Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 125: Feilong Island Crisis
On a small island near Puerto Rico,

The crude wooden houses and fences made sizzling sounds in the fire. More than a dozen plumes of thick smoke rose straight up from the island, spreading in the sky for a long time without dissipating.

After a fierce island defense battle, Hou Taiyuan and his men left the island highlands they were defending and came to the place where the pirates landed.

More than a dozen ships abandoned by pirates were stranded on the beach, and more than 200 corpses were scattered near the coast. Most of these corpses belonged to the pirates who attacked Feilong Island, and a small part were Chinese pirates who died in the battle.

Hou Taiyuan walked towards the coast step by step, and the Chinese pirates around him kept sending people to collect their dead companions and deal with the pirates' bodies.

When he reached the edge of the coast, Hou Taiyuan stopped and looked around at the scene after the battle, his brows furrowed into a straight line.

The pirates' surprise attack last night caught the Chinese pirates off guard. Eighteen Chinese pirates patrolling the coast were wiped out at the guard post. Without the vigilance and reminder of the guard post, the pirates on Feilong Island did not notice anything unusual until the invading pirates landed on a large scale. However, by then, nearly half of the pirates had already established themselves in the coastal area. Hou Taiyuan led the three hundred Chinese pirates who had been gathered in an emergency to launch a counterattack, but failed to drive the invading pirates into the sea. Instead, he lost more than fifty of his men. As the number of invading pirates increased, in order to preserve his strength, Hou Taiyuan ordered all pirates to move to the base in the center of Feilong Island and use the steep terrain of the base to resist the pirates' attack.

The battle lasted for a day and a night. The pirates failed to capture the high ground defended by Hou Taiyuan, and the ships driven by the Chinese pirates who were returning home on the sea had already returned. The ships of both sides clashed repeatedly on the sea. Five or six pirate ships were destroyed by the Chinese pirates, and seven or eight ships were seriously damaged and stranded on the coast and could not be used.

It was difficult to eliminate the pirates holding out on Feilong Island in a short period of time. At the same time, the returning Chinese pirates continued to launch attacks on the invading pirates.

After persisting in the attack for a day and a night, the attacking pirates chose to give up and all evacuated Feilong Island this morning, leaving only ruins and abandoned corpses on the ground for the Chinese pirates on Feilong Island.

The attack on Feilong Island was a premeditated hostile act. Hou Taiyuan thought about it and immediately thought of the identity of the pirate who attacked Feilong Island - Babu. The last time Babu and his pirates attacked the fleet transporting Chinese workers, they returned empty-handed and also lost many of his men. After Babu withdrew, Hou Taiyuan successfully captured a small sailing warship and two merchant ships. When the news reached Babu and his gang of pirates, they believed that the Chinese pirates had taken advantage of them, and sent people to Feilong Island to demand half of the seized ships and supplies as compensation. However, Hou Taiyuan decisively refused, and the two sides therefore had a conflict.

As a pirate living on the edge of a knife, fighting with other pirate forces was inevitable due to conflicts of interest. Hou Taiyuan did not regret his original decision. However, looking at the completely destroyed island defense facilities and the heavy casualties of his pirates, Hou Taiyuan could not help but feel pain in his heart.

Of the 600 Chinese workers rescued last time, only 500 survived due to injuries and the lack of supplies and medicines on the island. Together with the original 300 pirates, the total number of more than 800 pirates is already a considerable pirate force.

However, after this battle, the newly developed Chinese pirates suffered a heavy blow, and there is no exact data on how many pirates are left.

Worried about the current situation of his pirates, Hou Taiyuan gathered together pirate leaders including Wang Yongtian after inspecting the island and asked them about the specific losses caused by the pirate raid to Feilong Island.

Wang Yongtian was in charge of the financial and logistical affairs of the Chinese pirates. When the battle broke out, he and a group of pirates were driving a fleet consisting of captured small sailing warships and several merchant ships to Cuba to purchase supplies. When they were returning, they found that the pirates were attacking Feilong Island, so they attacked the pirate fleet on the sea to disperse the pirates' force attacking Feilong Island.

After the battle, at the urging of Hou Taiyuan, Wang Yongtian spent half a day counting the losses of Feilong Island and finally came up with an approximate loss data.

The battle losses mainly included three parts: personnel, houses and defense facilities on the island, and ships.

In terms of personnel, the total number of Chinese pirates before the war was 812, including 700 combatants. After the battle, 170 were killed, 140 were seriously injured, and 140 were lightly injured. Most of the more than lightly injured pirates were able to recover and regain their combat effectiveness, while the seriously injured pirates had almost no way out on Feilong Island, which was short of medical care and medicine. Even if they survived by chance, they would leave various hidden dangers and lose their combat effectiveness.

Not counting the lightly wounded, nearly half of the combat-capable pirates were lost in one battle. Even though Hou Taiyuan had prepared himself mentally, he still found it hard to accept Wang Yongtian's words. "Three hundred people were lost in one battle. Did Brother Yongtian make a mistake?"

"I have personally checked the bodies of the brothers who died in the battle and the conditions of the brothers who were seriously injured. There will be no mistakes."

Wang Yongtian's words chilled Hou Taiyuan's heart. "More than half of the combatants have been killed, and the external enemies are eyeing them covetously. If they attack again, can the pirates under my command still resist? Even if we defeat the pirates, how many people will be left on Feilong Island, which has suffered heavy losses?"

"Stranded in a foreign land, hiding on a small island and struggling to survive, even in such a day, the nearby enemies did not give the remnants of the Taiping Army a chance. Does God really want to watch all the Taiping Army soldiers die and disappear? Not giving the old brothers of the Taiping Army any chance to survive?"

The heavy casualties reminded Hou Taiyuan of his despair about the fate of the remnant Taiping army and his brothers. He was filled with resentment and gritted his teeth, saying, "Bub wants to destroy Feilong Island, and we can't let him live easily. Notify all the brothers, gather our forces, and attack Torti Island. We have to make an end to those black ghosts!"

"General, you can't do that," Wang Yongtian said hastily. "There are nearly 2,000 pirates attacking Feilong Island. Babu and his group of pirates alone don't have such a strong force. It must be that all the pirate forces on Torti Island have united to attack Feilong Island. Otherwise, it would be impossible for Babu to do it with his strength."

"General, there are three pirate gangs on Torti Island. Their total strength is more than 2,000 people. In addition, Torti Island is their base. If we attack Torti Island, they can mobilize more forces to deal with us. In this way, even if all the brothers on Feilong Island are sent to attack Torti Island, the result will be annihilation. General, please consider the safety of all the brothers and do not act rashly!"

Hou Taiyuan was furious and wanted to use his remaining strength to make a desperate attempt for revenge, but not all pirate leaders were so overwhelmed by anger and despair. After Wang Yongtian dissuaded him, another old Taiping Army soldier tried to persuade him.

"Taking the initiative to attack is not an option. Are we going to stay on Feilong Island and wait for death?"

Hou Taiyuan knew that there were more than just Babu's family of pirates attacking Feilong Island, which was why he felt desperate. This attack meant that the Haitian pirate forces represented by Babu had officially become their enemy, and before the attack, Feilong Island could deal with the Haitian pirates with the strength of 800 people, but after losing half of its combat force, the possibility of the remaining pirates and the wounded surviving in the Caribbean was very small.

Hou Taiyuan sighed, and said in a calm tone, "Attacking Torti Island means perishing together with the enemy. After this battle, Feilong Island only has two options left. One is to stay on Feilong Island and wait for the pirates to attack again in more than ten days or half a month. The other is to stop being a pirate and sell yourself to Cuba as a laborer.

It is too humiliating to hide on Feilong Island and be blocked to death by black ghosts. Everyone knows what the end of being a laborer is. Since we have been forced into a dead end, it is better to take the initiative to attack and kill a few more black ghosts to avenge our dead brothers, which is worse than waiting to die in cowardice. "

Hou Taiyuan paused for a moment and continued, "The houses and fortifications on the island were burned down by the pirates before they retreated. Even if we didn't hear the data about the island's material losses from Brother Nagata, everyone had a rough idea in their minds that the fortifications were destroyed, the weapons and ammunition were exhausted, and Brother Nagata led the fleet to fight against the pirates with superior strength, so the losses must have been huge. All things considered, Feilong Island can be said to have reached the end of its rope."

Hou Taiyuan's performance today is very different from his previous image. Perhaps it was the training he had received since he led the remnants of the Taiping Army to establish a foothold on Feilong Island that allowed Hou Taiyuan to slowly get rid of the habit of solving problems only with force, and unconsciously began to consider the possibility of victory in the battle from the perspective of overall power comparison.

Seeing through the comparison of strength is sometimes not a good thing. If it were in the past, Hou Taiyuan would not have considered so much. He would have solved the problem by ignoring the consequences and confronting the enemy in a swarm. However, after clearly weighing the possibility of winning the war, it is even more painful to take the initiative to attack even though he knows that there is almost no chance of success.

Hou Taiyuan told Wang Yongtian about the current situation of Feilong Island. Wang Yongtian opened his mouth to persuade him again but found that he had nothing to say. The wooden house fell into silence.

(End of this chapter)