“Xu-san, whose army is this?! How do they have so many matchlocks?! What kind of tactic is this?! Are we close to your capital? Did your emperor send his imperial guards?!”
Matsuura Shigenobu’s eyes were bloodshot as he watched his pirates being slaughtered. He even suspected the Ming emperor’s elite had arrived.
“The Ming emperor is thousands of li away!” Ryūzōji Takanobu stared at Xu Hai in stunned disbelief.
“This is not the emperor’s guards. This is the Zhejiang Army, the troops under Zhu Ping’an, the Governor of Zhejiang!”
The moment Xu Hai spoke the names Zhejiang Army and Zhu Ping’an, his teeth ground together in hatred. If Zhu Ping’an stood before him now, he would tear him apart and eat him alive.
“So this is the Zhejiang Army that has thwarted you time and again!” Both Ryūzōji Takanobu and Matsuura Shigenobu had heard of Xu Hai’s bitter feud with them. When they first heard the stories, they thought Xu Hai had simply capsized in a ditch. Now, having seen the Zhejiang Army, they realised it was not Xu Hai who was weak. The Zhejiang Army was simply monstrous!
So many matchlocks, one in every man’s hands. No, some soldiers even carried two!
The silver required for all those matchlocks alone would be astronomical!
And their armour. Every single soldier was fully armoured from head to toe, the quality visibly superior even to the ancestral treasured armour of their own daimyo!
Moreover, that armour’s protection was outrageous!
The pirates also had matchlocks. Earlier, some had fired at the Zhejiang troops.
The Zhejiang line was so densely packed that a pirate could hit them blindfolded!
Yet what happened next left Ryūzōji and Matsuura utterly stunned. Pirate shots struck the Zhejiang soldiers square in the chest, and the soldiers merely staggered slightly, grimaced in pain, and kept marching forward.
The Zhejiang armour had stopped the musket balls!
Damn it!
Why could their armour stop matchlock fire while ours could not?!
When their shots hit our armour, we die along with the armour shattered. When our shots hit them, they just sway a little?!
Is it that their matchlocks are more powerful, their armour far stronger, or both?!
The more Ryūzōji Takanobu and Matsuura Shigenobu watched, the colder their scalps grew.
“In a head-on fight, the Zhejiang matchlocks are too deadly. We must charge without fear of death and close in for hand-to-hand combat to turn the tide! I will lead my personal guard to break through!” Matsuura Shigenobu gripped his katana and stood.
“A frontal charge will cause too many casualties. If the men falter, they will never reach the Zhejiang line!” Ryūzōji Takanobu shook his head.
“Then what should we do?!” Matsuura Shigenobu was frantic. The perfect situation was being ruined by the Zhejiang Army, and rage boiled inside him!
The great city was already in their grasp. The mountains of gold and silver inside, the endless grain, the women. Everything was supposed to be theirs, yet this cursed Zhejiang Army had ruined it!
Unwilling! Furious! Beyond rage!
“I will twist the enemy commander’s head off and turn his skull into a sake cup for my family shrine!”
Matsuura Shigenobu clenched his katana.
“The enemy formation is like a long serpent. To break it is simple. Strike the vital spot seven cun from the head and sever it in one cut! The army will die!”
Ryūzōji Takanobu’s eyes gleamed like a hawk’s as he studied the narrow, snake-like Zhejiang formation and pointed his katana at its vital point.
“I will cut off its vital spot!” Matsuura Shigenobu roared with killing intent, drawing his blade. “Their firearms are deadly, but reloading takes time. Their tactic may seem to produce continuous fire, yet after each wave there are several breaths of pause, and after four volleys a longer gap! If we charge without fear, even losing a hundred or two hundred men, we can reach their line. Once we reach it, the enemy is finished!”
“No!” Xu Hai grabbed Matsuura’s arm and shook his head.
“What is it, Xu-san?! Do you think I cannot do it?!” Matsuura glared, displeased.
“I thought the same before. I led charges against the Zhejiang firearm formation multiple times and failed every time!” Xu Hai shook his head and pointed at the pirates who had already halted in terror. “Not everyone can face firearms without flinching. Look at them. They are already broken by the Zhejiang volleys.”
“Forgive my bluntness, but if Xu-san could not do it, that does not mean I, Matsuura Shigenobu, cannot! My six hundred personal guards fear no death! I will lead them to shatter the formation. Once I break through, Xu-san, bring the army to follow up and slaughter them!”
Matsuura Shigenobu was arrogant and brimming with confidence. With his blade and his men, he believed he could smash the Zhejiang line.
“The enemy numbers only a little over three thousand. Concentrate elite troops to break through, then follow with the main army. It is not difficult!”
Ryūzōji Takanobu agreed.
“General Matsuura, General Ryūzōji, the Zhejiang commander Zhu Ping’an is the most treacherous and cunning man alive. His Zhejiang Army is not just three thousand strong!”
Xu Hai warned them.
“Not three thousand?! Then how many does he have?!” both Japanese generals asked.
“He has over ten thousand Zhejiang troops! According to intelligence, ten days ago Zhu Ping’an arrived in Jiaxing with six thousand men! Right now only three thousand stand before us. Where are the other three thousand?!”
Xu Hai glanced around nervously, feeling that at least another three thousand Zhejiang troops were lurking somewhere like venomous snakes, waiting to strike.
“Xu-san! Enough worrying! Whether three thousand or six thousand, the enemy is charging our centre! If we do not break them now, it will be too late!”
Matsuura pointed his katana at the advancing Zhejiang formation that never paused.
“You Ming people have a saying: to catch bandits, first catch the king! The Zhejiang Army is coming straight for us!” Ryūzōji Takanobu saw their intent clearly.
“Xu-san, if we do not charge now, it will be too late! We may have taken Songjiang’s gates, but the walls are still held by Ming troops. If the enemy forces us beneath the walls, we will be attacked from above and below. We will be finished!” Matsuura urged, pointing at the wave-like Zhejiang advance.
“Fine!”
Xu Hai closed his eyes for several seconds, then opened them, resolve hardened. After decades on the battlefield, he never lacked decisiveness in killing.
“Good! That is the Xu-san I know! I will take my six hundred guards and strike its vital point!” Matsuura raised his katana.
Xu Hai bared his teeth in a grim smile. “Against the Zhejiang Army, striking only the vital point is not enough! After many defeats, I finally discovered the truth. To charge their serpent formation head-on requires piling corpses high enough to reach them. Only the utterly fearless can do it! Yet men are not grass and trees. They fear death by nature. It is too hard to make ordinary soldiers charge without flinching. After long thought, I devised a method to break them: multi-directional assault! If the Zhejiang Army wants to use their long serpent to concentrate fire, we must deny them that. Attack from front, rear, left, right. Multiple breakthrough points! Force them unable to maintain the serpent formation, unable to concentrate their firearms. Then we can surely destroy them!”
