The pirates burst into raucous laughter the instant they saw the object arcing toward them.
"They're throwing rocks at us!"
"Hahahaha!"
"Can't hit us with their flintlock rifles anymore, so now they're hurling stones?"
"And they didn't even pick a big one!"
Mockery rolled across the river in waves, the sound growing more brazen by the breath. In their eyes, the militia had clearly run out of tricks, reduced to desperate, laughable gestures.
Yet at that very moment, another militia soldier calmly stepped forward and produced another hand grenade.
This one was different.
He was the bronze medalist of the Gao Family Village First Militia Games throwing competition.
In those games, Gao Chuwu had taken gold, Zheng Daniu silver, and this man had come in third.
Ordinarily, a bronze medal might sound unremarkable. But in Gao Family Village, earning bronze was equivalent to an ordinary person winning gold, because the two men above him were not human by any reasonable standard. They were monsters.
The bronze medalist lit the fuse with practiced ease, weighed the grenade lightly in his palm, and laughed loudly at the brother who had thrown the previous one off target.
"Watch carefully," he shouted. "I'll show you how to throw a hand grenade properly."
His right arm swung forward in a smooth, unhurried motion.
The grenade, fuse spitting bright sparks, soared through the air in a perfect arc. It was not merely thrown far, but thrown with calculation, its trajectory subtly adjusted for the forward momentum of the pirate ship itself.
Precise. Flawless.
It landed squarely inside the lead pirate vessel.
The five pirates aboard were still roaring with laughter.
"Hahaha, they threw a little rock and still missed!"
"Brother, why is this rock on fire?"
"Is that… a fuse?"
The grenade answered their foolish yet strangely innocent questions with a thunderous explosion.
"Boom!"
All five pirates were blasted clean off the boat, their bodies flung outward like broken dolls before splashing heavily into the dark river.
The sudden reversal stunned every pirate nearby.
Someone screamed, voice cracking with terror, "The rocks they're throwing explode!"
"Bloody hell, what kind of devilry is that?!"
"It's gunpowder, gunpowder charges!"
"How can something like this even exist?!"
"Another one is coming!"
Yet another militia soldier hurled a hand grenade with its fuse already burning.
Splash.
It landed directly on another pirate boat.
The six pirates aboard shrieked in panic.
One man lunged forward, grabbing the grenade with the desperate hope of flinging it into the river before the fuse burned down. His fingers had barely closed around it when the fuse reached its end.
"Boom!"
His palm vanished in a spray of blood and fragments. Shrapnel tore into his chest, and the five pirates beside him were struck at the same time. In the space of a heartbeat, the entire boat fell silent, its occupants sent straight to the Yellow Springs.
"Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!"
The pirates screamed in complete disorder. "What kind of demonic weapons are they using?!"
Even Boat Flipper Dragon, their leader, was shaken. Faced with weapons utterly beyond his understanding, his mind went blank for several dozen breaths. Only then did he roar, forcing himself to think.
"Get closer! Close in and board them! They can't blow up their own ships!"
At this point, it was the only tactic left to them.
The pirate boats paddled frantically, men rowing as if their lives depended on it, desperate to shorten the distance.
Only then did they realize something even more horrifying.
The massive flat-bottomed cargo boats were charging toward them at full speed.
"A head-on collision? What's there to be afraid of?!"
Small boats normally feared crashing head-on into large vessels. In such encounters, they relied on agility, first pulling away sideways, then circling around to attack from the flanks.
The pirates instinctively tried to veer off laterally.
But something was terribly wrong.
The medium-sized flat-bottomed boat before them was astonishingly fast, faster even than their small sampans paddling with all their strength.
So fast that the pirate boats did not even have the chance to pull away.
"It's going to ram us!"
"Watch out!"
The pirates screamed in terror.
A deafening crunch rang out as one small boat was smashed aside and capsized.
Five of the six pirates aboard were hurled straight into the river. Only one, the most agile among them, standing at the bow, leapt forward with all his might and actually managed to land on the flat-bottomed boat.
His bravery achieved nothing.
Before his feet could properly touch the deck, five bayonets plunged into him at the same time. They were withdrawn just as cleanly, and his lifeless body was kicked back into the river without a second glance.
This fate was not unique.
Several pirate boats that attempted head-on engagements were struck down in much the same way, capsized or sent spinning helplessly across the water. The militia soldiers aboard the cargo boats seized each opening with ruthless efficiency, erasing the pirates in the blink of an eye.
"From the sides!"
"Approach from the flanks!"
"Throw grappling hooks!"
The pirate boats tried to swarm from both sides, grappling hooks flying through the air. But the flanks of the flat-bottomed boats were killing grounds for flintlock riflemen.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
A volley rang out, and pirates fell in clusters. Those throwing grappling hooks had exposed half their bodies, and they caught the worst of it, riddled with lead like fishing nets full of holes.
A militia soldier stepped forward and slashed downward, severing the rope of a grappling hook. The pirate boat attached to it drifted away helplessly, its boarding attempt cut short.
"Fire arrows! Torches!" Boat Flipper Dragon bellowed. "Burn their strange boats!"
The pirates had prepared such weapons in advance. Arrows wrapped with oil-soaked rags, meant to cling to a ship's hull and ignite it, along with burning torches meant to be thrown aboard.
They unleashed everything at once.
Yet almost immediately, they sensed that something was wrong.
On the flat-bottomed boats, a group of men was not fighting at all.
They were firefighting.
Wherever a fire arrow struck and flames sprang up, these men appeared at once, stamping it out or dousing it within moments. Once the fire was extinguished, they retreated calmly, eyes already scanning for the next spark.
Such discipline was unheard of.
The pirates collectively sucked in a sharp breath. "Who in the heavens are these people?"
They had fought armed merchant ships and government troops for years, yet they had never encountered an enemy so composed, so methodical, and so utterly unstoppable. Against this force, they were completely helpless.
The few flat-bottomed boats cut through hundreds of pirate sampans like a blade through reeds, charging in and out again and again, just like Zhao Zilong at Changban, until the pirates were beaten so badly that their screams filled the river.
On the bank of Hengshui Town, Bai Yuan watched the battle unfold, his expression complicated.
"Oh dear," he muttered. "I haven't even given a single order, and they've already fought like this. Could it be that our fleet no longer needs a naval commander at all?"
From the golden image of Dao Xuan Tianzun hanging on his chest came a soft chuckle. "The better the training in peacetime, the clearer soldiers are about what to do in battle, and the less they rely on commanders. In the end, the role of captain becomes more like a mascot."
Bai Yuan blinked. "Huh?"
Dao Xuan Tianzun continued calmly, "So from now on, when choosing admirals and captains, simply pick the prettiest handsome men and the most beautiful women."
Bai Yuan's eyes lit up instantly. "Then there's no problem at all," he said happily. "I fit the criteria perfectly!"
Dao Xuan Tianzun fell silent.
Standing beside them, Jiang Cheng quietly wiped a bead of cold sweat from his forehead and thought to himself, Mister Bai actually managed to leave even Dao Xuan Tianzun speechless.