1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3893

When even the military headquarters in the city center could observe the unidentified flying object appearing above Desheng Gate in the north of the city, it was no longer just Ding Baoguo and his group in Nanchang who could witness this extraordinary sight.

In most parts of the northern part of the city, centered around Deshengmen, many people had already noticed the hot air balloons floating in mid-air and went outside to watch.

The appearance of such an unimaginable phenomenon before the public, without a reasonable explanation, naturally caused considerable panic.

Some people believed this was a divine miracle, and some even knelt down and kowtowed to the flying object in prayer. Their actions, in turn, instilled fear in many others, and many Ming soldiers were also affected.

Of course, some sharp-eyed people noticed the red and blue basket below the hot air balloon and connected it with the Haihan Army that was besieging Nanchang at that time.

If the Haihan people could fly into the sky, then the tall city walls and long-prepared defenses of Nanchang would become completely useless; this is self-evident.

The hot air balloon hovered over Deshengmen for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn before slowly continuing its southward journey. From the ground, it appeared to be heading towards the city center.

Ding Baoguo, of course, also noticed this movement, but no matter what that thing in the sky was, he couldn't let the Haihan people come and go freely over his head. To prevent the morale of his troops from wavering, he immediately ordered his musketeers to fire at the flying object, attempting to shoot it down from the air.

After receiving clear instructions, the garrison quickly assembled a team of two hundred musketeers, then aimed their guns at the hot air balloon in the sky, and opened fire in unison at a command.

However, Ding Baoguo somewhat overestimated the performance of his weapons. After these muskets fired into the air, the bullets exhausted their kinetic energy after flying dozens of feet in the air, and could not hit the hot air balloon high above, nor did they affect its direction of movement at all.

However, the people in the hot air balloon quickly responded to the ineffective attack from the ground by scattering a large number of paper scraps from the basket, which drifted to the ground like snowflakes.

This was certainly not some kind of performance art that ordinary people couldn't understand; it was simply scattering pre-made leaflets urging surrender. Scattered high in the air, the leaflets could drift over a radius of several miles, making it impossible for the government to immediately collect them all, even if they wanted to suppress the news.

Soon, someone picked up the fallen leaflets. These leaflets were all five inches square, and the content on them was all printed in the same way. They claimed that the area of ​​Jiangxi except for Nanchang City had been basically occupied by Haihan, and no reinforcements had come. The soldiers and civilians of Nanchang had no chance to turn the tide. If they surrendered, they could save their lives and property and come and go freely without restriction.

However, if they choose to continue to hold their ground and resist, the soldiers and civilians in the city will no longer receive the aforementioned treatment after the Haihan army breaches the city. As for the civil and military officials in the city, those who refuse to surrender will be treated as prisoners of war, and those who resist will be killed without exception.

During this period, most of the news received by the soldiers and civilians in the city came from government announcements, which were nothing more than that the war situation was unfavorable and that they needed to hold Nanchang and wait for reinforcements. They were told that once the imperial army arrived, they would surely drive the enemy troops that had invaded Jiangxi out of the country.

Although the news brought by refugees from all over the country fleeing into Nanchang has made the government's credibility very low, everyone still holds a glimmer of hope that if they can defeat the Haihan people in Nanchang, everything will be alright again.

But these leaflets that fell from the sky shattered all illusions.

Nanchang City was completely surrounded, and no reinforcements would come to relieve the siege. The Haihan Army was even more powerful than rumored; they could even fly! Upon realizing these facts, the tension that had been building for dozens of days suddenly snapped. The prospects for the war became extremely bleak. What awaited them was not victory after a fierce battle, but death or capture.

While the soldiers and civilians in the city were immersed in an atmosphere of despair, the hot air balloons in the sky were not idle either. They slowly wandered around the city of Nanchang, releasing thousands of leaflets every time they moved a certain distance.

Of course, the hot air balloons, having traveled thousands of miles to the front lines in Jiangxi, were not merely there to drop leaflets. From the air, they could observe and record the defenses of Nanchang in greater detail, especially the deployment of troops at the city gates and on the city walls, which were almost completely visible.

The heavy equipment and city defense facilities that the defending troops had already deployed could not be moved or concealed in a short time, and were thus completely seen by the Haihan people in the sky.

The hot air balloon circled over Nanchang for most of the hour before slowly heading north along the route it had come from.

However, before leaving, a bomb was dropped from the hot air balloon, landing precisely on the city gate tower of Deshengmen in the north of the city with a whistling sound.

The bomb, weighing over 100 pounds, smashed through the roof of the city gate tower, causing a violent explosion. The top two floors of the four-story tower were reduced to rubble, with debris flying over a mile away.

At least several thousand people near Deshengmen witnessed this astonishing sight, and the loud noise from the north of the city could be heard throughout half of Nanchang.

Soon, the military command received news from the north of the city that the lookout post that first spotted the flying object at Desheng Gate, as well as a squad of archers deployed inside the city tower, had been completely wiped out in the explosion. The current count is seventeen dead and forty-eight injured, and some people are still buried in the rubble of the collapsed city tower.

The only saving grace was that the bomb was not dropped on any important institution in the city. If the military headquarters had been hit, the losses would have been far greater than those at Deshengmen.

But Ding Baoguo didn't believe this was a fluke. The Haihan people's purpose was merely to demonstrate their capabilities to intimidate the city's garrison, not to kill any important figures. The locations of the military headquarters and other important institutions weren't exactly secrets, and the Haihan people shouldn't have had much trouble finding these targets from the air.

Furthermore, since the Haihan people have created this unique method of warfare, they certainly won't use it only once; at some point, even more bombs might fall from the sky again.

The Haihan army's siege of Nanchang was somewhat mitigated by the city walls, but attacks from the sky were truly impossible to defend against. If the Haihan army had many such flying objects, the entire city of Nanchang would be left with nowhere to hide.

While the military officers were still arguing about how to deal with this unprecedented aerial bombardment, someone came to report to Ding Baoguo that Zhao Mingyu, the Left Provincial Governor, had come to visit.

Zhao Mingyu's visit to the Military Commandery at this time was clearly related to the Haihan flying object that had just appeared over Nanchang. Although Ding Baoguo didn't get along with Zhao Mingyu, the situation was tense, and he wanted to hear the other's opinion.

After all, when Zhao Mingyu went out of the city to negotiate with the Haihan people, he stayed in their territory for several days and might have seen the flying object, which could provide some valuable information.