Chapter 148: Dragon Power Camp's Dimensionality Attack
On a hillside a mile away from the Jiedushi camp, Shen Yuan was observing the battle situation ahead with a monocular telescope.
At the foot of the hill, two thousand new army guards were on full alert. This was the only way from the Jiedushi camp to Shenjing City. By controlling this road, they could prevent the rebels from reaching the Shenjing city gate.
Shen Yuan was not in a hurry to send the new army into battle. He had to wait for the right opportunity. The rebels were narrowing the encirclement of Wang Ziteng and others, and the military generals who tried to break through had suffered casualties.
"Sir, look!" A captain pointed behind him with a nervous expression.
Shen Yuan turned his head to look, and saw dust flying two miles behind the new army guards. Then there were bursts of roars and neighs of horses, which was quite powerful.
Looking through the telescope, he saw the leading cavalryman holding a flag with the word "Wang" on it. From the armor they wore, it could be seen that they were none other than Wang Xian's Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp.
"Reinforcements have arrived."
Shen Yuan went down the hillside and rode on his war horse. Soon he saw Wang Xian leading the troops, with Jiang Fan following beside him.
"Captain Wang."
"Commander Shen."
The two men met, and Wang Xian didn't say much. He asked anxiously, "What's the current situation at the Central Army Camp?"
At this moment, half an hour had passed since he escaped in the hot air balloon.
Wang Ziteng has only 5,000 men, while the rebels have more than 20,000 people. With a ratio of one to four, the current situation must be precarious.
Shen Yuan's face was calm, and he said, "General Wang Jie has less than 2,000 men left."
Just as Wang Xian expected, most of Wang Ziteng's 5,000 personal troops were killed and the situation became extremely critical.
"Commander Shen and I will lead the army to rescue immediately..."
"Don't worry, Commander Wang." Shen Yuan raised his hand to interrupt, "How many people did the Commander bring?"
"Thirty-five thousand."
"That's enough." Shen Yuan said solemnly, "We can wipe out all these rebels and not let any of them escape."
Wang Xian was stunned when he heard this, his expression suddenly changed, and he said in surprise: "The number of rebels is no less than 20,000. It is not difficult to defeat them, but how can we prevent even one from escaping?"
You know, more than 20,000 rebels besieged Wang Ziteng's 5,000 people, and it took a force ratio of four to one to barely encircle them.
Even with the addition of Shen Yuan's new army guards, the total strength of Wang Xian's troops did not exceed 40,000, which was less than two to one compared with the rebels.
There is no problem in defeating them, but it is very difficult to encircle and kill them. When the enemy sees that the situation is not right, with such a large encirclement, they will concentrate their forces to break out in one direction, which will be impossible to stop them. In the end, the siege will turn into a pursuit war.
"Commander Wang will lead his troops to deploy on the periphery first to encircle the rebels. The first wave of attack will be completed by the new army guards." Shen Yuan said, "When the enemy army is in chaos, the soldiers of the Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp will encircle and kill them."
Wang Xian was quite surprised when he heard this. He glanced at the new army guards behind Shen Yuan and asked in confusion, "Commander Shen is planning to lead these two thousand men to attack the 20,000-man army?"
Shen Yuan nodded without further explanation.
After getting the confirmation, Wang Xian took a deep breath and was deeply shocked by Shen Yuan's courage. Two thousand against twenty thousand, this is a ten to one ratio, or even more.
Not to mention whether it is possible to achieve the effect Shen Yuan mentioned of disrupting the rebels, even if it can be done, the new army guards will inevitably suffer huge losses. It is possible that this new army that has been formed for half a year will be mostly destroyed in this battle alone. Wouldn't Shen Yuan feel distressed?
In Wang Xian's opinion, Shen Yuan didn't have to take this risk. With their current superior military strength, it would not be difficult to defeat the rebels.
However, once the rebels are defeated, they will inevitably flee in all directions, and it will be difficult to wipe them out one by one afterwards.
As for how much damage these scattered rebels will cause to the people around Shenjing, it is unknown.
Wang Xian didn't know, but Shen Yuan knew.
Today is the fifth day of August, the seventeenth year of Yuanzhen. This is not an ordinary day, because... Shen Yuan has started the time loop.
Just 'yesterday', the Four Brave Camps suddenly mutinied. When Shen Yuan learned the news, the rebels had already invaded Shenjing City. Although Shen Yuan, Beijing Prince Shui Rong and others eventually quelled the rebellion, the rebels released their most insane bestiality when they were dying. They fled in Shenjing City, slaughtered civilians everywhere, and took the lives of more than 100,000 innocent people.
So Shen Yuan knew that if these rebels were turned into desperadoes, it would be a nightmare for the people around them.
Since this day has been restarted, Shen Yuan will not let the tragedy of "yesterday" happen again. He will do everything possible to wipe out all the rebels.
"Okay, let's do as Commander Shen said."
Wang Xian hesitated for only a few breaths before agreeing to Shen Yuan's suggestion. Since they were not afraid of sacrifice and took the initiative to undertake the first wave of attack, what else could he say?
However, he didn't want to see Shen Yuan get into trouble, so he patted the boy on the shoulder and said in a clear voice: "If you see that things are impossible, withdraw in time. His Majesty has placed high hopes on the new military guards, and they can't be defeated like this."
Shen Yuan said calmly, "Don't worry."
He is not a reckless man, so he would never do something that would destroy himself and the rest of the family.
Wang Xian said no more and led more than 30,000 troops from the Yangwei Camp and the Zhenwei Camp to advance and deploy a siege on the rebels.
After Wang Xian left, Shen Yuan told Jiang Fan, "Have the Longwei Camp get ready and take off immediately."
"Yes." Jiang Fan responded excitedly and headed towards the valley next to him.
The so-called Longwei Camp is the air corps under Shen Yuan's command. It currently has hundreds of hot air balloons and is under the charge of Jiang Fan. The word "Longwei" was named by Emperor Yuanzhen himself.
……
At this moment, the Jiedushi camp.
"General, we...can't hold on any longer!" Lieutenant General Pang Guang's face was covered in blood, he was breathing rapidly, and had many wounds on his body.
Wang Ziteng raised his head and looked around. Among his 5,000 guards, more than half had been killed, wounded or surrendered. Now there were less than a thousand people left, and they were compressed in a small area of less than a hundred meters. At this point in the battle, even Wang Ziteng had to draw his sword and fight.
He was barely able to survive until now because of the protection of thousands of personal guards, while the other commanders of various regiments and camps who broke through with only a small number of guards had mostly been hacked to death by the rebel army.
Thinking of this, Wang Ziteng felt a chill in his heart.
"General Jie, be careful!"
Just as he was stunned for a moment, he saw a rebel cavalryman galloping towards him with a knife in hand, and in the blink of an eye he was already in front of him.
Seeing that the knife was about to chop Wang Ziteng's neck, Lieutenant General Han Rui responded by pushing him from behind.
Wang Ziteng staggered and fell to the right, but the rebel's knife still chopped him down.
"Pfft!"
One arm is thrown high into the air.
"Ah!" With a heart-wrenching cry of pain, Wang Ziteng fell heavily to the ground.
Although he saved his life, his left arm was cut off at the root. After falling to the ground, he fainted.
"Come on!"
The few remaining trusted generals surrounded Wang Ziteng and protected him in the middle.
Apart from the dead, wounded and surrendered, those who are still around Wang Ziteng are his most trusted ones. These people had received a lot of preferential treatment from Wang Ziteng in the past, and now they are determined to die.
"God has doomed me..." Han Rui cried out to the sky.
Just as he looked up, he was stunned for a moment.
Not far away in the sky, countless "sky lanterns" were flying towards their heads.
Soon, a huge roar was heard, attracting everyone's attention.
Everyone in the battle subconsciously stopped what they were doing, and looked up curiously, looking in the direction of the voice.
Not long after, an unprecedented bizarre scene appeared. These huge balloons flew over their heads one by one and then hovered.
It covers the sky and the sun, and its momentum is terrifying!
"this…"
Everyone was so shocked that they were speechless.
They had seen this thing before, but only one of them came and flew away not long after.
And now... there are probably hundreds of them above their heads?
The leader of the rebels, Lieutenant General Xu Kun of the Ganyong Battalion, was also staring up at the sky in a daze. The warhorse under him seemed to be frightened and kept neighing.
Everyone's eyes were filled with confusion, not knowing what was going on.
But their confusion did not last long, and soon a loud shout came from one of the balloons: "Attack!"
Following Jiang Fan's order, the soldiers of the New Army's Wei Longwei Battalion emerged from the hot air balloons one after another, and at the same time poured down arrows and... fire bombs.
Moreover, each soldier draws multiple arrows from his bow at once, not seeking shooting accuracy but only to cover a large area.
"Boo! Hah! Hah..."
Waves of arrows swooped down.
"Boom! Boom! Boom..."
One after another, fire bombs exploded in the rebel camp.
What followed was a cry of pain and wailing. Because the rebels were in a dense formation, a large number of casualties occurred in an instant.
Xu Kun was alert and reacted quickly. The moment he saw the arrow, he had a bad feeling and quickly dismounted, using the horse to block the attack. He escaped the disaster, but the horse was hit by several arrows, let out a whine, and fell to the ground.
Then, he quickly grabbed a hand shield from a nearby soldier, raised it to block the attack, and shouted loudly: "Don't panic, soldiers, quickly raise your shields to protect yourself!"
He didn't need to say much, the rebels had already reacted. Those who had shields raised them and squatted down.
But not everyone carried a shield. Among the more than 20,000 rebels, less than 3,000 had shields. Even if two people hid under each shield, they could barely protect 6,000 people.
The rest of the soldiers were at a loss and simply used the corpses on the ground to block the arrows, but they could only barely avoid the sharp arrows. When the fire bombs hit them, they would still be injured. As long as they fell to the ground, they would be pierced by the rain of arrows.
Seeing the large number of rebel casualties, Xu Kun was extremely anxious and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Fight back with bows and arrows! Fight back quickly!" he shouted.
Those who were protected by shields remained unmoved, but the rebel soldiers who could not find cover, in panic, had to draw their bows and shoot arrows at the hot air balloon.
However, because they were shot upward and affected by gravity, very few arrows could reach the height of the hot air balloon.
After repeated experiments and training, the Longwei Battalion controlled the height of the hot air balloon very accurately, just enough to keep it hovering outside the shooting range of bows and arrows on the ground. And because they were shooting from a prone position, it did not affect the lethality of the bows and arrows.
On the outskirts of the battlefield, Wang Xian sat high on his warhorse, staring at the scene in front of him, and couldn't help but get goose bumps in his heart.
"This... is simply a one-sided massacre of the enemy! No wonder Shen Yuan is confident that he can wipe out all these rebels."
He vaguely remembered the calmness and composure in Shen Yuan's eyes before. Only now did he know where the young man's confidence came from.
Having such an air legion is equivalent to tens of thousands of troops.
Especially when the opponent is off guard, it is like having divine help when fighting against the enemy.
After hundreds of hot air balloons were launched in succession, more than half of the rebels had been killed or wounded, leaving only more than 10,000 people.
The remaining people found cover, and the damage the hot air balloon could cause was extremely limited.
Wang Xian also saw this, and when he saw that the time was ripe, he wanted to order his army to close the encirclement and begin to suppress the rebels.
But before he could give the order, a man on horseback came galloping and was in front of him in the blink of an eye.
"Report to the commander-in-chief, Lord Shen sent someone to deliver a message, saying that our army should not move for the time being. They will use the arrows as a signal, and then we will launch the attack."
"Does Shen Yuan have a backup plan?" Wang Xian was stunned when he heard this, not understanding what Shen Yuan meant.
He didn't wonder for long, before he saw a group of elite cavalry charging into the enemy camp from the southeast corner.
It is not difficult to tell from the flag that it is the new army guard led by Shen Yuan, with a number of exactly more than 2,000 people.
"This..." Wang Xian thought for a moment and understood Shen Yuan's intention. He said thoughtfully, "He really doesn't miss any opportunity. He intends to use the war to sharpen his troops."
Looking at the battlefield again, the hot air balloons did not disperse, but stopped attacking and just hovered there to create a psychological deterrent.
At this time, Shen Yuan took the lead, leading two thousand elite cavalry, like a sharp sword out of its sheath, charging straight into the rebel enemy camp, with morale high.
Their fighting strength and momentum far surpassed that of the enemy. Although they had only two thousand men, they were all elite cavalry, coordinated in an orderly manner, and moved as fast as the wind.
Just like a frost blade or a wind sword, it cut through the battlefield, quickly killing the originally terrified and disorderly rebel soldiers.
After several rounds of fighting, more than half of the rebels were killed or wounded, leaving only more than 5,000 people.
During the process, many people chose to surrender, but Shen Yuan did not give them any chance. He just issued an order: "Kill without mercy!"
Just three simple words announced the death of the rebel.
Xu Kun was panicking at this moment, and shouted, "Gather our forces and break out to the southeast!"
There is no chance of surrender anymore. The only way to survive is to fight to the death.
Shen Yuan saw that there was no point in actual combat training, so he instructed the messenger next to him: "Leave the rest to the brothers in the Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp."
The messenger obeyed the order and shot the arrow in his hand.
As the sharp arrow shot into the sky, a long sound of arrowhead rang out.
Soon, Wang Xian led tens of thousands of troops to encircle and annihilate the rebels, and there was nothing good to say.
In less than a moment, the remaining thousands of rebels were all wiped out.
The rebel leader Xu Kun never figured out until his death why the good situation was reversed in such a short time and was crushed unilaterally.
What went wrong?
No one answered him. In fact, from the moment he decided to rebel, he was doomed to failure.
Even without Shen Yuan, he would not have the last laugh, and would only have plunged the country into chaos.
"Master Shen!"
Shen Yuan looked over when he heard the voice and saw a middle-aged man covered in blood. Judging from his clothes and armor, he should be a general and of a high rank.
Seeing Shen Yuan's scrutinizing gaze, the middle-aged man hurriedly said, "I am Pang Guang, a lieutenant general under General Wang Jie."
"Oh? Where is Wang Jieshuai?"
"there!"
Shen Yuan looked in the direction Pang Guang was pointing, and saw Wang Ziteng surrounded by several people. His left arm was missing, and his chest was still heaving. He must be unconscious.
"Find the military doctor to treat him." Shen Yuan instructed the guards beside him and rode away.
Leaving some people to clean up the battlefield, he and Wang Xian led the army towards Anding Gate.
After today, the Beijing Camp will suffer heavy losses. Excluding the rebels and vacancies, there may be no more than 100,000 men left in the entire Beijing Camp.
All the military commanders were killed by the rebels, which saved Shen Yuan a lot of trouble in his future plans.
And Wang Ziteng survived in the end, which could be considered as his personal good fortune. However, he is now disabled, and even if he is not punished by Emperor Yuanzhen, he will not be able to achieve anything in the future.
(End of this chapter)
On a hillside a mile away from the Jiedushi camp, Shen Yuan was observing the battle situation ahead with a monocular telescope.
At the foot of the hill, two thousand new army guards were on full alert. This was the only way from the Jiedushi camp to Shenjing City. By controlling this road, they could prevent the rebels from reaching the Shenjing city gate.
Shen Yuan was not in a hurry to send the new army into battle. He had to wait for the right opportunity. The rebels were narrowing the encirclement of Wang Ziteng and others, and the military generals who tried to break through had suffered casualties.
"Sir, look!" A captain pointed behind him with a nervous expression.
Shen Yuan turned his head to look, and saw dust flying two miles behind the new army guards. Then there were bursts of roars and neighs of horses, which was quite powerful.
Looking through the telescope, he saw the leading cavalryman holding a flag with the word "Wang" on it. From the armor they wore, it could be seen that they were none other than Wang Xian's Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp.
"Reinforcements have arrived."
Shen Yuan went down the hillside and rode on his war horse. Soon he saw Wang Xian leading the troops, with Jiang Fan following beside him.
"Captain Wang."
"Commander Shen."
The two men met, and Wang Xian didn't say much. He asked anxiously, "What's the current situation at the Central Army Camp?"
At this moment, half an hour had passed since he escaped in the hot air balloon.
Wang Ziteng has only 5,000 men, while the rebels have more than 20,000 people. With a ratio of one to four, the current situation must be precarious.
Shen Yuan's face was calm, and he said, "General Wang Jie has less than 2,000 men left."
Just as Wang Xian expected, most of Wang Ziteng's 5,000 personal troops were killed and the situation became extremely critical.
"Commander Shen and I will lead the army to rescue immediately..."
"Don't worry, Commander Wang." Shen Yuan raised his hand to interrupt, "How many people did the Commander bring?"
"Thirty-five thousand."
"That's enough." Shen Yuan said solemnly, "We can wipe out all these rebels and not let any of them escape."
Wang Xian was stunned when he heard this, his expression suddenly changed, and he said in surprise: "The number of rebels is no less than 20,000. It is not difficult to defeat them, but how can we prevent even one from escaping?"
You know, more than 20,000 rebels besieged Wang Ziteng's 5,000 people, and it took a force ratio of four to one to barely encircle them.
Even with the addition of Shen Yuan's new army guards, the total strength of Wang Xian's troops did not exceed 40,000, which was less than two to one compared with the rebels.
There is no problem in defeating them, but it is very difficult to encircle and kill them. When the enemy sees that the situation is not right, with such a large encirclement, they will concentrate their forces to break out in one direction, which will be impossible to stop them. In the end, the siege will turn into a pursuit war.
"Commander Wang will lead his troops to deploy on the periphery first to encircle the rebels. The first wave of attack will be completed by the new army guards." Shen Yuan said, "When the enemy army is in chaos, the soldiers of the Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp will encircle and kill them."
Wang Xian was quite surprised when he heard this. He glanced at the new army guards behind Shen Yuan and asked in confusion, "Commander Shen is planning to lead these two thousand men to attack the 20,000-man army?"
Shen Yuan nodded without further explanation.
After getting the confirmation, Wang Xian took a deep breath and was deeply shocked by Shen Yuan's courage. Two thousand against twenty thousand, this is a ten to one ratio, or even more.
Not to mention whether it is possible to achieve the effect Shen Yuan mentioned of disrupting the rebels, even if it can be done, the new army guards will inevitably suffer huge losses. It is possible that this new army that has been formed for half a year will be mostly destroyed in this battle alone. Wouldn't Shen Yuan feel distressed?
In Wang Xian's opinion, Shen Yuan didn't have to take this risk. With their current superior military strength, it would not be difficult to defeat the rebels.
However, once the rebels are defeated, they will inevitably flee in all directions, and it will be difficult to wipe them out one by one afterwards.
As for how much damage these scattered rebels will cause to the people around Shenjing, it is unknown.
Wang Xian didn't know, but Shen Yuan knew.
Today is the fifth day of August, the seventeenth year of Yuanzhen. This is not an ordinary day, because... Shen Yuan has started the time loop.
Just 'yesterday', the Four Brave Camps suddenly mutinied. When Shen Yuan learned the news, the rebels had already invaded Shenjing City. Although Shen Yuan, Beijing Prince Shui Rong and others eventually quelled the rebellion, the rebels released their most insane bestiality when they were dying. They fled in Shenjing City, slaughtered civilians everywhere, and took the lives of more than 100,000 innocent people.
So Shen Yuan knew that if these rebels were turned into desperadoes, it would be a nightmare for the people around them.
Since this day has been restarted, Shen Yuan will not let the tragedy of "yesterday" happen again. He will do everything possible to wipe out all the rebels.
"Okay, let's do as Commander Shen said."
Wang Xian hesitated for only a few breaths before agreeing to Shen Yuan's suggestion. Since they were not afraid of sacrifice and took the initiative to undertake the first wave of attack, what else could he say?
However, he didn't want to see Shen Yuan get into trouble, so he patted the boy on the shoulder and said in a clear voice: "If you see that things are impossible, withdraw in time. His Majesty has placed high hopes on the new military guards, and they can't be defeated like this."
Shen Yuan said calmly, "Don't worry."
He is not a reckless man, so he would never do something that would destroy himself and the rest of the family.
Wang Xian said no more and led more than 30,000 troops from the Yangwei Camp and the Zhenwei Camp to advance and deploy a siege on the rebels.
After Wang Xian left, Shen Yuan told Jiang Fan, "Have the Longwei Camp get ready and take off immediately."
"Yes." Jiang Fan responded excitedly and headed towards the valley next to him.
The so-called Longwei Camp is the air corps under Shen Yuan's command. It currently has hundreds of hot air balloons and is under the charge of Jiang Fan. The word "Longwei" was named by Emperor Yuanzhen himself.
……
At this moment, the Jiedushi camp.
"General, we...can't hold on any longer!" Lieutenant General Pang Guang's face was covered in blood, he was breathing rapidly, and had many wounds on his body.
Wang Ziteng raised his head and looked around. Among his 5,000 guards, more than half had been killed, wounded or surrendered. Now there were less than a thousand people left, and they were compressed in a small area of less than a hundred meters. At this point in the battle, even Wang Ziteng had to draw his sword and fight.
He was barely able to survive until now because of the protection of thousands of personal guards, while the other commanders of various regiments and camps who broke through with only a small number of guards had mostly been hacked to death by the rebel army.
Thinking of this, Wang Ziteng felt a chill in his heart.
"General Jie, be careful!"
Just as he was stunned for a moment, he saw a rebel cavalryman galloping towards him with a knife in hand, and in the blink of an eye he was already in front of him.
Seeing that the knife was about to chop Wang Ziteng's neck, Lieutenant General Han Rui responded by pushing him from behind.
Wang Ziteng staggered and fell to the right, but the rebel's knife still chopped him down.
"Pfft!"
One arm is thrown high into the air.
"Ah!" With a heart-wrenching cry of pain, Wang Ziteng fell heavily to the ground.
Although he saved his life, his left arm was cut off at the root. After falling to the ground, he fainted.
"Come on!"
The few remaining trusted generals surrounded Wang Ziteng and protected him in the middle.
Apart from the dead, wounded and surrendered, those who are still around Wang Ziteng are his most trusted ones. These people had received a lot of preferential treatment from Wang Ziteng in the past, and now they are determined to die.
"God has doomed me..." Han Rui cried out to the sky.
Just as he looked up, he was stunned for a moment.
Not far away in the sky, countless "sky lanterns" were flying towards their heads.
Soon, a huge roar was heard, attracting everyone's attention.
Everyone in the battle subconsciously stopped what they were doing, and looked up curiously, looking in the direction of the voice.
Not long after, an unprecedented bizarre scene appeared. These huge balloons flew over their heads one by one and then hovered.
It covers the sky and the sun, and its momentum is terrifying!
"this…"
Everyone was so shocked that they were speechless.
They had seen this thing before, but only one of them came and flew away not long after.
And now... there are probably hundreds of them above their heads?
The leader of the rebels, Lieutenant General Xu Kun of the Ganyong Battalion, was also staring up at the sky in a daze. The warhorse under him seemed to be frightened and kept neighing.
Everyone's eyes were filled with confusion, not knowing what was going on.
But their confusion did not last long, and soon a loud shout came from one of the balloons: "Attack!"
Following Jiang Fan's order, the soldiers of the New Army's Wei Longwei Battalion emerged from the hot air balloons one after another, and at the same time poured down arrows and... fire bombs.
Moreover, each soldier draws multiple arrows from his bow at once, not seeking shooting accuracy but only to cover a large area.
"Boo! Hah! Hah..."
Waves of arrows swooped down.
"Boom! Boom! Boom..."
One after another, fire bombs exploded in the rebel camp.
What followed was a cry of pain and wailing. Because the rebels were in a dense formation, a large number of casualties occurred in an instant.
Xu Kun was alert and reacted quickly. The moment he saw the arrow, he had a bad feeling and quickly dismounted, using the horse to block the attack. He escaped the disaster, but the horse was hit by several arrows, let out a whine, and fell to the ground.
Then, he quickly grabbed a hand shield from a nearby soldier, raised it to block the attack, and shouted loudly: "Don't panic, soldiers, quickly raise your shields to protect yourself!"
He didn't need to say much, the rebels had already reacted. Those who had shields raised them and squatted down.
But not everyone carried a shield. Among the more than 20,000 rebels, less than 3,000 had shields. Even if two people hid under each shield, they could barely protect 6,000 people.
The rest of the soldiers were at a loss and simply used the corpses on the ground to block the arrows, but they could only barely avoid the sharp arrows. When the fire bombs hit them, they would still be injured. As long as they fell to the ground, they would be pierced by the rain of arrows.
Seeing the large number of rebel casualties, Xu Kun was extremely anxious and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Fight back with bows and arrows! Fight back quickly!" he shouted.
Those who were protected by shields remained unmoved, but the rebel soldiers who could not find cover, in panic, had to draw their bows and shoot arrows at the hot air balloon.
However, because they were shot upward and affected by gravity, very few arrows could reach the height of the hot air balloon.
After repeated experiments and training, the Longwei Battalion controlled the height of the hot air balloon very accurately, just enough to keep it hovering outside the shooting range of bows and arrows on the ground. And because they were shooting from a prone position, it did not affect the lethality of the bows and arrows.
On the outskirts of the battlefield, Wang Xian sat high on his warhorse, staring at the scene in front of him, and couldn't help but get goose bumps in his heart.
"This... is simply a one-sided massacre of the enemy! No wonder Shen Yuan is confident that he can wipe out all these rebels."
He vaguely remembered the calmness and composure in Shen Yuan's eyes before. Only now did he know where the young man's confidence came from.
Having such an air legion is equivalent to tens of thousands of troops.
Especially when the opponent is off guard, it is like having divine help when fighting against the enemy.
After hundreds of hot air balloons were launched in succession, more than half of the rebels had been killed or wounded, leaving only more than 10,000 people.
The remaining people found cover, and the damage the hot air balloon could cause was extremely limited.
Wang Xian also saw this, and when he saw that the time was ripe, he wanted to order his army to close the encirclement and begin to suppress the rebels.
But before he could give the order, a man on horseback came galloping and was in front of him in the blink of an eye.
"Report to the commander-in-chief, Lord Shen sent someone to deliver a message, saying that our army should not move for the time being. They will use the arrows as a signal, and then we will launch the attack."
"Does Shen Yuan have a backup plan?" Wang Xian was stunned when he heard this, not understanding what Shen Yuan meant.
He didn't wonder for long, before he saw a group of elite cavalry charging into the enemy camp from the southeast corner.
It is not difficult to tell from the flag that it is the new army guard led by Shen Yuan, with a number of exactly more than 2,000 people.
"This..." Wang Xian thought for a moment and understood Shen Yuan's intention. He said thoughtfully, "He really doesn't miss any opportunity. He intends to use the war to sharpen his troops."
Looking at the battlefield again, the hot air balloons did not disperse, but stopped attacking and just hovered there to create a psychological deterrent.
At this time, Shen Yuan took the lead, leading two thousand elite cavalry, like a sharp sword out of its sheath, charging straight into the rebel enemy camp, with morale high.
Their fighting strength and momentum far surpassed that of the enemy. Although they had only two thousand men, they were all elite cavalry, coordinated in an orderly manner, and moved as fast as the wind.
Just like a frost blade or a wind sword, it cut through the battlefield, quickly killing the originally terrified and disorderly rebel soldiers.
After several rounds of fighting, more than half of the rebels were killed or wounded, leaving only more than 5,000 people.
During the process, many people chose to surrender, but Shen Yuan did not give them any chance. He just issued an order: "Kill without mercy!"
Just three simple words announced the death of the rebel.
Xu Kun was panicking at this moment, and shouted, "Gather our forces and break out to the southeast!"
There is no chance of surrender anymore. The only way to survive is to fight to the death.
Shen Yuan saw that there was no point in actual combat training, so he instructed the messenger next to him: "Leave the rest to the brothers in the Yangwei Camp and Zhenwei Camp."
The messenger obeyed the order and shot the arrow in his hand.
As the sharp arrow shot into the sky, a long sound of arrowhead rang out.
Soon, Wang Xian led tens of thousands of troops to encircle and annihilate the rebels, and there was nothing good to say.
In less than a moment, the remaining thousands of rebels were all wiped out.
The rebel leader Xu Kun never figured out until his death why the good situation was reversed in such a short time and was crushed unilaterally.
What went wrong?
No one answered him. In fact, from the moment he decided to rebel, he was doomed to failure.
Even without Shen Yuan, he would not have the last laugh, and would only have plunged the country into chaos.
"Master Shen!"
Shen Yuan looked over when he heard the voice and saw a middle-aged man covered in blood. Judging from his clothes and armor, he should be a general and of a high rank.
Seeing Shen Yuan's scrutinizing gaze, the middle-aged man hurriedly said, "I am Pang Guang, a lieutenant general under General Wang Jie."
"Oh? Where is Wang Jieshuai?"
"there!"
Shen Yuan looked in the direction Pang Guang was pointing, and saw Wang Ziteng surrounded by several people. His left arm was missing, and his chest was still heaving. He must be unconscious.
"Find the military doctor to treat him." Shen Yuan instructed the guards beside him and rode away.
Leaving some people to clean up the battlefield, he and Wang Xian led the army towards Anding Gate.
After today, the Beijing Camp will suffer heavy losses. Excluding the rebels and vacancies, there may be no more than 100,000 men left in the entire Beijing Camp.
All the military commanders were killed by the rebels, which saved Shen Yuan a lot of trouble in his future plans.
And Wang Ziteng survived in the end, which could be considered as his personal good fortune. However, he is now disabled, and even if he is not punished by Emperor Yuanzhen, he will not be able to achieve anything in the future.
(End of this chapter)
