You Wastrel

At this moment, the foremost ladder had already been pushed to the base of the stockade wall.

The soldiers hiding behind the shield carts rushed forward, supporting the ladders as they climbed onto the top of the wall. The iron hooks at the top of the ladders clicked firmly onto the battlements, and they wouldn't budge.

In the blink of an eye, two ladders were firmly placed on the wall. The heavily Black Armor Army soldiers, holding shields and with their heads down, quickly climbed up the ladders, almost reaching the top of the wall.

"Smash it down!" Hu Tieniu roared.

The dozen or so boulders that were just brought up came in handy.

Four strong men worked together to lift the round stone wrapped in a net, moved it to the top of the ladder's latch, and pushed it down with all their might.

A boulder weighing two to three hundred pounds crashed down from a ten-meter-high wall, striking the middle of the siege ladder. With a loud cracking sound, the entire ladder broke in two. The Black Armor Army soldiers on the ladder didn't even have time to scream before they fell straight down, landing in the crowd below.

The boulder didn't stop after it hit the ground; it rolled down the steep cement road, knocking down a group of soldiers along the way, their screams echoing everywhere.

The other ladder didn't last even half a breath before a second boulder crashed down, breaking it in two as well, and the ladder and its rider fell sideways to the side of the mountain path.

The second wave of siege ladders that had just been hung up was also subjected to the same method; a few rocks fell down, and broken wood and armor shattered all over the ground.

Just then, the machine gun finished firing its entire belt of ammunition, and the gunfire paused. Taking advantage of the reloading break, Hu Tieniu shouted at Zhou Meng at the top of his lungs:

"From now on, you don't need to wait for my orders! You can fight as you see fit, sweeping away wherever there are more people!"

"Alright!" Zhou Meng responded excitedly, his hands moving quickly. With a "click," he loaded a new ammunition belt, turned the muzzle, and the dense gunfire once again echoed through the mountain path.

Without orders to restrain them, Maxim full firepower. Apart from the few armored wagons at the very front that could barely hold out, the rest of the soldiers had nowhere to hide on the mountain road.

Bullets pierced through heavy armor, shattered shields, and blood and flesh flew everywhere on the mountain path, with soldiers at the forefront falling in droves.

The shield formation was broken, exposing the soldiers behind it. The crossbowmen on the city wall then followed up with a barrage of arrows, aiming for the gaps in the armor and the faces of the soldiers. A machine gun, accompanied by more than a hundred crossbowmen, worked together quite well from their high vantage point.

The Government Army troops continued to rush up the mountain path, but the narrow road was like a gate to hell. As many soldiers rushed up, they fell one after another. Soon, the corpses on the ground piled up in a thick layer, and blood flowed down the cement road, staining the entire mountain path red.

At the forward outpost, Wei Zheng's face was ashen. He clenched his fists tightly. In less than half an hour of attack, the Black Armor Army had already lost several hundred men, all of whom were his carefully trained elite troops.

If this drags on, even eight thousand Black Armor Army won't be enough.

"Sound the retreat! Withdraw!" he ordered through gritted teeth.

"Clang--Clang--Clang--"

The sound of the gong signaling the end of the battle echoed through the mountain path.

The Government Army who were charging uphill felt as if they had been granted a pardon and turned around to retreat down the mountain.

Machine guns on the stockade wall swept after the retreating troops, and crossbow bolts followed, felling another group of soldiers who were running at the back.

Several soldiers were carrying the remaining stones, about to push them down the wall, when Hu Tieniu caught sight of them and immediately started yelling:

"Stop! You wasteful good-for-nothing! This stone is precious! Do you know how much effort it took to make one? It took a tremendous amount of work to transport it up here. Save it for next time! Don't throw it around like that!"

The soldiers sheepishly stopped what they were doing and quickly moved the stones back to the wall and stacked them properly.

After the troops returned to camp, the commander's tent was deathly silent. The officers stood with their hands at their sides, each with a somber expression. The only sound in the tent was the soft crackling of the candlelight.

The initial attack failed, resulting in the loss of hundreds of elite troops. Everyone felt a heavy weight on their hearts, and no one dared to speak first.

Wei Zheng sat upright in the main seat, tapping his fingertips on the edge of the table as he glanced at everyone and said in a deep voice:

"Alright, what are you all doing hanging your heads like women? Tell me, is there any other way?"

After a moment of silence, a lower-ranking captain stepped forward and tentatively spoke:

"General, what do you think... would a catapult work? We could smash huge rocks into the stockade wall and create an opening."

As soon as he finished speaking, a deputy general next to him immediately shook his head:

"That's absurd. The catapult has to be pushed within a hundred zhang (approximately 33 meters) to reach the stockade wall. That thing is huge and slow-moving. Before it even gets into range, their rapid-fire weapons will have already smashed it to pieces. If you put it too far away, it won't reach the stockade wall. It's a complete waste of effort."

The captain blushed and awkwardly retreated.

Another adjutant general frowned and spoke:

"General, to be honest, this stronghold isn't unassailable, but we need our crossbowmen to hold the line and suppress the firepower on the city walls so that our attacking brothers can have a chance to scale the walls with ladders."

But those unidentified rapid-fire weapons on the city wall were too ferocious; they had a long range and great power. Our crossbowmen were mowed down as soon as they moved forward, and no amount of reinforcements could save them.

He paused, his tone growing increasingly serious:

"Without the crossbowmen's cover, the brothers who charge up will be sitting ducks. They're standing on a ten-zhang-high wall, shooting at the narrow passage like shooting rabbits. To break through the camp, the first thing we need to do is take care of that thing."

"Easy for you to say."

Someone nearby whispered a reply:

"How do we solve this? We can't even get close enough to get up there. We were thinking of sending scouts to sneak around and infiltrate, but after scouting for the past few days, we've found that the entire mountain, except for this main path, is sheer cliffs all the way up. There's not even a way to get in."

Silence fell again in the tent. Everyone looked at each other, and for a moment, no one could come up with a feasible plan.

The following afternoon, a scout rode swiftly to report that the Third Prince Xiao Mingyuan, along with Prince Jing's Heir Xiao Mingxuan, had arrived at the camp with a thousand guards from the Prince's residence.

Upon hearing this, Wei Zheng immediately led the officers in the tent out of the camp to greet them.

The group welcomed the Xiao Mingyuan brothers into the commander's tent, invited Xiao Mingyuan to sit in the main seat, and Xiao Mingxuan sat to the side. The generals stood with their hands at their sides, waiting for instructions.

Wei Zheng stepped forward, bowed, and reported in detail the situation of yesterday's first attack, the number of casualties, and the power and tricky tactics of the rapid-fire weapons on the city wall.

Upon hearing this, Xiao Mingyuan's face immediately darkened, and he slammed his hand on the table:

"A bunch of useless trash! You couldn't even take down a mere mountain bandit stronghold with 20,000 elite troops, and instead lost hundreds of your own? You're just sitting here waiting, what do you think you'll get out of this?"

Wei Zheng lowered his head and replied:

"Your Highness, please calm down. Based on my many years of military experience, this stronghold is strategically located and difficult to attack head-on. The safest approach is to besiege it for a long time."

There's only one path up and down this mountain. If we block the pass and cut off their supplies, the stronghold will naturally fall without a fight once they run out of food.