

Behind the war chariots, Yan's long-spear soldiers began to move, their spears—three meters and six—packed so tightly they were terrifying.

"Kill! Kill!" The relentless cries of battle pleased Lord Yan Chun all the more behind the lines.

This was the iron army of Yan, the power of the royal house, and soon, the future would be his to command.

Invisible machine gun bullets whistled through the air, and suddenly, the racing warhorses sprouted bloody holes.

Neighing~ neighing~

One after another, horses screamed in agony, and as the chariots halted, soldiers were thrown into the air, forcing those behind to slow and swerve.

Boom~ That terrifying sound again.

The chariot soldiers saw a flash, then the head of a warhorse exploded, bone fragments even slicing their faces.

The disfigured chariot soldier was lucky; behind him, a spearman had already been blown to pieces.

Such was the power of armor-piercing shells, but the carbon-oil shells were even more dreadful. Lin Shu had discovered some low-grade petroleum, but extraction, refining, and storage were troublesome, and easily detonated by arcane energy; thus, coal was far more convenient.

Boom~ The small fireball explosions were not large, but they enveloped the chariots perfectly.

The fortunate horses and drivers did not die instantly, but being engulfed in flames was worse than death.

"Ah~ no~"

"No~" In agony, the chariot driver turned and leaped, intentionally impaling himself on the steel spear of the chariot behind.

Blood sprayed, and the driver, as he wished, was skewered on the spear, a twisted smile appearing on his contorted face.

"Ah! Damn it! Fire! Throw the spears!"

The distance was still great, but the commander at the front could not restrain his furious order.

At once, the remaining chariot soldiers retaliated.

Crossbow bolts and short spears shot forth, but all were deflected by the plate armor of the steam tanks. To the Yan soldiers’ disappointment, they didn’t even hear a sound.

"Whew~ drive~"

Collision was imminent. The chariot soldiers pulled the reins and shouted! This was not a headlong charge, but an attempt to swerve around the tanks.

The chariots, massive and unwieldy, were avoided by the horses, who deftly dodged ten tanks.

The dense formation of chariots opened ten lanes, while those unable to dodge were crushed, both man and vehicle forced back into the earth.

Though the chariot army evaded the steam monsters, six hundred vehicles were destroyed, and two hundred more stopped due to traffic mishaps.

Having escaped the steam beasts, nearly a thousand chariots now faced five Black Tigers.

Those previously knocked down now joined the battle. Earlier, several drivers had nearly been steamed alive; if King Lin had driven a Black Tiger with his ordinary constitution, he would have been roasted!

"Heh heh!" It was over. Qing Qin knew this action was hopeless. Even if they destroyed the Liaoxi camp, ten thousand Yan soldiers would be crippled, unable to resist the coming Liaodong army.

"Drive~ drive~"

"Ram them!"

Steam tracked vehicles were clearly immovable, but the Black Tigers' limbs were slender; dozens of spear-chariots charged at them with furious roars.

Neighing~

Pressed by the long spears, the horses could only panic and resign themselves.

"Hmph! Come then." The young mech commander smiled secretly. The Black Tigers would not fight head-on; a collision would surely topple them.

A jet of steam erupted, and the running Black Tiger leapt into the air.

The Mohists had been defeated, but the Black Knight's Vermilion Bird still hovered above, observing.

"This Black Tiger is even stronger than our White Tiger!" Master Ban had to admit.

The elder's face was bitter: "The northern mechanisms focus on long-range arbalests. The Mohists could modify ours too!"

A thought struck, and the Black Knight atop the Vermilion Bird understood. "From now on, not only should the White Tiger be armed with arbalests and firebombs, the Vermilion Bird must be as well!"

Qing Qin was fortunate. He dodged the Black Tiger's trampling and the sweep of its tail blade.

After losing two hundred, six or seven hundred battered chariots arrived before the giant mech.

"Ah! Forget it!"

The giant sheathed its sword and crouched down, the entire mech resting on the earth.

Wei Qian used her shield to block the front; she truly could not bring herself to strike.

If the three-meter sword swept across, chariots within five or six meters would be severed in sections.

"Heh! Qianqian is soft-hearted after all." Xuan Xian smiled quietly, reassured.

Even crouching with its shield, the giant mech was five meters tall—a threat none dared provoke. The chariot troops swerved away, not even the crossbowmen dared challenge it.

"Good! Wonderful!" Qing Qin was on the verge of tears—at last, they had reached the infantry shield wall.

At this moment, the two rows of heavy shields were tilted back, their height reduced from one meter six to one meter three.

Rows of strong arbalests pressed close behind the shield bearers, six lines of crossbowmen with arrows set and angled skyward.

Rumbling~ The charge of hundreds of chariots remained formidable.

"Drive~ drive~"

The drivers' voices were hoarse as they shouted once more; this time, all would be finished, even if they broke through the shield wall.

The arbalests' farthest range was two hundred meters, but the veterans on Yan's chariots wore armor, and the warhorses were resilient.

At two hundred meters, the crossbows did not fire.

At one hundred fifty meters, Xuan Xian, controlling the mech before the shield wall, raised his longsword.

"Fire!"

"Volley!"

With a sweep of the heavy blade, the first line of crossbowmen let loose.

Buzz~ The dense humming of bowstrings, thousands of bolts whistled forth.

The chariot drivers ducked, the shield bearers protected them.

After the whistling, blood bloomed from horses’ necks and heads.

Neighing~ Some too weak to cry out, the horses fell with a final leap, and the chariot drivers were thrown, scraping along the ground.

"Yan is finished!"

Qing Qin quickly ordered the drivers to slow down—he had forgotten again, the northern army possessed a terrifying arrow formation.

No—Even the brave Yan veterans were afraid; after a single volley, two hundred chariots fell.

"Drive~ drive~" The front was finished, the middle chariots scattered to the sides.

Some clever drivers turned directly east and west, even though east was the sea and west barren mountains.

Whoosh whoosh~ whoosh whoosh~

The rain of arrows would not cease; in a few breaths, the six lines of crossbowmen completed their task.

A sharp pain in the driver’s back—without looking, he knew he was done.

"Eight-head, if you survive, tell Second Son: stop fighting! Flee the army!"

His own son served in the Yan army.

After twenty thousand crossbow bolts had flown, fewer than a hundred chariots remained able to move, and none returned to the main formation—they all fled toward the empty wastes east and west.

"In the end, surrender is inevitable!" Staring at the frozen sea, Qing Qin felt both bitter and grateful—he had survived, but how could his family in Ji City escape?

Smoke and dust covered the battlefield, and the charging tens of thousands of spearmen still did not know the chariot army was destroyed.

Of course, they now faced the Black Tigers, with no time to consider more.

"Useless Mohists!" Seeing a dozen chariots and Black Tigers charging, the old Yan general could only curse the Black Knight and his ancestors for eighteen generations!