lerbook Chapter 32 The Wusongkou Iron Fortress Rises from the Ground
Chapter 32 The Wusongkou Iron Fortress Rises from the Ground
3:00 AM. Wusongkou. Paotaiwan mudflats.
The river wind howled, there was no moon in the sky, only thick dark clouds pressing down overhead.
Chen Zijun stood on the mudflat, his military overcoat collar turned up, his face stinging from the river wind.
But he couldn't care less about any of that.
He closed his eyes, and the system panel in his mind lit up.
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[Unlimited Pay-to-Win System - Day 400]
Current fund pool: £3,399,836
(Sulfonamide orders continue to generate an average daily inflow of £100,000)
Real-time deposit rate: +1 pound/second (basic)
Fortress Infrastructure Module Procurement List
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
►280mm Krupp coastal defense cannon ×4
Unit price: £85,000 | Subtotal: £340,000
►6 sets of reinforced concrete permanent fortifications (Grade A)
Unit price: £12,000 | Subtotal: £72,000
►Two artillery observation posts and fire control command centers
Unit price: £25,000 | Subtotal: £50,000
►Special bulletproof steel plate dome covering layer × 4 sets
Unit price: £18,000 | Subtotal: £72,000
►Battlefield Infrastructure Rapid Construction Pack (including prefabricated foundation components) ×1
Bulk price: £120,000
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total amount: £654,000
Estimated balance: £2,745,836
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£650,000.
The price of a fortress.
Without hesitation, Chen Zijun clicked "confirm".
Ding!
A crisp system notification sounded in my mind.
Then, the miracle began.
Shen Li stood twenty meters away, holding a flashlight in his hand, preparing to call a few engineers over to set up a searchlight.
Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet began to shake.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a very regular, low-frequency rumbling sound coming from deep within the earth's surface.
"What's that sound?" Shen Li subconsciously crouched down, the beam of his flashlight swaying wildly in the darkness.
He saw a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.
The mud and sand on the mudflats rolled and churned on their own, as if an invisible giant hand was pushing them from underground. Steel bars as thick as an adult's arm emerged from the soil, automatically bending, interlocking, and crisscrossing to form a grid-like structure.
Immediately afterwards, a large amount of grayish-white concrete gushed out from somewhere and quickly solidified and hardened along the steel reinforcement framework.
The speed is ridiculously fast.
Shen Li stared with his mouth agape, nearly dropping his flashlight.
five minutes.
In just five minutes, a curved concrete wall about 30 meters long and more than 1.5 meters thick grew out of the ground.
The top of the wall automatically closes, forming a hemispherical dome structure. The pre-drilled firing ports and observation windows are accurate to the millimeter.
Shen Li finally came to his senses and swallowed hard.
"Young Marshal... this, this is..."
Chen Zijun opened his eyes, a slight smile playing on his lips.
"Turret Number One."
He pointed to a spot about two hundred meters to the left. The soil there was also churning, and steel bars were breaking through the ground at the same speed.
"That's Battery No. 2 over there. On the south bank of that battery are Battery No. 3 and No. 4. These four gun positions, positioned in a mutually supporting formation, provide crossfire covering the entire Wusongkou estuary."
Shen Li's legs went weak. He had followed Chen Zijun for so many years and had seen all sorts of strange things. He had seen twelve trucks loaded with cash smash up a bank. He had also seen thirty thousand rifles appear out of thin air overnight.
But how could a permanent reinforced concrete fortification be built overnight from flat ground?
Is this something a human could do?
"Young Marshal," Shen Li's voice trembled. "This...this fortification...how large a caliber of shell can it withstand?"
203 millimeters.
"hiss--"
"An eight-inch naval gun can't penetrate it," Chen Zijun said, as if he were remarking on the weather. "The largest caliber gun on those three Japanese ships is only 14 centimeters; it wouldn't even scratch the paint."
Shen Li was completely speechless.
He simply stood at attention, watching as the mudflats in the darkness seemed to come alive, with one gray steel fortress after another rising up.
It was still dark. The warehouse area of the Longhua Road Garrison Command.
Mo Huixin was wearing a dark cheongsam with a military cotton overcoat draped over her shoulders, and she was holding a stack of lists in her hand.
A German man with a full beard stood in front of her.
Felix von Heidelberg. Former chief agent of Sassoon & Co., now a German military industry broker recruited by Chen Zijun.
When he saw the contents of the warehouse, he almost lost his footing.
Four massive, dark-colored cannon barrels lay horizontally on a specially made wooden frame. Each one was twelve meters long, with a caliber large enough to fit an adult's head.
The surface of the gun barrel was polished to an extremely smooth finish, and the forging patterns unique to Krupp gleamed with a cold metallic luster under the light.
"This...this is..." Felix walked around the cannon barrel, reached out and touched the edge of the rifling, his fingers trembling.
"280 mm." His voice was hoarse. "L/40. This is a coastal defense heavy gun that was strictly prohibited from export by the Treaty of Versailles. Where...where did you get it?"
Mo Huixin turned a page of the list, her tone as flat as if she were reading a supermarket shopping list.
"Our young commander entrusted French Consul Wilhelm to assist in the import of a batch of heavy industrial components. They were processed through the scrap steel recycling customs channel. The shipping documents are here; would you like to see them?"
She handed over a stack of bills of lading and documents stamped by customs.
Felix took it and looked at it. The document was flawless. It had the French customs stamp, the German exporter's signature, and even the tonnage of the scrap steel and the shipping schedule matched.
But he was a Krupp native. He knew this gun barrel couldn't be a scrap metal part. It was brand new. The precision of the workmanship and the level of rifling could only be achieved in the top workshops of the Essen main plant.
But he didn't dare ask.
Because he's now eating Chen Zijun's food.
Felix took a deep breath. "Miss Mo, where do you plan to install these four cannons?"
"Wusongkou."
Felix's pupils contracted slightly.
280 mm caliber. Range 38,000 meters. Armor penetration 320 mm.
Is it installed at Wusongkou?
Any warship attempting to enter the Huangpu River from the sea would be locked onto by these terrifying cannons from 38 kilometers away.
What was the armor of the light cruiser Tianlong?
It's no different from something made of paper.
Felix suddenly felt a chill on his back.
He began to feel fortunate that he hadn't fought Chen Zijun to the bitter end.
"Mr. Felix," Mo Huixin's voice was soft, but every word was sharp and precise. "The transportation and installation of these four cannons will require the cooperation of your trading company's heavy-duty trailers and technicians. Transportation and labor costs will be settled according to the previous standards. Any questions?"
"No, no problem."
"Very good. Everything must be loaded onto the trucks and we must depart before dawn."
5:30 a.m. Wusongkou.
As the first rays of gray-white dawn pierced the sky, Shen Li rubbed his eyes, thinking he was still dreaming.
When he arrived last night, this place was still a desolate mudflat. It was a patch of reeds and muddy ground where you could sink up to your knees with a single step.
Now?
Four hemispherical gray concrete fortresses, each three stories high, sit precariously on either side of the fortress. Their outer walls are as thick as city walls, and their firing ports and observation windows, like the eyes of giant beasts, coldly stare at the river.
The fortresses are connected by underground passages. They are equipped with trenches, ammunition depots, communications rooms, and command posts.
At that moment, eight German heavy trailers were slowly driving along the makeshift gravel road. On them were huge cylinders wrapped tightly in thick canvas.
Cannon barrel.
The barrels of four 280mm Krupp coastal defense cannons.
The roar of the winch echoed across the entire mudflat. Soldiers from the engineering battalion, together with the German technicians brought by Felix, used steel cables to hoist the first gun barrel and slowly lower it into the gun mount deep within Battery No. 1.
Click.
The gun barrel and the gun mount fit together perfectly.
Shen Li stood to the side, watching the dark cannon barrel, as thick as a water vat, embed itself into the fortress, like a giant beast opening its mouth.
The hairs on the back of his head stood on end.
That's 280 millimeters.
In the entire Far East, apart from the few 381mm fortified guns the British had in Singapore, there were no other coastal defense weapons with a larger caliber.
The second gate. The third gate. The fourth gate.
Within an hour, all four giant cannons were in place.
Chen Zijun stood in front of the observation window of the No. 2 gun emplacement, holding a cup of hot tea that Mo Huixin had just brought him.
He looked at the gray river surface under the morning light, and a slight smile appeared on his lips.
"Shen Li, let's do the math."
"The light cruiser Tianlong, displacing 3500 tons, has armor up to 63 millimeters thick. A 280mm armor-piercing shell can penetrate 320mm of homogeneous steel at a range of 10,000 meters."
He took a sip of tea.
"Tell me, after this shot, what will be left of the Tianlong?"
Shen Li thought for a moment. "Fragments?"
Even the fragments are large.
Chen Zijun put down his teacup, his expression suddenly turning cold.
"But don't get too excited. The fortress's anti-aircraft firepower is still too weak; only four 88mm guns were brought in. What if the Japanese send planes next—"
He didn't finish speaking because a communications soldier came running up, panting.
"Reporting to the young marshal! Urgent telegram from Longhua Road!"
Chen Zijun took the telegram and glanced at it.
His expression changed.
"Qi Yingcai has gone mad."
Shen Li leaned closer. "What's wrong?"
"He dispatched a heavily armed brigade south from Yangzhou along the highway. Their objective was the supply lines north of Taicang."
Chen Zijun crumpled the telegram into a ball and threw it into the wind.
"He wants to cut off our supply lines by land before the Japanese fleet arrives."
Shen Li sneered. "A brigade? Does he think our three newly formed national defense divisions are just sitting around doing nothing?"
Chen Zijun stared at the river, his eyes extremely cold.
"Perfect timing. What the three newly formed divisions lack is real combat experience. Qi Yingcai has delivered a whetstone to my tools."
He turned around.
"Order He Maofeng to lead the vanguard regiment of the 2nd Division of the National Defense Army north to Taicang. I want them to use Qi Yingcai's heavy firepower brigade to practice handling the new guns."