Grandfather, This Is Called Dimensional Reduction Strike!

On the high ground, the atmosphere remained heavy.

Zhu Zhanjun had already stood up, patted the bloodstains off his clothes, and resumed his usual grinning demeanor.

"Grandfather, you're not looking too good. How did you end up in such a mess?"

He leaned close to Zhu Di and whispered, "You brought out an army of 300,000, and now only this many are left?"

"If this gets out, where will your 'God of War' reputation go?"

"You scoundrel! Is that how you talk to your grandfather?"

Zhu Di was so angry he puffed out his beard and glared, but upon seeing Zhu Zhanjun's blood-stained face, the anger instantly vanished, replaced by a heart full of lingering fear and relief.

He looked Zhu Zhanjun up and down, then glanced at the three thousand Great Snow Dragon Riders standing like javelins in the distance, his eyes brimming with confusion.

"You... where did these three thousand soldiers of yours come from?"

Zhu Di finally asked the question everyone wanted to know.

"Household guards."

Zhu Zhanjun spread his hands, his expression one of utter naturalness. "I saved up my allowance for several years to raise them."

"How are they? Decent enough, right?"

"Decent enough?"

Zhu Di nearly choked.

These were decent enough?

An army that could pierce through a camp of thirty thousand elite Mongolian cavalry in a single charge, and he called them decent enough?

Zhang Fu, Zhu Yong, and the others nearby twitched at the corners of their mouths.

They finally understood why His Highness the Crown Prince had used words like "unbelievable" and "indescribable" to describe this army in the secret report he sent.

"Why can your horses ignore the wind and snow and travel hundreds of miles a day?"

Zhu Di pointed at the Wuzhui Horses, which were currently chewing on something, and asked in a deep voice.

Under normal circumstances, ordinary warhorses would be lucky to survive standing in this weather without freezing to death.

"Oh, this."

Zhu Zhanjun took out a small cloth bag from his pocket and poured out a few dark beans. "It's a special feed I had made. I added some cooking wine and herbs. The horses eat it to replenish their energy, improve circulation, and ward off the cold."

Zhu Di took the beans and brought them to his nose. A rich aroma of beans and wine wafted towards him.

Behind him, Zhu Zhanji, the eldest son of Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi and the historical Xuan De Emperor, also leaned in.

He looked at Zhu Zhanjun with a complex expression.

As the Imperial Grandson, Zhu Zhanji had been groomed as the heir apparent since childhood, excelling in both civil and military arts.

He had always believed that he was the most outstanding among the younger generation.

But today, his second brother, whom he had always looked down upon, had given him a huge "surprise" in a way he couldn't comprehend at all.

Secretly maintaining three thousand elite soldiers, possessing wealth comparable to a nation, appearing like divine soldiers, and saving the emperor in his time of crisis.

Any one of these events would have been enough to shake the entire Great Ming court.

And now, all of them had happened to the same person.

"Absurd!"

Zhu Zhanji finally couldn't help but speak. He pointed at the peculiar short crossbows hanging from the waists of the Great Snow Dragon Rider soldiers and frowned. "Cavalry wins through charges and close combat. Equipping them with such short crossbows with a range of less than a hundred paces is like crippling them!"

"It's simply preposterous!"

His words echoed Zhu Di's own confusion.

The crossbows had a strange design, much smaller than ordinary crossbows, and they didn't seem very powerful.

"Brother, you don't understand this."

Zhu Zhanjun chuckled and beckoned to a nearby guard.

A Great Snow Dragon Rider soldier immediately rode over, dismounted, and handed over the Shenbi Crossbow he was carrying.

Zhu Zhanjun took the crossbow, operated it skillfully, and then handed it to Zhu Di. "Grandfather, try it."

Zhu Di took the Shenbi Crossbow. It felt heavy in his hands, entirely made of fine iron.

He mimicked Zhu Zhanjun's actions and gently shook a handle at the rear of the mechanism.

"Click! Click!"

The sound of the mechanism echoed as the bowstring automatically cocked, and a crossbow bolt was automatically loaded from the quiver below the body of the crossbow.

"This..."

Zhu Di's eyes widened instantly.

Automatic cocking?

Automatic loading?

He shook the handle again, and with another crisp mechanical sound, the fired crossbow bolt was ejected, and a new one was loaded.

The entire process was fluid and incredibly fast!

"This... is this a repeating crossbow?"

Zhang Fu exclaimed in disbelief.

"Something like that,"

Zhu Zhanjun said proudly, "I had some modifications made. Shaking the handle once completes the three actions of cocking, loading, and firing."

"A skilled soldier can shoot thirty arrows a minute."

"Isn't that more than ten times faster than the Shenji Camp's muskets?"

"Hiss—"

A chorus of gasps filled the air.

The Shenji Camp's volley fire was already a revolutionary tactic.

But the slow reloading of muskets had always been a pain point for the Great Ming army.

And this thing before them completely solved that problem!

Thirty shots a minute!

Three thousand men would mean ninety thousand arrows!

This wasn't tactics anymore, it was an arrow rain!

A storm of steel!

Zhu Di stroked the cold crossbow body, feeling the intricate mechanism, and a tempest surged within him.

He finally understood why those thirty thousand Mongol cavalry had been defeated so miserably.

Under such dense covering fire, any flesh and blood seemed so fragile and powerless.