Henry immediately put away his rifle and started releasing 50-pound TNT explosive packages from his space every 20 meters or so from behind the corner, activating 20-second delay electric detonators before letting them drop to the ground. He released 5 packages continuously - scattered evenly along the roadside for about 80 meters ahead.
Finally, he placed one more package with a 15-second delay about 100 meters ahead.
As he approached the turning point over 200 meters away, Henry repeatedly tightened and loosened the reins to quickly slow the horse's speed, then freed his feet from the stirrups, released the reins, and jumped off! He rolled!
Fortunately it was all muddy ground, and with Henry's LV4 horsemanship and powerful physical constitution, he rolled several times and stood up unharmed.
By this time, the horse had turned the corner and run behind the hills.
Henry immediately released that chest-high granite stone from his space. He had just raised his Winchester lever-action rifle when the cavalry brigade began appearing at the intersection over 200 meters away. This road could accommodate five or six horses charging side by side.
In just about 10 seconds, the lead cavalry could charge forward!
Henry stood calmly, letting the cavalry vanguard shoot at him while counting in his mind. After three seconds, when the cavalry vanguard had passed the third-to-last explosive package, he began shooting.
"Bang bang bang"
Henry attacked like an emotionless robot with a steady rhythm of firing 15 bullets in 8-9 seconds.
By now many cavalry had realized they were ambushed - there were explosive packages on the road!
But once cavalry began charging, you couldn't stop immediately just because you wanted to.
At this moment they could only pray to charge through the trap zone at high speed.
After Henry fired 5 shots and brought down the five frontmost cavalry, there was a tremendous "boom" as the first and sixth TNT packages exploded almost simultaneously, sending cavalry in front and behind tumbling.
This was followed by four more consecutive explosions.
Six explosions sent shock waves of over 2000 degrees Celsius sweeping across about 120 meters of road ahead!
Cavalry and war horses within this range were at minimum severely injured.
Not a single cavalry escaped the explosion zone!
The front 120 meters of road was like hell projected onto the mortal world - blood and flesh flying everywhere, severed limbs and remains scattered across the ground, with no horse or person able to stand intact.
He had just seen one unlucky fellow thrown by the shock wave to the cliff edge about ten meters from the road, ultimately falling dozens of meters down the cliff with his horse.
If quarter horses charged at 23 meters per second, they could run at most 460 meters in 20 seconds, and with a turn and 30-degree slope, covering 420 meters would be impressive.
Henry had already rehearsed over ten possible scenarios he might encounter today.
This pursuit situation was just one of them.
He actually didn't need to shoot at all - it was just for extra insurance in case there were any oversights.
With his storage space and bullet-deflecting shells, he wasn't afraid of pursuit at all - he even welcomed it.
This perfectly embodied the great leader's principle of "enemy advances, I retreat."
Attacking fortifications would actually give him more headaches.
Even if the ambush plan had flaws, he had powerful error tolerance.
Henry put away the granite stone and slowly walked forward along the road, using two double-action revolvers to finish off each enemy one by one.
At this time, factory commander Tom and Fabio heard five consecutive explosion booms and felt something terrible had happened.
When they heard gunshots ringing out one by one, both men's hearts sank further - if the cavalry brigade had caught their target, it wouldn't sound like this.
Tom couldn't understand how, from the sentry's alarm to the enemy attack taking only over ten seconds, one person could set up an ambush so quickly.
This time, starting at 7 PM, having 96 cavalry lying in ambush inside the factory was Tom's decision.
He predicted the enemy might attack at the same time and had arranged sentries on the hills.
When he heard the sentry say there was only one enemy, he immediately had deputy commander John lead the attack, telling him to try to keep the opponent alive to find out what was going on.
"Rocky, go immediately to the living quarters and tell Finn to bring everyone here right away."
"You ten go together to see what happened. Watch for enemy ambushes, figure out the situation and report back immediately. Don't pursue the enemy."
Tom waited nearly a minute without seeing any cavalry return before issuing commands in succession.
Rocky immediately rode toward the living quarters over 300 meters away.
The other ten quickly grabbed guns and ran toward the outside road entrance.
Over three minutes later, the ten guards reached the corner at the top of the outside road slope and looked left.
By this time Henry had long finished his follow-up shots, since there were only cavalry fallen within 100 meters before the slope corner.
He had just joyfully discovered his release progress bar had reached level 3.
Before he could examine it further, he spotted several people carefully poking their heads out from below the slope over twenty meters away - he had been watching all along.
"Bang bang bang"
Like shooting at rapid-response targets in a shooting range, Henry got a perfect score - the five people who stuck their heads out first were almost simultaneously headshot.
This scared the other five into quickly ducking down. Just as they were still in shock, they suddenly found an explosive package falling overhead, exploding just one or two meters above their heads.
The high-pressure, high-temperature shock wave from the explosion crushed their internal organs, causing them to instantly lose consciousness and die shortly after.
Henry walked to the slope and looked down, finding ten mangled corpses with no one else.
From this position the factory entrance was visible, so Henry temporarily ignored it.
After the release progress bar reached level 3, the storage space became a sphere with a 3-meter radius, totaling 113.04 cubic meters.
Having used it for so long, he knew this sphere was just a visualization.
In reality, the space could conform to collect items, with objects separated by what seemed like spatial membranes, completely independent of each other.
Space utilization was almost 100%.
Henry estimated the factory people wouldn't dare send anyone out to investigate casually, but for safety he still ran along the road to 100 meters away before turning back to collect those cavalry, horses, and weapons one by one.
This way, if anyone came up the slope, he could react immediately.
Collecting corpses was much slower than follow-up shots, since he had to touch each one individually.
Most horses were still alive but had broken legs and likely internal bleeding. Keeping them would only cause suffering, so Henry put them out of their misery one by one.
During this time he heard dense hoofbeats from the smelting plant - it seemed they had reinforcements again.
By the time Henry finished his work, it was getting dark.
Henry took out his Patek Philippe gold pocket watch and found it was just past 8 PM.
He walked to the cliff edge and looked toward the factory. His sharp vision let him see the brightly lit factory was bustling with dozens or hundreds of guards.
However, the distance was nearly 500 meters with many buildings blocking the view.
This distance exceeded the "one-in-a-thousand" Winchester rifle's effective range by about 50 meters. He could take a few blind shots, but it wouldn't mean much.
(End of Chapter)
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