The Fourth Lingshi Financial Crisis

Chapter 205 Ballista
Seeing that Tian Beixi's face was cloudy and cloudy, but he never issued a combat order, Shi Yi couldn't help urging regardless of his identity: "Tian Xianzi, what should we do now?"

Tian Beixi gritted his teeth, and ordered viciously: "Just fight! We have the advantage of the terrain, and the people of Zhongzhou choose to attack in the rain, and it will definitely not please us!"

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

"How's the morale of the soldiers?"

"Everyone has won so many consecutive victories with you, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as magnificent!"

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

After getting Tian Beixi's promise, Shi Yi was determined. He thought Tian Beixi could still use gunpowder to help them fight, but he didn't know that Tian Beixi had no confidence in detonating gunpowder at all!

However, Tian Beixi had to deceive him.

Since Shi Yi himself has the notoriety of "undermining the upper hand", and his family members were sent to Huoyun Prefecture as hostages by Tian Beixi, he will definitely not easily betray Shenhuozong, but the slave soldiers of Shi Yi's Guhong Island have the will to fight. It's pretty weak.

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

Although Yang Lu often laughed at himself that the Sea Cliff Fleet was a failure, but in this war of competing for the lower limit, the army of the outlying island natives would only be worse than the Sea Cliff Fleet.Now the soldiers on Guhong Island seem to have high morale, but that is entirely based on their blind trust in the power of gunpowder!
With Tian Beixi's promise, Shi Yi was satisfied and took the order to leave.When Shi Yi's figure left, Tian Beixi snapped her fingers lightly, and a small group of flames appeared on her fingertips.

Tian Beixi has placed more than [-] gunpowder detonation points in the underground of the beach fortifications on Guhong Island today. A small magic flame can instantly detonate the gunpowder, which looks as sensitive and magical as a cultivation spell.

It's just that it's raining heavily outside now, and the gunpowder still has some power, even Tian Beixi can't say it's too good.

But fortunately, the Sea Cliff Fleet is also an expedition of hard work, and the right time and place are all on my side. What's more, even if the gunpowder cannot be fully detonated, the explosion and smoke produced will have a first-class deterrent effect on the cold weapon army, and my chances of winning are still quite large. ...

"Woo-woo-"

Just as Tian Beixi was meditating, with the long sound of horns, the attack of the Haiya Fleet officially started!

In order to prevent the sea cliff fleet from condescendingly launching an attack, the defensive position of the Guhong Island army is more than 300 meters away from the tidal flat.

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

Regardless of the cold weapon war of any era, maintaining a good combat formation is a very important combat principle. If you look through the history books, you can see that the army that is attacked by surprise is often very fragile, and the army that is flanked is often particularly prone to collapse. It's not because the soldiers in the army are scared out of their wits by the opponent, but because soldiers without formations have no room to fight back against soldiers with formations.

It is precisely because of this that the cold weapon army that has just landed and has not yet deployed its formation is often the most vulnerable existence, which is very suitable for half-crossing strikes. If the Guhong Island army has no 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.

Right under the eyes of the Guhong Island army, the vanguard of the Haiya City army had already set up a combat formation on the beach. Since Tian Beixi voluntarily gave up the beachhead defensive position, the Haiya soldiers hardly suffered any damage during the whole process.

The army on Guhong Island tried to use bows and crossbows to harass them from a distance, but they were located far away, and the heavy rain seriously affected the range of ordinary bows and crossbows. This level of harassment was completely ineffective.

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

He ordered to the herald beside him: "Let the fleet's ballista fire first, and completely destroy their fortifications!"

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

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

Slightly comparing the distance between the Xiahaiya Fleet and the Guhong Island position, Yang Lu couldn't help being a little surprised and said: "Our fleet is about a mile away from the opponent's fortifications! Such a long distance, our ballista can also hit To the other party?"

Han Fulai smiled and said, "How can the mortal weapons produced by our Haiya Chamber of Commerce be comparable to ordinary road goods? Our ballistas can shoot at a distance of not one mile, but if the weather is clear, even two miles will not be a problem!"

The ballista with a maximum range of 1000 meters has surpassed the technical level of the top projectile weapons on the ancient earth, and even heavy catapults do not have such an exaggerated range.

It seems that the strengthening range of comprehension materials for cold weapons is also terrifying. I am afraid that ordinary wood structures and bowstring materials cannot withstand such a large firing torque.

And the ballista's range limitation isn't just about the material.

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

Therefore, Yang Lu couldn't help being surprised and said: "The Haiya Chamber of Commerce has actually mastered this level of ballista technology?"

Han Fulai explained with a smile: "For thousands of years, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has been studying the theory of mortal warfare and the technology of mortal weapons. The cultivation organization that is best at fighting mortal warfare in the entire Kyushu world is probably none other than our Haiya Chamber of Commerce!"

Before Yang Lu had time to ask, Lin Muhu couldn't help interjecting, "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 to the sailors of the Haiya Fleet who were operating the ballista, and introduced like a king of the sea, "The lord of the outlying island There are frequent wars between the two countries, but the local products are very poor, and there is no decent manufacturing industry at all. Eighty percent of the weapons and equipment of the armies on the outlying islands are supplied by our Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce. This is also the largest source of profit for our Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce to conduct outlying island trade! "

Yang Lu stroked his chin and said, "The outlying islands arms trade is so profitable, isn't there any other forces involved?"

Han Fulai spread his hands and said: "Mortal weapons can only be used on the outlying islands, and leaving the outlying islands is a pile of scrap metal. With the Haiya Chamber of Commerce already occupying the first-mover advantage, other chambers of commerce want to catch up with our technology accumulation. Burning money in return. Everyone is very smart, no cultivation force is willing to market for a small outlying island, and we, Haiya City, will lose both."

Han Fulai's words are not difficult to understand.

The arms trade on outlying islands is somewhat similar to the ballpoint pen business on Earth.The steel ball manufacturing process of the ballpoint pen nib is not very complicated, but it takes a long time to accumulate technology. Even if you successfully develop it, the market application is extremely narrow, and the input and output are completely out of proportion. Then one or two companies monopolize related technologies and businesses.

If you really want to develop this kind of technology, it’s okay, but as a late entrant, you will inevitably break out of a price war with the original market owner, causing both sides to lose.

The original market occupants at least have accumulated profits in the early stage, so even if they fight a price war, they will not lose money, and if the entrants start a price war, they will simply lose money.

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's comprehension, mortal warfare technology is basically a low-level dragon-slaying technique, and there is no market for it outside the outlying islands.

Now that the Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce has the advantage of being close to the water and has already firmly occupied this extremely segmented market, other chambers of commerce can't afford to compete with the Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce for this small profit.Therefore, in addition to unskilled 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 Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce.

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

Although the strength of the Haiya Chamber of Commerce alone cannot develop a systematic science and technology, after such a long period of technology accumulation, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce has developed a cold weapon manufacturing technology that is no less than the top level of the Middle Ages. Surprisingly.Even because the materials can be refined using the Immortal Formation, the quality of the cold weapons of the Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce may be even better than that of the ancient Earth.

In addition, according to Han Fulai's statement, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce also used a toothpaste-squeezing strategy similar to Intel's when conducting arms trade on outlying islands.All the 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 Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce.

If other comprehension chambers of commerce try to intervene in the outlying island arms trade, the Haiya chamber of commerce will immediately upgrade its own export products, causing a blow to other cultivation chambers of commerce; Dumping low-quality arms to outlying islands, relying on low-quality and high-priced trade strategies to earn excess monopoly profits.

However, these are all foreign trade strategies of the Sea Cliff Chamber of Commerce.

This time, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce personally organizes the fleet to go out, and it must be equipped with the most advanced mundane combat weapons of the Haiya Chamber of Commerce!
After Han Fulai conveyed the order, all the ocean-going merchant ships pointed their ballistas at the wooden fence and wooden watchtower built by the soldiers on Guhong Island; the sailors began to turn the winch to string these heavy ballistas; Members also began to use wooden rangefinders similar to those used during the Napoleonic Wars to constantly adjust the scale of the ballista.

Seeing this scene, Yang Lu was startled and said, "Could these things be... tangent scales and sextant range finders?"

"I almost forgot that you are a disciple of the Golden Knife Sect!" Han Fulai was slightly taken aback, and suddenly realized, "That's right, this ballista ruler and rangefinder were invented by your master Xu Yannan entrusted by our Haiya Chamber of Commerce I don’t understand the specific principle of the sight, but it can greatly improve the ballista’s long-distance shooting accuracy, and looking at the entire Kyushu cultivation world, only our Haiya Chamber of Commerce has mastered this kind of technology!”

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

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 shooting table. According to your master, the precise modeling of the ballistic trajectory of the ballista involves the so-called partial... er, partial differential equations." Calculations, this aspect of knowledge is relatively unpopular among practitioners of mathematicians, so there has been little progress..."

Hearing Han Fulai, a resident of the comprehension world, say the words partial differential equation, 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 great mathematicians Poisson and Pei Shu. It is said that artillery is almost the most important application scenario of modern mathematics besides astronomy.

However, the development of mathematics in the field of comprehension has obviously gone astray, at least in terms of artillery mathematics, it is far from the level of the Napoleonic Wars.

This may be because natural science is almost useless in the field of comprehension, while the mathematical knowledge of Jindaomen is mostly derived from the actual needs of comprehensionists for economics research, so it is quite different from the focus of modern mathematics on the earth based on artillery and astronomy .

However, the theoretical results developed by the comprehension mathematicians have more or less promoted the improvement of the sea cliff chamber of commerce's mortal combat weapons.

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

Although Yang Lu realized that the Kyushu cultivation world has developed a certain level of mathematics through the navigation technology of the Haiya Fleet, he still couldn't help but wonder: "Using mathematics to ordinary weapons, the Haiya Chamber of Commerce is really unique Get out!"

However, Han Fulai waved his hands and said: "It's hard to be elegant, so you can only bully these bumpkins from outlying islands!"

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

He interjected with an interested expression: "My dear brother Lin Musen once had the idea of ​​applying mathematics to mundane things, but I didn't expect it to be realized by your Haiya Chamber of Commerce!"

Yang Lu smiled and said, "I don't know if Fellow Daoist Lin Musen has researched any actual 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 on this idea. This kind of heresy research is too wasteful of time, after all, it is not longevity. Avenue!"

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

Due to the existence of self-cultivation spells, the natural sciences in Kyushu lack application scenarios far more than those on Earth. Therefore, although there are occasional breakthroughs in the scientific theories in the field of self-cultivation, they are still in a state of stagnation overall.

Everything is inferior, only comprehension is high.

This idea has become so popular that no one will question its validity.

(End of this chapter)