Actually, several days earlier, before the armies of the "Four Great Bandits" had even arrived at the pasture, Kou Zhong had already received more than a dozen improved wooden, twin-winged, human-powered aircraft from Lu Miaozi.
But to keep them secret, he hadn't announced them. Instead, he'd secretly summoned more than thirty second- and third-rate fighters from the Twin Dragons Army and trained them as pilots in the valley where their hideout was located. He'd also bought large quantities of tung oil, flaming oil, saltpeter, sulfur, and other flammable and explosive materials to use as the so-called "bombs" that their little master Annie had casually mentioned. He'd made sure each plane could carry a full eight ceramic-pot "bombs" into the sky!
This time, the actual air raid on the encampment of the Four Great Bandits' thirty thousand troops had proved just how astonishing the destructive power of those new aircraft and their "bombs" really was. Just a dozen or so planes, carrying fewer than a hundred flaming-oil "bombs" in total, had managed to set the Four Great Bandits' camp ablaze and throw it into utter chaos!
Most importantly, there was nothing their enemies could do to defend against or counterattack a new weapon that could fly a hundred zhang or higher above the ground. Even the "Four Great Bandits," who were first-rate martial artists, could only look on in dismay. They had no way to deal with something flying so high, and could only watch helplessly as the flames gradually devoured their camp and army.
With Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling's help, the Flying Horse Ranch had sent out just five thousand cavalrymen to crush the Four Great Bandits' encampment. Nearly half of their thirty thousand troops had been burned to death, cut down, or trampled by warhorses that night. By