Alien Arms Empire

 Chapter 643643Lost Supplies

 No matter how crazy a person is, they still want to have some face. Although in most cases, for people who are really crazy, their pursuit of face will be twisted in a very strange direction.

For example, in ancient times, if a king always felt that he owed you something, then you were basically not far away from being confiscated and exterminated.

His Royal Highness, the second prince of Qi State, has now entered into this despised cycle of self-consistent moral logic.

 He felt that none of this was his fault, nor was it the fault of the people of Mirage. All the difficulties he is facing now are actually because his father refused to promote him and trusted him and handed over the entire Qi country to him.

As for blaming Tang Guo, he was resistant in his heart and did not dare. Because the Tang State was too powerful, so powerful that even the people of Mirage couldn't defeat it, so powerful that he didn't even dare to think of blaming someone.

  Does it sound strange? Strange indeed. It's just that Jiang Zhi thinks so himself. No matter how strange it is, these are his true inner thoughts.

He did not ask how his subjects were being slaughtered, nor did he dare to investigate how his country was destroyed by the Tang Dynasty.

Now what he blames the most is actually his older brothers and younger brothers, his dead father, and the ministers who delayed him and prevented him from taking power...

 The killing outside has been going on for several days. In fact, the entire Beiyuan City has become a ghost land. The number of Qi people dropped sharply, and the streets were full of wounded soldiers from the Mirage Kingdom. The Tang army was already close at hand, and Jiang Zhi seemed to have seen his own end.

He has applied to Mirage Saburo to go to Mirage Country several times recently, but none of them have been approved: because Mirage Musaburo knows that the route to Mirage Country has become no longer so safe.

It’s not that they don’t want to leave now, it’s that they can’t leave even if they want to. Except for the occasional supplies that can be received every day, that transportation line no longer has the ability to support the entire Beiyuan City.

Mirage Musaburo, who has been guarding the periphery of the port area recently, has sensitively discovered that the supplies he can receive are rapidly decreasing day by day.

Previously, we could barely replenish supplies to Beiyuan City despite the harassment of Tang warships, but now there are fewer and fewer transport ships that can reach Beiyuan City.

Most transport ships can only calculate the time to arrive in nearby waters at night, and then leave quickly before dawn. Because I was afraid of the planes flying in the sky, I was nervous throughout the supply process.

What makes Mirage Musaburo even more depressed is that as the port of Beiyuan City was destroyed and Beiyuan City was blocked, the various supplies previously stored, especially those that seemed less important before, began to suffer from shortages.

For example, coal and fuel oil, which were originally stored in the port area for the small supply ships and stationed guard warships, have now been destroyed or exhausted.

The loss of these fuels makes it impossible for the already severely insufficient number of transport ships, especially small transport ships with insufficient range, to continue to perform transportation tasks.

 There is no way, you can’t drive back if you drive there, so you can only rely on large ships to carry out transportation and supplementary tasks.

However, Beiyuan City's port was attacked and the conspicuous dock was severely damaged. Even with desperate repairs, it could not be restored immediately to a level where large transport ships could dock.

 So at this time, the maritime supply of the Mirage Kingdom fell into an ironic contradiction: only large ships can perform transportation tasks, but the dock can only allow small ships to dock.

The result is not only that half of the capacity is lost because small boats cannot be used, but also that constraints at port terminals make it difficult to unload larger ships.

A few days ago, Mirage Musaburo discovered that heavy artillery vehicles and other equipment could no longer be unloaded ashore. The unloading of artillery shells had also become very cumbersome and the efficiency was hopelessly low.

 Some ships could only use slings to transfer hundreds of shells to small boats in one night, and then these small boats sent the shells ashore.

 But after such a troublesome night, the artillery shells transported were barely enough to consume an artillery company for a day. How could Mirage Musaburo not collapse?

After summarizing experience and lessons, the transport ships of the Mirage Kingdom will no longer load thousands of rounds of artillery shells and sail to Beiyuan City, because they cannot unload them completely and must return.

You can't just drive back more than 200 kilometers before dawn the next day, and then drive back the next day to continue unloading the artillery shells, right? Not only is this a waste of fuel, but it is also a serious waste of transportation capacity.

Therefore, Mirage can only change the structure of shipping materials in transport ships: transport as many small items as possible, so as to facilitate sea transshipment and improve efficiency.

In the end, their experience was that it was most convenient to transport as many people as possible: it was the most economical and convenient to have soldiers carry light weapons and ammunition on board the ship.

 So unknowingly, the Mirage Kingdom transported 50,000 Mirage Kingdom soldiers to Beiyuan City and took back about 30,000 wounded people. The reason why more people were sent away than brought back was, on the one hand, because unloading was more important, so more time could be spent unloading the goods, and the time for the wounded to board the ship was compressed. On the other hand, these ships returning home will more or less bring some private goods with them.

 The looted items must be transported back to the Mirage Kingdom. This is the core national policy: the Mirage Kingdom is using the whole country to fight this war. If there is no reward, how can they continue to persevere?

Part of these looted supplies will be handed over to Cyric to continue to purchase weapons and equipment and repay previous debts, and some will be distributed to the families of the fallen to comfort their emotions.

 Of course, a large part of it is the cake of the nobles. With these profits, they will continue to support this war. Even the king of Mirage took his part of the cake.

As for the dead goblin civilians, they are just numbers to the entire Mirage Kingdom. Aren’t people just things to be consumed?

"The people of the Tang Dynasty are still unwilling to talk to us?" Mirage Saburo sat in the office he snatched, looking at the receipt list in his hand, and asked Mirage Wenxi beside him a little impatiently.

Ming Wenxi shook his head and replied absentmindedly: "The other party does not accept any form of peace talks, and the conditions given by the Tang diplomat are simply unacceptable."

His answer seems to be very contradictory. On the one hand, he said that the Tang people did not give the Mirage country a chance for peace talks at all. On the other hand, he said that the Tang people made conditions, but these conditions were unacceptable to the Mirage people.

Mirage Saburo still heard the smell: the conditions offered by the Tang people were definitely too harsh, making everyone in the Mirage feel that the other party did not want to negotiate at all, but was prepared to continue fighting the war.

 “What do they want?” Mirage Musaburo asked curiously.

  Mirage Wenxi sighed and fulfilled Mirage Saburo’s Bagua wish: “Pay compensation of 100 million gold coins, 300,000 slaves, and punish war criminals…”

 “War criminal?” Mirage Saburo was slightly startled, seeming to be extra concerned about this matter.

Mirage Wenxi nodded and said: "Yes, criminal! People in the Tang Dynasty believe that it was our Mirage country that rashly launched the war, and during the war, our generals committed massacres and must be punished."

 “Ha!” Mirage Saburo sneered.

 What a person has done, no matter how perfectly he conceals it, he himself knows it very well. Mirage Saburo didn't have dual personalities that shielded each other, so he naturally knew what happened in Beiyuan City recently.

 These things were planned by him and continued with his tacit approval. If there are indeed war criminals in the Mirage Kingdom, Mirage Musaburo is definitely one of them.

It’s just that he never felt that he had made any mistakes, because all the choices he made were for the sake of the Mirage Army in Beiyuan City.

As the encirclement outside Beiyuan City shrinks tighter and tighter, and as Beiyuan City's port is destroyed, the food and ammunition in the entire Beiyuan City will become less and less.

 In this case, killing civilians to save supplies for the army is obviously the best choice. What's more, the tradition of the Mirage Army bloodthirsty expanding and occupying the land in order to immigrate and control the area is almost universally known.

The Mirage Kingdom did this on Dongwan Island before, and now they continue to do this in Beiyuan City, which is obviously not surprising.

"We all know that if we really give the Tang people hundreds of thousands of slaves, their development speed will become even faster. Plus the 100 million gold coins we can't afford, we can't accept any of these conditions." Mirage Wenxi continued.

"Indeed!" Mirage Musaburo agreed: "So we have only one option left now, fight to the death here!"

"I will not let a single soldier fall into the hands of the Tang people. We will turn Beiyuan City into real ruins here, and every Mirage soldier here will die in the end!" His expression was so ferocious that it was a bit scary. : "They won't get anything! Just a Beiyuan City that no longer exists!"

"That's what the higher-ups mean," said Xu Wenxi, "the higher-ups hope that we can hold on here to thwart the Tang people's attack and delay them for the longest time."

"As long as we hold on, there is hope!" As a civilian official, Mirage Wenxi could not expect the performance of the army, so he could only say what he was familiar with: "There will be new changes in the international situation, and our allies will not just watch us. Devoured by Tang State!"

“You are right!” Mirage Saburo also placed his hope on the international situation: in his opinion, as long as the Chu State and the Great China Empire declared war on the Tang Dynasty, the value of his isolated city would immediately double.

At least some countries in the Eastern Continent, eager to add insult to injury, will immediately join in the feast of carving up the Tang Kingdom and give Beiyuan City the greatest reinforcements!

 With these reinforcements, he can turn defense into offense, complete the reversal, and become the most famous general in Mirage and even the world!

 (End of this chapter)