Munitions Empire

"Hurry! There are two horses here!" Just as the two men sprinted towards their mounts, a shout from afar filled them with despair.

They were startled for a moment before realizing that their means of escape might have been discovered.

"Go! Run fast!" Beiji quickly pointed south and, with his entourage, started running towards Brunas.

"You run towards the main road! Give me the flintlock gun!" Beiji came up with a plan to escape as he ran, "No one recognizes you. Just act like a passerby on the road, and they won't trouble you!"

"After you get through, head immediately north! Do not go south... to Northern Ridge, find the people at Shireck Iron Mine, release the news! Whether I can return or not... None of Brunas's men shall be spared!" Beiji laid out his plan and stopped in a rather concealed location.

His attendant also thought it unwise to carry a longsword and flintlock gun at this time. Without hesitation, he undid his armed belt and handed it over to Beiji.

When Beiji took the belt and drew the flintlock gun from inside, he turned and ran in the opposite direction.

With the flintlock gun in one hand, Beiji parted the weeds in front of him with the other and continued to crouch and flee southward.

Rather than disguising himself to run, he trusted the flintlock gun in his hand more. He had confidence in his swordsmanship and his marksmanship, and he did not believe the enemy would easily find him.

Tang Mo was beside the road to Vicious Forest, watching the passing merchants with odd suspicion towards his own search party.

Having just emerged from the bandit-ridden Vicious Forest, the sight of so many armed personnel naturally made them very wary.

Acting as if it had nothing to do with him, Tang Mo, with Roger and Redman, continued northward along the road, "Once they discard their weapons and blend into a caravan, we will not be able to find them."

"The problem is, only Wes has seen one of them, which makes it difficult." Redman, a middle-aged man, looked neither strong nor tall and somewhat lean.

Speaking with a Northern Ridge accent, he seemed mature and composed. With his hand on the flintlock gun at his waist, he said to Tang Mo, "With three teams deployed along the road, we can only hope they can stop them from escaping into the wilderness."

"Do our utmost and leave the rest to fate," Tang Mo conceded, feeling the difficulty of capturing two spies without photographs in this era.

The spies could easily blend in with a simple disguise, making them hard to differentiate. Furthermore, they could split up, increasing their chances of breaking through the encirclement.

Regardless, it was always easier and less conspicuous for one person to move and disguise himself. If they were just a bit unlucky on their side, the enemy could indeed escape to freedom.

"Commander! We've found two horses! And this!" A soldier ran up and handed something to Redman.

Redman took the object, which turned out to be an armed belt with a longsword hanging from it, but the flintlock gun was missing from the holster.

"It seems our opponents have chosen the most correct path to escape," Tang Mo revealed a smile, "They've disguised themselves as merchants, instead of choosing to fight us."

"So what should we do?" asked Redman anxiously.

"Do our utmost and leave the rest to fate," replied Tang Mo with a sense of helplessness. His opponents were not fools; it would be unreasonable to expect them to cooperate entirely according to their plans.

Watching the carriages and pedestrians come and go on the road, Tang Mo could only hope that the Shireck Consortium would not rashly assemble a private army and come looking for trouble with hundreds of men.

If the enemy did not play by the rules, Brunas might erupt into a kingdom-wide civil war. His 500 private soldiers might create an astonishing history—defeating the highly trained Shireck private army in one go and becoming a notable armed force within the Leite Kingdom.

By then, his K1 Quick Gun might become a bestseller, highly sought after by everyone, forcing even Shireck to bow and negotiate a partnership with him.

Alternatively, he might face an even larger Shireck private army, with thousands of men and cannons, initiating an all-out arms merchant war, deciding everything with a real battle.

Tang Mo didn't believe he would lose; he even felt a direct war might be a good option.

But he had to consider the cost of the war—his painstakingly built factory and the nearby facilities might be destroyed, and the troops he had cultivated could suffer significant losses.

Of the 500 private soldiers he had assembled, how many would survive this protracted war? 200? Or just 100?

Reflecting on this, Tang Mo pulled back from his thoughts. After all, none of this was within his control.

The choice was now in the hands of the Shireck Consortium. How they chose seemed to determine the fate of both powers.

"That way... is that the caravan heading back to Northern Ridge...?" Tang Mo decided not to concern himself with matters beyond his control and resolved to handle things one step at a time, focusing only on what lay directly before him.

Roger nodded and spoke, "Yes, this time they are taking away 100 K1 Quick Guns, one of our experimental mining steam engines, one thousand meters of matching steel rails, and twenty mine carts."

"Starting tomorrow, let's shift our production focus to the K1 Quick Guns..." Tang Mo let out a long sigh and said to Roger, "On the basis of satisfying Lord Earl's weapons supply, strive to equip our new recruits with an additional 100 or more K1 Quick Guns each month."

Redman was taken aback, then quickly realized that this young man in front of him had already started shifting his focus to arming the troops.

In fact, Tang Mo was thinking even more comprehensively than he imagined. Tang Mo, who asked Roger to go back to discuss shifting the production focus with Mathews, was already scheming about how to establish his own intelligence network.

At the very least, he felt he should establish a sophisticated intelligence network near Brunas to ensure he had enough time to respond to emergencies.

Now he was suffering from the lack of an intelligence network, having remained passive and reacting only when the enemy was nearly upon him, which led to today's events.

He also knew that building an intelligence network required time, extensive investment, and a considerable amount of money, but if he didn't proceed with it, the losses could be even more substantial.

"Go check the front, see the caravan heading to Northern Ridge..." Tang Mo mentally noted the task of creating his own intelligence agency and gestured to Roger and Redman with a wave of his hand.

...

Without his horse and weapons, the attendant didn't dare cross the Vicious Forest alone; he lacked the guts to face those bandits by himself. So after steering clear of those searching for him, he climbed onto the roadbed with lingering fears and approached a fairly substantial-looking caravan.

"Hey, I say... Are you heading to Northern Ridge?" he asked a guard next to the carriage, feigning nonchalance.

The guards were carrying Shireck Flintlock Guns, which brought a sense of familiarity to the attendant. He approached them and pulled out a few silver coins from his chest, "I want to go to Northern Ridge, could you give me a lift?"

"You want to go to Northern Ridge?" A man sitting on the carriage jumped down, brushing off the dust as he curiously asked.

"Yes, I plan to go to Northern Ridge to seek out a relative," the attendant of Beiji concocted a story and said, "It's too dangerous to travel alone, so I hope you can take me along."

He gestured with the silver coins in his hand, "This is all the money I have left, just consider it travel expenses, I beg you, please help me out."

In fact, he was already very cautious, keeping in mind the principle of not flaunting his wealth, while trying to bribe as naturally as possible.

Normally, the caravan's guards would agree to sneak such passengers into the caravan without inquiring about their background.

Sure enough, the man who seemed to be among the guard leaders laughed as he took the silver coins from the attendant's hand and slipped them into his pocket, patting the attendant's shoulder with a smiling face, "We are the caravan going to Northern Ridge! You're in luck, kid!"

While patting, the guard leader glanced at the attendant's muddy high-quality boots and once expensive but now filthy riding breeches.

Under normal circumstances, the guard leader's dirty hands would never have touched his shoulder. However, the attendant restrained himself from showing a look of disgust and nodded with a forced smile, bending over to say, "Thank you! Thank you!"

"Not this carriage! It's carrying important parts... very important," the man who took the money, proving to be very conscientious, led the attendant past several resting carriages and even started to act as a tour guide, "Come with me, I'll arrange a carriage for you..."

"Parts, parts?" the attendant from Beiji seemed puzzled.

The guard leader nodded, "Yes, important parts."

As he spoke, he seemed to arrive at the spot and pointed at a nearby carriage, "Here are the steel rails, they're heavy... a carriage can only transport two!"

"Steel, steel rails?" the attendant from Beiji started to sense that something was amiss.

"Lord Roger, Lord Redman..." Just as the attendant from Beiji was feeling uneasy, the guard leader, who had led him on a tour all the way here, saluted respectfully towards three individuals next to the carriage, "Lord Tang Mo... this youngster, clad in fine riding breeches without a horse and offering money to bribe the guards, claims he wants to go to Northern Ridge..."

"Oh?" Tang Mo carefully scrutinized the attendant from Beiji, his eyes brimming with amusement. Even Roger, standing beside him, couldn't help but laugh out loud.

With a growing sense of dread, the attendant from Beiji suddenly turned to flee, only to crash into two Soldiers of the Northern Ridge Legion disguised as mercenaries in plain clothes who were following close behind.

"Let me go!" the attendant from Beiji struggled fiercely, continuing his act while trying to resist, "Who are you? It's robbery! I'm just a woodworker going to join relatives in Northern Ridge! Let me go!"

Redman rested his hand on his Longsword and approached, a single kick subdued the attendant, "Take him away!"