“Boom! Boom!”
The cannons kept firing, and the barbarian soldiers on the wall could only take the hits without fighting back.
In just a short time, the fortress walls were blasted into a terrible mess by Qingzhou’s artillery.
Many barbarian soldiers were directly hit by cannonballs, dying in gruesome ways. This only made the defenders more terrified.
And that was just the beginning.
Next, catapults launched barrels of burning gunpowder onto the fortress walls.
Explosions rocked the top of the wall, and screams of pain filled the air as the barbarians suffered heavy losses.
On the wall, Guduo stared at the scene in despair.
After Beishan was accidentally hit by Qingzhou’s cannon, Chagatai immediately ordered the tribe to retreat.
They had suffered too much. They knew they couldn’t fight Qingzhou’s army again, so they pulled out of Shanhai Pass.
If they stayed and Qingzhou attacked, they’d be trapped in the city with no way out—death was the only ending.
So Chagatai didn’t hesitate. He had the tribe leave Youzhou and nearby areas.
Guduo was left behind to guard the city, just in case. But the worst happened—right after Chagatai sent off Beishan, the Qingzhou army arrived.
Without cannons or gunpowder barrels like Qingzhou had, they were powerless against this kind of bombing. In no time, they were already suffering badly.
And worst of all, Beishan’s fate was unknown. The whole tribe was panicking, and morale was at rock bottom.
They had no idea what kind of disaster was coming next.
“Boom! Boom!”
The cannon fire and gunpowder barrel attacks continued. Qingzhou troops were fully unleashing their firepower to bury the barbarians.
Niu Ben carefully watched the wall. As one group of soldiers died, another took their place. The barbarians just had too many troops.
Thinking for a moment, he gave a hand signal from the balloon.
Qingzhou soldiers brought out ten barrels of gunpowder from the main camp.
The walls of Shanhai Pass weren’t as thick as the ones at Cangzhou—they could blow them open.
The fastest way to finish this fight was to break through the wall and expose the enemy to direct musket fire.
“Where are the lime bombs?” Luo Xin shouted.
The barbarian archers and infantry were still dangerous to Qingzhou soldiers near the wall. It wouldn’t be easy to plant those barrels under enemy fire.
So Luo Xin remembered the lime bombs from the Cangzhou army.
The soldiers quickly carried over a crate of bombs. When Luo Xin saw them, he was surprised.
“These are just gunpowder barrels?”
A soldier nodded.
“The machinery department said these lime bombs are meant to be launched by catapult.”
Luo Xin was speechless. He thought lime bombs were solid shots. He didn’t expect them to be like firebombs.
After studying them, Lu Tong and Chen Qi realized that only explosive barrels could spread the lime effectively. So they made the first batch of lime bombs as gunpowder barrels. Really, it would work even better as a fragmentation shell.
Inside, the gunpowder was at the bottom and quicklime was packed on top. When it exploded, the quicklime would scatter into the air like fireworks.
The soldiers placed the bombs into the catapult. One soldier shortened the fuse slightly, lit it, and let it fly.
“Boom!” The barrel exploded as it landed on the fortress wall.
A cloud of white smoke instantly spread across the wall, covering twenty or thirty meters.
Thanks to experience, the soldiers knew how to time the explosion by adjusting the fuse length, so the bomb would blow up mid-air just above the wall.
“Amazing,” Luo Xin gasped.
The thick white smoke completely covered the barbarians, making it impossible to see what was happening inside.
More and more lime bombs exploded across the fortress wall, coating everything in white dust.
“Aah! My eyes!”
“It burns! I can’t see anything!”
“Water! Water!”
“—”
After the bombs exploded, chaos broke out.
The quicklime entered the barbarians’ eyes and started burning them.
They rubbed their eyes, but that only made it worse. Some grabbed water bags to rinse their eyes, but the moment water touched the lime, it burned even more.
The quicklime spread from the wall down toward the city, creating mass confusion.
From the hot air balloon, Niu Ben watched the chaos. As the lime dust slowly cleared, he saw how messed up the wall was. Cold sweat ran down his back.
‘These lime bombs… they’re terrifying.’
But this was the moment to strike—since the barbarians couldn’t even open their eyes, Niu Ben gave the order:
“Blow up the wall with the gunpowder barrels!”
At once, Qingzhou soldiers rushed toward the wall carrying the barrels.
To their surprise, the barbarians couldn’t fight back—they were blinded and helpless.
The soldiers were thrilled. They dug holes at the base of the wall and placed the barrels. The noise of cannon fire masked the sound of their chisels.
On the wall, Guduo clutched his eyes in pain. His vision was blurry, and he could barely see. His heart turned to ice.
After so many battles, he realized—this army was nothing like the regular Great Yu troops. Their weapons were terrifying.
One thought echoed in his mind:
“We can’t hold Shanhai Pass anymore.”
He stumbled down from the wall. Other blinded soldiers also tried to climb down, while the unhurt ones at the bottom tried to climb up. They got in each other’s way, creating more chaos.
The slave soldiers inside the town refused to go up at all.
To them, the Blood Wolf Tribe was finished. They were once citizens of Great Yu—why keep dying for barbarians?
“We’ve lost. We’ve lost…” Guduo muttered as his world went dark.
Just as he stepped away from the wall—
BOOM!!
A massive explosion shook the entire pass.
Flames shot into the sky, stone flew everywhere, and the walls of Shanhai Pass came crashing down.
Right after that, the Qingzhou army’s battle horns echoed across the sky. Their war cries drowned out everything.
From the balloon, Niu Ben had tears in his eyes.
The shame of a nation. The humiliation of a people. Today, it would all be washed away here.
This glory belonged to Qingzhou—and to Prince Qi!