The Song Dynasty on the Sand Table

Chapter 353 See it with your own eyes
Yue Wenxuan smiled and said, "That way, Lord Qin won't have to worry about not being able to carry it."

Qin Hui supported the musket with one hand, and a forked stick helped him hold it. It was really easy for him to hold the thing now. Zhang Dashu took out a huge paper-wrapped bullet, stuffed it into the chamber, and pointed to a large rock not far away: "Aim the muzzle this way."

Qin Hui did as instructed, turning the gun barrel to aim at the large rock.

Zhang Dashu personally helped him light the fuse...

"A circuit breaker!"

Qin Hui: "Ah, okay."

With a loud bang, smoke billowed, and the immense recoil made Qin Hui's hands go numb. He couldn't even hold the musket anymore, and it slipped from his grasp. He fell backward with a thud, landing in a very disheveled state.

But when he got up and looked at the big rock in front of him, he was so shocked that he couldn't close his mouth for a long time. The big rock had been dented by a musket, a very big dent...

If you can dent a hard stone with a single blow, then if you hit a person, no matter how thick your armor is, you'll die.

Qin Hui trembled all over: "So...terrifying..."

Yue Wenxuan: "Is it fun?"

Qin Hui's fear of the Jin Dynasty finally wavered and began to transform into fear of the Northern Song Dynasty. He asked in a trembling voice, "How many of these heavy muskets are there?"

Yue Wenxuan adopted a Versailles-like expression and sighed, "Not many."

Qin Hui breathed a sigh of relief: It's alright if it's not too much.

Yue Wenxuan immediately changed the subject: "I only have five thousand of them."

"puff!"

Qin Hui almost spat out a mouthful of blood; those guys from Versailles were truly despicable.

In fact, the Northern Song Dynasty did not have 5,000 heavy firearms; nowadays, there are at most 1,000 of them.

But the existence of the Strategic Deception Bureau is absolutely necessary!
Qin Hui knew that the entire fortune of the Jin Dynasty consisted of five thousand Ironclad Cavalry.

Now that the Northern Song Dynasty has prepared five thousand heavy firearms, isn't that specifically designed to target the Iron Pagoda?
Qin Hui's resolve was severely shaken...

Yue Wenxuan continued, "Lord Qin, don't be fooled by how powerful this thing is; training musketeers takes a lot of time."

Qin Hui was secretly delighted: That's right, even powerful weapons require elite soldiers to use them; insufficient training is also unacceptable.

Yue Wenxuan changed the subject: "Teaching someone to use a heavy musket takes at least the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, which is too slow."

"Pfft!" Qin Hui: You bastard...

Only then did he realize that he had just learned how to use a heavy musket, and it seemed that he had already mastered it in the blink of an eye.

The fear in Qin Hui's heart had begun to grow wildly.

He had witnessed the speed of mining and smelting in the Northern Song Dynasty, and he had also seen the huge blacksmith workshop. Although he had not seen the process of craftsmen making firearms, he could guess that the output of these things would not be low.

Now we know how quickly soldiers can be trained.

By the way, the Northern Song Dynasty wasn't short of food. Qin Hui and his family were being transported around, and along the way they saw vast tracts of fertile land, new crops, and terrifying harvests in the Northern Song Dynasty…

All these conditions combined led to a terrifying conclusion: the Northern Song army was invincible.

They are invincible!
"Report!" the scout reported. "The vanguard of the bandit general Li Cheng is about ten miles ahead."

Zhang Yong turned to look at Yue Wenxuan, who waved his hand and said, "You take charge. I'm just a guest."

Zhang Yong nodded, his spirits lifted, and began to direct the army's actions. Yue Wenxuan ignored the fighting and focused solely on "entertaining" Qin Hui, pulling him aside and saying, "Lord Qin, watch how we deal with the bandit generals of the pseudo-Qi Kingdom."

Qin Hui had heard of Li Cheng, the notorious bandit who had plagued Huainan and frequently fled to Jiangxi. The Southern Song court had sent several generals, including Zhang Jun and Yue Fei, to suppress him. Now that he heard Li Cheng had surrendered to the puppet Qi regime, he wasn't surprised. He simply thought: Li Cheng isn't that great; defeating him is no big deal. Even Zhang Jun could do that.

I just wanted to see what firearms from the Northern Song Dynasty would actually look like in real combat...

(omitting 100 million words of nonsense...)

The real battle begins!
The army of the pseudo-Qi state stood in formation opposite the army of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Li Cheng is no longer the naive and ignorant man he once was. He is no longer a bandit, but a general of the puppet Qi state, wearing a set of incredibly stylish fish-scale armor, officially certified by the puppet Qi government. He commands tens of thousands of troops, far more than any other general of the puppet Qi state.

However, although he had many subordinates, they were of varying quality.

Qin Hui glanced around and saw at least fifty or sixty thousand enemies before him, and he couldn't help but be startled: There were so many enemy troops...

“What’s there to be afraid of?” Zhang Yong laughed. “Let’s fight to our hearts’ content! Listen to my command, get ready, all firearms, open fire!”

This time, with the True Lord's personal order, there's no need to conserve bullets.

The entire army was filled with excitement.

"Let the fight begin!"

The artillery battalion commander was the first to shout out excitedly.

"Boom boom boom!"

A tremendous roar resounded. Qin Hui, upon hearing the sound, whirled around and realized that the Northern Song army possessed even heavier firearms called "cannons," which were larger, thicker, blacker, and harder than heavy muskets...

The shells whistled out and landed in Li Cheng's army, instantly causing them to cry out in pain.

Then, the tiger-crouching cannon, rifled firearms, heavy muskets, and ordinary muskets opened fire in succession...

The firearms units of the Northern Song army were more comprehensive and diverse than before.

Especially in the final stage, when the ordinary muskets fired, the large volley of gunfire caused a large number of the pseudo-Qi soldiers in front to fall like wheat being harvested.

Qin Hui had never seen a war like this before.

This completely overturned his understanding of war.

The soldiers of the pseudo-Qi state only had a chance to fire a few arrows, have the catapults hit the target once or twice, and have the giant ballistae fire an arrow once before the battle was over. Their melee weapons were only used as decorations from beginning to end...

Bullets from firearms whizzed through the battlefield. The army of the pseudo-Qi state initially maintained its formation, but in less than half an incense stick's time, the pseudo-Qi state was already in complete disarray. How could they possibly maintain any formation? The soldiers were all lying on the ground, rolling backwards or crawling on their hands and feet.

All they wanted was to escape, to get out of this hellish place as quickly as possible.

The bullets were completely invisible!
It's common to see people suddenly collapse, and you can't even tell where they were shot. They die without even knowing why.

Qin Hui's mouth was wide open, big enough to fit a light bulb.

He witnessed firsthand that a young general in the puppet Qi army, dressed in heavy armor that was no less formidable than the Iron Pagoda, was riddled with holes by a single volley from Zhang Dashu's heavy musket battalion, dying without a breath left.

"The world has changed! It has changed!" Qin Hui muttered to himself.

His confidants, Weng Shun and Gao Yigong, were just like him, so terrified that they could hardly stand.

(End of this chapter)