As the sound of the horn slowly faded into the heavens and the earth, as the commander of the Kandy Campaign, Xu Jiao and the other two regiment commanders lined up in a row to turn their horses' heads and face their own army.

The guards handed the regimental flag to Xu Jiao, who waved it heavily to the east.

Immediately, the battalion arranged in the easternmost part waved its own flag when it saw it, and its battalion commander shouted: "The second battalion of the first regiment of the fourth division, all of them!" ”

"Wan Sheng!"

"Wan Sheng!"

"Wan Sheng!"

More than five hundred soldiers roared at the same time, and the loud roar could still make Xu Jiao feel the vitality and morale of his subordinates even from a few hundred meters away.

Waving the flag again, another battalion responded to the commander's banner with a loud roar that resounded through the sky.

Thirteen times like this, after thirty-nine "ten thousand victories", Xu Jiao turned his horse's head, faced the Temple of the Tooth Relic again, and shouted,

"Start attacking!"

After receiving the order to attack, the gunners, who were already gearing up, immediately inserted their red-hot iron drills into the fire doors of the siege guns. In an instant, their most trusted old fellow let out an unparalleled roar, and the muzzle of a hundred-millimeter caliber spewed out smoke like the clouds of the Nine Heavens after a flash of flickering fire.

Just like a pale dragon suddenly flashed in front of the military town, dozens of heavy iron balls traveled through a space of more than two hundred meters at a speed barely visible to the naked eye. At a distance that was a little close to them, the cannons of the thick walls designed to combat classical militarism had broken through somewhat devastatingly, and the temporary façade outside the Temple of the Tooth Relic had taken a few days to build.

Squinting at the smoke and dust rising from the outside of the Temple of the Tooth Relic, Xu Jiao felt that it might be a waste to bombard it with heavy artillery, and the cost of the thin layer of rammed earth wall was estimated to be less than the gunpowder money needed to knock it down.

After hesitating for a few seconds, the lieutenant colonel decided to waste a little, not to let the lads fall before the dawn of victory in order to save a little money: "Change the grape bombs, wait for the smoke to clear and play another round!" ”

When the gunners heard the order from the heralds, they had to stop what they were doing and help their comrades unload grapeshotfire, which had never been used in battle, from the wagons.

In the dust, the enemy, who was ravaged and almost unable to fight back, still stubbornly made the last effort.

Even if it is a trapped beast, the fearlessness of the brave is still moving, even if it is the ferocious Australian and Song invaders.

It was a burst of singing, a loud singing.

On this battlefield flickering with the flames of gunpowder and the cold light of bayonets, Xu Jiao suddenly heard this loud singing, which made him fall into a trance for a moment.

The thousands of people present heard the singing. The difference is that the Australian and Song soldiers have their ears catching the music from the Temple of the Tooth Relic, but their movements have not stopped at all, and they are still efficiently changing the ammunition for the cannon.

The Sri Lankan soldiers, who were farther away from the source of the sound, made some slight commotion, and a few of them retreated in some fear, and were immediately driven back into the ranks by the gendarmes wielding leather whips.

"Mr. Mu, what song is this?" Xu Jiao listened for a while, and found that he really couldn't understand the meaning of the lyrics with his clumsy Sri Lankan language, so he turned sideways and asked the Sri Lankan who had just come to him on horseback.

Midani Toh Mustafa listened attentively for a while, and respectfully replied to the low-ranking nobleman next to him, who only had the title of knight: "Your Excellency, Commander, this is a traditional war song in our country, and according to custom, only members of the royal family can play it. ”

"For the past few hundred years, the royal family has used the song as a means of showing that they have divine blood. They say that when the music sounds, their god-like ancestors will bestow upon them supernatural powers..."

"Well, okay, thank you." Xu Jiao interrupted Mustafa's introduction with a wave of his hand. He really had no interest in spending a lot of energy listening to the myth of a royal family that would not survive today's before victory.

Mustafa immediately stopped what was in his mouth, bowed his head slightly in obedience, and stepped back without a trace, keeping a gap of half his body with Xu Jiao.

Soon, the singing reached a climax, and the chorus of an unknown number of people suddenly became high-pitched.

As the music reached the peak of its momentum, an army appeared in the dust that slowly cleared. They were dressed in silver-white full-body plate armor, holding swords in both hands, and wearing brightly colored cloaks behind their backs.

Under the illumination of the sun, the dust scattered in the sky appeared a Tyndall effect, and the pillars of light hit the soldiers' armor one by one, diffusing a dazzling halo.

Xu Jiao whistled a little distractedly. Men are always interested in everything with an iron-blooded aura, let alone the group of armored warriors a few hundred meters away. But the head of the regiment immediately realized that this frivolous behavior was a devastating blow to his usual iron-faced and ruthless image. He regained his seriousness at an astonishing rate, and the speed with which he changed his face was that Mustafa was secretly stunned.

"What is this?" Xu Jiao asked. Twelve hours ago, the attackers and defenders were engaged in street battles to the standards of the times with arquebuses and small-caliber smoothbore guns, but now suddenly a dismounted knight who seemed to have broken in from the European Middle Ages?

Mustafa said with some uncertainty: "It should be the Praetorian Guard of the royal family... I'm sorry, Mr. Lieutenant Colonel, I can't be sure, they didn't wear this before. ”

Xu Jiao became a little interested, and began to speculate in his heart about what kind of combat power this cold weapon army shrouded in a mysterious aura had, and it would be sent out by the king at the last moment.

"Could it be that he is a top master who has been training secretly since childhood? Sent out to carry out a decapitation operation on me? Xu Jiao touched his chin and thought with some uncertainty, "But they... How do they wear Ao Song clothes? ”

Well, Lieutenant Colonel Xu's good eyesight made him recognize the plate armor worn by the armored warriors, which was the military full-body armor that was completely discontinued by our Great Song Dynasty twenty years ago and sold to the people for collection.

"I also have a set of these things at home, can I still fight with it? Still fighting? The other regiment commander also recognized the opponent's equipment and asked a little strangely.

Xu Jiao waved his hand: "Can you fight, try it to know." ”

"Let the artillery be ready, the target is a hundred meters closer, come with a salvo, and then our musketeers will go up."

As a half-body armor developed by die-hard designers to compete with Europeans of the same period, the 1588-style military plate armor has always been regarded as the biggest failure of the cavalry bureau of the Great Song Military Technology Co., Ltd. Weighing up to 20 kilograms (the terrifying 26 kilograms with the matching leg armor) and having a rather poor man-machine effect, the armor that was popular in the classical military era was once called "unbreakable iron coffin" by the cavalry. The design indicators, which were too far from the actual needs, made it completely useless for cavalry against the natives of the South Sea Islands, and more than 3 mm of steel had the same properties in front of a bow and arrow as a 1 mm of insert - it could not be shot through anyway.

"So why don't we choose a plug-in board?" - the cavalry asked.

So the bureaucrats who were already in charge of the department slapped their heads and shook the shit in their skulls a little to produce thousands of sets of steel armor, which were arranged by the armament department with evil intentions to the infantry - it was a complete disaster caused by the layman bureaucrats! Annoyed by the soldiers who suffered from a large number of muscle strains and soft tissue injuries after being put on armor, the generals almost burst into the gates of the armament department with pistols and shot all the bureaucrats who did not need IQ work.

Well, so in order to avoid being cleared by the angry army roadmen, the equipment department waved its hand and discounted the produced armor, and loaded it on a ship to sell it to the west.

"Don't tell me, this thing works pretty well." Xu Jiao looked at the blood gas sprayed in the air in the distance, and said with some admiration.

The Type 1588 is indeed of decent quality and lives up to its terrible weight.

At a distance of 100 meters, grapeshot, fired by heavy artillery, did not show its former power in field combat. The volley of twenty cannons accelerated nearly 3,000 small shells to the point of breaking through the sound barrier, and the rain of bullets enveloped the Sri Lankan armored warriors who were struggling to advance in small steps.

Brilliant sparks flashed in the rain of bullets, and the crisp sound of "crackling" was continuous, as if hundreds of craftsmen were patiently beating the red-hot steel.

The 3 mm thick steel armor showed its value, and with the exception of a few unlucky ones who were hit at a near-vertical angle, most of the armored warriors did not have their coffins damaged by lead bullets.

Of course, the powerful force of the impact was still unreservedly applied to their bodies, and the fragile ribs played a negative role when they were shattered, and the internal organs and muscles were stirred up by the splinters of ribs that were scattered around in a large area centered on the point of impact.

However, compared to those companions who were unfortunate enough to be rampant, the lead bullet pierced through the plate armor and almost broke the whole person in two, they were lucky enough to leave a whole corpse behind.

Mustafa watched silently as the Praetorian Guards, who had been killed by a volley of a quarter of the cannons, were killed without any emotion.

Perhaps these warriors are skilled in their skills and horses. If they were to be one-on-one with the Ao-Song soldiers, they could easily win the achievement of ten people.

But so what? Tigers can easily tear apart a lone wolf, but wolves always move in packs. Even the fiercest tiger Mustafa had ever seen in the Colombo royal palace could never have dealt with ten wolves at the same time.

The Ao-Song soldiers are such wolves... In front of them, in front of the muskets and cannons in their hands, the warriors who have been struggling for decades and spending more than ten hours a day to train their martial arts are almost useless, no matter how powerful their bodies are, they cannot withstand a lead bullet, and no matter how strong their kung fu is, they cannot be mixed in front of a tenfold and hundredfold difference in numbers.

"Mr. Mu?" Xu Jiao's words interrupted Mustafa's thoughts. He hurriedly leaned forward and waited for the other party's next step.

Xu Jiao gently put his thick arm on the other party's shoulder and smiled, "The king's Praetorian Guard has been wiped out by the young men. The rest is up to you. ”

Mustafa looked up at the Temple of the Tooth Relic, which had dispersed its dust. Between him and the Temple of the Tooth Relic, hundreds of armoured soldiers who had been majestic just a few minutes ago had fallen to the ground.

Their sacrifice did not even result in the death or wounding of a single Ao-Song man.

"Yes, Mr. Lieutenant Colonel." Mustafa closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He knew very well that when he did what was next, he and his family would always be the worst enemies of the forces that opposed the Song Dynasty.

However, if you want to get benefits, you have to give, don't you? Ao Song will not help a careerist family for free.

"I'll send the king on his way myself." He looked into Xu Jiao's eyes and said seriously.