Chapter 1407: 1324 Old Capital Defense Line
The Tang Empire occupied Dongqing, and the native Dahua people in Dongqing city even lined the streets to welco them, which made the Qin Country soldiers captured soon after occupation very disgruntled.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have the chance to ask these Dahua people for the reasons, as they had to move outside the city and obediently build their new ho—the POW Camp. They had to vacate their barracks and positions to make room for the Tang Army.
After capturing Dongqing, the stumbling blocks on the Tang Army’s advance were all cleared, and hundreds of thousands of troops had already marched to the outskirts of Dahua’s old capital, seemingly about to take over this large city with a population of millions.
Unfortunately, they ran into trouble! Liu Zhian had set up a large number of mines and reard hundreds of thousands of Dahua troops, forming a barrier near the old capital.
Compared to the previous Qin Army, his performance was indeed outstanding: the Tang Army had to stop and wait for the follow-up mine-clearing units, which bought the Qin Army a lot of ti.
Liu Zhian did not build a defense line around the old capital, instead, he expanded his defensive area as much as possible, forming a rectangular box-shaped defense line around the old capital.
This defense line is about 150 kiloters long, with about 20,000 mines in front serving as a barrier. The Tang Army was delayed by the mines, giving Liu Zhian ti to build several trenches.
Although there were no permanent fortifications like reinforced concrete bunkers, the Qin Army finally escaped from the disadvantageous state of field battles.
Before the Tang Army arrived, the Qin Army had been expanding the defense line, making it more and more complex. To enhance the “solidity” of these defense lines, Liu Zhian brought out the sealed Dahua tanks, burying them on the positions as “bunkers.”
Liu Zhian made use of everything he could get his hands on: from the tanks provided by the Tang Empire to Zhao Yu, the well-maintained No. 4 tanks were directly repainted and allocated to the troops because Qin Country was also using them.
Due to the hurried allocation process, many of these tanks were only marked, without changing the serial numbers, and were directly handed to the Qin Army troops.
In addition to these No. 4 Tanks, Dahua had so Panther Tanks, which were originally provided to Dahua’s elite, serving as the main force of the Armored Corps.
Now, they all fell into the Qin Army’s hands and were distributed to frontline troops to serve as the “Elite Tank Corps.”
After all, the Tang Empire’s Panther Tanks were a great asset. Despite their complexity, their performance was indeed comndable. With these “advanced tanks,” the Qin Army’s Armored Corps sowhat restored their strength.
Apart from the No. 4 Tanks and Panther Tanks, the Dahua troops also equipped themselves with a large number of self-produced tanks, whose performance was inadequate.
But Liu Zhian did not waste them; he moved these poorly performing tanks to the defense line, using them as much as possible to reinforce his defense line.
Under favorable conditions, these tanks could be considered formidable bunkers: equipped with steel plate protection, machine guns at the front, and turrets on top, they served much better than ordinary bunkers.
To fully utilize their firepower, the terrain had to be perfect; often Liu Zhian could only bury the tank corpses, leaving only the turret exposed, wasting the machine guns on the corpses.
In short, on the defense line over 100 kiloters long, Liu Zhian not only used mines to buy ti but also piled all available weapons and equipnt onto his defense line.
Besides mines and tanks, when the Dahua troops surrendered to the Qin Country, they left behind a large number of artillery pieces, which were indeed valuable assets.
The artillery pieces used by the Dahua Empire varied in caliber, including 75mm caliber artillery from the Shireck Consortium, 100mm caliber artillery, 130mm caliber artillery, and 200mm caliber heavy artillery.
Additionally, with the assistance of the Tang Empire, Dahua also used the Tang Army’s artillery caliber system: 105mm caliber howitzer, 155mm caliber howitzer, as well as the Wild Bee 155mm self-propelled artillery, and 105mm self-propelled artillery.
The overall quality of Tang Country’s artillery was far superior to the Dahua Empire’s imitation artillery; yet, Liu Zhian did not disdain the inferior artillery, deploying them all to the front line.
The distinction was that the artillery provided by Tang Empire were well camouflaged, covered with disguise nets, and artillery positions were constructed whenever possible.
Whereas the inferior self-made artillery from Dahua, Liu Zhian arranged them on relatively obvious defensive positions, a practical waste-utilization strategy—fire a round when possible, and if destroyed, so be it, no heartache.
Thus, no matter how strong the Tang Army was, clearing mines and eliminating these weapons and equipnt also required ti. And what Liu Zhian was stalling for was ti! As long as he could stall long enough, Qin Country could mobilize more troops to the front lines, stalling for even more ti!
Overall, Liu Zhian’s madness indeed had a certain effect, at least the Tang Army’s vanguard slowed their attack speed significantly after suffering several setbacks from the mines.
The Tang Army’s Engineer Corps had been constructing bridges and laying roads at the rear, moving rather slowly. Now that there were minefields on the frontline, they naturally had to co forward to play their role.
When a Tang Army mine-clearing unit appeared on the frontline, the Qin Army witnessed what efficient mine-clearing truly ant. The Tang Army’s mine-clearing thods, many of which appeared on the battlefield for the first ti, were unheard of by the Qin Army.
After all, the Tang Army used to be experts in mines themselves, so they certainly knew how to quickly and effectively clear minefields.
The Tang Army first utilized ard helicopters and rocket artillery to destroy surrounding Qin Army positions, providing cover for the engineers to start operations. The engineers used chanized mine-clearing equipnt, easily opening safe paths by installing mine-clearing plows on armored vehicles, then using mine-clearing rockets to directly detonate mines on both sides.
The mine-clearing process was earth-shattering, and after clearing mines, the Tang Army surged forward to attack Qin Army defensive positions. The Qin Army relied on the defense line to resist step-by-step, their rate of collapse visibly slowing.
However, for Liu Zhian, the situation was far from optimistic, as he had already utilized mines; under such circumstances, if he couldn’t completely mire the Tang Army in trench warfare, his efforts would be in vain.
Gradually, the Tang Army, after clearing all issues behind them, began gathering near the old capital, increasing the pressure on the Qin Army, and Liu Zhian finally began to feel the pressure faced by Ying An and Wang Luo.
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