Chapter 2111 - A Narrow Escape

The household guards had fought in full armor—whether iron plates or quilted cotton, both became death sentences once submerged. In the chaos of the pontoon bridge's collapse, men plunged into the Gui River and found themselves dragged inexorably downward. Exhaustion from a full day's combat had already consumed every reserve of strength. Even the urge to struggle faded as breathlessness gave way to hallucinations. Fragmentary memories flickered through drowning minds: a father's patient instruction in the martial courtyard at age six, the first muster at sixteen with banners snapping overhead, a wedding ceremony, the squalling birth of a son, the smoke and thunder of Chengmai...

Consciousness dimmed and slipped away. Perhaps there was a sensation of hands desperately pulling upward through the murk—but even that dissolved into nothing, and then all became black.

Jiang Suo reached the opposite bank and collapsed on the stony beach, gasping with a desperation he had never known. His lungs heaved in ragged spasms, and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. Looking back across the shallows, he saw Song Ming sprawled face-down like a corpse, half his body still submerged, utterly motionless. Jiang Suo had seen Song Ming fall and, without hesitation, hurled away his rifle to dive after him. Even for a swimmer trained since childhood in the fishing village, stripping armor from a drowning man underwater was a feat bordering on the impossible. He had barely managed to haul Song Ming to shore, and now every fiber of his body screamed in protest. He wanted to drag Song Ming fully onto dry land and force the water from his lungs, but he had no strength left—his limbs were useless, trembling and weak.

Yet he had survived. Though the pontoon bridge lay shattered, most of the Bangshan garrison who still drew breath had made it across the river. Many had braved the screaming artillery and musket fire to swim the crossing; now they sprawled across the stony beach, gasping for air like beached fish. Even with shells and bullets shrieking overhead, no one could summon the energy to move.

But the survivors were pitifully few. Jiang Suo's own household guards—men he had personally trained—had fought without armor. Scanning the beach, he counted perhaps twenty or thirty figures still breathing. A wave of desolation crashed over him. Ten survivors from every hundred. What senseless slaughter had demanded such a price?

Hair-Bandit shells continued their arcing trajectory across the river, detonating along the beach in geysers of stone and spray. The soldiers who had been sprawled among the rocks lurched to their feet and fled in a ragged stream toward the city walls.

Jiang Suo tried to call out—to anyone—for help carrying Song Ming. But the fleeing soldiers swept past without so much as a glance. Dressed in nothing but a common soldier's sweat-stained tunic, stripped of any insignia of rank, who would heed his voice? Only when a handful of Song Ming's own household guards—survivors who had been desperately combing the beach—finally spotted him did Jiang Suo remember Master Yi's words: "On the battlefield, you still need a few personal guards you can count on."

Night descended, and the guns fell silent at last. Before darkness had fully claimed the sky, Zhu Quanxing had led the 3rd Battalion to seize Beishan east of the city, then pivoted north to engage the retreating Ming forces. Apart from sporadic exchanges of fire, the advance had proceeded with ruthless efficiency. Every objective for the day had been achieved.

After securing Bangshan, only a skeleton garrison remained on the hill. Through the night, engineers labored to widen and grade the approach roads so that the mountain howitzers could be dragged into position at first light. The Gui River now lay firmly under the 1st Combined Brigade's control.

Save for scattered sentries, most of the Fubo soldiers had succumbed to exhausted sleep. Zhu Mingxia had just completed his inspection tour of the units deployed south of the city and made a point of climbing Bangshan himself.

The after-action report for Bangshan had reached his field desk half an hour earlier. Total casualties for the Fubo Army and attached labor units: nineteen killed, sixty-seven wounded. Ming casualties: over two hundred bodies recovered, more than four hundred prisoners secured. By any measure of exchange ratio, it was an overwhelming victory—and that accounting didn't even include the casualties inflicted during the shelling of the pontoon bridge.

The inventory of captured weapons held little interest for him. It was the usual hodgepodge of Ming firearms, destined for the General Affairs Bureau's smelters. Nor had Bangshan yielded significant stores of grain.

In summary: they had cracked a formidable nut, but found little meat inside.

Still, the defensive tactics employed on Bangshan demanded serious scrutiny. Zhu Mingxia and Xu Ke had personally ascended the hill to examine the fortifications, inspect the abandoned weaponry, and interrogate selected prisoners. They had convened a brief tactical conference with participating officers and soldiers to capture firsthand impressions while the experience remained fresh.

Analysis of the battlefield evidence revealed two distinct types of Ming defenders. The first was the traditional Ming soldier—some clad in armor, others in simple tunics. The second type wore no armor whatsoever; their uniforms were tailored shorter and tighter to the body, more practical for rapid movement. They carried canvas ammunition pouches virtually identical to Fubo Army issue, along with percussion caps and paper cartridges. Near their positions, discarded Nanyang rifles littered the ground.

This had to be the "new army" mentioned in the intelligence reports—the force trained by the spy.

Xu Ke remained on the hilltop with his assistants, methodically photographing and sketching the defensive works. Military Intelligence teams were cataloging all relevant materiel, with particular focus on the Nanyang rifles. Every rifle abandoned on the field—functional or damaged—was being recovered and logged. Broken weapons would be pieced together to estimate total deployment numbers. Serial numbers would be cross-referenced against manufacturing dates and export records to trace the supply chain.

The export of Nanyang rifles had always sparked heated debate within the Council of Elders. Whether Quark's lucrative sales to Southeast Asian warlords or the shipments to various Ming commanders in Shandong, both had provoked bitter controversy. After all, once sold, firearms respected no political allegiance. Yet the profits were staggering, the demand insatiable. Debates came and went with tedious regularity; the sales never stopped. In Shandong, the weapons trade even enjoyed enthusiastic backing from the Huaxia Society, whose members argued that since the Council conducted business with the Manchus, they were duty-bound to "balance the scales" on the Ming side.

Zhu Mingxia entertained no particular anxiety about the Nanyang rifles. Export volumes might be substantial, but ammunition constraints ensured no hostile force could deploy them in operationally significant numbers. They posed no genuine strategic threat.

What captured his attention were the period firearms—weapons of this era's own manufacture. The captured arsenal was substantial. Over a hundred heavy matchlocks alone, each representing Xu Guangqi's vaunted "divine weapon" at nine taels of labor cost. Xiong Wencan had clearly invested serious silver in arming his forces. The battle had demonstrated that the Ming were exploiting their available firearms with tactical sophistication: heavy matchlocks and Falangjis of every caliber had been deployed extensively, with the lighter Falangjis proving nearly indistinguishable from their heavier cousins in practical effect. The crude birdshot muskets and three-eyed hand cannons so prevalent at Chengmai and along the Pearl River estuary were conspicuously absent. Evidently the Ming command had internalized those weapons' fatal shortcomings—birdshot lacked penetrating power, hand cannons sacrificed both range and accuracy. They had transitioned to heavier matchlocks offering superior range and lethality. Though cumbersome for mobile combat, such considerations mattered far less in prepared defensive positions. These weapons had successfully delayed and disrupted the Fubo Army's assault.

The Red Barbarian cannons that the Ming had once venerated as divine instruments were nowhere in evidence. Instead, crouching-tiger mortars with their devastating close-range fragmentation effects dominated the defensive scheme, positioned at the terminus of communication trenches to seal them against penetration. The defending commander had clearly grasped the tactical utility of each weapon system.

The enemy was learning. Fast.

Zhu Mingxia stood on Bangshan's summit, gazing across the darkening plain toward Wuzhou's walls, turning these observations over in his mind.

From the bastion geometry to the trench network, from the use of massed arrow volleys to slow the Fubo advance to the ferocity of in-trench fighting, from artillery pushed to point-blank range to the calculated deployment of modern firearms—every element revealed that the enemy was beginning to decode the Fubo Army's operational doctrine and groping toward effective countermeasures.

From the turntable gun mounts deployed in the Little Three Gorges to the fire-ship assault on the river to the layered fortifications of Bangshan itself, all reflected sustained technical and tactical innovation within the Ming forces. The execution remained crude—constrained partly by their inferior technological base, partly perhaps by institutional rigidities. But the intent was unmistakable. The enemy was learning how to fight them. The dazed, fumbling soldiers who had blundered into slaughter at Chengmai and along the Pearl River estuary were gone, replaced by something far more dangerous.

(End of Chapter)