[There's still one more update. I wrote it late today, but it won't affect tomorrow's update if it's past midnight. Tomorrow will be earlier. Give me a few more votes.]
Behind Duanren Pass was the Metatlin Plains. It was only two hundred miles wide, and apart from the West Town garrison, there were no other cities. However, there were villages on the plains, and many nobles had built fortresses.
According to the original plan, Salin would repair Duanren Pass this July and seal off the Metatlin Plains. This was a safe place. Even if a small army infiltrated from the mountains, it wouldn't be enough to pose a threat to those fortresses.
Usually, Metatlin only faced threats from the north and the sea. With this mountain pass in the west, there shouldn't be any trouble. However, the Church's army had arrived too quickly. Before Salin's plan could be implemented, he encountered the first major battle since the founding of the nation.
After three days, the Church's main army finally arrived outside Duanren Pass. After the battle between Salin and Rex's army and the sneak attack, the main force of the Church was still there, but without many support soldiers, the soldiers had a hard time marching. Every day, there would be people to help them wear armor, massage, wash their feet, cook, and other benefits. Only the officers could barely maintain such treatment.
Fortunately, there were many Divine Masters in the army. Otherwise, the soldiers would have fallen sick long ago. Sickness was contagious. It sounded ridiculous, but in reality, if a soldier's companions were sick for a long time, even if they didn't collapse, the people around them would be greatly affected.
The army arrived and set up camp outside Duanren Pass. According to the astrology, this place wasn't far from the sea. The error of the Divine Masters' calculations was no more than a hundred miles. Even without a map, they could estimate that Metatlin City was no more than three hundred miles away.
Once they broke through this impregnable pass, that heretic city would be in the bag.
In the eyes of the Church's army, Duanren Pass was Metatlin City's last line of defense. This impregnable pass was thirty meters tall, and there were many towers. Behind the city walls, there were also large crossbows hidden. The vanguard tried to release a few flying Magical Beasts to observe, but they were immediately shot down.
The soldiers on the city walls wore bright armor. They were definitely not a motley crew. A newly built city that could expand to this extent couldn't have many hidden forces. If the enemy was strong enough, why would they burn down small towns?
What they didn't know was that Salin wanted the enemy to think so. His army was not used to mutually destroy the enemy. In a field battle in the northern wilderness, Salin's soldiers were definitely no match.
After all, Salin had only established six battalions, which was already his limit. One of the battalions had even been taken away by Rex. Out of the five battalions under Salin's command, the sixth battalion had come into contact with the expeditionary army several times and suffered heavy casualties every time. Only by relying on the speed of the skeleton warhorses and the cautiousness of the flag leaders did they manage to preserve their vitality.
The thirty thousand soldiers that the nobles had recruited were all in West Town. Those soldiers were inferior to Salin's five battalions, and could only be used to defend the city with the battalion that Rex had left behind.
The narrowest part of the mountain pass where the Duanren Mountain Pass was located was more than a mile wide. It was too narrow for a hundred thousand soldiers. The vanguard tried a few times and found that he couldn't fly above, so he gave up on the idea of using the flying puppets to attack.
When the army arrived, they did not immediately attack the city. Instead, they rested for a day, and only launched their first real attack at noon the next day.
There were three gates at the front of the Duanren Mountain Pass. The two smaller gates on the sides were less than four meters wide, while the main gate at the front was twelve meters wide. Qin Yin's carriage was 2.8 meters wide, and a skilled coachman could carry four carriages side by side at this kind of gate.
The Tanggulas army first tried to attack with the catapults, but the people inside the Duanren Mountain Pass quickly counterattacked. The quality of the catapults on both sides was similar, and the Duanren Mountain Pass had a slight advantage in height. After fighting for a few hours, the catapults on both sides were almost completely destroyed.
There was no other way. The terrain inside the Duanren Mountain Pass was not spacious enough, so it was useless to prepare too many catapults. In the future, when they rebuilt the pass, they could naturally open up underground warehouses and install real magic catapults. Right now, they could only compete with the enemy in terms of attrition. Fortunately, a few magicians were vigilant. Stone shells flew everywhere, and not many people actually died.
The immovable catapults destroyed each other, and the situation actually relaxed. The people of the Duanren Mountain Pass had no other choice. They had fewer catapults, and could only try their best to destroy the enemy's catapults. Otherwise, when the enemy attacked the city, with the suppression of the catapults, their own archers would suffer great losses.
There were twenty-four hours in a day, and at sixteen in the afternoon, both sides no longer had the ability to use the catapults to launch a suppressive attack. The siege towers of the Church began to approach, and the archers on the siege towers also began to fire arrows at the top of the Duanren Mountain Pass.
The city walls were built in the style of Qin Yin. Large cities had bronze arrow towers that could defend against magic and Divine Spell attacks. The arrow towers of smaller cities also had high quality stones, or even wood reinforced with magic. Salin did not lack stone. He had used white stone to build dozens of arrow towers of various sizes in this Duanren Mountain Pass.
These arrow towers were not damaged by the attacks of the catapults. There were holes for arrows on the arrow towers, and the Tanggulas soldiers on the siege towers could exchange fire. The arrow towers were filled with large crossbows, and with the help of alchemy machinery, two people could operate one.
There were many types of large crossbows, and one of them was a scattershot crossbow that could scatter more than two hundred arrows at the same time. In such a large-scale battle, the accuracy of the crossbows was no longer enough. The distance was too far, and what was needed was range and lethality. Not everyone was at the level of a mid-level swordsman. If they wanted the crossbows to be accurate, they had to train hard.
So in every arrow tower, there was a swordsman operating a small alchemy crossbow, ready to deal with the stronger warriors of the enemy at any time. The other people relied on the scattershot crossbows to suppress the enemy.
The Tanggulas army sent out two wings of heavy cavalry to hold the line on both sides, and then pushed out carriages from the front. The soldiers hid under the carriages, and approached the city walls. Inside the crenelations, there were also soldiers using bows and arrows to shoot. These soldiers hiding under the carriages carefully approached. The arrows hit the carriages, but could not penetrate.
Behind the small gates on both sides of the Duanren Mountain Pass, the hidden cavalry did not mount their horses. The enemy's heavy cavalry cautiously pressed the two wings. Once the cavalry in the Duanren Mountain Pass went out to attack the infantry, the heavy cavalry on the two wings would press in.
The core of the attack on Metatlin City this time was a regular army of the Tanggulas Empire. In terms of combat methods, they might be a little old-fashioned, but there were few loopholes. First, they used the catapults to trigger a counterattack from within the city, then confirmed the location and destroyed each other. Only then did they send out the siege towers to suppress the arrow towers on the city walls, allowing the infantry below the city to approach the city walls.
The two wings used heavy cavalry to hold the line, ensuring that the soldiers inside the city could not attack by force. This series of actions was no different from what was written in military books, and could be said to be abnormally ordinary. The strong point was that most of these soldiers were temporarily recruited. After a short period of training, they could link all the links very closely, and no loopholes could be found.
Salin's cautiousness allowed him to avoid a disaster. If he mobilized the entire army and clashed with the army of the Vatican, the result would definitely be worse than he thought.
Under the protection of the carriages, a few hundred soldiers came to the edge of the city walls. They jumped out one after another, picked up the shovels in their hands, and wanted to dig under the city walls.
Clang!
Sparks flew. Although these strong soldiers had never practiced swordsmanship, their strength was no different from a beginner swordsman. The steel shovel dug down forcefully, but it dug up a rock. The hardness of the rock immediately caused the steel shovel to curl up.
"We can't dig it!"
A soldier shouted.
"Stop digging, just pour the acid!" an officer among the soldiers ordered.
The soldiers all took off the water sacks at their waists, which were filled with acid made with divine arts.
Hiss …
White smoke rose. The foundation of Duanren Pass's city walls was made of white stones dug out from Metatlin City. The acid was poured on it, but it only corroded a layer as thick as a fingernail. Dozens of soldiers tried to approach the city gates. The city gates were made of wood, and no matter how thick they were, holes could be corroded by the acid.
However, when they reached the front of the city gates, a large platform protruded from the city walls, revealing a metal hole. Hot kerosene was poured down, and then a volley of fire arrows was fired.
The kerosene burned in front of the city gates, and the officer supervising the battle from behind frowned. The enemy had set fire to the city gates. Obviously, the wooden city gates were not afraid of fire. Otherwise, such an attack would certainly cause the enemy to die, but their own city gates would be opened.
Sure enough, the kerosene burned fiercely, burning to both sides, and instantly burning more than a hundred Tanggulas soldiers to death. Some of the soldiers' hands and feet were burned, and they could not fight anymore. Moreover, it was impossible for them to escape. At the same time, those carriages were also burned.
This was still a probing attack. Hundreds of people died under the city walls, and not a single one could return. This was not a small loss. The officer on top of the city walls was overjoyed when he heard this news. Unexpectedly, an explosion suddenly came from below the city walls. It was the injured soldiers taking out divine talismans one by one, launching a suicidal attack.
The blood essence of hundreds of soldiers was injected, and so many divine talismans exploded at the same time. This was equivalent to a mid-level magic attack. If such an explosion happened in a battle formation, the hundreds of people nearby would be affected. If it was a dense battle formation, perhaps thousands would die.
These hundreds of soldiers were smashed to pieces, and their flesh and blood were all stuck to the city walls. The soldiers on top of the city walls were frightened. Fortunately, the foundation several meters below the city walls were made of white stone. Otherwise, a large hole would have been corroded, and with such an explosion, cracks would almost appear.
Although the white stone produced in Metatlin City could not be enchanted, it was harder than steel. Salin had to use the level-four spell Water Cutting to slowly cut it before he could collect it. This kind of violent attack, on the other hand, was extremely ineffective against the white stone.
Hundreds of people died, and only a large piece of stone fell from the foundation of the city walls. The 30-meter-tall city walls had a thickness of 12 meters, and now it was only as thick as a finger. To use this method to blow up the city walls, it would probably take more than 100,000 soldiers.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
