The Empress’s Gigolo

For a short time, Ren Baqian fired bullets that were attached to an ammunition belt at the Great Xia commanders, who were observing the frontline from a vantage point. Instantly, they fell like a heap of mosaic tiles.

Prior to this, Ren Baqian didn’t open fire on those soldiers who were beyond 700 meters and had let them run away. Everyone assumed that this was the limit of the firing range for Ren Baqian’s weapon. Even though the strength of the soldiers in this world and the Great Xia soldiers were much stronger than those on Earth, their bows only had a range of 300 to 400 meters.

Their crossbows had a range of about 100 paces, while the huge crossbows protecting their cities had a range of 800 to 1,000 paces. As for the Thunder Cannon that Great Xia recently developed, it had a range of 1,400 paces and had been deemed as a weapon that could be used to besiege a city.

The weapon in Ren Baqian’s hands was more powerful than powerful crossbows because it had an unbelievable rate of attack. Also, it’s range of 1,400 paces was already considered astounding in everyone’s eyes.

Many of the Great Xia commanders observed from one kilometer, or 2,000 paces, away and were thinking about storming the aboriginals’ stronghold, snatching their weapons, and bringing them back to the headquarters. Instead, they were wiped out by Ren Baqian.

For a moment, there was chaos among the Great Xia soldiers, especially among the personal guards. One had to know that in Great Xia, if a commander was killed, their surviving guards had to die as well. In normal times, these personal guards were also given preferential treatment. They were also bound together for better or worse with their commanders, and as a result, they were extremely loyal.

Even if a personal guard was killed, the commander would take care of his family and give them financial support. On the contrary, if the commander died, the personal guards would not live on either.

At this moment, a few commanders and captains had been decimated, leaving their personal guards stunned. Soon enough, they were all angrily crying about seeking revenge for their higher-ups.

Chaos spread from the front to the rear of the troops.

Ren Baqian used his binoculars to observe the confusion on the other side. First, he saw some people inside the group shouting something, followed by one third of them charging toward the stronghold. Even the cannon was being hauled by horses and carried forward by them. As for the rest, they were at a loss and didn’t know what to do.

“Very heroic!” Ren Baqian felt utmost respect for them.

It was better for these brave enemies to die.

He didn’t know that by wiping out those people earlier, he had caused many people to lose their means of living.

This group of Great Xia soldiers consisted of five barracks, numbered 4,600 soldiers, and was equivalent to a brigade.

From the highest ranking commanders to the captains of every barracks, there was a total of about several hundred people. Including those who had been incited, a crowd of more than a thousand people rushed over.

Ren Baqian slowly used the scope to aim at the targets deliberately. Some were seen running around the battlefield with their bodies suddenly missing a part or broken into two, causing dust to be swept up. The scene was quite scary and made them even crazier.

However, their frenzy only caused Ren Baqian to shoot even faster.

Occasionally, there were some who managed to escape the shooting, but he didn’t care. There were still many guards around him, and 50 Earth Wheel level guards could easily kill these Great Xia soldiers.

Therefore, after shooting half of the Great Xia soldiers to death, he stopped and gave an order. The guards jumped down from the stronghold’s walls with their steel knife to kill those “heroic” Great Xia soldiers.

The surrounding area was immediately filled with battle cries.

Several villagers from the stronghold looked enviously at the ensuing battle and simply rushed out carrying clubs. After charging for a while, they threw down the clubs and picked up weapons from the ground.

The ground was scattered with spears, and each villager grabbed a bundle of them to bring back to the stronghold. Then, they waited for the blacksmith to melt the spearheads and convert them into swords. They were smiling happily that their faces looked like sunflowers.

Ren Baqian used the binoculars to observe the few desperate soldiers who were loading the cannon with explosives.

He waited until after they had loaded a stone artillery shell before proceeding to shoot them dead.

They were not needed to ignite the fuse anymore. He could do it for them.

Once again, Ren Baqian fired his machine gun at those Great Xia soldiers who didn’t know whether to charge or retreat. It was easier than serving tea and sending off the guests when he saw them rushing to retreat.

The battle outside the stronghold was also coming to an end.

Together with other soldiers who were stained with blood, Shi Hu kicked the corpses blocking the way to the sides. They clasped their arms to their chests like heroes as they watched the soldiers from Great Xia fleeing helter-skelter.

Ren Baqian threw away his gun, shouted for Shi Hu to look after his precious gun and led Lin Qiaole and some guards to inspect the two cannons. By the time they arrived, the soldiers of Great Xia were nowhere to be seen.

“Sir, do you know what this is?” Some guards looked at the iron cylinder and curiously asked Ren Baqian.

“Cannon!” Ren Baqian casually said before inspecting it carefully.

The cannon looked a little ugly. The mouth was like a trumpet, while the belly was relatively thick. He wondered why it was designed this way.

It was about 1.6 meters long, completely made out of cast iron, and entirely black.

The weight was estimated to be about 500 kilograms, but he couldn’t be specific since he did not weigh it.

He took out the stone artillery shell, which was about 110mm in diameter.

Ren Baqian then re-inserted the stone artillery shell and looked for a direction to aim at. With one hand holding the binoculars, he lit the fuse with the other to find out the range of the cannon.

A boom sounded as the cannon shuddered, causing the cannon and the carriage wheels to move back due to the recoil.

The smell of gunpowder permeated the air.

However, the smell of the gunpowder was different from that of Ren Baqian’s machine gun. To his surprise, it actually smelled like peaches. It made Ren Baqian a bit baffled, and only Heaven knew what the people from Great Xia had added to the gunpowder.

“Go and find where the artillery shell went. Its imprint is also acceptable.” As Ren Baqian pointed to a direction in front of him, a dozen guard behaved like horses being released from their reins… and ran out.

“This thing seems to be similar to yours?” Lin Qiaole asked.

“It is much lousier.” Ren Baqian looked disgusted, and his face had a how-dare-you-compare-it-with-my-precious-gun expression written on it.

There was not much difference in theory, but the big difference was in the few hundred years of development.

If Great Xia was allowed 1,000 years to develop the cannon, it was debatable whether they could achieve the same modern standard in the time to come.

By then, Dayao could already be using the Star Destroyer.

(Star Destroyer – spaceship from Star Wars)

Soon, the imprint of where the artillery shell had landed was found. Ren Baqian went to take a look and calculated it to be about 1,200 paces or about 600 meters. He had estimated that the cannon’s range would be less than 800 meters.

Although it wasn’t considered a big deal in Ren Baqian’s eyes, it was still considered something pretty good for this era. After all, catapults could only reach about 400 paces or close to 200 meters.

Furthermore, the catapult was more low-tech and needed more manpower to operate.

This thing only needed a few people to operate.

This weapon wasn’t powerful enough to use to attack the cities, but it could be effectively used to attack the strongholds in the remote areas.

The wood used to build the strongholds simply wouldn’t be able to withstand this type of stone artillery shell.

Furthermore, since they had developed the stone artillery shell, it would only be a matter of time before Great Xia discovered that the iron artillery shell was even more powerful.

Perhaps it was possible that Great Xia had already discovered this, but they were not using it for some reason.

By the time Ren Baqian ordered the guards to pull the two cannons back into the stronghold, the rest of the weapons had already been collected by the villagers of the stronghold.

“Sir.” A villager used two hands to present some swords to Ren Baqian.

“This is not bad.” Ren Baqian picked the most beautiful one. It was quite heavy and weighed more than 10 kilograms.

As Ren Baqian whirled a pattern with the sword, the guard beside him turned green with fear. The guard looked at the sword tip as the wind blew past his eyes. His whole body was covered with goosebumps, his head emitted cold air, and he instantly flew backward several meters.

This guard made up his mind not to be near this eminent person whenever he held a weapon.

“Sir, what should we do with these weapons?” a guard asked.

The villagers in the stronghold looked at Ren Baqian anxiously.

These spears were considered precious to them because roughly 2,000 of the spearheads were enough to make 100 swords, and this was worth a lot of money.

“They belong to all of you.” Ren Baqian could see their desire and gestured with his hands.

Previously, Dayao lacked iron, but there was less deficiency now. As time passed by, the weapons produced would increase, and after one year, these weapons made from iron wouldn’t be so unobtainable for the people in the stronghold.

“Thank you, sir!” the villagers in the stronghold said happily.

“Bring this thing to the nearest city or town and get someone to send it to the Ministry of Works. I will write a personal letter slightly later,” Ren Baqian pointed at the cannon as he instructed the villagers.

“Yes, sir.” The villagers looked affectionately at Ren Baqian after receiving those spears. Furthermore, he had saved their stronghold earlier on.

It was natural for him to accept such gratitude.

Ren Baqian turned on the radio station and located Shi Qing after asking around.

He felt that Shi Qing wasn’t doing much by stationing himself at the radio station everyday and seemed to be more like a Taobao customer service assistant.

(Taobao – a Chinese online shopping website headquartered in Hangzhou, China and a subsidiary of Alibaba Group)

Ren Baqian related the events that had happened, and Shi Qing was shocked.

This Ren Baqian had encountered the Great Xia army again?

This news was indeed shocking.

Sir Ren, can you not frighten us again?

If anything happens to you, the empress will lose her mind.

Shi Qing couldn’t hold back and said tactfully, “Sir Ren, as long as you are safe and don’t wander around, you will be most helpful in this war… As for intercepting the Great Xia army, we aboriginals have 10 million soldiers. There is no need for Sir Ren to waste your efforts.”

However, he found it unbelievable when Ren Baqian told him about the subsequent details. Ren Baqian actually led tens of guards to beat back thousands of Great Xia soldiers without any losses? How could this be possible? It was a one versus 100 battle, and the casualties wouldn’t be few even if the soldiers were all at the Earth Wheel level. After all, the Great Xia soldiers were no weaklings.

Ren Baqian didn’t explain in detail. He got them to urgently inform all the strongholds outside of the northern towns and cities near Lan City to immediately move their food supplies to the nearest towns and cities and to destroy the rest with fire.

After that, he wrote a letter and gave it to the villagers. He then got the guards to pack his belongings and prepared to set off.

2,000 people died outside this stronghold, so the ground would most likely be very fertile next year.

Unfortunately, the villagers of this stronghold were going to the cities to hide.

In all likelihood, the wild grass would be extremely lush in a few months’ time.

After Ren Baqian left, the villagers brought along the 2,000 spears to the next town. The story of how the husband of the empress used a strange weapon to kill 2,000 Great Xia soldiers started circulating in this town, and the number gradually changed to 5,000, then 8,000, and even 20,000.

The image of Ren Baqian changed from that of a weak and delicate gigolo to a formidable gigolo who rode on Hot Wheels while holding a gun in his hand.