Tiantang Splendid

Chapter 4187
The wind was turbulent on the river, and the warships were faster than the galloping horses. The stones fired by the trebuchets generally rained from the sky. Although most of them fell into the river and splashed, a few fell on the warships, and the decks and sides of the ships were occasionally smashed into sawdust. Flying horizontally, some people were injured by stones.

However, all the soldiers stood firmly on the deck and performed their duties, and no one fled in panic, waiting with red eyes for the warship to break into the river section held by the defenders on both sides of the strait, and quickly ignite the artillery leads.

Before the artillery could be fired, a cloud of gloom poured down from the sky, but it was the bow and arrow of the defenders. The soldiers of the navy who had been prepared raised their shields to protect their whole bodies. The sound of "snatch".

The sails of the warship bulged and moved forward at full speed. The wooden oars protruding from both sides under the side of the ship stretched into the water in a neat and uniform manner, and then emerged from the water, bringing a white spray into the water again, and again and again, making the warship faster and faster. Speed ​​up.

The distance was getting closer and the trebuchet had lost its effectiveness.

Boom boom boom!
The artillery on both sides of the ship roared in unison, and the gun barrels spewed fire smoke. The huge recoil caused the hull to shake, and the keel made a "creaky" sound. From a distance, it looked like a giant beast spewing fireworks. In general, mighty and unpretentious.

A round of artillery shells drew a high parabola and landed in the well-organized guard positions on both sides of the strait. Although the soldiers hurriedly avoided being hit, but the shells landed, the leads burned out, and the gunpowder inside was released when it exploded. With huge energy, the cast iron shell was blasted along the prefabricated lines, and then countless fragments were blasted away in all directions.

Puff puff!
When the dense array of defenders encountered such a powerful weapon, they fell one by one like wheat swept by a sickle in autumn. .

The face of Zheng Rentai, who was holding the sword in Yuanyuan and Yuezhi in his hand, suddenly changed. He naturally knew that the lethality of artillery was astonishing. When the Guanlong rebels attacked Xuanwumen before, they were bombarded by artillery. There is bound to be some exaggeration.

However, after seeing it with my own eyes, I discovered that the power of artillery can only be stronger than the legend, and even an elite and powerful army cannot stop such artifacts with flesh and blood...

"Send the order, spread out the array, avoid the artillery, and destroy the enemy with rockets and ballistas!"

"Here!"

These more than [-] soldiers are the elites of Zheng Rentai's direct line. They are well-trained and stable. Although they were a little embarrassed by the indiscriminate bombardment of artillery, they quickly recovered and quickly dispersed according to the military order. Ships on the river.

In fact, there are not many ways to attack the surface enemy from the road. Among them, the rocket is the most effective one, but because the gunpowder is bound to the arrow shaft, the wind resistance is too large and the weight is too high, so the range is far inferior to that of the strong bow. The crossbow, the scene that can be applied is really limited.

But now the defenders are gathered on both sides of the canal, holding the river in it, and the naval ships are equivalent to passing straight through the array of the defenders, which gives the rockets the best room to play.

For a time, countless rockets on both sides of the strait rose into the air, as if a dark cloud had risen out of thin air, and with thick smoke fell into the fleet of fast-moving ships on the river.

The target of most rockets is the sail. As long as the sail is burned, it is difficult for such a huge warship to increase its speed by paddling alone, and then it can only be besieged by the defenders on both sides of the strait.

However, Zheng Rentai was disappointed. Seeing that rockets hit the sails, penetrated the canvas, and landed on the other side of the river. There were countless holes on the sails, but they were not ignited. Obviously, this kind of sails has been specially fireproof. On the contrary, the rockets that landed on the deck had some effect. The arrow clusters were nailed to the deck, the side of the ship, and the rudder. The ignition materials slowly ignited the wood. Thick smoke, the smoke billowing, with the river wind blowing, soon filled the entire river.

The navy and soldiers on the ship would not dare to neglect, there are flammable materials such as gunpowder and shells everywhere. If they are detonated, it is very likely to cause death, and the whole ship will be blown to pieces, and everyone will have to fall. Into the river to feed Wang Ba.

While scrambling to put out the fire, he covered the gunpowder and shells with water-soaked cotton cloth.

But the shelling kept going.

The shells were sent to the shore by the artillery, and exploded in the crowd. The scattered fragments shredded everything that was blocked. The places closest to the blasting point were all torn apart.

As soon as the battle started, it became white-hot, and the battlefield was extremely bloody.

Zheng Rentai is worthy of being a battle-hardened general. Although the power of the artillery far exceeded his expectations and brought great damage to the troops under his command, he was still as steady as Mount Tai, with only a pair of sharp eyes staring at the river on the river. Sow.

There are more than a dozen river-blocking cables lying across the water, and as long as the enemy ships are trapped, so that they cannot move forward, the warships that lose their mobility can only become living targets of the defenders, and the boulders thrown by the catapults will greatly increase their accuracy. , until these huge warships were smashed to pieces.

The canal was filled with smoke and smog, and a fleet of dozens of warships walked through the darkness like giant dragons. Flesh and blood were scattered all over the place.

The battle was extremely brutal.

Finally, under the watchful eyes of countless defenders, the warship headed slammed into the river-blocking rope, the sturdy chains tensed up in an instant, and the huge bow seemed to be held down by an invisible big hand, heading towards the surface of the water. It sank sharply.

Zheng Rentai clenched his fist tightly and stared at Lan Jiangsuo for a moment.

However, just under his gaze, the sturdy iron rope was hit by the huge inertial force carried by the warship, bent and elongated little by little, and then...

There was a muffled sound of "collapse", and the iron rope broke, and the warship seemed to have escaped from its cage in an instant, and then slammed into the next iron rope, and the castration was blocked again...

The iron cable that had been broken earlier bounced out from the broken place to both sides due to the huge tension, and the whip swept all the objects blocking the way forward. The person was swept into two sections on the spot, the blood rain sprayed more than ten feet high, and the minced meat was scattered.

The scene was appalling.

Until the kinetic energy contained in the iron rope completely disappeared, it fell softly to the ground, but it had already swept a fan-shaped area on the river bank, and the blood was dripping...

"Crash crash"!
Immediately afterwards, the second iron wire was also broken, the third one, the fourth one...

For a time, the two sides of the canal shouted their mothers and screams, and the broken iron cables turned into huge whips and swept through everything. The destructive power was even greater than that of the explosion of artillery shells. Countless soldiers rushed to avoid them, even if they didn't die. Bloody.

Zheng Rentai did not expect that the iron cable blocking the river would be so powerful after it broke, and he regretted it under the cocoon. , However, the castration was inexhaustible, and he broke all the iron cables blocking the river so abruptly, and rushed away at the sluice.

Then, just before reaching the sluice amid the smoke and gunpowder of the river, the warship adjusted its sails, and the oarsmen plunged the paddles deeply into the river, abruptly lowered the speed of the warship, and then turned the ship around. Head, kill again!
Although the gun barrels of the artillery will be scrapped with at most three or five guns, and there is no time to replace them, but with such a short distance and such a fast speed, the two armies face each other almost instantly, and each of the hundreds of artillery pieces on dozens of ships is only fired three shots. , and hundreds of artillery shells fell into the defenders' formation, causing innumerable casualties.

Apart from the slight trauma to the warship, the navy suffered very little damage.

At this moment, seeing the navy ship actually turned around and killed it, the artillery on board was still spewing artillery fire, the defenders were horrified, and the morale of the army was completely shaken.

When Zheng Rentai witnessed such a situation, he couldn't help his eyes being split!
Yet helpless.

Since joining the army at the age of 16 to participate in the Jinyang Rebellion, he has fought under the command of His Majesty Li Er. He has fought countless battles throughout his life. He has defeated Liu Wuzhou, Dou Jiande, Song Jingang, and Wang Shichong, chased the Turks far away, and swept the barbarians. But has he ever fought such a useless battle?
You can't attack, you can't stop you, you can only be passively beaten and you don't even have the ability to fight back.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a black spot flying from far to near, and his heart jolted, he threw his stirrups off the saddle and jumped off the horse's back, leaned his body tightly on the ground, and shouted: " Lie down! Lie down!"

Although I have never encountered an artillery battle array, I have just seen through observation that the huge damage caused by the artillery is not the explosion itself, but the damage caused by the fragmented shrapnel after the explosion, and most of the fragments are sputtered around. The body is close to the ground, and the probability of being hit by debris can be avoided to the greatest extent.

Of course, it's just a probability, and once the cannonball falls around, it's useless to say anything...

Before the guards on the left and right could react, Zheng Rentai heard a loud bang. Not far away, a cannonball landed, and the flying shrapnel swept the guards battalion. Numerous elite veterans who followed him in the southern and northern wars were violently beaten. The raging shrapnel cut off limbs, pierced through the body, and fell one by one.

Zheng Rentai felt dizzy from the shock. He only felt cold pain in several parts of his body. He shook his head and woke up. He was about to get up, but a sharp pain in his leg fell and fell to the ground, when he heard Dugu Yanyun. shouted: "The whole army retreats! Retreat!"

When he looked up, he saw Dugu Yanyun running from the tent at some point, grabbed his arm, and dragged him away from the battlefield.

Looking back, the entire battlefield was filled with gunpowder smoke, with corpses lying on the pillow and countless casualties.

Big defeat.

(End of this chapter)