My Pen Pal Zhu Yuanzhang

Chapter 243: Astonishing Consumption Speed
The ambushing Ming troops were organized into groups of three according to the three-three system, and in this dense forest, there were countless groups of three lying in ambush.

Soon, several teams, under the command of Xu Huizu, pointed their guns at the elephant. In an instant, countless bullets formed a hail of bullets and were fired at the elephant!

The elephant was a very large target and could be seen clearly even from a distance of more than a hundred meters. The Ming army fired their bullets quickly without much need to aim.

Raising the gun, shooting, and shooting again, every Ming soldier repeated the same action. At this time, they had only one thought in their minds, and that was to shoot all the bullets in their hands at the enemy!
Under the powerful firepower of the Ming army, many elephants were knocked to the ground, while more injured elephants went mad and ran around violently.

Many cavalrymen who were rushing too fast could not stop and collided with the violent elephants, and were smashed to pieces in an instant!
The elephant soldiers tried hard to control the elephants, but were thrown off by the elephants and trampled into a pulp.

Soon, the elephant soldiers were defeated, and the cavalry behind the elephant soldiers, facing the hail of bullets, were not able to move forward even a foot, except for having their horses and men blown away by bullets!
News of various battle losses kept reaching Fan Keyong's ears. Seeing that the army in front had suffered heavy losses, and the troops could not move forward at all and were still stuck in the same place, Fan Keyong was so anxious that his veins bulged, his blood boiled, and he kept roaring.

"Charge! Charge! Whoever dares to disobey military orders will have his head chopped off!"

He couldn't believe that an army of more than 100,000 people could be defeated by a mere 20,000 Ming troops.

However, this battle was something no one had ever fought before. They had not even encountered the enemy, but there were heavy casualties on their side. Even the most experienced Annan veterans were at a loss as to what to do.

The only thing you can do is to rush forward desperately, run away, or just lie on the ground and pray to the Buddha to avoid the fatal bullet.

Not only did the soldiers of Annan personally feel the horror of the Ming army's firearms, but even the Ming army officers and soldiers themselves were shocked by the excellent performance of the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle.

What a great gun! What a great gun!

The only drawback is that the bullets are consumed too quickly!

The consequence of a fast firing rate is that the bullets are fired quickly. Moreover, each time the bullet is loaded, there are ten bullets, and if ten bullets are fired quickly, it will only take five or six breaths of time.

I once used a needle-fired gun in the desert, and it took a while to fire ten bullets.

Considering that this ambush was not an offensive, everyone carried as many bullets as possible. Basically, each person carried 100 rounds of bullets, and each group carried a box of bullets with 500 rounds as backup.

But less than an hour had passed since the first shot was fired, and almost half of the spare bullet boxes were used up.

At this rate, we can only hold out for half an hour at most before we run out of bullets.

Seeing that the bullets in his hands were getting fewer and fewer, Xu Huizu could only order his soldiers to improve their shooting accuracy as much as possible to slow down the consumption of bullets. At the same time, he used the walkie-talkie to contact the commander's tent in the rear, requesting Xu Da to send someone to deliver bullets to the front line immediately.

When Xu Da received the news, he was shocked. How could the bullets be used up so quickly?
According to calculations before the ambush, with 20,000 people going out to ambush, plus spare ammunition, each person would have about 270 rounds of bullets available on average, a total of more than 5 million rounds of bullets, which should be enough to deal with 150,000 enemy troops.

Didn't expect it to be defeated so quickly?

Not only Xu Da was surprised, but Li Wenzhong was also shocked. When formulating the battle plan, they greatly underestimated the rate at which bullets were consumed!

This is a big mistake!

But this is not their fault. When they launched the Northern Expedition last year, they only carried one million rounds of bullets for the first time. During the entire Northern Expedition, including the bullets that were supplied later, they used more than ten million rounds in total.

I didn't expect that after just a short time of fighting, five million rounds of bullets were almost used up. My goodness, it was almost half of the ammunition consumed during the Northern Expedition. Are the guys on the front line throwing bullets away like water? However, the results reported from the front made the two very satisfied. The enemy was nailed to death in the ambush circle and could not move forward until death. It can be seen that the power of the new gun has reached a terrifying level!
If they continue to fight at this speed, the stock of more than 20 million rounds of bullets will not be enough for these little bastards to squander in a day!
I thought 30 million bullets would be more than enough to take down Annan. Now it seems that it would be good enough to achieve the initial plan of destroying Nguyen Da Fang's 200,000 troops.

If Your Majesty wants the next plan to attack Annan to be implemented smoothly, then there is only one way: add more bullets!

Xu Da acted decisively. On the one hand, he decided to have Suwang's soldiers use donkeys and horses to rush 4 million bullets to the front. On the other hand, he ordered people to ride as fast as possible back to the Cheli Xuanwei Office in Yunnan to contact Yingtian Prefecture as quickly as possible and ask the court to send more bullets.

As for how much to give, of course the more the better.

After issuing two orders in succession, Xu Da let out a long sigh and said to Li Wenzhong:

"I have a feeling that starting from this Banla ambush, there will only be one key factor that will determine the outcome of Ming Dynasty wars in the future, and that is - the amount of ammunition!"

Li Wenzhong smiled and said, "In other words, the intensity of firepower determines the outcome of the war!"

"The changes are so fast that even I can hardly believe it. Two years ago, when Fu Youde and Mu Ying marched south to Yunnan, they still used swords, guns, bows and arrows. Although they also equipped a large number of musket battalions, the key to war is still the deployment of troops and the courage of the soldiers."

Xu Da recalled the past, "Earlier, in the fifth year of Hongwu, when you, Feng Sheng and I led the Eastern, Central and Western armies to the north, if we had the new guns of today, even if they were needle-fired guns, I, Xu, would not have been defeated so thoroughly."

The failure of the Northern Expedition in the fifth year of Hongwu had become a hurdle that Xu Da would never be able to overcome.

"Marshal Xu, have you ever thought about this? The so-called Type 56 semi-automatic rifles we are using now are far from the end. In the future, our Ming Dynasty will have more powerful weapons, just like the weapons used by the soldiers in the magical picture of His Majesty when you and I first saw it."

Li Wenzhong smiled and said that although he and Xu Da were of the same rank, Xu Da was still the chief commander in this southern expedition, so he addressed him as General Xu.

Xu Da stood up, left the sand table, lifted the tent curtain, and looked towards the artillery camp not far away.

"What I'm thinking about is, when will our artillery battalion be able to replace the artillery in that picture?"

Under Fan Keyong's hysterical command, countless Annan troops launched wave after wave of charges forward, but they were all blocked by the Ming army.

At this time, the jungle was full of corpses, including those of elephants, horses, and more of Annan soldiers!
"General, we can't charge any further. If we continue like this, our army will be wiped out!"

Fan Keyong's deputy general looked at the soldiers falling down in large numbers, and finally couldn't help but said to Fan Keyong.

Fan Keyong stared with bloodshot eyes and roared: "Anyone who dares to disobey will die!"

The deputy general also risked his life and shouted: "General, our elephant soldiers have been wiped out, there are only 2,000 cavalry left, and more than half of the archers and swordsmen have been killed or wounded. If this continues, we will really die!"

His voice was almost hoarse, he swallowed his saliva and said with difficulty: "General, we can't rush through the Ming army's gun formation!
We, we only have more than 70,000 soldiers left!"

"what?"

After hearing this, Fan Keyong finally came to his senses from his anger. He looked at the deputy general in disbelief and said, "Say it again, you dare to lie to me? I'll kill you!"

(End of this chapter)