Chapter 252 - Moon Island Naval Battle (Part 2)
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Nora
After he salvaged the captived pirates, Pei Donglai had to face a huge issue.
Black Beard had regathered his troops that totaled at more than a thousand pirates on the dock, so how could Pei Donglai successfully dock on the island? The Beihai navy fleet wasn’t like the marines in the real world, which could commence amphibious operations.
In the end, Pei Donglai came up with a stubborn idea. He ordered the 1st unit to dock on the island, and the other four units remained in the fan-like formation. These units provided cover fire to suppress the pirates.
Black Beard saw the warship, as it prepared to dock. In response, he quickly ordered the pirates to stop them.
Right at this moment, a wave of arrows rained on the path of the pirates and stopped them in their tracks. The pirates hesitated, unsure if they should move.
The Behai navy fleet’s actions infuriated Black Beard. He continually scolded them. What incredibly shameless intruders!
“Charge, move! Or we all die!”
Under his command, the pirates rushed toward the rain of arrows. Every second, the archers would shoot down a pirate, which left some injured, while some directly died.
The pirates on the shore escaped death after the enemy set their ships ablaze. Finally, they jumped into the sea to save their lives, but now, they had to face death itself again. Naturally, they felt reluctant.
As the casualties increased, some of the pirates couldn’t take it anymore. Instead of charging forward, they secretly fell back and escaped. They tried to run away from the rain of arrows.
When some people took the lead, others would follow the trend. Humans were afraid of death, and pirates were no exceptions. Therefore, the pirates hadn’t even made it halfway toward the 1st unit before more than half of them retreated.
The Beihai navy 1st unit took advantage of the situation to board the island and establish a defense line.
At this moment, Black Beard knew that no course of action could stop the Beihai navy anymore. Even if they continued to charge forward, they would not stop the intruders.
“Retreat!” Black Beard said wryly.
This order made the pirates overjoyed. They dispersed and ran away faster than rabbits.
Ouyang Shuo stood on the flagship. He shook his head, as he saw the opponent’s powerless state.
Just like this, the Beihai navy fleet successfully boarded the island and commenced a round of extermination of the pirates that remained.
At this time, the pirates all ran for the own lives and weren’t even organized.
In order to prevent anyone from slipping through the net, Pei Donglai arranged the 4th and 5th units to stay in the Meng Chong warships and patrol the island waters. This action completely blocked off the pirates' escape routes.
Moon Island was only 50-square kilometers, so it wasn’t really a good place to hide.
Pei Donglai tacitly implemented Ouyang Shuo’s captive policy. The sailors shouted and called for the pirates to surrender themselves. If they did, they would be spared. Otherwise, if the pirates decided to ignore the message and run, the navy would exterminate them without mercy.
The threat was effective.
One by one, the pirates exited their hiding holes and held both of their hands in surrender. Only Black Beard and a few of his stubborn subordinates were still on the run.
To the diehard pirate members, Pei Donglai showed no mercy. He had the soldiers of the 1st unit spread out in search of them. Once found, they would exterminate these pirates on the spot.
The extermination lasted for the whole afternoon.
Then, Pei Donglai accompanied Ouyang Shuo to inspect the island.
The Black Sharks had good looting skills. In exchange, they had trash building skills.
The whole pirate camp didn’t even have a fence; they had left it wide open. They could count the buildings on the island on one hand.
The pirates only actually paid attention to their dock.
A narrow, bumpy, and damp dirt road weaved down the marina. Ouyang Shuo carefully watched his feet as he walked. He did not want to step into the puddles.
Wooden houses were scattered across both sides of the dirt road. The houses were rudimentary and rough, as if the pirates had simply built them from a few pieces of wood.
Ouyang Shuo felt doubtful about whether such a wooden house could shelter the owner during rainy or sunny days.
They had no decent courtyards outside the log houses. There were not any domestic animals or vegetables either. A few dilapidated clothes hung under the eaves, floating and dangling in the wind.
Occasionally, he found some dried fishes in some of the houses. These were the homes of the more diligent pirates.
In terms of fields, they had basically not reclaimed any land. They only had purely barren land that lacked plantations. Only the wild green bristlegrass told the visitors a certain decadence.
Clearly, the pirates simply did not produce any crops . They lack the ability to self-sustain and completely depended on stolen supplies.
After they continued inward, they suddenly came across a small pond in the middle of the island. Ouyang Shuo observed it and estimated that the pond had a size of less than 500-square meters. It should be the island's only source of freshwater.
For this reason, the pirates regarded this pond as their most important asset and protected it very closely.
The pirates had built a circle of buildings around the pond. These were all wooden structures and looked more solid than the wooden houses on the outer ring; this should be the core area of the pirates. The most popular pirate tavern was one of these buildings.
The only courtyard in the highest place looked very conspicuous within the group of wooden houses.
Needless to say, this must have been the abode of the great leader of the pirates.
Along the way, Ouyang Shuo had lost interest in the other buildings. He headed straight for the courtyard.
Even after they had walked to the core area of the island, the roads along the way had not improved, still bumpy and full of potholes. On both sides of the road, the lively wild green bristlegrass swung in the breezes of wind.
The soldiers had cleaned up these buildings of pirates first.
Therefore, when Ouyang Shuo arrived, there wasn’t a single pirate in sight. He only saw the soldiers of the Beihai navy fleet. On the ground, he could occasionally see some traces of blood and fighting.
The guard on duty saw Ouyang Shuo and immediately saluted.
Ouyang Shuo nodded and walked through the door.
The soldier had not expected any response from the great marquis, so this small gesture warmed his heart.
Ouyang Shuo raised his head and observed the island's most advanced building.
A simple, small courtyard laid before him. It touches on Ouyang Shuo’s memories. He thought back to when Shanhai Village was originally built. At that time, the Lord’s Manor and the courtyard were very similar.
Ouyang Shuo arrived at the Council Chamber and began to patiently wait for the latest information the scouts had gathered.
5 PM in the afternoon, Pei Dong gathered all the information and reported to Ouyang Shuo.
After Ouyang Shuo gestured, Pei Dong entered and sat down on the lower portion of the chamber. He said, “Reporting to the marquis, the campaign has gone much smoother than imagined. Our fleet had almost no casualties. We only lost 150 men.”
Ouyang Shuo nodded. The progress of this war had indeed gone beyond his expectations.
“This campaign has captured a total of more than 1,650 pirates. We exterminated all the remaining pirates. We basically either burned all the pirate ships into ashes or sank the into the sea. Only five or six ships survived, we have towed them back to the dock. "Pei Donglai continued, “Through the seizure of the storage houses and the pirate homes, we have plundered 12,500 gold and a box of jewelry. The seized weapons, equipment, and foodstuffs are relatively scarce. They did not store these in large quantities.”
Ouyang Shuo nodded. He had also expected this situation. The pirates relied on loot for a living. At times of food shortage, they would just go hunt, so they would definitely not store much food.
On the contrary, the pirates had backlogged all the gold and jewels they had plundered and scavenged because of a lack of selling channels. For this reason, the pirate group of more than 3,000 people held a fortune of over 10,000 gold.
“Take 500 gold from the seized funds and reward it to the soldiers,” said Ouyang Shuo.
No one knew when it began, but Ouyang Shuo started to reward the soldiers according to their performances. He did this to encourage the soldiers to fight bravely.
“Thank you, lord!” Pei Donglai represented the fleet and thanked Ouyang Shuo.
“Did we plunder anything special?” Ouyang Shuo asked. By ‘special,’ Ouyang Shuo referred to special-level items. In general, there was a great probability of obtaining some weird items from the loots of the pirates.
“Yes, there is.” Pei Donglai did not disappoint.
The soldiers outside dragged in a box of jewelry and gold, and everything else they had plundered from the pirates. They left it on the ground so that Ouyang Shuo could inspect the items.
Ouyang Shuo stood up. Other than setting aside 500 gold, he kept the other goods in his storage bag. The packed chamber once again became empty. He had only left two goods on the ground, a stone and a picture.
Ouyang Shuo picked up the black stone and inspected it. The rock was medium-sized, about the size of two fists in total. It felt heavy when one picked it up in their palm.
[Meteorite fine iron] (Platinum) : Godly stone fallen from the skies, rare forging material.
The stone had simple properties, but it stirred a great storm of excitement in Ouyang Shuo’s heart. Platinum-level forging materials, Ouyang Shuo could see his personal exclusive weapon waving at him.
This meteorite fine iron alone made Ouyang Shuo feel that this trip was worthwhile.
Ouyang Shuo guessed that the only reason Black Beard did not forge this meteorite fine iron was because he couldn’t find himself a decent blacksmith. Only a master blacksmith could make use of this rare ore and turn it into great use.
Carefully, he placed the meteorite fine iron into his storage bag before he picked up the picture.
Rumors said that before his death, Blood Slaughterer had hidden his fortunes on a deserted island. He jotted down the position of the island onto a map and split it into three. He gave one piece each to his three trusted subordinates.
After his death, his three subordinates tried to snatch the other two parts of the map from their former brother-in-arms. Day after day, year after year, the infighting eventually led to the fall of the famous group of Blood Slaughterer pirates. In the end, none of them could defeat each other, and they all died in depression. They left behind the treasure map pieces to their heirs.
Hundreds of years later, the treasure map pieces shifted from one hand to another, which caused countless tremendous tragedies over the years.
Regrettably, not a single person could gather all three treasure map pieces and find the treasures of Blood Slaughterer. As time went by, another rumor sparked, which said that the treasure maps were only Blood Slaughterer’s wicked ploy to provoke a war between the pirates. Such a conjecture was reasonable given Blood Slaughterer’s personality as a maniac killer.
Slowly and gradually, the truth behind the treasure map sank deep into the river of history. No one even believed the rumors of Blood Slaughterer anymore, and the treasure map pieces became items of collections. No one ever fought for it.
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