Chapter 78: Blowing Up Something Big

Chapter 78: Blow It Up Big

Cannons roared, hollow shells stuffed with gunpowder raining down incessantly.

Explosions erupted one after another, smoke shrouding the island where Huangshi City stood.

Chen Jian lay prone behind cover, eyes fixed on the drone's shifting aerial feed, wanting to act yet powerless.

There was no way—our long-range firepower delivery was too weak!

The farthest-reaching weapon we had was a few mortars, but their maximum range was only 3.5 kilometers.

Moreover, we had only twenty-four shells left; we could not afford to waste them indiscriminately, they had to be spent where it mattered most.

Conversely, the enemy's logistical support was formidable.

Relying on the Yangtze waterway and steam-powered vessels, they could easily communicate with several nearby large towns, even hauling artillery and ammunition all the way from Jinling across a thousand li.

Their task was simple: use artillery fire to continuously suppress everyone inside Huangshi City, then slowly advance, sealing off the periphery.

The longer they dragged it out, the stronger their reinforcements became.

When the moment ripened, they could surge forward in one breath, under the cover of massed firearms and heat weapons, launch a large-scale assault into Huangshi City, and rely on the close-combat advantage of the Holy Blooded to trade lives with the city's defenders.

Most importantly, they would not lose by fighting this way.

For them, the third-tier monster lurking in the Han River ruins was originally hard to deal with, but Chen Jian's group could handle it much more easily.

As long as they took Huangshi City, they could enter the Han River ruins without fear, scavenge, and reap the reward.

Not only was it a mantis stalks cicada, oriole waits behind scenario, they also pulled a Tian Ji's horse race maneuver.

This was an invincible tactic; from any angle, the ability to coordinate medieval weapons so effectively and make such a swift decision marked the opposition as true masters.

Steady, agile, playing to strengths and avoiding weaknesses.

They knew that in visual range they could not overcome the so-called 'mimetic heretics' who possessed information superiority and firepower supremacy, so they simply hid their faces, staying four kilometers away and bombarding with large-bore smoothbore cannons.

Chen Jian could not recall the last time he had fought a battle like this.

Accustomed to crushing enemies with equipment, only when the enemy turned the tables did he realize how stifling it felt.

You couldn't strike back!

It was more suffocating than being blinded by a ground‑burst electromagnetic pulse bomb from Man Guangzhi, because back then at least we still had usable forces, whereas now…

If we rashly sent these greenhorns, fresh to the battlefield, charging out, we would merely be delivering provisions to the Machine God Sect!

Difficult!

Under the intermittent falling shells, Chen Jian shuttled back and forth, steadying the emotions of the combatants inside Huangshi City.

But visibly, under the soul‑shaking barrage, their will had begun to waver.

Cannon and gun are not the same; that marrow‑deep fear makes every person instinctively want to flee.

“Hold on!”

“Don’t worry, they can’t hit you!”

“Stay in cover! Don’t run around!”

Chen Jian kept shouting to boost morale, while He Shuo, operating the drone from the high point to observe and seek an opportunity, reported over the radio:

“I can’t find any opening!”

“Their tactics are very steady!”

“We must take the initiative to advance and seek a chance; let me lead a team to give it a try!”

“Give me ten city defense troops; at least knock out their gun emplacements first!”

“It’s pointless!”

Chen Jian firmly refused:

“A front‑loading smoothbore cannon with a range over four kilometers is at least comparable to a Qing dynasty great general’s cannon.”

“Unless you score a direct hit with a recoilless rifle, there’s no way to destroy it outright.”

“The enemy aren’t idiots; inside close range they still have Holy Blooded scouts active, so you’d have no shot.”

“What then? Let them encircle us to death?”

He Shuo’s voice was urgent; Chen Jian brushed dust from his helmet kicked up by a shell, fell silent for a moment, then gritted his teeth and said:

“Let’s go big.”

“Have Li Shi bring out the lead box.”

“Are we going to blow it up?!”

He Shuo stared, astonished, and asked urgently:

“Are you sure? If the blast radius of this tactical nuclear warhead is too large, we’ll suffer too!”

“Besides, delivery is a problem; we have no long‑range means—do we have to rush up and detonate it by hand?”

“No need.”

Chen Jian shook his head:

“We’ll go around the encirclement, carry the warhead to the Huangzhou ruins, then float it downstream.”

“We’ll remove two IFF long‑wave triangulation modules to mark the position, then trigger detonation via radio.”

“Conventional tactics are useless here; no matter how we fight, we will inevitably suffer heavy losses.” “What’s the point of holding onto Huangshi City then? We might as well not have come at all.”

“You have to trust that finding this thing was meant for a purpose; it’s meant to be used here!”

“I don’t believe they’d dare keep advancing after a nuclear blast!”

“Understood. Li Shi! Fetch the lead box!”

At the command, Li Shi sprang out of cover.

At that moment, the Machine God Sect’s artillery fire paused briefly; after the last shell landed, several lithe figures darted out of the treeline on the far shore of the lake, seemingly intending to exploit a gap in Huangshi City’s defenses and rush across the water into the city.

——

But in the coordination of infantry and artillery, they were still too green.

He Shuo, who had never let his guard down, finally found a firing opportunity; the 201 gun opened full throttle, bullets flying, pointing the way for everyone else.

Next, the 301 heavy machine gun and Shen Yue’s 22‑calibre high‑mount opened fire simultaneously; large‑caliber rounds swept across, snapping countless slender trunks, and at the same instant felling a Holy Blooded who couldn’t dodge in time.

The enemy’s close‑range assault collapsed for a moment, gunfire ceased, and Li Shi, dragging his wounded leg, limped over with the lead box to Chen Jian.

Without hesitation, Chen Jian pried open the lead box.

The environmental monitoring system immediately sounded an alarm; radiation levels spiked into the red zone.

But fortunately, the CPM reading was only around three hundred.

That meant the nuclear warhead’s preservation was actually quite good.

Even the relatively smooth casing of the warhead bore testament to that.

Upon seeing the inner inscription, Chen Jian breathed a sigh of relief.

“A 2,000‑to‑20,000‑ton adjustable nuclear warhead, similar in design to the B2112, but with a more powerful atomic trigger.”

“Fortunately it isn’t a true tactical nuclear weapon; if it were really a neutron bomb, that would be pointless.”

“They haven’t replaced the tritium in centuries, so there’s no chance it would detonate properly.”

“So what do we do now—detonate just the atomic trigger, or go for maximum yield?”

Upon hearing Chen Jian’s words, Lei Jie, who had rushed to the side, immediately said:

“We must detonate the whole warhead.”

“After hundreds of years, if it hasn’t been kept in cold storage, the fuel enrichment should have dropped to a very low level.”

“Under normal conditions, a twenty‑kiloton atomic warhead’s lethal radius would be about two kilometers, but if the enrichment has fallen, a one‑kilometer radius would be a blessing.”

“Just blow it up—no need to overthink!”

“The fuel enrichment has dropped?”

Chen Jian frowned and asked:

“Could it turn into a high‑yield dirty bomb?”

“Not very likely.”

Lei Jie replied:

“Even though the enrichment has dropped, if the atomic trigger is strong enough we can still vaporize everything.”

“Besides, we have no other choice.”

“The situation is now clear.”

“They can’t kill the monsters, but they can kill us.”

“If we don’t throw this punch, the foothold of Huangshi City won’t hold; even if we later wipe out the monsters, we’ll only become their tools.”

“Captain, you’re right—let’s blow it up!”

“Then let’s do it!”

Chen Jian gave a hard nod and then ordered:

“Rest for an hour, cease fire all around, and pull them in close!”

“In exactly one hour we’ll launch a counter‑attack to give Lei Jie a chance to break out.”

“Lei Jie, take Zeng Yi and Xie Liu, break out to the Huangzhou ruins, and get the warhead in place.”

“You work out the exact detonation method, but make sure the warhead explodes after it surfaces.”

“We have to show them what a real big blast looks like!”

(End of chapter)