Munitions Empire-Chapter 996 - : 918 Fengjiang refugees

As the frontline moved to the west side of Fengjiang, right on their doorstep, there was one person who was truly despondent. It was not Zhao Yu, but Zhao Zheng.

This Air Force Commander-in-Chief of Fengjiang from the Great Tang Empire, had once boasted in front of Zhao Yu, guaranteeing that not a single enemy plane could fly over Fengjiang.

But now, his airfield was less than 50 kilometers away from the front line, which drastically reduced the response time of Fengjiang’s Air Force to virtually zero.

Even to protect the Fengjiang airfield, Luo Xiao had allocated almost all of the Anti-Aircraft Guns available near Fengjiang to Zhao Zheng, leaving the city itself almost as unprotected as if it were streaking naked.

So, if the Dahua Empire’s planes were to attack Fengjiang, they could easily succeed: even with the early warning provided by the Great Tang Empire’s radar on the opposite shore, Fengjiang’s Air Force was still not fast enough.

To conceal these vulnerabilities, Zhao Zheng had no choice but to have the Air Force of Fengjiang take the offensive approach, suppressing the Dahua military planes to ensure the relative safety of Fengjiang City.

No matter what, his tactics had achieved some success recently. At least, the Dahua Empire’s Air Force hadn’t attacked Fengjiang in recent days; everything in Fengjiang remained unchanged.

Unfortunately, many people still knew the truth: about 20 kilometers outside their city had already become the frontline of intense fighting.

If the Dahua troops advanced another 5 kilometers or so, their large-caliber artillery would almost be able to hit inside Fengjiang City.

Just when Zhao Zheng thought he could keep deceiving them, the Dahua Empire’s bomber units took the risk of closing in on Fengjiang City.

At that time, there were only two Fighter Jets from the Fengjiang defense forces in the sky, nowhere near enough to intercept the Dahua Empire’s bombers.

Despite the emergency takeoff of the Fighter Jets deployed at the airfield, the bombers from the Dahua Empire still managed to drop around 3 tons of bombs on the city.

This scared the civilians of Fengjiang terribly, many of whom had experienced the war between Dahua and Tang over Fengjiang, and could say the memory of the bombing was still fresh.

Now these nearly forgotten images had reappeared before their eyes, suddenly awakening their deep-seated fears.

Although the Dahua Empire’s bombers were outdated and performed poorly, they were still able to induce a certain degree of panic among the civilians.

These planes did not bomb power plants, nor water plants, neither did they bomb train stations nor any other important key facilities.

They didn’t have the courage to fly to the airfield to provoke the powerful Butcher Fighters, so they just hastily dropped bombs on the edge of the city and quickly fled back to their controlled area.

By the time the Butcher Fighters arrived, these bombers had vanished without a trace. Frustrated, the mercenary Elf pilots could only watch the smoke-rise from the city below as they returned to base.

This bombing didn’t bring a devastating blow to Fengjiang City; in fact, given the quality of the Dahua Empire’s bombers, destroying Fengjiang would probably require thousands of sorties.

But this bombing was no trivial matter; since the outbreak of the civil war in Fengjiang, this was the first time that the enemy had attacked the Fengjiang urban area, and its impact on Fengjiang was incalculable.

Soon, a wave of exodus swept through Fengjiang, except the civilians wanted to head east instead of south.

Countless cars were jammed on the Fengjiang Bridge, and although the Great Tang strictly controlled border crossing, they had to allow 2,000 people from Fengjiang to pass every day.

Most of these refugees from Fengjiang were wealthy—they had their own cars, many had temporary passes, and everywhere there were shouts and calls, with many even taking the risk to swim across Fengjiang River to seek asylum in the Great Tang Empire.

“I’ll say it one more time! Passage is forbidden here! Don’t make things difficult for us!” The Great Tang Empire soldier, standing by the checkpoint at the end of the bridge, returned an introduction letter to the man and explained with righteous indignation.

“I am well acquainted with Sir Lu Ming…” That merchant from the Dahua Empire, holding his daughter and his wife, ignoring the curses from the people behind, was still desperately pleading, “If it really can’t be helped, at least let my daughter and wife go through!”

As he spoke, he even pulled out a gold bar from his pocket, trying to discreetly hand it to the young man with a Type 56 assault rifle.

“If you do that again, I will have to be unpleasant!” The soldier from the Great Tang Empire quickly stepped back, his face already filled with impatience.

Where would he dare to casually accept such a large sum of money? If the squad leader found out, he’d probably be sent back to his hometown to serve a sentence the next day.

Dammit, who knows how much effort he had put in to become a soldier: In the Great Tang Empire, being a soldier was an honorable affair, walking on the street was even more glamorous than being a celebrity.

“I said, if you don’t have a pass then get out of the way! Don’t hold up the lineup!” The people behind the merchant were already very dissatisfied, shouting loudly.

The merchant reluctantly pulled his family aside to make way. The people behind him immediately moved forward, dragging their families along, and presented a small notebook.

The soldier took the booklet and inspected it carefully; the paper used was indeed special, such “banknote paper” could probably only be produced by the Great Tang Empire. He returned the documents to the other party and then stepped aside.

In the midst of envious glances, the family, along with their car, were allowed to pass and on the other end of the bridge, existed a peaceful world.

And right after crossing the bridge, the Dahua man immediately became respectful towards the friend who provided him with the documents: It seems that Pan Yiping really is capable, being able to obtain such a useful document.

At the head of the bridge, it was still crowded with people, still some pleaded desperately: “Please, just let us through!”

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Beneath the crowded feet of these people, a train full of Dwarf soldiers whooshed by, crowded carriages were entirely filled with Dwarf soldiers, squeezed together like livestock, struggling to breathe in the cramped space.

To transport more soldiers to Fengjiang at once, the train efficiency of the Great Tang Empire was brought up to the highest level.

As long as no one died, the rest of the arrangements were at their discretion. Under such requirements, all loading used “space magic.”

Carriages supposed to carry 100 people were demanded to carry 200, and after filling with people, they crammed in luggage to stuff the space. Soldiers in the innermost parts, in order to access the toilet once, had to exert considerable effort.

The freed-up transport capacity was filled with a variety of materials: imported 150 cannons from other countries, also 105 cannons, and 50 mm long-barreled anti-tank guns urgently produced by the Great Tang Empire.

Of course, there were innumerable bullets as well as hand grenades, artillery shells, and flares: hundreds of thousands of Shireck Model 1 rifles.

Speaking of which, since they were cheaper and didn’t carry significant Great Tang lineage, the Shireck Model 1 rifles are now a veritable star in the arms market: They sell well and have become standard equipment for many countries, with production astonishingly large.

These rifles have already reached a cumulative production of 20 million, far surpassing the Mauser 98K Rifles previously used by the Great Tang Empire, to become the highest-produced bolt-action rifle in the world.

Ranked second isn’t the Mauser 98K Rifle but the Mosin-Nagant Rifle produced by the Ice Cold Empire, and coming third is the Mauser 98K Rifle that the Great Tang Empire had already phased out.

Trains crammed with weapons and munitions, as well as all sorts of materials, charged into Fengjiang City and then headed all the way to the Fengjiang train station for unloading.

The surroundings of the train station were already chock-full of various materials, with numerous Fengjiang Soldiers building fortifications and placing the newly arrived anti-aircraft guns in position.

This train station might be Fengjiang’s most critical supply base, thus it cannot be lost. The Great Tang Empire directly aided Fengjiang with 40 searchlights for night-time anti-air operations, 20 of which were deployed here.

Underneath the Fengjiang Bridge, seemingly calm waters often saw people crossing by boat or simply swimming across illegally.

At one spot on the bankside, a man who had tied all his belongings into a sheepskin float, was wringing his clothes.

Next to him stood Soldiers of the Great Tang patrol Troops who had just caught him. Under the man’s desperate gaze, the soldiers were inspecting all his possessions with a smile that was not quite a smile.

People like him would soon be sent back: All cross-border personnel must be recognized by the Great Tang Empire as “good citizens,” the Great Tang Empire was past the stage where just anyone was welcomed.

The minimum requirement was also to see if these people fleeing disasters had contraband or whether they were spies infiltrated by the enemy, right?

Under the bridge behind them, on the river surface, a Great Tang Empire patrol boat slowly sailed by. These small boats could actually speed up quite fast and were also equipped with a large caliber machine gun, with quite formidable firepower.

In fact, on the banks of the Great Tang’s side of the river, there are two 350 mm caliber huge gun turrets – it is because the Great Tang Empire had installed these two giant turrets here, that the Dahua Empire had installed so many river defense turrets to counter them on the opposite side of Fengjiang.

Looking back at it now, this kind of confrontation seems laughable from any angle. Because if these turrets were truly useful, the Great Tang side should have installed even more.

In actual fact, the situation was this: the Great Tang Empire had overproduced two turrets for the Dongwan-class Battleships, which are now either retired or used as training ships, so there was nowhere to put these two turrets, and putting them to waste they were left here in Fengjiang as “scenery.”

The result tricked the Dahua Empire into spending a lot of money to purchase some cannons from Shireck, leading to an arms race across the river…