This heretic cannot be burned, he must be hung up and whipped!

Wings rise sulfur instrument umbrella pheasant er guilt chen kun...

"Tube six, fire!"

In just over ten seconds, six torpedoes formed a fan and silently pounced on the sinking Pioneer.

"Everyone, silence! Dive to 300 feet! Slow down!" Sterling immediately ordered an evasive maneuver after launching all the torpedoes.

The Victory sank deeper into the ocean floor. Inside the command cabin, the only sounds were the ticking of the timer's second hand and the rustling of the sonar operator's headset. Everyone's heart was in their throat, awaiting the final judgment.

"Thirty seconds... forty seconds... fifty seconds..." Time has never felt so long.

Suddenly, the sonar operator's body shook violently, he pressed down on the earphones, his eyes widened.

"An underwater echo! An explosion! A violent explosion! I heard it! Once! Twice! Three times! At least four hits!

God of Damn Machines bless you—that’s the sound of metal breaking!”

Almost at the same time, a dull vibration, as if coming from the ground, came through the sea water, making the entire hull of the Victory buzz.

"We hit it! We hit it!" A suppressed, ecstatic cheer erupted in the command cabin.

"This time we're going on vacation to the Carpathians, and the saints will honor us!"

Captain Stirling's tense face finally showed a smile. After a safe time, he ordered the submarine to surface to periscope depth again.

When he put his eyes to the periscope again, the scene on the sea had changed completely.

　The once-mighty heretic flagship, the "Herald of the Fallen," was now tilted at a terrifying angle. At least four massive, irreparable wounds were sustained below the waterline, and seawater continuously poured in. A blazing fire erupted amidships, and explosions echoed from within.

Its massive body was being swallowed up inch by inch by the dark, icy water at a speed visible to the naked eye. In the final moments of its sinking, its bow rose high, like a giant making its last struggle on the edge of the abyss. Then, accompanied by a deafening roar and the hissing of steam, it irretrievably and forever disappeared below the sea level.

A huge vortex lingered where it once existed.

"Target confirmed sunk."

Captain Stirling lowered the periscope and announced to all his crew members in a calm but proud tone.

"Humanity will win."

PS: This section of submarine operation is Bei Zhai's personal experience when he was playing Uboat in real mode + the captain's first-person perspective (laughing). Bei Zhai really marked the map and counted down, then paused, opened the phone, calculated trigonometric functions, and adjusted the torpedo advance.

What makes Bei Zhai's blood pressure rise the most is not that the enemy dodges my torpedoes, but the duds and the failure of the fuse to trigger due to the firing angle ()

So later on, Bei Zhai mastered the skill of operating the 88 gun and bombarding the opposite destroyer. From the entry-level captain to the master of the gunner, it belongs to that.

Red Tide: 1921: Chapter 90: The Great Ocean of People's War

At this time, salvage operations are underway in Portsmouth Harbour.

A thick layer of oil slicked the surface of the sea, swirling countless planks, cables, lifebuoys, and unidentified debris. The rescue mission for the remaining personnel within the wreckage had already lasted all night. To further the chaos, the heretic bombers had dropped some of their bombs on the harbor with live iron nets instead of explosives.

The living iron net that frightened the Aztecs in America also caused great trouble to the Crusaders in the dark. Since only flamethrowers could effectively "inactivate" it, the soldiers and civilians in the port had to put out the fire while setting fire.

The moving speed of the living iron nets was not very fast. They were running around in the port that was bombed into ruins. The Crusaders with flamethrowers could only chase them, spray fire on them, and then rekindle the embers of the fire that had just been extinguished by friendly forces.

In a sense, the chaos caused by these live iron nets was almost comparable to the damage caused by the heretics' bombing during the day.

After a night of cleaning, the Crusaders finally cleared the live iron nets in the ruins with the help of bulldozers, land craft, grenade launchers and anti-aircraft guns. The specific method is as follows:

Find the live iron net → use the grenade launcher and grenades to force it into some ruins → use the bulldozer to block the holes on the other three sides of the ruins → place the 8-barrel 40mm anti-aircraft gun on the battleship flat and fire at that place for three minutes until it is killed.

By dawn, Portsmouth was choked by civilian ships and boats, responding to the broadcast call for assistance from London, Portland, and White Cliff. The remaining submarines were helpless against these small boats; after all, it was far too difficult to torpedo a small fishing boat displacing less than a hundred tons. They could only watch helplessly as the military and civilians rescued the sailors and salvaged the wreckage.

No submarine dared to surface during the day. Now the entire English Channel was filled with Crusader planes. After completely annihilating the heretic raiding fleet, the Crusaders launched a frenzied revenge on the heretic submarines that remained in the channel.

Anyway, the heretics don’t have a surface fleet, so the heretic submarines can truly be trapped in the “sea of ​​blood and fire of the people’s war”.

Countless small fishing boats, many of which were trawlers weighing just over a hundred tons, were subjected to simple modifications by engineers overnight. The owners generously removed their fishing winches and replaced them with larger, more powerful diesel engines.

An active sonar was towed behind the ship. In addition to a large group of civilian crew members whose eyes were red because their homes were destroyed and who were constantly searching the sea surface with their eyes, there were also two Crusaders standing on the ship.

One soldier cradled a flare gun in his arms, his ammunition pouch filled with flares of various colors. As soon as the sonar detected a heretic submarine, he would immediately send a signal skyward, calling all nearby "hunters" to close in. Another soldier steadily mounted a Vickers heavy machine gun, its muzzle covered with a tarpaulin, ready to unleash a deadly hail of bullets on any enemy who dared to surface. This was to prevent the heretic submarine from surfacing frantically after being surrounded, attempting to sink the boat with its deck guns or even boarding and escaping.

On a fishing boat arriving from Dunkirk, France, Captain Arthur Sr. was at the helm, his wind-wrinkled face full of concentration. His son, Arthur Jr., was huddled in the small cabin with a navy sonar operator, staring intently at the monotonous green line on the sonar display.

"Beep...beep...beep..." The monotonous pulse sound of the sonar was very hypnotic, but everyone present was highly focused.

Suddenly, a strange echo came from the sonar operator's headset. He sat up straight and quickly adjusted the knob of the instrument.

"We got you, heretic!" Little Arthur looked at the instrument and shouted excitedly outside the cabin:

"Dad! Straight ahead, bearing zero-one-five, distance six hundred yards! There's something underwater! It's huge! It's moving slowly! It's a heretic!"

"Signalman!" Old Arthur didn't even look back, he just shouted.

The signalman on deck reacted immediately. He grabbed a red signal gun, pointed it toward the sky, and pulled the trigger. "Whoosh—bang!" A dazzling red ball of light, trailing a long trail, shot up into the sky, lingering for a long time.

The signal is the command.

Instantly, all the small boats searching for the French fishing boat within a few miles of the sea turned their boats around, sped up, and converged on the French fishing boat from all directions. For a moment, the sea was filled with the roar of engines and the rolling of white waves. Over a dozen vessels of varying sizes surrounded the area, completely blocking all passage.

"It's diving! Trying to slip under us!" the sonar operator shouted again.

"You wish!" Old Arthur spat, holding the steering wheel tightly with both hands. He roared into the loudspeaker on the boat: "All men! Listen up! Take out all your food! Throw down all the trawl nets on the boat! Let's catch the big iron fish of hell!"

"Let these heretic bastards taste our power!"

Fishing boats sailed over the target sea area, the crews untied the ropes, and threw huge fishing nets made of thick ropes and steel wires and studded with heavy lead blocks into the sea. One after another, huge nets unfolded in the sea, layer upon layer.

Nearly three hundred feet underwater, the captain of the heretic submarine HS-606 was trying to slip away from the swarm of annoying flies. He listened to the noise of the propellers overhead, a hint of disdain playing on his lips. Suddenly, however, a creepy, scraping sound erupted from the hull.

"What happened?"

"Report to the captain! The propeller is entangled by an unknown object! The right propeller has stopped rotating! The left engine is overloaded!" The chief engineer reported in horror.

Alarms blared instantly! Before the captain could issue new orders, another, even more intense, tug was felt. More fishing nets entangled the submarine's tail, horizontal rudder, and propeller. The entire submarine lost control underwater and began to spin uncontrollably.

"We're caught in the net! We're tangled in the net!"

"what?"

The heretic soldiers in the boat looked at each other in confusion.

"Empty the main ballast tank! Surface urgently! Prepare to fight with the deck gun!" The captain gave the only possible order to survive.

"Boom--" Amidst the roar of high-pressure gas, HS-606 broke through the sea surface in a mess.

However, what greeted it was a hellish scene.

When the captain pushed open the heavy hatch of the command tower and prepared to come out to command the battle, he was stunned for a moment.

His vision was filled with ships! Dozens of small fishing boats surrounded his submarine tightly, and each boat had a heavy machine gun mounted on its bow. The "click, click" sound of the bolts being loaded filled the sea like a death knell.

The captain and the two crew members who had just stuck their heads out froze in place, hands raised high, not daring to breathe. They had no doubt that if they moved even slightly, they would be instantly smashed into a pile of bloody fragments.

Moved?

Immediately afterwards, the roars and curses from the civilians hit them like a tsunami.

"Murderers! Look what you've done! My son died on the Barham!"

"Blow up their port! Now let you taste the feeling of being trapped! You are a bunch of devil's lackeys!" "Kill them! Kill these heretical bastards!"

Amidst the shouting and cursing, there were also cheers for the soldiers.

"Good job, boys! Hold your guns steady! Don't let them get away!"

The young soldier with the heavy machine gun was locking his sights on the pale-faced heretic captain in the submarine's conning tower. Old Arthur walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder.

"Well done, kid. Let's show them what happens when they mess with us."

The soldier grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth. He turned his head and said to Old Arthur, "Dad, do you want to try this thing? It's more powerful than the Pilgrim's rifle. Just one shot can cut a man in two!"

Old Arthur looked at the soldier's young and fearless face and laughed out loud. "Hahahaha! No, kids! Your job is yours! You keep an eye on these bastards for us, and we'll cheer you on!"

Under the aim of dozens of machine guns, amid the deafening roars and shouts, this heretic submarine could only wait for its final fate.

--------

At the same time, in the main channel of the port, the most important operation in the whole of Portsmouth was being carried out tensely and secretly.

The wreckage of the heretic submarine, crushed into pieces by the 10,000-ton King Warspite, was being lifted bit by bit from the murky seawater by the combined efforts of several cranes. The wreckage was no longer in shape, and the twisted hull barely recognizable as a ship.

Just like Hakimi who was crushed into a cat pancake on the national highway, he is almost integrated with the national highway.

A captain from the European Union Intelligence Department and a technical priest were standing side by side on the makeshift dock, staring at the pile of scrap metal.

"Be careful! Be even more careful!" the intelligence captain shouted to the crane operator. "We must not allow the hull to break a second time during the lifting process! The code book and communication equipment are likely in the wreckage of the command module!"

"Captain, please remain calm." The Tech-Priest's voice was very calm.

"The will of Om Messiah is precise. As long as we strictly follow the procedures, nothing will go wrong."

He turned to a monk beside him who was also wearing a red robe and asked in a low voice: "What is the reaction of the cross?"

The monk glanced at a pointing instrument in his hand, which consisted of a gyroscope, a pendulum, and an eagle cross, and replied, "There's a faint lingering aura of Hell, mainly concentrated near the wreckage of its power module. But no active, threatening signals have been detected."

PS: The inspiration for this instrument came from the gyrocompass Bei Zhai used when reviewing aircraft electrical instruments yesterday.

"Very good." The Tech-Priest nodded. "Once the wreckage is ashore, you will immediately begin the decontamination process and then dismantle it. I want to quickly learn what corrupt 'innovations' the heretics have compared to ours."

Finally, with a teeth-grinding metallic groan, the main body of the submarine was successfully hoisted onto the dock. A mixture of seawater, rust, and an indescribable stench immediately filled the air.

"Retreat fifty meters from the blockade! All unnecessary personnel evacuate!" the intelligence captain immediately ordered, while simultaneously addressing a group of soldiers nearby, "You all, put on your protective gear and double-check the status of the crosses. Priest, come and sprinkle some holy water on them! Prepare to enter the wreckage with me!"

"Remember, our primary targets are code books, logbooks, and anything that looks like communication equipment! Once you find them, don't touch them and report immediately! I don't want you to be burned at the stake by the time I see you again!"

The soldiers responded and carefully entered the submarine's grave through a huge gap.

PS: 260 votes, next update 4k...

Red Tide: 1921: Chapter 91: Faith fluctuates with the battle line, only gold is eternal

Soon, Royal Marines, covered in crosses and anointed with holy water, emerged from the wreckage, carrying out gray stone slabs that exuded a hellish aura. These slabs, about a foot square, were engraved with unknown infernal symbols, and in the grooves of each symbol, dried human blood was congealed.

The priests wearing iron helmets who were waiting nearby immediately covered the area around the stone slab with cloth to prevent the ignorant civilians from being corrupted after coming into contact with the symbols of hell.

"Neos bless..."

A military chaplain made the sign of the cross and prayed to Neos. "According to the intelligence we have on the front lines, theoretically, if enough sacrifices are made on these stone slabs, a rift to Hell can be opened, allowing us to transmit messages, cast spells and curses, and even summon units that shouldn't exist in Hell."

"What do you mean you shouldn't be there?" an officer asked.

"Wizards' power comes from their knowledge, and deciphering these randomly appearing tablets in Hell is their lifelong pursuit. Often, even wizards don't know what's written on the tablets, let alone us humans. This isn't likely a code book, but more likely a medium for casting spells."

"But this is just a small attack submarine, Priest," a naval intelligence captain nearby frowned. "It can't possibly carry so many living sacrifices on board. Moreover, according to our intelligence, this kind of sacrificial ritual in a non-occupied area requires lengthy and complex preparations."

The priest pondered for a moment, a flash of enlightenment in his eyes. "Perhaps this is a special code book. Through it, the holder can establish a brief mental link with the wizard responsible for intelligence transmission in Hell at a specific time, thereby changing the communication code or receiving new instructions. However, to decipher the information on these stone tablets—it requires... a very professional person."

Over the next few days, the English Channel became a vast hunting ground. Crusader destroyers, frigates, and numerous civilian ships towing sonars, like tireless hounds, constantly discovered and surrounded the heretic submarines. After being discovered, the vast majority of the heretic submarines chose to fight to the bitter end.

They put up a desperate resistance with the torpedoes on their bows and the rapid-fire guns on their decks, but were eventually reduced to a pile of scrap metal on the seabed by the fierce depth charges and artillery fire.

However, there were a few captains of heretical submarines who, when they were at their wit's end, unexpectedly raised the white flag and chose to surrender. After preliminary interrogation, most of these surrendered captains had one thing in common:

They did not come from the "fallen areas" that had long been completely eroded by the forces of Hell, but were directly born in the Hell dimension and were "native races" created or enslaved by the demon lords.

In their minds, they had not directly participated in the massacre of civilians, but had merely participated in the war as soldiers. They naively believed that according to the spirit of the "Hague Convention" promoted by the Crusaders, they had the right to survive as prisoners of war.

As for the actual situation....

Star Torch, please (no mercy)

The heretic captains from the occupied territories, without exception, chose to sink with their submarines. They knew full well that their efforts to gain Hell's trust and climb the ladder of advancement had already stained their hands with the blood of innocents. With the zeal of converts, they had presided over countless sacrifices and slaughtered countless civilians to prove their loyalty.

They knew that if they fell into the hands of the Crusaders, they would be subjected to the most severe form of burning at the stake.

The Astronomican is not used because it burns people too quickly and is too easy for these traitors.

Crusader intelligence officers naturally wouldn't let go of the surrendered submarines. Soon, more fragments of stone tablets were recovered, along with some strangely constructed telegraph machines, clearly used for long-distance communication. Cross-checking this with other intelligence, the Crusader leadership was finally convinced that these tablets were the "codebooks" used by the forces of Hell to encrypt and transmit core commands.

This discovery excited everyone, but a more difficult problem also arose: how to decipher these codes from hell?

------

Lambeth Palace, London Diocese

A cardinal slammed a report on the Hell Slate onto the conference table.

"Decipher? Where can we find the 'professionals' who can decipher the code of Hell?" the Cardinal questioned.

"According to canon law, anyone who has had in-depth contact with hellish spells and heretical symbols and has not promptly repented and returned to the right path should have been burned at the stake long ago!