Chapter 305: Decisive Battle (I)

The Tang Dynasty vanguard troops were composed of two armies, totaling 60,000 people, carrying two thousand small-caliber artillery and 1,200 armored vehicles. These were the only full-loaded armies of the Tang Dynasty. They connected the artillery cars, armored vehicles and trucks transporting logistics supplies. They rushed up the endless wilderness of the Great Zhou Dynasty. If we talk about firepower alone, this army would be enough to sweep the entire territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

According to the scheduled plan, the vanguard rushed to the Tiger City, which was closest to them, with murderous intent.

According to previous information, Hucheng, as the largest military garrison on the Great Surrounding Front, was stationed with 300,000 elite soldiers. However, I don’t know how many soldiers there could be left after the civil strife in the Great Zhou Dynasty. Wang Wen, the commander of this war, dared not neglect the first battle, so he specially sent two full-loaded troops to the vanguard position, intending to win.

But he did not expect that the vanguard troops would encounter trouble after leaving Mengyin border fifty kilometers.

I don’t know whether it was the Liu Gu era or the Liu Guang era. On the road leading to Tiger City, there were dense traps. An armored vehicle from the vanguard army was the first to be hit and fell into a deep trap. Fortunately, the vehicles behind were braked in time, otherwise the consequences would be serious. With the efforts of the three armored vehicles, everyone worked together to pull the armored vehicle out of the pit, but the five members of the armored vehicle were already bleeding.

The commander in charge of the vanguard unit was Cheng Wu. The former head of the armored troops under Wang Wen did not dare to act rashly after getting the situation ahead. Instead, he ordered a team of infantry to explore the distribution of the traps on the spot. As a result, he found that on this necessary road, there were deep and wide traps everywhere, and vehicles could not pass through it at all.

There are endless mountains on both sides of this road. If you want to detour, you need to walk thousands of kilometers more. Therefore, Cheng Wu must find a way to forcefully break through the past from this place.

Standing in front of the pits with the top covers opened, Cheng Wu's face was full of bitterness.

He did not expect that the Great Zhou Kingdom would use such a simple and effective method to deal with their steel torrent. The only way at present is to use manpower to fill the huge pits ahead one by one, but the road ahead is not very wide, and at most, 1,800 people can be dispatched at a time. When will it take? His 60,000 people consumed every day is also amazing. It is impossible for them to fill the pit here slowly, but what are the solutions under the current circumstances?

While organizing soldiers to seize the time to immediately fill the pit, Cheng Wu reported the situation to Wang Wen.

When Wang Wen received the situation ahead, he was helpless. The only way was to ask Li Ming for help urgently and ask the airship to transport a group of professional engineering personnel to assist in opening the passage.

Li Ming immediately issued an emergency mobilization order, and fifty airships were recruited to transport migrant workers and some engineering vehicles who built railways in Great Soviet to the front line. The blasting personnel exploded the rocks on both sides and filled them into the pit with bulldozers. It took fifteen days to finally open up this critical passage.

During these days, the reconnaissance airships have been hovering around hundreds of miles. The troops of the Great Zhou Kingdom have not taken any abnormal actions, and they have not even intention to block them. This made Li Ming, who was in the imperial city, feel a little uneasy. For the sake of safety, he personally flew to Mengyin border to deal with sudden situations at any time.

After the road was opened, Cheng Wu commanded the armored troops to slowly pass through this narrow passage. According to normal circumstances, this place is a traffic throat road. As long as it blocks the place, it can effectively prevent the Tang troops from advancing. However, I don’t know whether it was because the Great Zhou Kingdom did not receive news of the Tang troops sending troops or they had other conspiracies. There was no trace of the Great Zhou Kingdom troops on such a critical road, and the airship troops had not seen any signs of the troops during their reconnaissance for dozens of days, which made everyone, including Li Ming, confused.

The armored troops carefully drove out of this passage that was more than 20 kilometers along the paved road. In front of them was the endless plain of the Great Zhou Kingdom.

Looking at the airship hovering in the air, Cheng Wu slightly stabilized his uneasy mood and ordered the armored troops to continue advancing. They were preparing to camp in front of a tall wood forest about fifty kilometers ahead. The next day, they would bypass the woods and go straight to Tiger City.

Cheng Wu sat on the third armored vehicle, looking at the dense forest ahead with a heavy helmet. It was autumn at that time. Although the leaves had turned yellow, they had not yet fallen. Looking from the airship, the forest that was dozens of kilometers long was dark. No abnormalities were found in the air reconnaissance. However, Cheng Wu always felt uneasy.

"The convoy stopped advancing and sent a reconnaissance force to Lin to investigate." Although he knew that the Great Zhou Kingdom had no weapons that could threaten its armored troops, he still cautiously stopped the advancing troops.

More than 300 cavalrymen quickly crossed the armored vehicles and ran towards the woods. In a short while, they appeared in front of the woods. The people jumped off the horse, and the three of them covered each other and slowly entered the woods.

The dense forest was very dark, and the visibility was relatively low, but the soldiers who had been trained for a long time were not panicked. They were holding rifles and scanning the front nervously, slowly searching in the forest.

Suddenly, a dense rain of arrows rushed towards the soldiers and hit them with crackling sounds. However, for the strong armor on the soldiers and the steel helmets above their heads, the arrow branches seemed too weak. Except for the soldiers in front of them scratched the back of their hands and faces by the rain of arrows, there were no casualties.

The enemy's attack exposed their position. The soldiers quickly reacted and began to shoot accurately at the enemy hidden in the dense branches and leaves. The enemy who was shot kept falling on the ground like raindrops. Soon, there was no resistance in front of the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty.

With the main site where the enemy was hiding, the soldiers began to turn their attention to the high branches and leaves. In a short while, hundreds of people fell under their guns.

The sky outside gradually darkened. The soldiers turned on their headlights and continued to search in the woods. After Cheng Wu, who was climbing outside the woods, he ordered the large army to station about five kilometers away from the woods.

The 60,000 troops and thousands of vehicles filled the place. After camping, the fire-headed army hurriedly cooked, and the smoke began to rise above the camp.

The soldiers in the woods destroyed five or six ups and downs, and no whereabouts of the enemy's large troops were found. Considering that they would march tomorrow, Cheng Wu called them back. Their camps were defending on the periphery with armored vehicles. Even if there were a small number of enemies, they could not pose any threat to them. After all, their equipment had far exceeded the era of cold weapons, and even if they had white rifles, it was not worth worrying.

The night gradually enveloped the earth, and the camp that lasted dozens of kilometers began to quiet down. The searchlights around the camp illuminated the outside ground under the power of diesel generators, and the sentries on the watchtower were nervously staring at the distance.

After inspecting the camp, Cheng Wu also returned to the tent to prepare for rest. It was already midnight and he had to get up early tomorrow to rush.

But at this moment, the sentry facing the woods suddenly issued an alarm.

A shrill alarm sounded across the night sky, awakening the soldiers who were gradually falling asleep. The long-term training made him hurriedly get up, grab the weapons beside him and enter the combat post. The armored soldiers hurriedly got into the armored vehicle and started the engine.

At the same time, Cheng Wu also got into the armored vehicle in front. He picked up the microphone and was about to ask about the specific situation, but he heard a dense rumbling sound from the woods opposite him. Then, the whistling shells fell from the sky, turning the camp into a sea of ​​fire.

Cheng Wu was shocked. In the evening, the reconnaissance troops had already passed the woods, but why did such fierce artillery fire appear there now? Judging from the density of the shells, the opponent had at least hundreds of artillery guns, so his losses would be huge.

"All artillery strikes the woods indiscriminately and completely destroys the woods." Before I could think about how the enemy appeared, Cheng Wu issued an emergency order to the microphone.

The armored vehicles first started the rumbling sound of cannons. The shells fired by two thousand armored vehicles instantly enveloped the dense forest in front of them in the sea of ​​fire. Then, the artillery that was in a hurry also began to intensive carpet bombardment. In less than two minutes, more than 5,000 shells completely destroyed the woods in front of them.

"Stop shooting, adjust the artillery position, and prevent the enemy from counterattacking." Cheng Wu knew that this time alone had fired more than 50,000 taels of silver. During the military academy, the instructor repeatedly emphasized the effectiveness of artillery strikes. Such panicked and purposeless shootings like tonight would be severely punished.

No shells were shot out from the woods surrounded by raging fire, but there were constant explosions in the flames. It seemed that the enemy shells were detonated.

The airship hovered in the air immediately flew to the rear of the woods, and the bright searchlights scanned the ground, but they found no trace of their enemies.

One night was spent in a nervous alert for everyone. After dawn, the statistics were also delivered to Cheng Wu. Last night, the enemy's shelling lost about 1,000 soldiers, ten artillery units were lost, six transport trucks were lost, and the diesel on three trucks was ignited. Fortunately, the fire was extinguished in time, otherwise the entire camp would be trapped in a sea of ​​fire.

Holding Cheng Wu's telegram, Li Ming slapped the coffee table in front to pieces. He didn't understand where the Great Zhou Kingdom got the artillery. Logically speaking, even the Desert Legion, their military factories and raw material bases were blown up by himself. So where did these artillery come from last night?
Chapter completed!