Warrior in Turbulent Han Dynasty

In the mysterious and deep valley of the Yangtze River, a large number of people on the north bank are like a long black-painted torrent, but now they have stopped and blocked the road; the Shu army fortification in front is a flood control embankment, blocking the passage. The noisy voices rippling back and forth between the rocky mountains on both sides of the bank, like the roar of a mountain torrent.

Zhou soldiers in front of the fort were digging ditches, very busy, like a scene of emergency labor. In the winding ditches, the soldiers were digging the soil desperately with hoes and shovels instead of weapons.

In this place, the ground is not rocks but mud, so the Shu army was able to dig deep trenches in front of the fort, and the Zhou army could naturally do the same. The difference from the work scene is that the stones above the head are flying randomly, and the stones thrown by the stone cannons fall on the ground all around with a "bang bang". Occasionally, a stone just fell into the ditch, and it made Zhou soldiers scream.

So people can't help but look up at the sky while digging.

The ground outside the trench was already full of stones, and the Shu army's stone artillery did not stop for a moment. From time to time, there are still arrows flying, but most of them can't hit the people in the ditch. The passive defensive sandbag tactics of the Shu army could only use long-distance to try to attack the Zhou army to dig a ditch, but the army could not come out, and was blocked by its own fortifications behind the deep ditch fortress.

In the rear camp, Guo Shao was sitting in front of a rough wooden table under the general's gaze. The wooden case is so rough that there is only one plank and a few stones for padding. With paper and ink on the board, he looked more like a construction engineer than a general.

"The ditch has been dug to the front of the fort. You two go up to supervise it yourself, continue digging as I said, and report the situation in detail when you come back. Be sure to look carefully. If there is a mistake, it is equivalent to ineffective combat!" Guo Shao said to a general next to him.

The general asked cautiously, "Will the gunpowder blow us up?"

"No!" Guo Shao said with certainty, "This is directional blasting, don't worry."

Guo Shao has never done blasting work, but he has seen it before, and he can understand the law: gunpowder will leak energy to the weakest direction of the seal, otherwise why can't gunpowder without seal explode, but will emit expanding heat energy from the gap? The artillery is similar, because the wall of the gun cannot be blasted, and the energy will be vented from the muzzle. Inflated balloons in life, poke a small hole with a needle, and the place where it bursts and tears is also the place where the puncture is made.

Ren Guoshao has learned a lot of knowledge, and he is not very clear about the principles of this profession, but his life and experience have taught him the rules.

Guo Shao pointed to the drawing and explained it to the general. This person has done "hole attack" in wars before, is good at digging tunnels, and is good at building siege fortifications, so Guo Shao felt that it would be a little more reliable for him to supervise civil engineering operations, at least with experience. Guo Shao himself would not go up to "hands-on guns and arrows", with rocks and arrows flying around his head, so close to the fortress, if he was unlucky and was smashed to death, wouldn't he die unjustly? He felt that if he didn't die, he wouldn't die.

...The former army did not dig the tunnel directly, it was too much trouble, a group of people digging trenches in the open air and approaching the fortress would be much faster.

Everyone dug another earth ditch in front of the trench fortification of the Shu army, brought sandbags and stacked it in front, and the distance was less than twenty steps, and the two sides could see what each other looked like when they showed their heads. Rao is so close, the Shu army can't do anything about them for a while. The heavy weapons of this era are trebuchets and ballistas. Catapults throw stones from the head, with limited accuracy and frequency. The most limited is of course the lethality. Occasionally, if a stone hits, it will kill and injure at most one person; the ballista shoots flat, and cannot hit people hiding in the ditch.

Then the military general of the Zhou army, who is proficient in acupoint attack, is asking someone to dig a hole. This hole is much simpler than digging a tunnel. It is like digging a well, digging a hole diagonally from the rear. After the hole was dug down, it was dug upwards obliquely, and the tunnel was like a flat "V" shape.

The hole is not deep, so the construction was completed in less than half a day.

"Get it here! Quick!" The general turned around and urged, when a stone suddenly "bang" fell on the ditch beside him, which also surprised him, and his neck shrank down.

I saw some people in the trench carrying stones and stones in baskets and carrying stones and stones on their backs, and some people behind them were carrying coffins. Of course, the coffin was not filled with corpses, but gunpowder. The Zhou army had prepared something long ago.

It was noon now, and some soldiers were sitting in the ditch and eating wheat cakes with water. Suddenly there was a "kuang", and when the general looked back, a soldier's head was hit by a stone cannon, and his helmet couldn't resist the stone. He still had a wheatbread in his mouth. The general looked at the cake in his mouth, and cursed uncomfortably: "Fuck!"

Dead people are everywhere, the military general didn't bother to ask, he got into the hole himself. The other exit of the cave was facing the fortress of the Shu army, and the opening was on the wall of the deep ditch dug by the Shu army itself, and there was still a thin layer of soil left.

There were still candles burning in the cave, but the light coming in from a small hole at the mouth of the cave was brighter than the candle. The general came to the hole and looked out for a while, then took the candle from the soldier, and carefully looked at the surrounding pit walls. The left and right sides and the bottom have been rammed with wooden hammers, and wooden beams have been erected on the top...Taming earth was the most familiar and exquisite work for people at that time, because at this time, whether it was building walls or houses, most of them were rammed with earth; brick walls were rare.

"The stones and stones are mixed with soil and sealed in the front first, so don't make it too tight." The general ordered.

The soldiers with baskets behind them came up and got busy. Not long after, the general ordered to put the coffins containing gunpowder inside, a total of eight coffins. (Guo Shao himself doesn't know why it is eight. Anyway, if you put too much, you don't need to worry too much about the cost in war.) The lead wire is wrapped with gunpowder in oil cloth, and the front part is wrapped with a thin bamboo tube.

After the coffin was finished, the general ordered the soldiers to tamp the earth, and tamped the coffin firmly with earth. The tunnel at the back continued to ram the earth and fill it all the way to the back.

The Shu army also seems to be busy. Maybe they feel that Zhou Jun is digging a tunnel to attack. They obviously didn't understand the situation. It is impossible to make any progress in the point attack without ten days and a half months, and the Shu army has enough time to temporarily take precautions underground.

... A lonely light boat flying the flag of the Zhou Dynasty was on the river, and the oars on both sides of the ship were like centipedes, slowly sailing upstream with difficulty. "Plop..." Some stones fell into the river from mid-air, and the boat quickly turned around and ran downstream. There was a commotion behind the fortress of the Shu army, as if mocking the embarrassment of the ship that was peeping at the Shu army.

The flags on the ships waved from side to side.

In the front army on the shore, a general clasped his fists and said: "De Ling!" Then he drew his sword from his waist, raised it high, and shouted: "Attack!"

The war drum rang "dong dong dong", the flags on the flanks were leveled, and the infantry in formations slowly approached. Not long after, stones flew towards his head one after another, and screams came from the army. After dozens of steps, the bows and crossbows in the two-story fort also shot out. Zhou's soldiers were holding iron-skinned wooden shields, and the team was a little messy.

The wooden ladders in front were brought down one after another, "Kill, kill..." shouts roared in the mountains, and the army rushed forward with swords and shields. I saw flags waving on the wooden arrow tower behind the fortress of the Shu army, and the defenders should come out of the cave to prepare for battle.

The generals of the Zhou army scrambled to climb up the wooden ladder, with stones and arrows thrown from above their heads like rain.

Arrows flew across the fort, and there were even ballistas firing huge arrows as thick as arms; behind the Shu army, on the wooden fence higher than the fort, archers were firing arrows in turn.

"Huh, huh, huh..." The boat on the river rowed upstream again, this time there were no stone cannons to hit it, and the stone cannons of the Shu army were all hitting the troops attacking the fortress. The ship's flag waved back and forth in the other direction.

At this time, the Zhou army was ringing gold from behind, and the soldiers who had just rushed up turned around and ran away, and the crowd usually went towards the ebb tide.

There was a "bang" sound of the gong, and there was a loud shout in Zhou's barracks. Under the yelling of the military general, the rebels who had just returned fell to the ground one after another. The scene was very strange. The soldiers at the back all stared at the front with rounded eyes, as if they were expecting something, many of them held their breath, and the noise here suddenly quieted down very strangely.

At this moment, there was a sudden "boom", and the green hills on both sides of the Yangtze River seemed to shake. People clearly felt the ground tremble, as if there was an earthquake. In an instant, flames and thick smoke erupted in front together, and a large number of stones and soil erupted crazily like a volcanic eruption. They seem to destroy everything in front of them, unstoppable.

Thousands of catties of gunpowder lifted up the deep soil surface, and everything flew out in the forward direction at a speed much faster than an arrow. If the stones were not blocked, they would fly at least a mile or two away. The rapidly spreading gunpowder smoke immediately enveloped the entire place in front of it, making it impossible to see anything.

"Boom boom boom..." Like the sound of continuous thunder, the sound of the explosion was still echoing in the mountains on both sides of the river for a long time. Countless people have been shocked.

A moment later, far behind the Shu army, the upper floor of the arrow tower had not yet been filled with thick smoke.

The generals and soldiers of the Zhou army behind were already shocked, and they stood there dumbfounded. Sure enough, the debris that was blown up did not spread to the east, and only flew towards the west sky as if they had eyes. The camp of the Shu army was completely shrouded in thick smoke, and no one knew what it was like, only heard the screams of "ahh..." from a distance.

"What are you waiting for?" A general shouted from behind.

"Boom, boom, boom..." A man stood in front of the big drum, swung his arms, and thundered on the drum's surface slowly and quickly. The woo-woo horn also sounded, and the army came back to their senses and shouted loudly.

The soldiers who were on standby at the striker were different at this time. They all had wet towels around their shoulders, like sweat towels when they were going to work.