"You want to be witnessed?"

"Fine. I'll put an arrow through you."

Shen Cong's expression had gone flat. He felt the damage to Great Vajra as a physical ache — the photovoltaic panels were nearly irreplaceable at this point. Every one lost was a meaningful blow to the vehicle's power generation. He had almost no spares left.

He'd raised the crossbow when the death-eater who'd fired the improvised cannon retreated behind the group. The bolt went wide of him and punched through someone else's abdomen instead. That man went down screaming.

Sixty-six left.

Before he could adjust, a second death-eater had already produced another wooden tube. This one didn't bother with any ceremony — just twisted the end in silence, and the tube coughed out a projectile that hit the opposite side of Great Vajra. More glass. More panels shattering and sliding off the hull.

Another wave of visceral pain.

"This won't work. A few more of those and the vehicle takes serious damage. Activity reinforcement isn't stopping this weapon." He thought through it quickly. "But the reload time is slow."

"Dismount and engage."

Nineteen-bull strength and bouncing stilts against death-eaters operating at seven, eight, maybe nine-bull — he could completely suppress them. And they couldn't reload those tube weapons fast enough to track him at speed.

He was already moving toward the exit when a new convoy appeared from the Pukou District direction.

Motorcycles — three in the lead, crude sidecar configurations, rifles up in the sidecar positions. Behind them: simple bicycles, riders with bows slung across their backs and core weapons at their sides.

The death-eaters reacted before Shen Cong could process what he was seeing.

"Those are — Zhao the [slur]!"

"Sidecar trikes — Home of the Fearless sidecar trikes!"

The motorcycle convoy didn't slow down. Without any preamble, they engaged — the sidecar gunners opening up on the death-eater mass with aimed fire.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Sustained gunshots. The death-eaters, who'd been comfortable throwing numbers at Great Vajra, couldn't absorb fire from two directions simultaneously. They scattered and began returning fire, pulling attention off the vehicle.