The Fourth Financial Crisis

Seeing that Tian Beixi's expression was uncertain but he never issued a battle order, Shi Yi couldn't help but urge regardless of his identity: "Fairy Tian, ​​what should we do now?"

Tian Beixi gritted his teeth and ordered fiercely: "Just fight! We have the advantage of the terrain. If the Zhongzhou people choose to attack in the rain, they will definitely not get it!"

Shi Yi immediately accepted the order and said: "Yes! Then we will organize the defense according to the original plan?"

"How is the morale of the soldiers?"

"We have won so many battles with you in a row. It's not an exaggeration to describe it as overwhelming!"

Tian Beixi nodded and said, "Then you go organize a defense immediately! I will personally raid the formation for you!"

After receiving Tian Beixi's promise, Shi Yi was reassured. He thought Tian Beixi could still use gunpowder to help them fight, but he didn't know that Tian Beixi had no confidence in being able to detonate gunpowder!

However, Tian Beixi had to deceive him.

Since Shi Yi himself has a bad reputation of "subjugating superiors", and all his family members were sent to Huoyun State by Tian Beixi to serve as hostages, he will definitely not betray the Shenhuo Sect easily, but the slave soldiers of Guhong Island under Shi Yi have the will to fight. It's quite weak.

She knew that if she did not use lies to stabilize the morale of the army, even if her side had the terrain advantage, the indigenous soldiers on the outlying islands under her command would easily collapse on a large scale.

Although Yang Lu often laughed at himself that the Haiya Fleet was a failure, but in this war of competition to see who had the lower threshold, the army of the indigenous people on the outlying islands would only be worse than the Haiya Fleet. Nowadays, the soldiers on Guhong Island seem to have great morale, but that is entirely based on blind trust in the power of gunpowder!

After receiving Tian Beixi's promise, Shi Yi accepted the order and left with satisfaction. When Shi Yi left, Tian Beixi snapped her fingers, and a small flame appeared on her fingertips.

Today, Tian Beixi has placed more than 20 gunpowder detonation points underground in the Guhong Island tidal flat fortification. Under normal circumstances, Tian Beixi does not even need a fuse. He only needs a slight movement of his mind to use his spiritual energy to rub out a small flower. A small spell flame can detonate gunpowder instantly, and it looks as sensitive and magical as a cultivation spell.

It's just that it's raining heavily outside, and these gunpowders still have a few percent of their power. Even Tian Beixi doesn't think they're good.

But fortunately, the Haiya Fleet is also on an expedition, and the time and place are on its side. What's more, even if the gunpowder cannot be fully detonated, the explosion and smoke produced will have a first-class frightening effect on the cold weapon army, and its chances of winning are still quite large. …

"Woo--Woo--"

While Tian Beixi was meditating, with the long sound of the horn, the attack of the Haiya Fleet officially began!

In order to prevent the Haiya Fleet from launching an attack from above, the defensive position of the Guhong Island army was more than 300 meters away from the tidal flat.

Although this approach can effectively avoid the long-range bow and arrow fire of the Sea Cliff Fleet, it is also equivalent to directly giving up the most important beachhead.

No matter what era of cold weapon wars it is, maintaining a good combat formation is a very important combat principle. If you look at the history books, you can see that armies that are attacked by sneak attacks are often very fragile, and armies that are flanked are often particularly prone to collapse. This does not mean that It's not because the soldiers in the army are frightened by the other side, but because soldiers without formation have no room to fight back when facing soldiers with formation.

It is precisely because of this that the cold weapon army that has just completed the landing and has not yet deployed its formation is often the most vulnerable existence, and is very suitable for a mid-crossing attack. If the Guhong Island army does not have gunpowder, it will definitely not give up this key area easily.

Tian Beixi's weird formation method does have the problem of over-reliance on gunpowder.

Under the eyes of the Guhong Island army, the leading troops of the Haiya City army had already set up a combat formation on the beach. Because Tian Beixi voluntarily gave up the beach defense position, the Haiya soldiers suffered almost no damage during the whole process.

The army on Guhong Island tried to use crossbows for long-range harassment, but their location was relatively far away, and the heavy rain seriously affected the range of ordinary crossbows. This level of harassment was completely ineffective.

After the vanguard troops in raincoats completed their formation, Han Fulai did not immediately order an attack.

He ordered to the herald beside him: "First let the fleet's ballistae fire a volley to completely destroy their defenses!"

Yang Lu had already seen the power of the Haiya Fleet's ballistae before.

However, when Han Fu came to pacify the outlying island lords who were unwilling to pay protection fees, he always fired at close range, so Yang Lu really didn't know the specific range of the Haiya Fleet's ballistae.

After slightly comparing the distance between the Haiya fleet and the Guhong Island position, Yang Lu couldn't help but be a little surprised and said: "Our fleet is about a mile away from the opponent's defenses! At such a long distance, our ballistae can also fire To each other?"

Han Fulai chuckled and said: "How can the mortal weapons produced by our Haiya Chamber of Commerce be comparable to ordinary street goods? Our ballistae can shoot two miles, let alone one mile. If the weather is clear, it will not be a problem even if it shoots two miles!"

The ballistae with a maximum range of 1,000 meters has exceeded the technical level of the top projectile weapons on the ancient earth. Even the heavy trebuchets do not have such an exaggerated range.

It seems that the degree of strengthening of cold weapons by cultivation materials is also very terrifying. Such a large firing torque may not be able to withstand ordinary wood structures and bowstring materials.

And the range limitation of a ballista isn't just the material.

A ballista with a long range can barely be considered an aircraft. Its flight stability and accuracy will be greatly affected by its own aerodynamic properties. It is definitely not as simple as just shooting it with a stick. Han Fu said that his The ballistae can hit a target one mile away, which shows that the ballistae of the Sea Cliff Fleet should be able to maintain a certain accuracy at this distance.

Therefore, Yang Lu couldn't help but be surprised: "Haiya Chamber of Commerce actually masters this level of crossbow technology?"

Han Fulai smiled and explained: "For thousands of years, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has been studying the theory of mortal war and mortal weapon technology. The cultivation organization in the entire Kyushu cultivation world that is best at fighting mortal wars is probably our Haiya Chamber of Commerce!"

Before Yang Lu could ask further questions, Lin Muhu couldn't help but interject: "Why does the Haiya Chamber of Commerce conduct research in this area?"

"Because Haiya City is the closest port to the outlying island, and the Haiya Chamber of Commerce is also the largest arms dealer on the outlying island!" Han Fulai pointed at the sailors of the Haiya Fleet who were operating the ballistae, and introduced it like the King of the Sea pointing out the country, "One of the lords of the outlying island There were frequent wars, but the local products were very poor, and there was no decent manufacturing industry at all. Eighty percent of the weapons and equipment of all the outlying island armies relied on our Haiya Chamber of Commerce, which is also the biggest source of profit for our Haiya Chamber of Commerce from outlying island trade! "

Yang Lu touched his chin and said: "With such huge profits from the arms trade on outlying islands, aren't there any other forces involved?"

Han Fulai spread his hands and said: "Mortal weapons can only be used on outlying islands. Leaving outlying islands is just a pile of scrap metal. Now that the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has taken the first-mover advantage, other chambers of commerce want to catch up with our technology accumulation and need to ignore it for a long time. It will cost money in return. Everyone is very smart, and no cultivation force is willing to harm both of us, Haiya City, for the sake of the small outlying island market."

Han Fulai's words are not difficult to understand.

The arms trade on outlying islands is somewhat similar to the ballpoint pen and steel ball business on Earth. The manufacturing process of ballpoint pen tips is not very complicated, but it requires a long time of technical accumulation. Even if you successfully develop it, the market application is extremely narrow, and the input and output are not proportional at all. This leads to only Then one or two companies monopolize related technologies and businesses.

If you really want to develop this technology, you can, but as a late entrant, you will inevitably break out of a price war with the original market occupiers, causing both parties to lose.

The original market holders at least have accumulated early profits and will not lose money even if they engage in a price war. If entrants then start a price war, they will lose money purely.

Therefore, no one will take the initiative to develop this technology. This is the most typical game of first-mover advantage and late-mover disadvantage.

In the world of Kyushu cultivation, mortal warfare techniques are simply inferior dragon-slaying techniques, and there is no market for them outside the outlying islands.

Since the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has a first-come-first-served basis and has firmly occupied this extremely segmented market, other chambers of commerce do not have to fight with the Haiya Chamber of Commerce to compete for this small profit. Therefore, in addition to low-tech weapons such as spears and shields, there are other overseas importers on the outlying islands. High-end equipment such as armor and crossbows are almost exclusively monopolized by the Haiya Chamber of Commerce.

So far, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has monopolized the high-end cold weapon business on outlying islands for thousands of years.

Although the Haiya Chamber of Commerce alone cannot develop systematic science and technology, after such a long period of technological accumulation, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has developed cold weapon manufacturing technology that is no less than the top level in the Middle Ages. Surprisingly. Even because the immortal array can be used to refine materials, the quality of the cold weapons produced by the Haiya Chamber of Commerce may be even better than that of ancient Earth.

In addition, according to Han Fulai's statement, when conducting arms trade on outlying islands, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce also used a toothpaste-squeezing strategy similar to Intel's. All armor, crossbows, and siege equipment exported to outlying islands are actually not the best quality equipment. The real high-end equipment is firmly controlled by the Haiya Chamber of Commerce.

If other cultivating chambers of commerce try to intervene in the arms trade on outlying islands, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce will immediately upgrade their export products, causing a dimensionality reduction blow to other cultivating chambers of commerce; and if no other cultivating chambers of commerce intervene in the outlying island trade, then the Haiya Chamber of Commerce will continue to Dumping inferior arms to outlying islands and relying on the trade strategy of low quality and high price to earn excessive monopoly profits.

However, these are the external trade strategies of Haiya Chamber of Commerce.

This time the Haiya Chamber of Commerce personally organizes a fleet expedition, and it must be equipped with the Haiya Chamber of Commerce's most advanced mortal combat weapons!

After Han Fulai conveyed the order, each ocean-going merchant ship aimed its crossbows at the wooden fence and wooden lookout built by the soldiers on Guhong Island; the sailors began to turn the winch to wind up these heavy ballistae; professional crossbow operation The crew members also began to use wooden rangefinders similar to those from the Napoleonic Wars to constantly adjust the scale of the ballista.

Seeing this scene, Yang Lu was shocked and said: "Are these things...a tangent ruler and a six-point range finder?"

"I almost forgot that you are a disciple of the Golden Knife Sect!" Han Fulai was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized, "Yes, this kind of ballista ruler and range finder was invented by our Haiya Chamber of Commerce, entrusted by your master Xu Yannan. I don’t understand the specific principle of the sight, but it can greatly improve the shooting accuracy of the ballista at long distances. Looking at the entire Kyushu cultivation world, only our Haiya Chamber of Commerce masters this kind of technology!"

"Since you can make mathematical sights, have you tried using mathematical knowledge to calculate ballistics?"

This time Han Fulai spread his hands and said: "We can only roughly estimate the ballistic trajectory of the ballista based on the ready-made firing table. According to your master, the accurate modeling of the ballista ballistic trajectory involves the so-called partial... er, partial differential equation Arithmetic, this aspect of knowledge is relatively unpopular among cultivation mathematicians, so there hasn’t been much progress..."

Hearing Han Fulai, a resident of the cultivation world, say words like partial differential equations, Yang Lu didn't know where to complain.

The use of mathematics in artillery is nothing new. Napoleon majored in artillery because he was good at mathematics. When he was studying in the military academy, his artillery teacher was the great mathematician Laplace, and the textbooks were written by the great mathematicians Poisson and Pei Shu. Artillery is almost the most important application scenario of modern mathematics besides astronomy.

However, the development of mathematics in the world of cultivation has obviously gone astray. At least in terms of artillery mathematics, it is still far from the level of the Napoleonic War.

This may be because natural science is almost useless in the world of cultivation, and the mathematical knowledge of Jindaomen is mostly derived from the practical needs of cultivators for economic research, so it is very different from the focus of modern mathematics on the earth based on artillery and astronomy. .

However, the theoretical results developed by cultivation mathematicians have more or less promoted the improvement of mortal combat weapons of the Haiya Chamber of Commerce.

From this point of view, although the existence of cultivation magic has left little room for the development of ordinary science and technology, the natives of the cultivation world have still made many unexpected technological breakthroughs in some special subdivisions.

Although Yang Lu had long realized through the navigation technology of the Haiya fleet that the Jiuzhou cultivation world had developed a certain level of mathematics, he still couldn't help but marveled: "The Haiya Chamber of Commerce is really unique in applying mathematics to ordinary weapons. Come out!"

However, Han Fulai waved his hand and said: "It's hard to reach the level of elegance with extraordinary skills, so I can only bully these bumpkin from an outlying island!"

The chat between the two also attracted Lin Muhu's attention.

He showed an interesting expression and interjected: "My brother Lin Musen once had the idea of ​​applying mathematics to mundane things, but I didn't expect that it has been realized by your Haiya Chamber of Commerce!"

Yang Lu smiled and said, "I wonder if Fellow Taoist Lin Musen has ever produced any practical results?"

"No, not yet!" Lin Muhu didn't seem to expect that Yang Lu would ask such a question, and his expression looked a little surprised, "He finally gave up the idea. This kind of heretical research is too waste of time and will not lead to immortality after all. Avenue!”

The words of Han Fulai and Lin Muhu can completely represent the general understanding of natural science among cultivators.

Due to the existence of cultivation magic, Kyushu's natural sciences are far less applicable than those on Earth. Therefore, although there are occasional breakthroughs in scientific theories in the cultivation world, overall they are still in a state of stagnation.

Everything is inferior, only cultivation is high.

This idea has become so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that no one will question its correctness.