At this moment, Shenwu Sixteen was organizing the "orderly" retreat of the Shen Army in New Water City, though the defensive strategy he had once championed—holding the coastline at all costs—had completely failed. The so-called "orderly" retreat was, in essence, nothing more than a spectacular rout.
The main forces were almost entirely in chaos; once one point was breached, the other troops scattered across the islands could scarcely regroup.
The roads being destroyed was the lesser issue. The truly fatal blow came from the relentless barrage of airstrikes. Daytime movements were crushed mercilessly, leaving nighttime as the only window for barely functional maneuvers.
Yet, compared to the lightning-fast mobility of the Tang Army, the Shen Army's sluggish attempts to regroup were nothing short of seeking death. Most units were annihilated during the process of assembling; it was as if the troops were preemptively picking their own burial sites.
