In November, the Mughal colonial governorate of the Chinese empire sent a note to officials of the Persian kingdom and the Afghan feudal lords, demanding that the two countries stop interfering in the territorial dispute between the Rajput and Gujarat states and immediately withdraw their troops.

The statement of the Chinese Empire made the Afghan feudal lords hesitate. However, the Persian kingdom did not buy it, and continued to increase its troops in Gujarat, while demanding that the Chinese imperial government refrain from meddling in the affairs of the Indian subcontinent.

At the insistence of the Persian kingdom, the Afghan feudal lords continued to send 50,000 troops to Gujarat. By the end of the 14th year of Shenwu, the Persian kingdom sent 300,000 troops, the Afghan feudal leader sent 170,000 troops, plus the whole army of Gujarat, the total strength reached 700,000, and the army pressed the north bank of the Narmada River.

At the same time, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) also continued to increase its troops. The four nations of Orissa, Bijapur, Coromandel, and Marat sent 500,000 troops, plus Rajput's 110,000 troops, for a total strength of 610,000, on the south bank of the Tunzanar Mada River.

More than a million troops on both sides faced each other and received supplies on the spot, plunging the people of the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent into an endless dark abyss.

At the request of the Mughal Colonial Governorate, the South Asia Dispatch Army Command of the Chinese Empire mobilized two integrated infantry divisions and one integrated cavalry division of the Royal Army to station on the Malwa front line and make a posture of attacking Gujarat in the south.

However, due to differences between the South Asian Dispatch Command and the Imperial Chinese General Staff on the way to intervene in the war in the Indian subcontinent, the Imperial Chinese Army on the Malwa front was unable to take military action.

It turned out that the General Staff of the Chinese Empire hoped that the South Asian Dispatch Army Command and the Mughal Colonial Governor's Office would take advantage of the opportunity of the main forces of the Kingdom of Afghanistan and the Kingdom of Persia entering Gujarat to send troops to Afghanistan and Persia and occupy the Persian Gulf region in one fell swoop.

However, the South Asian Dispatch Command did not agree with this plan, believing that once the opportunity was taken to send troops to Persia proper, the Mughal colony would be empty, and once the Persian army at the Narmada River jumped over the wall and turned north to invade the Mughal colony, it would have a huge impact on the colony's economy and the imperial government's tax revenue, and it was even possible to lose the colony.

The Central Military Department and the Overseas Military Department had serious differences, and the back-and-forth exchange of views lasted nearly two months, and the Imperial Chinese Army in Malwa had been standing still and waiting for the final decision from the top level.

The immobility of the Chinese Imperial Army gave Persia and Afghanistan the illusion that the Chinese Empire was insufficient to intervene in the war. In addition, the main force of the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire was transferred to Egypt to escort the convoy, resulting in the emptiness of the naval power of the Narmada River and the Arabian Sea.

The Battle of the Narmada River was fought in late December of the same year, and the Persian-Afghan-Gujarat Confederation Army (referred to as the Northern Army) was commanded by the Persian general Abin Laden. The Northern Army mobilized 40,000 elephants, 300 artillery pieces, and more than 1,000 boats to launch a river-crossing operation, mobilizing 400,000 troops, and simultaneously launching a fierce attack on the coalition forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (referred to as the Southern Army) on the opposite bank on a front of 110 miles in the west, starting from the Arabian Sea in the west and Chedsh in the east.

At six o'clock in the morning of the 23rd, when the east of the sky was just showing the white of the fish's belly, more than 300 artillery pieces of the Northern Army opened fire and launched a fierce attack on the defensive positions of the Southern Army on the opposite bank.

On the south bank of the Narmada River, the Southern Army built a large number of fortifications, beacon towers and anti-landing piles, as well as artillery positions.

The Northern Army seemed to be well aware of these facilities of the Southern Army, and the 300 artillery pieces were aimed at the artillery positions of the Southern Army for the first time.

The artillery shells roared in, and the artillery positions of the Southern Army were suddenly splashed with sand and gravel, and dust was flying, and they were instantly submerged in thick gunsmoke. The shelling continued, and soon the positions were full of people, heavy fire, a large number of ammunition boxes exploded, artillery was destroyed, and the artillery suffered a large number of casualties.

The sudden artillery attack caused chaos in the Yugoslav army, and the commanders of the Yugoslav army and the commanders of various countries gathered their troops one after another to prepare for battle.

The artillery bombardment of the Northern Army lasted for three hours, first destroying six coastal defense artillery positions of the Southern Army, causing damage to more than 200 artillery pieces of the Southern Army, destroying tens of thousands of pounds of explosives reserves, killing and wounding more than 700 artillery casualties, and disintegrating the entire coastal defense artillery fire system. Then, the artillery targets of the Northern Army turned to the fortifications, beacon towers and anti-landing piles on the shore, focusing on the beacon towers of the Southern Army and destroying them all.

Without the beacon tower, the southern army's defense line of more than 100 miles appeared to be a little strained, because they did not know which direction the northern army would focus on launching the main attack.

At about nine o'clock in the morning, the artillery fire of the Northern Army began to extend the artillery fire to the deep defense of the Southern Army, and at the same time launched a river-crossing operation.

In this river-crossing operation, the Northern Army mobilized 400,000 troops as the vanguard and launched a full-scale river-crossing operation on the 110-mile-long river, and the attack intensity was very strong, so that the Southern Army on the opposite bank could not judge where the Northern Army was the main direction of attack.

Somewhere high in the upper reaches of the river, on a hot air balloon, Lieutenant General Li Jianguo, commander of the Marwa Theater of Operations of the Chinese Empire, and Major General Chang Wenqing, chief of staff, were observing the battle with high-powered telescopes.

Standing high and looking far away, out of the hot air balloon, you can see the overall situation of the battle of the Narmada River clearly.

"It looks like this Abin Laden is not simple"

"It's a little interesting" Chief of Staff Chang Wenqing nodded and said: "It seems that he has studied the strategy and tactics of our army a lot, and he has learned a lot of things."

Li Jianguo and Chang Wenqing easily judged that the Northern Army had done a very good job in intelligence gathering, and was able to knock out many artillery positions of the Southern Army, so that the advanced Chinese artillery equipped by the Southern Army could not be put to use, so as to achieve the established strategic objectives of the Northern Army.

At the same time, the defense situation of the Yugoslav Army is obviously very bad, and it should be rotten to the bottom. The deployment of such an important artillery position was leaked to the Northern Army, and it has to be said that it had already lost two-thirds of it before the war began.

Li Jianguo said: "I thought that this would be a long-term military confrontation, and it would be difficult to distinguish the winner in a short period of time. Now it seems that we almost underestimated the commander and strength of the Northern Army, and if we did not intervene, the Southern Army would not be able to hold the river today."

"Yes" Chang Wenqing sighed lightly, and then said: "The southern army has lost its artillery position, and it is obviously not the opponent of the northern army. The important thing is that once the northern army breaks through this river, the southern army will fall into a completely passive situation, and these feudal lords in the south are afraid that they will not be able to keep it, and more importantly, thanks to the fact that the command did not immediately transfer us to attack Persia and Afghanistan proper, otherwise it will be difficult to end."

Li Jianguo nodded and said, "Now it seems that the headquarters will not hesitate anymore, we must stay here, and we can't sit idly by."

Chang Wenqing said: "However, it will take two days for us to inform the headquarters, you look at the posture of the northern army and the instigation of the southern army, the southern army will not be able to hold out for two days at all, if my estimate is good, the main attacking force of the northern army is the remaining 300,000 troops, and the main attack location is in Polvani, where the river is shallow, and now it is the off-season Their elephant army can be forced to pass guò." ”

Speaking of the Elephant Army, Li Jianguo couldn't help but shudder.

Since he was transferred to the Mughal colony, he has experienced the power of the elephants in this land. It's not because he saw an elephant for the first time, but when he was at the Imperial Military Academy in Beijing, he had also seen a white elephant paid tribute by the vassal state. But that was a rarity, and there were only a few hundred heads in the entire territory of the Chinese Empire. But once in the Mughal colony, elephants were everywhere. Especially in the undeveloped dense forests of the southeast region, there are elephant herds everywhere, and they are the supreme overlords of the tigers and wolves.

Gujarat is the best at domesticating elephants, training more than 60,000 elephants, 40,000 of whom have been brought in to fight.

The huge elephant herd army also made the heavy cavalry of the Chinese Empire, the black armored elite cavalry, feel fearful. This fear was relatively light and could be overcome for the cavalry warriors of the Imperial Chinese Army, but for the mount, the dragon horse, although the dragon horse was not even afraid of the lion tiger and wolf leopard, it was always fearful in the face of a giant elephant that was more than twice the size of the dragon horse.

In response to the Empire's most powerful attacking force, the Imperial military has been training the Heavy Cavalry Division's mount Dragon Horse for many years to resist fear, but the effect is not very good. As long as the elephant barks, most of the Ryoma will be irritable, and the combat effectiveness will naturally be greatly reduced.

"What are you going to do with their elephant legions?"

The question before Li Jianguo is how to deal with the elephant army in Gujarat. If it is a head-on confrontation, Li Jianguo can also use artillery to carry out strikes, but this is limited to plain operations, and the terrain of Polvani is conducive to elephant herd operations, which is not conducive to artillery agitation operations.

Chang Wenqing said suddenly: "I think, all animals are afraid of fire."

"What do you think?"

"I can't talk about it," Chang Wenqing said: "We must not only prevent the northern army from crossing the river, but also find a way to overcome the enemy's killer weapon - the elephant army." You see how this goes, aren't we located in the upper reaches of the river, why don't we dump the oil into the river and let the oil flow down the river, and then we light a fire upstream, and the fire locks the river, and nothing can be crossed."

Li Jianguo's eyes suddenly lit up, and he said: "This is a good plan, but we don't have so much oil."

Fire oil, or black oil, that is, oil, has always been the fuel for the fire oil tank, the defensive weapon of the Chinese Imperial Fortress, and was mainly deployed in the urban defense system. With the prosperity of the Chinese Empire, people began to use oil on a large scale in their daily lives. Lighting, cooking and other applications are extensive, because Persia is rich in this oil, the Chinese Empire imports more than 20 million silver dollars of oil from Persia every year, and Persia also takes the opportunity to raise the price of oil exports, and it is precisely for this reason that the Central Cabinet of the Chinese Empire has a lot of complaints about the import cost of oil. The merchants of the Chinese Empire opened oil factories in Persia, and they also faced high taxes and exploitation in Persia, and the oil merchants formed trade unions and complained and complained to the Senate members of the Chinese Empire and the Senate of the provinces in various ways, and public opinion also widely reported it, and finally the Persian oil issue was put on the agenda of the cabinet discussion, and it also became the biggest excuse for the Chinese Imperial Government to invade Persia with arms.

The Royal Army's oil reserves are in the city fortress defense system, and the Royal Air Force has a large amount of oil reserves, as the hot air balloons are supplied with oil. The Royal Navy has the least oil reserves, and does not store too much oil except for cooking and lighting to prevent the catastrophe of burning ships.

"There are about 500 tons of oil estimated in Malwa City, and we can borrow 200 tons to come over and make an emergency. In addition, the Royal Air Force base in Agra has at least seven or eight thousand tons of oil reserves, which is enough to block the river."

Li Jianguo thought for a while, nodded and said: "Two hundred tons of oil should be blocked for a few hours, as long as the blockade is three hours, the oil from Agra will also arrive, yes, you can try"

Li Jianguo and Chang Wenqing discussed properly, and when his subordinates went to do things, the battle of the Narmada River had already entered the climax stage.

The cannon roared, and the smoke filled the river. On the front of more than 100 miles, flames were flying, and shouts of killing soared to the sky.

The 400,000 troops of the northern army crossed the river on all fronts, while on the south bank, more than 500,000 southern troops resisted desperately.

The Northern Army attacked on all fronts, all of which were charges at any cost, and all the assault troops crossing the river were the main attack, making it impossible for the Southern Army to determine the real focus of the Northern Army's attack.

The northern army attacked frantically, landing one after another. The southern army resisted desperately, and the 100-mile-long defensive position was full of blood and corpses.

Li Jianguo hurriedly observed the battle situation, and the scene of hundreds of thousands of people crossing the river and charging was truly spectacular. In the past, he had also been to the battlefield in person, and at most he had seen tens of thousands of people fighting, and his vision was too limited to see the whole picture. Now on the hot air balloon in the sky, looking down at the battle scene of hundreds of thousands of people, the feeling is indescribable, which makes him very excited.

Chang Wenqing said suddenly: "Do you feel like a god, looking down at the people below?"

"That's how it feels" Li Jianguo smiled and said, "It's still the chief of staff who will describe it."

Chang Wenqing smiled, and suddenly found that the number of troops in the Polvani direction had increased, and suddenly felt that something was wrong, and hurriedly turned the high-powered telescope to observe the situation.

Li Jianguo also felt strange, and when he saw it, he was immediately surprised.

Sure enough, the second echelon of Abin Laden was the main attacking force. Obviously, there are tens of thousands of giant elephants in the second echelon, and this kind of land monster weighing five or six tons, appearing in groups, obviously has a very strong combat purpose.

"Although Gujarat is very poor, if you get the tusks of these elephants and sell them, you will have no problem selling them for one or two hundred million silver dollars."

Li Jianguo's words suddenly made Chang Wenqing's face full of helplessness, and he was speechless for a while.

It is true that the tusks of an adult elephant can be sold for at least 10,000 silver dollars, and a male elephant is worth 20,000 or 30,000 silver dollars alone. Gujarat has a huge elephant population and does have a potential market value of hundreds of millions of silver dollars.

When, though? Thinking about ivory?

Looking at the black lines on Chang Wenqing's face, Li Jianguo smiled brightly and said, "Just kidding"

Seeing that Chang Wenqing didn't react, Li Jianguo hurriedly changed the topic and said: "I really got what you said, the Northern Army will definitely carry out the main attack in Polvani"

These words immediately attracted Chang Wenqing's attention, and Chang Wenqing pointed to the opposite bank of Polvani and said: "The northern army has attracted the attention of the southern army with the first wave of attacks. Taking advantage of the blockade of gunpowder on the river and the inability to see the situation on the other side, the main forces of the second echelon were transferred to Polvani. These tens of thousands of elephants crossed the river, and the southern army could not stop it. ”

Li Jianguo frowned and said: "I didn't expect this Abin Laden to be so fast, we didn't find out how he was quietly transferred to Polvani in the air."

Chang Wenqing said: "The survival ability of these elephants is much higher than that of war horses, they pass through the deep forest and play, and the vicinity of Polvani is dense deep forest, and we have a hard time observing it from the air, not to mention the group of wastes on the other side."

Li Jianguo looked at the south bank, the southern army had too few troops there, less than 30,000 people, and it was difficult to resist the second wave of attacks of the northern army.

"Our fire oil hasn't arrived yet, so it's better to let the 67th Division contain them"

Chang Wenqing immediately vetoed: "Do you want to lure this group of elephants to Malwa?" This herd of elephants is crazy, and our muskets can't bear it."

Li Jianguo also understood that the elephant army looked very kind, but once the elephants were shot by muskets, they were very vindictive and would rush towards the musketeers frantically. However, the musketeers may not be able to kill an elephant with a few shots, so Li Jianguo is not confident that the infantry can complete the battle under the trampling of the mad elephant.

Elephants, the largest super-spawn on land, are simply invincible when they go crazy in herds. This is also the ultimate killer feature of Gujarat, which is really a headache.

At noon, the elephant corps of the Northern Army began to cross the river.

The turbulent river was intercepted by tens of thousands of giant elephants in an instant, and it soared more than half a meter high. In the case of the Chinese Empire's dragon horses, this kind of turbulent water war horse could not pass guò, because the tonnage of the war horse was small, and it would be washed away by the river water. However, for elephants weighing six or seven tons, crossing the river is like walking, and the river cannot rush them.

However, the river rose and drowned the heads of many elephants. Li Jianguo shouted happily: "The river is still very deep, and the elephants have been submerged, and they can't get through it now."

However, as soon as the words fell, the submerged elephant suddenly stretched out its long trunk. Their noses are as long as their body heights, and they reach out into the air to breathe freely, like submarines.

The Yugoslav army on the south bank was dumbfounded, although they also had giant elephant troops, but they did not have so many giant elephants in Gujarat. In their eyes, the only one who can fight against the Giant Elephant Legion is the Giant Elephant Legion, and the others are all nonsense that can't be defeated at all.

The southern army immediately returned fire with muskets, arrows, and thunderstones, and the northern soldiers on the giant elephant were hit one after another, and they kept falling into the river, and the blood suddenly stained the river red.

However, elephants suffer very little damage due to being in the water. With their master killed, the elephants burst into flames, thundering and speeding up their impact.

Half an hour later, in the terror of the Southern army, the first group of giant elephants crossed the river and quickly rushed to the defensive positions of the Southern army.

The elephant's huge body ran, and the earth trembled. The spikes tied to the front and back of the body, left and right, harvesting the lives of the soldiers of the nearby Southern Army, are simply invincible.

"How can this be"

Li Jianguo's face was suddenly bitter, and when he was worried, Chang Wenqing suddenly received good news, that is, the first batch of oil transported from Malwa had arrived at the Mehhead ferry in the upper reaches of the Narmada River. V