Rhodes

At Signor Martelli's command, fifty terrified gunmen cautiously emerged from the woods, their rifles clutched tight, advancing like a slow, doomed wave. Dutch Van der Linde had not only cleared trees within a hundred meters of the factory but, with meticulous ruthlessness, even shrubs and weeds had been meticulously removed.

The very ground had been plowed, flattened, looking starkly exposed, like freshly turned farmland. Three watchtowers, stark against the dark sky, their massive lights illuminating the vicinity of the factory buildings, seemed to offer no defense at all. The scene looked utterly devoid of menace, so these fifty gunmen didn't even bother to conceal themselves. They simply advanced towards the factory, half-crouching with their rifles, their figures starkly visible.

Signor Martelli, meanwhile, slowly, deliberately, began to fall behind the advancing group. His movements became more hesitant, his steps slower, until he had completely detached himself from the main team. With a practiced stealth, he melted back into the bushes, less than two meters behind where he had originally emerged.

His heart rate accelerated uncontrollably, a frantic drumbeat against his ribs, making him profoundly uncomfortable. He had never reacted this way during previous, brutal street battles.

Meanwhile, the team of gunmen, led by the unsuspecting Sam and Jason, unknowingly advanced towards the factory buildings, straight into the maw of death.

Seeing the stark, open plains around them, Sam and Jason instinctively wanted to seek some cover, anything to at least slightly conceal their figures, allowing them to get closer to the factory before their discovery. At this moment, the slightly elevated dirt mound in the distance obviously became their best target, a perceived haven.

So the entire team walked while subtly changing direction, aligning their advancing figures with the dirt mound and the factory, intending to use the mound to obscure them from the view of the factory behind it.

"Dutch Van der Linde, a lapse in judgment; after cutting down all the trees, he still left these five dirt mounds. However, with such weak defenses, even without the dirt mounds, it wouldn't make any damn difference," Signor Martelli whispered to himself, a smug, contemptuous smirk on his face as he squatted in the bushes, watching the gunmen's retreating backs.

He felt his paralyzing fear of the Van der Linde Gang diminishing, replaced by a surge of self-righteous confidence. Judging by the factory's apparent lack of defenses, this damned Van der Linde Gang was nothing more than a band of ignorant exiles with no planning, no strategic thought, possessing at most astonishing individual combat strength.

Upon this thought, Signor Martelli's inner fear significantly decreased, almost vanishing. Perhaps due to his recent, profound psychological trauma, he unconsciously began to belittle the Van der Linde Gang, desperately seeking a sense of security, trying to calm his inner tension.

"Hehehe, they are just a bunch of clowns after all, with no vision, no planning, just a group of reckless brutes relying on their own brute force and—"

"Bang bang bang bang…"

Signor Martelli's disparaging, confident thoughts hadn't even finished forming when a series of familiar, deafening gunshots abruptly ripped through the silence beyond the open ranch. A horrifying series of muzzle flashes flickered amidst the very dirt mound that served as "cover" for the advancing gunmen. A straight chain of bullets, like a fiery, deadly line, appeared in the dark air, accompanied by the choking smell of hot gunpowder smoke rising into the sky.

The scorching bullet chain, like a brutal, indiscriminate meat grinder, directly swept through the fifty gunmen, precisely hitting the two perfectly aligned lines of men attempting to use the dirt mound for cover. The 11.43mm bullets, fired from the water-cooled Maxim gun, were like massive steel nails, capable of penetrating four or five bodies before their kinetic energy was completely exhausted.

And its terrifying lethality directly tore apart the first and second groups of people hit by the bullets, completely blowing open their chests, exploding them into a fine mist of blood and bone.

The fifty unsuspecting gunmen, arranged in two neat, straight lines, became the Maxim's best, most tragic test subjects. As the machine gun roared its metallic, mechanical death song, the first ten people didn't even have time to react, didn't even register a flicker of fear, before their bodies were violently torn and perforated by the relentless hail of bullets.

Limbs flew everywhere, severed and mangled, and a chilling blood mist poured onto the ground. Before the shot gunmen could even scream, a horrifying, heart-wrenching shriek already erupted from the dense forest behind them, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror.

"Ah ah ah ah ah ah!!!!"

Signor Martelli's pants instantly felt warm, a horrifying gush. The fear on his face even caused his facial muscles to twitch uncontrollably, his screams as shrill, as utterly unmanly, as a terrified woman's.

Piercing screams echoed through the dense forest, a horrifying chorus of terror. Signor Martelli's mind was like mush, utterly incapable of rational thought; he stopped thinking about anything, stopped wanting anything, and simply followed his deepest, most primal instincts, turning and running into the dense forest behind him, a pathetic, desperate flight.

The next moment, the frantic sound of his hooves and his own high-pitched screams echoed in the dense forest, growing fainter and fainter, until they vanished into the night. Damn it, what a legendary survivor!

However, the fifty gunmen who had so foolishly accompanied Signor Martelli were not so lucky. Following the devastating attack from the first bunker's Maxim gun, the Maxim gun in the nearby second bunker also roared to life, unleashing its own torrent of death.

Two straight chains of fiery bullets swept across the open ground like intersecting scissors, resembling a superhero's terrifying laser eyes, their combined firepower completely raking the entire area in front of them, leaving nothing but carnage.

A mere fifty gunmen were tragically useless against the Maxim gun's relentless, indiscriminate sweep. The first ten were instantly riddled by the gunfire, their bodies exploding. And even if those behind them reacted and managed to dodge sideways, the relentless firepower would sweep over them again in the very next instant. Running backward was even less of an option; the Maxim's brutal lethality reached a thousand meters, and it only took three short bursts of bullets to completely clear the entire area in front of them.

Coupled with the terrifying, overlapping intertwining of the two bullet chains, these gunmen's cries for help were futile; they would be instantly showered with bullets the very moment they dared to dodge.

And that wasn't all; as the relentless gunshots roared, the powerful searchlights from the nearby watchtowers, responding to the automated sensors, directly illuminated this direction, brutally exposing the seven or eight gunmen still miraculously alive and lying wounded on the ground. The next moment.

"Boom!!!" A cannon shell, whistling like a banshee, screamed from a hidden position, slamming into the midst of these seven or eight terrified souls. The massive explosion completely obliterated the four people lying in the middle, reducing them to unidentifiable paste, and the other three were directly killed by the sheer force of the concussion, their bodies violently thrown as if by an invisible hand.

Thus, from Signor Martelli and his doomed group's arrival to their complete, horrifying annihilation, a total of one hour passed. Signor Martelli, the self-proclaimed strategist, scouted for forty-five long, agonizing minutes, then spoke for ten confident minutes, then the group walked for three fateful minutes into the kill zone.

And the Maxim guns? They roared for less than two minutes. Signor Bronte's last fifty men, his precious reserves, were completely, utterly wiped out, leaving no survivors and not a single intact body. Oh no, Dutch would later muse, the legendary survivor, Signor Martelli, escaped unscathed!

Damn him, he always anticipates the enemy so well! Comparable to America's first general: MacArthur! Consequently, Signor Bronte will have virtually no means of resistance for nearly a year, his empire a broken shell.

Time slowly passed, each day bleeding into the next, and in the blink of an eye, a week had gone by. Shady Belle, once a crumbling, forgotten mansion, had now been urgently transformed into a solid, unyielding fortress. Three Maxim guns were strategically positioned around Shady Belle's outer wall, nestled within the bunkers built directly into the thick, reinforced walls, their cold, hungry muzzles alone guarding Shady Belle's impregnable safety.

Inside Shady Belle, wooden house structures had been ingeniously used for rapid expansion, adding two functional factory sheds and two comfortable residential wooden houses around the central villa, serving as both the booming factory and the living quarters for the bustling Shady Belle area.

And ten new families, loyal and eager, had also been transferred by Dutch. These were quite a few people, with children and adults totaling thirty to forty souls. Each family was still assigned a comfortable six-square-meter house to live in, small but private.

The men served as dedicated gunmen, maintaining Shady Belle's security with unwavering vigilance, while the women acted as skilled female workers within Shady Belle, diligently operating fifty newly purchased sewing machines for continuous clothing production.

Their children, the future of the gang, would be specially escorted by Shady Belle's gunmen in secure carriages to Saint Denis for school, simultaneously acting as small, unseen informants within Saint Denis. Should Signor Bronte make any move, any desperate attempt to retaliate, the people in Shady Belle would be instantly informed, allowing them to directly pursue and intercept, ensuring that Signor Bronte's desperate members could not take a single step out of Saint Denis without being obliterated.

As for the two major families in Rhodes, Dutch had decided to employ a devastating decapitation strategy. These two families had been deeply entrenched in Rhodes for a very long time, their roots far more complex and interwoven than Signor Bronte's superficial influence.

Once war broke out, it would at least require the complete slaughter of the entire town of Rhodes to cleanse it, a brutal, unacceptable cost. So Dutch decided to directly take swift, decisive decapitation action, plunging Rhodes into utter chaos, and then, from the ashes, restore a new, Dutch-controlled peace. And he would seize this golden opportunity to become the new prominent, unchallengeable gang in Rhodes, transforming Rhodes into the second, vital line of defense for besieging and protecting Saint Denis.