Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 84, Steel Cannon Cart

Under the starry night, Li Sheng and his men climbed up the city wall little by little.

Three thousand people is not a small number. In order to be discovered as late as possible by the defenders on the city wall, Li Sheng ordered his men to break off branches and dry grass to cover their bodies, crawl forward, and move towards the city wall little by little.

People of this era generally had poor eyesight at night, so they did not notice Li Sheng and others for a while.

Li Sheng approached the city wall little by little. The closer he got, the more nervous he became, and his mind involuntarily tensed up.

Closer, closer!
If he gets a little closer, he will launch an offensive, catching the enemy off guard, and even have a chance to capture the city wall in one fell swoop!
Suddenly, the city gate opened halfway, and a team of "cavalry" galloped out!

Li Sheng's ghost was terrified: "Oh no, there's an ambush!"

Li Sheng was already on edge, and when he suddenly saw the cavalry appear, he instinctively thought that his whereabouts had been exposed, so he quickly ordered his men to retreat.

After hearing the order, the men stood up one after another and prepared to retreat in an orderly manner.

On the other side, Wei Xiuliang had just walked out of the city gate escorted by his personal guards.

Thinking about his father's instructions, Wei Xiuliang felt somewhat heavy-hearted at this moment.

At such a young age, he was shouldered with the heavy burden of a city without any preparation. Wei Xiuliang had no confidence at all whether he could really convince the Huizhou governor to send troops.

Can 800,000 taels of silver really convince the Governor of Huizhou?

Wei Xiuliang was just thinking about it when suddenly, a large group of straw men stood up on the ground in front of him!
This immediately frightened Wei Xiuliang and the guards around him, and they quickly pulled the reins.

"what's the situation?"

Wei Xiuliang looked at it in confusion.

On the other side, Li Sheng and others retreated two steps and quickly realized that something was wrong.

"The sound of horse hooves is wrong. There are too few of them. This is not the cavalry of the main group!"

Li Sheng was in a state of tension just now, and was inevitably a little stressed when he suddenly saw the cavalry. Now that he had come to his senses and carefully checked the situation ahead, he realized that he had made a mistake.

Wei Xiuliang on this side was trying to watch under the moonlight, and saw a large group of people standing densely in the night, with grass growing on their bodies.

The fledgling Wei Xiuliang was still thinking, "Where did all these straw men come from?"

The guards around him had already reacted.

"Oh no, Master, this isn't a straw man, it's a bandit soldier!"

They no longer had time to think about why there were so many bandits at the west gate.

A dozen guards turned around and ran without hesitation.

They were just guards, not personal soldiers. Although they had been with the Wei family for many years, they were not willing to die for the Wei family.

If there were only a hundred or so bandits, they could still find a way to rescue them, but now the enemy obviously had several thousand men, and their dozen men were not enough to fill the gaps between their teeth. Just giving them a reminder before leaving was already the most they could do!

At the same time, Li Sheng and others drew their steel knives almost at the same time and chased after them.

Wei Xiuliang was not a good horseman, and the horse under him became unobedient and refused to turn its head.

The only loyal servant saw that the bandits were about to catch up, so he didn't care about anything else. He drew his sword and stabbed Wei Xiuliang's horse's butt with such great force that half of the horse's tail was directly cut off.

Wei Xiuliang's horse was like being struck by lightning, and all four hooves started running wildly.

From the perspective of universal rationality, humans cannot outrun horses.

However, this may not be the case if the two sides are in opposite directions.

Wei Xiuliang had no way of controlling the mad horse and could only watch himself rush towards the center of the enemy army.

Li Sheng was surprised and solemn.

"What a brave man! How dare you stay here alone to cover our retreat?"

Li Sheng did not dare to be careless and was ready for battle. He looked for the right moment and the scenes of his hundreds of sparring matches with the general emerged in his mind.

"This is the moment!"

Li Sheng tightly gripped the steel knife in his hand. The moment the opponent rode towards him, he ducked back by a hair's breadth and slashed the opponent's horse's legs with the steel knife.

"Bang", the huge impact force instantly knocked Li Sheng's steel knife out of his hand, but at the same time, the horse's leg that hit the steel knife also suffered severe injuries.

The horse ran forward two more steps due to inertia, and then its leg broke with a "click".

Wei Xiuliang was thrown out and hit a soldier, and both of them were injured.

At this time, the defenders on the city also discovered Li Sheng and others, and hurriedly released beacons and beat alarm drums.

Seeing this, Li Sheng realized that a surprise attack was impossible under the current circumstances, so he took Wei Xiuliang and retreated to the camp.

……

In Yangzhou City,

When Wei Yinghong learned that his beloved son had fallen into the hands of thieves, he became so angry that he almost fainted.

This not only means that the beloved son will suffer, but also means that reinforcements will be cut off.

Seeing this, Lin Ruhai and Ji Quan could only try their best to comfort her, there was no other way.

This incident made Wei Yinghong heartbroken, but the news of Fang Yong's army's attack left him no time to grieve. He could only turn his grief and anger into strength and go to recruit young and strong people to fill the defensive force.

The next day, Fang Yong launched the attack.

The dark army approached the city wall like a tide.

In the distance, twenty strange large building vehicles wrapped in iron sheets, like steel monsters, creaked towards the city wall.

This is a secret weapon specially created by Fang Yong, designed specifically for sieges.

The defenders on the city wall had never seen this kind of tower car before. It was larger and wider than ordinary tower cars and was wrapped with iron sheets all over, like a small iron house.

The tower carriage passed through the bridge over the moat and drove all the way to the city of Yangzhou.

Because the Yangzhou defenders' attention had been focused on the two northeastern gates, no one expected that the bandits would attack from the west gate, so the government troops in the city did not blow up the bridge over the west gate moat.

By the time the government troops reacted, Fang Yong had already set up a military camp outside and sent soldiers to guard the bridge, which saved Fang Yong the trouble of filling the river.

As the strange tower car approached, the defenders on the city began to use bows and crossbows to tentatively attack the tower car below, but the effect was minimal. The arrows could not penetrate the iron-wrapped tower car and could not cause any damage.

Although the bed crossbow could cause some damage, the crossbow arrows were stuck in the iron sheet and could not penetrate it at all.

Just when the defenders on the city were at a loss, suddenly, the fender in front of the vehicle opened, revealing rows of artillery hidden inside the vehicle!

"not good!"

The defenders on the city were horrified and didn't have time to react.

The next moment, flames broke out and hundreds of artillery pieces fired at the same time.

It’s close, powerful, and accurate!
This is the artillery vehicle modified by Fang Yong, which was inspired by the tank. Of course, the artillery vehicle at this time is far inferior to the tank in terms of defense, attack power and mobility, but it is enough for siege in this era.

The defenders on the city were hit by the artillery and could not raise their heads for a while, and the Huaiyin army began to approach rapidly.

Fang Yong had a total of 50,000 elite soldiers. Although not all of them were sent up, there were about 10,000 of them responsible for attacking Niu Jin's troops.

On the other hand, there were only 5,000 defenders in Yangzhou City, and they had to guard three city gates at the same time. It was impossible to send all 5,000 men there. At least half of them had to rest. With two shifts, there were only a few hundred defenders at one city gate, and they were simply unable to stop the massive attack of Fang Yong's army.

Different from the difficulty of the first attack on Huaizhou City, Fang Yong is now completely different in terms of equipment, number of people, and the quality of training of the troops.

What's more, in terms of numbers, the defenders in Yangzhou City were less numerous than those in Huaizhou City at that time.

(End of this chapter)