On the battlefield east of Baoding Mansion, Zhong Feng looked coldly at the trenches of the Ming official army opposite.

The commander on the opposite side was Qu Dingsheng, the chief soldier of Shanxi, who was a typical Ming ruffian.

Qu Dingsheng is a very slippery person, he has experienced countless big battles and small battles in his life, but he has no record of being able to get his hands on it.

When Li Zhi was dying against the Ming gentry and civil officials, Qu Dingsheng chose to wait and see, unlike other military generals, who fought with Li Zhi to the death. Therefore, after Cui Changwu and Zhang Guanghang took power, this ruffian became a rare "enlightened faction" in the Ming border army, and soon grasped the real power of Shanxi Town.

In recent years, this person's family has occupied more than 100,000 mu of military land in Shanxi, and has been involved in the coal and iron business in Shanxi Town. Factories in one town and nine provinces import a large amount of high-quality coal from Shanxi, and they don't know how much silver they have been greedy for by this ruffian.

Zhong Feng had already received information about Qu Dingsheng from Han Jinxin, and in Zhong Feng's eyes, the opponent on the other side was simply not worth mentioning.

For the generals of the Ming Dynasty, Zhong Feng has always looked down on them. And the old-fashioned Ming army led by this ruffian Qu Dingsheng, Zhong Feng was even more nakedly despised. In Zhong Feng's eyes, he is the earl of Zhenbei, a dignified earl. Allowing yourself to fight against such a Qu Dingsheng is an insult to yourself.

However, there are only 3,000 people in the hands of Bo Zhongfeng in Zhenbei.

In Baoding Mansion, Zhong Feng had only 3,000 Tiger Army, 210 mortars, and 20 18-pounder guns. Qu Dingsheng on the opposite side had 40,000 border troops, 16,000 cavalry, and countless large and small artillery. But from the very beginning, Zhong Feng decided to end this battle as quickly as possible, which made him feel a little irritated.

Li Zhi's request to Zhong Feng was to hold the defensive line. However, Zhong Feng was not prepared to defend, and he immediately sent all forty infantry fighting vehicles under his command to attack the Ming army in Shanxi Town and Datong Town on the opposite side.

The fighting on the battlefield was fierce.

In recent years, after the reform of Chongzhen's new law, the income and expenditure of the Ming household department has been greatly alleviated, and the silver distributed to the border towns has also been greatly enriched. Therefore, at this time, the 40,000 Ming troops were all wearing fiery red mandarin duck battle jackets, a set of cotton armor, chain mail and armor were distinct, the war horses were fat, and the flags were displayed.

These border troops were even widely equipped with various types of firearms. There are more than 6,000 bird guns for 40,000 foot soldiers, and 8,000 elite cavalry even have three-eyed guns. In addition, there are some tiger squat cannons and general cannons in the trenches. The most conspicuous are the twenty Hongyi General Cannons in the middle of the trench, which by Western standards are about sixteen-pound bronze cannons.

By the standards of the Ming Dynasty, this border army is combative

It's a pity that combat effectiveness at the level of the XVII century is meaningless in front of infantry fighting vehicles.

Zhong Feng's infantry fighting vehicles were pressed towards the trench with a big grin, and the soldiers of the Ming army watched with fear as these steel chariots got closer and closer, and frantically used all their long-range weapons to shoot at the chariots. The birds, the three-eyed guns, desperately beckoned to the chariot, but the small arms were useless against the chariot.

Even the Tiger Squat Cannon and the Hongyi General Cannon could not penetrate the steel armor of the chariot more than two centimeters thick.

Seeing the chariot coming at a speed of more than ten kilometers per hour, Qu Dingsheng's face was like ashes.

As a general of the Ming Dynasty, he really couldn't understand how such a hard and heavy chariot could run at such a high speed in the fields and wastelands.

Qu Dingsheng subconsciously wanted to escape.

As a ruffian, Qu Dingsheng's kung fu of escaping is top-notch. The soldiers and horses of Shanxi Town under his command collapsed countless times, but Qu Dingsheng escaped again and again, relying on sniffing out the danger at the critical moment and running away.

But this time, Qu Dingsheng's reason was stopping the ruffian's instinct to escape. Because this time is different, this time it is a decisive battle between the Ming Dynasty and Li Zhi, the king of Qi, if Li Zhi wins, the whole of China will be included in Li Zhi's rule. If this battle is lost, Qu Dingsheng has no way to escape.

Although Qu Dingsheng's instinct made him tremble, his reason nailed him to the trench and made him insist on directing the battle.

But he didn't have much to command.

The banner of the Ming army in the trench was hunting in the wind, and the momentum was extraordinary, and no matter how you look at it, it should overwhelm the mere three thousand tiger army. But the Ming army did not have the slightest way to stop the approach of infantry fighting vehicles. Under the stunned gaze of the border soldiers, forty chariots were quickly pressed against the trench.

The trenches of the Ming army were not wide, in fact most of them were only about one and a half meters wide, which was not an obstacle at all for a chariot more than three meters wide. The driver of the infantry fighting vehicle has been trained to drive the vehicle day and night for several months, and has become very proficient in operating the vehicle. Many infantry fighting vehicles simply drove the vehicle directly above the trench and used the length of the infantry fighting vehicle to stand horizontally above the trench.

With a loud roar, the chariot crossed the trench with tracks that seemed to crush everything. The momentum was so amazing that it frightened the Ming army near the chariot with their heads hugging their heads.

No matter how many people there were on the side of the Ming army, the indestructible chariot made the border troops feel terrified to the bone.

The tank was erected on the trench, and the rear-loading gun on the left opened fire.

As more and more chariots arrived in the trenches, sparks suddenly flew in the trenches of the Ming army, and the smoke formed by the explosion of flowering shells covered the battlefield.

Of course, what was even more terrifying was the strafing of the Gatling gun, which integrated a bundle of barrels that rotated at high speed, and a storm of bullets clattered into the trench. Everywhere it went, blood splashed everywhere like ripples on a rainy lake.

Any tank is erected on top of the trench, and a radius of one or two hundred meters nearby becomes a slaughterhouse.

The border troops in Shanxi and Datong had not yet seen the horror of machine guns, and at first they tried to lie down in the trenches to resist and hold on, and even shot arrows and birds at infantry fighting vehicles. But the only result of this effort is death.

Death one by one.

The Gatling gun roared, and wherever the bullets swept by, all but screams could be heard, and only flying blood could be seen.

Qu Dingsheng saw an infantry fighting vehicle 300 meters away, and then the trench in front of the tank was swept over and over again by machine guns. The Ming troops hiding in the trenches were like stationary targets, ploughed over and over again by carpet-strafing machine-gun bullets.

Once the Ming soldiers in cotton armor were shot, they would roll and twitch in the trenches, and even get up and struggle and scream. As the angle of the machine gun stretches forward, a trench looks like a lit message. Wherever the machine guns swept, they moved violently, and everywhere there were figures of wounded people wriggling, scratching, and screaming.

Whether it is a general of the Ming army wearing well-dressed fish scale armor or an ordinary soldier wearing cotton armor and not wearing armor, in front of a large-caliber Gatling machine gun, it is a problem of one shot.

The soldiers who were swept by the bullets were like pigs and sheep in the slaughterhouse that had been bled by the opening, rolling in the trenches, one by one, gradually turning into cold corpses.

The Ming frontier soldiers often collapsed after being killed by one or two hundred people, and fled as if they had seen a ghost in the far away of the trench where there were no chariots. Order was quickly lost in the trenches.

The infantry fighting vehicles strafed at one position for a minute or two, killed and destroyed all the Ming troops in their field of vision, crossed the trench and drove to the next section, bombarding and strafing the trench at the other end.

Fifty infantry fighting vehicles were like fifty Grim Reapers, rapidly harvesting life above the trench.

Qu Dingsheng opened his mouth wide and knelt in the trench with a thud.