DLERB -Chapter 181 The Marshal’s Order — Use Stones to Smash Them! Antony Cuts Off His Armor and Loses His Soul!

The Victory carved a trail of despair across the sea.

Antony collapsed onto the deck, watching helplessly as his flagship was dragged toward that black mountain by an invisible force.

“Row! Reverse! Everyone, ROW!”

His roar was drowned out by the agonized creaking of the ship coming apart.

The rowers were pinned to their seats by their own iron helmets and daggers, unable to move.

Sailors rolled across the tilting deck, crying out the names of their gods.

It was useless.

Everything was too late.

The savage black dragon ram of the Zhenyuan was already right in front of them.

Antony opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Then came the impact.

There was no earth-shattering crash.

Only a horrifying crack-crack sound.

Like a giant tearing apart a sheet of wet paper.

The bow of the Victory struck the black ram.

And then—

starting from the bow and moving backward—

the deck, the mast, the cabins…

Rome’s strongest warship was effortlessly and cleanly split apart by the Zhenyuan.

Like a hot knife cutting through butter.

The entire ship was divided into two halves.

Wood splinters and human bodies were hurled into the air by the tremendous force.

The rear half of the ship, where Antony stood, was carried by momentum, scraping alongside the hull of the Zhenyuan.

And then he heard it.

Every remaining piece of metal aboard his half-destroyed ship let out a shrill scream.

They were violently ripped out of the wooden structure by an overwhelming force!

BOOM!

The command platform beneath Antony completely collapsed.

He slammed hard onto the shattered deck, mixed together with countless struggling soldiers.

Freezing seawater instantly flooded up to his calves.

On the deck of the Zhenyuan—

Wang Li stopped breathing.

He stared at the Roman flagship disintegrating below him and went completely numb.

That was it…?

It was over just like that?

Behind him, Wang Jian stroked his beard and let out a satisfied chuckle.

Meng Tian said nothing, but his posture grew even straighter.

“Your Highness!”

Wang Li finally snapped out of it and turned around, clasping his fists toward the commander’s seat.

“What should we do with the barbarians in the water?”

Ying Ziye didn’t even look at him.

He simply accepted a warm towel from a guard and leisurely wiped his hands.

As though what had just been crushed was not an entire fleet, but merely an annoying fly.

“Aren’t there plenty of ballast stones aboard?”

Ying Ziye tossed the towel back onto the tray.

“Bring them out.”

“Practice your aim.”

Wang Li froze.

Then his face flushed red with extreme excitement.

“This general obeys!”

He spun around and roared at the soldiers behind him.

“Did you hear that?!”

“Bring up the ballast stones!”

“Let His Highness watch us play a game of stone throwing!”

“ROAR!”

Hundreds of Qin soldiers answered excitedly.

They rushed into the hold, emerging in pairs carrying dark ballast stones the size of human heads.

Out on the sea—

the surviving Roman soldiers clung desperately to broken planks, struggling in the freezing water.

They had only just escaped the nightmare of their warships falling apart.

Before they could even catch their breath—

they looked up and saw rows of Qin soldiers lining the rails of the giant black warship above them.

The Qin soldiers did not draw bows.

Nor did they wield spears.

They merely raised the… stones in their hands.

One Roman centurion had just surfaced from the water—

THUD!

A black stone fell from the sky and smashed directly into the top of his skull.

Red and white matter exploded everywhere.

He didn’t even have time to scream before sinking beneath the sea.

“HAHAHAHA! Bullseye!”

Wang Li stood at the bow, personally holding the largest stone.

He aimed at a Roman officer who was desperately trying to climb onto a floating plank.

The officer wore an ornate half-suit of armor.

“Get back down there!”

Wang Li roared as he hurled the stone with all his strength.

The rock traced an arc through the air.

BANG!

Direct hit.

The stone smashed squarely into the officer’s back.

His iron armor let out a dull crunch and instantly caved inward.

Like a fly swatted flat, the officer was slammed straight into the sea and never surfaced again.

“GOOD!”

Cheers erupted across the Qin warships.

This was not war.

This was an execution.

And more than that—

it was humiliation.

Antony clung to a massive floating piece of wreckage.

He watched everything unfold.

Watched the warriors under his command—the men who had once conquered countless lands—being picked off one by one like ducks in the water.

What drove him into even deeper despair—

were the heavily armored infantry.

Their armor had become the deadliest curse of all.

“Help me! My leg’s stuck to his armor!”

Two heavy infantrymen had become fused together like candied hawthorns on a skewer, thrashing wildly in the sea.

A stone flew over and smashed one of them in the head.

The other was dragged down together with him.

Elsewhere, an entire formation of legionary heavy infantry—dozens of men—had been pulled together by their own armor into a gigantic human-shaped iron ball.

They struggled and wailed in the water.

But they could not separate.

They became the largest and most obvious target on the battlefield.

Qin soldiers rained stones upon them like hail.

BANG!

BANG! BANG!

Every impact burst another spray of blood from the writhing iron mass.

The screams gradually weakened.

Then disappeared altogether.

Finally, that iron sphere forged from Rome’s glory sank slowly into the bottomless sea under the weight of hundreds of pounds of metal.

Antony’s body began trembling uncontrollably.

He tried to move.

Only to discover that he could not.

He looked down.

The commander’s armor he wore—crafted from gold and steel, symbolizing the honor of the First Fleet’s supreme commander—had been firmly pulled against the iron-bound edge of the wreckage beneath him.

He too had become a prisoner inside the cage.

He watched Roman soldiers one after another having their skulls crushed by stones.

Watched his nation—

his everything—

become the enemy’s laughingstock.

Then survival instinct overwhelmed all fear and shame.

Live.

He used all his strength to pull out a tiny bronze fruit knife from his waist.

It was the only metal object on him that had not been pulled away.

Without the slightest hesitation—

he used the little knife to frantically cut at the thick leather straps binding his breastplate.

RIP!

The straps snapped.

The golden chestplate engraved with eagles and lightning slid off his body.

With a heavy CLANG, it stuck firmly to the nearby wreckage.

Antony was free.

Without pausing for even a moment, he crawled to the edge of the debris like a stray dog fleeing for its life.

Then dove headfirst into the freezing sea.

He swam desperately, not daring to look back.

After an unknown amount of time, he finally surfaced from the raging water and greedily gasped for air.

Instinctively—

he turned back for a glance.

Just one glance.

And his entire body froze.

The Roman First Fleet he had once been so proud of—

was gone.

In its place—

attached to the side of that moving wall of black iron warships—

was an indescribably massive, twisted, grotesque sphere of metal.

Swords.

Helmets.

Shields.

Armor.

Ballistas.

Iron nails…

Thousands upon thousands of metal fragments had been compressed, warped, and fused together.

Like some death-filled garbage star drifting from the depths of the cosmos.

His fleet.

His glory.

Had all become part of that heap of scrap metal.