Wang Chenggong's forces were fully prepared.
Rolling logs and boulders had been hauled into place. Buckets of boiling liquid were set aside. Even molten metal had been prepared, ready to pour down on any attackers foolish enough to approach the walls.
Everything was ready.
Yet, to their surprise, the government troops showed no intention of advancing.
They halted far away from the fortress, maintaining a distance that felt… strange.
Wang Chenggong frowned.
"What in the world are these government troops doing?"
A seasoned fighter beside him stood on tiptoe and squinted into the distance.
"It looks like… they're waiting for something?"
"Waiting?" Wang Chenggong sneered.
"What could they possibly be waiting for?"
Before he could say more, a wave of startled cries rose from the battlements.
"Cannons!"
"Big cannons!"
"What?" Wang Chenggong jolted and hurried forward, also standing on tiptoe to look.
Through a gap in the government formation, five massive cannons were slowly pushed into view.
Three of them gleamed with a strange silvery luster, forged from some unknown metal he had never seen before. The other two were darker, familiar bronze cannons—the kind he recognized.
The moment he laid eyes on them, Wang Chenggong's heart sank.
This was bad.
"Prepare yourselves!" he shouted.
At the artillery battalion commander's command, five groups of artillerymen moved at once.
Years of drilling finally came into play.
Powder was poured.
Shells were hoisted.
Ramrods plunged again and again into the barrels.
Fuses were inserted.
"Aim!"
"Raise it a little."
"Higher."
"Good. Hold it there."
"A bit to the left."
"Fire!"
With slightly trembling hands, the artillerymen lit the fuses.
As sparks raced along the fuse toward the barrels, the excitement surging in their chests was impossible to suppress.
Luo Xi stared in disbelief.
"Where did these artillerymen come from? They look like clumsy new recruits on their first battlefield."
Shi Jian replied calmly,
"They are new recruits."
Luo Xi fell silent.
"BOOM! BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!"
The cannons roared one after another.
The opening salvo struck squarely at the center of Wangjia Fork's gate.
That thick wooden gate, which could resist battering rams and ladders, was completely helpless before cannon fire.
With a deafening crack, a massive hole was blown open.
A moment later, a cannonball smashed into the nearby wall. Brick and packed earth exploded outward, dust and debris flying everywhere. The wall swayed violently, as if struggling to stay upright.
Before it could settle—
Thump.
Another cannonball struck the same section.
Wangjia Fork was no great stronghold like Xi'an, Nanjing, or the capital. It was merely a small border fortress.
How could it possibly withstand such bombardment?
With a low, tortured rumble, the wall finally collapsed, tearing open another breach.
The rebels stationed there, who had been clutching stones and logs in anticipation, suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath their feet. They tumbled down along with the crumbling wall.
Dust surged into the air.
When it cleared, a large group of rebels lay sprawled in the rubble, dazed, filthy, and coughing.
Wang Chenggong stood frozen, staring at the scene.
"Are you kidding me?" he cursed.
"Where did these government troops get cannons like this? Damn it… the soldiers in Northern Shaanxi can barely feed themselves—how could they afford such weapons?"
The answer came from the enemy lines.
"It hit!"
"It hit!"
The artillerymen were ecstatic.
"My first live shot—and it landed!"
"With a target that big, missing would be embarrassing, wouldn't it?"
The artillery battalion commander roared,
"What are you standing around for? Was all that training for nothing? Reload! Second volley!"
"Huh?"
The artillerymen snapped back to their senses.
They cleaned the barrels, reloaded powder and shells, adjusted the angles again—
After a full minute or two of frantic movement, the second round was ready.
"Fire!"
"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!"
Five more cannonballs screamed through the air.
The unfortunate Wangjia Fork fortress hadn't even finished "breathing" before it was struck again.
With a thunderous crash, two more sections of the wall collapsed.
Only then did Wang Chenggong fully understand.
The government troops had no intention of storming the city.
Their thousand-odd soldiers stood far away, relaxed, simply watching as the cannons dismantled the fortress piece by piece.
They were waiting for the walls to be flattened.
Only then would they move.
Wang Chenggong clenched his teeth.
"Pass down the order! We can't stay here. Prepare to charge! Once we close the distance, those cannons will be useless. We'll drive off the government troops and seize their artillery!"
The rebels began moving.
No longer did they cling to the walls. Instead, they withdrew inward, regrouping in the open ground behind the main gate, forming ranks for a charge.
Meanwhile…
In a mountain gully northeast of Wangjia Fork, another force was also preparing to move.
A cavalry unit.
They belonged to the Mongolian Wushen Tribe.
These were the same riders who had been raiding the Hetao region for days, giving Supreme Commander Hong Chengchou and Regional Commander Wang Cheng'en endless headaches.
Mongolian cavalry were fast—so fast that infantry found it nearly impossible to pin them down.
Like the rebels, they avoided strong cities, slipping past defenses to raid settlements instead, burning, killing, and plundering before vanishing.
To counter them, Zhu Yuanzhang had once built countless fortresses along the Nine Borders, weaving them into a defensive network that barely kept such raids in check.
But now…
With Ming finances collapsing in the late dynasty, soldiers went unpaid. Desertions were rampant. Fortresses were abandoned or seized by rebels.
The once-dense defensive net had been torn full of holes.
This Mongolian cavalry unit had been watching the battle for quite some time.
They were happy to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.
Then they saw the cannons.
Those cannons.
The cavalry captain's eyes lit up.
"I want those cannons."
He raised his whip and shouted,
"While the Ming army is busy dealing with the rebels, we charge in, slaughter them, and seize the cannons!"
The cavalry roared in response.
"Seize them!"
"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!"
Another volley fired.
The cavalry captain cracked his whip.
"Charge!"
With a thunderous roar, the Mongolian cavalry burst out of the gully.
They surged forward like a violent gale, covering hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye, a sharp blade slashing straight toward Shi Jian's flank.
At this moment, Wang Chenggong's rebels were still finalizing their plan to charge.
Just as he was about to issue the order, he heard sudden shouts of battle from outside.
He turned—and saw Mongolian cavalry pouring out from nowhere, charging straight at the government troops.
Wang Chenggong was stunned.
"What the—damn it!" he cursed.
"The Mongolians chose now to appear? Damn those barbarians! They let us draw the cannon fire, then charged during the reloading gap!"
A rebel shouted urgently,
"Boss! What do we do?"
Wang Chenggong clenched his jaw.
"We wait and watch. We're not joining forces with the Mongolians. If we move, it'll be when they're gone."