The Legend of Shushan Xuanjian

Chapter 586 City Design
The array under Helan Mountain is like a cloud, and the feathers cross each other and hear every day.

The festival ambassador Sanhe recruited young men, and the five edicts came out of the generals.

Try to brush the iron clothes like snow, and talk about holding the sword and moving the stars.

I hope that the Yan bow shoots the general, and the shameful order will be more and more Ming Wujun.

Don't dislike it in the old days, it is still worthy of feats in the first battle.

——Excerpt from "The Veteran's Journey" Wang Wei

……

Zhou Zhi, the puppet prime minister of Yan, assembled his army again and attacked Beicheng instead.Li Guangbi immediately led the main force into Beicheng.Li Feiyuan gave Bai Fu five hundred elite Mo Daomen, and followed Li Guangbi into Beicheng.

Li Guangbi boarded the tower and looked at the Yan army formation.

Li Guangbi took out his command arrows, set up defensive tasks, and the generals led them away.

Li Guangbi asked Bai Fu's Modao Army to rest for a while, as a reserve team, ready to support the generals at any time.

Although Bai Fu had fought a lot, he was not tired at all. He took the opportunity to carefully observe the city structure of Heyang North City.

At the time of Lihentian, Master Zhongsi once explained the structure of the city in detail using the ten great passes of the Tang Dynasty as examples, one of which was the three cities of Heyang.

Among the three cities in Heyang, Beicheng was designed by Master Zhongsi himself.

Beicheng is the strongest city among the three cities in Heyang, so Li Guangbi stationed the main force of Shuofang Army here.

Outside the city, there was originally a moat surrounding the whole city. The river course was deep and long, and there was only a suspension bridge across the river at the city gate for passage.

Bamboo sticks and staghorn wood are placed at the bottom of the moat. If you fall into the river or try to swim across the river, you will either die or be injured.

However, the Yan army had been besieging the city for many days, and the moat had been cut off and filled up with sandbags of soil.

This defensive barrier has been lost.That's why Yan Jun dared to covet Beicheng.

Most of the city walls in Datangzhou County are built with rammed earth, while Heyang North City is a city made of granite and green bricks.The specifications of the city bricks are quite uniform, and they are bonded with a mortar made of lime, glutinous rice pulp and tung oil, which is extremely strong.

The Heyang city wall covers a large area, and the city has dead corners in defense.

In order to effectively monitor and defend the enemy from attacking the city, when Master Zhongsi designed the city, he built protruding corner column-shaped towers - "horse faces" at intervals and corners of the city walls.

The "horse face" protrudes from the tower body outside the wall, and has shooting holes, which is convenient for crossbowmen to attack from the face facing the enemy.

A platform called "war shed" is built on the "horse face" to accommodate more soldiers and defense equipment, and it can also be used as a beacon tower.

In addition to the "horse face", the city wall is also equipped with arc-shaped arrow towers called "tuanlou", which are similar in structure and function to the "horse face".

Under the combination of "horse face" and "tuanlou", there is no dead corner in the wall of the entire northern city.

Outside the North City Gate is a semicircular urn city. If the rebels want to attack the city, they must first break through the urn city.But after entering the urn city, the rebels stuck between the urn city and the city gate will become the best targets for crossbowmen.

Even though there is a dangerous pass like the Urn City outside the gate, the gate of Heyang North City is still unique in design.

There is an L-shaped protective wall in front of the north city gate to cover the originally exposed city gate.

Master Zhong Si told Bai Fu not to underestimate this protective wall.

Adding this turning wall on the entry route can not only use twists and turns to screen the entry and exit, but also shorten the distance in front of the city gate.

Even if the enemy's siege equipment such as a charging car rushed to the door, they would not be able to charge hard due to lack of space, which curbed the impact of the battering ram, and the siege party finally returned home.

……

The gate of Beicheng is a double iron-clad wooden gate, and it is not easy to break through the gate and drive straight in.

There is a groove in the city gate, and in the groove is a "jack gate" made of huge stone bars, which is usually pulled up and suspended by a pulley winch.Once an enemy invades, the "Qianjin gate" will quickly fall, cutting off its retreat.

The ambushes ambushed in the cave of the soldiers came out everywhere, separating the enemies inside and outside the city and annihilating them one by one.

There are more than a dozen caves for Tibetan soldiers in the entire city gate and urn city, which can accommodate [-] troops to garrison.

Inside the city gate, there are left and right slopes for soldiers to ride horses and climb up the tower.

Bai Fu looked around and couldn't help sighing:

Master Zhong Si deserves to be a generation of famous generals with both civil and military skills. Not only can he be good at fighting, but the Heyang North City he designed is also well-deserved.

Bai Fu also finally understood the reason why Li Guangbi would rather give up Luoyang, the eastern capital, to station in Heyang.

Not only is the city strong and dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack, but also protected by the heroic soul of General Wang Zhongsi!

……

Zhou Zhi, the pseudo-Yan Prime Minister, led a group of marching Sima, standing in the nest car and looking at the northern city of Heyang.

The nest car is a large trolley with eight wheels.Two strong long poles stand on the chassis of the frame.The top of the long pole is the beam.There are rotating shafts at both ends of the beam, and the center is a rope.The beam rope is connected with the potter's wheel on the frame chassis.

Similar to the principle of using a bucket to fetch water from a well, a box-shaped wooden house can be hoisted with hemp ropes to the top of the pole by reeling or setting out the wires with a potter's wheel.

Because the hut hanging on the top of the pole looks like a bird's nest, it is called "nest car", also known as "lin car" or "watching building car".It is used for the siege side to climb the tower and look far away, and look at the military situation of the defending side.

Zhou Zhi and the marching army Sima carefully surveyed the city structure of Heyang Beicheng, and believed that it would be very difficult to attack the Wengcheng by using Chongche and Xu boxcars, and directly break through the Beicheng from the city gate.

For the current plan, we can only break through the city wall by relying on giant siege equipment such as ladders, sculls, and female walls.

After the siege strategy was finalized, only the drums and cannons of the Yan army were fired, and the horns were blown.

The generals of the Tang army were refreshed, knowing that the Yan army was about to launch an attack.

The Yan army dispatched large-scale siege equipment-ladders and troughs.

Thousands of soldiers pushed dozens of ladders and troughs slowly towards the city wall.Dozens of ladders and floor troughs are like dozens of giant beasts, with ferocious faces, terrifying the guards.

The ladder is huge, as high as the city wall, invincible.The middle layer of the ladder is the siege tower, which can accommodate [-] elite soldiers.At the top is an archery tower and a springboard.

There are wooden wheels at the bottom of the ladder, and soldiers can hide behind the bunker of the ladder and push the ladder to the city wall.

……

The building slot, also known as "well fence", is about ten feet high, similar to a wooden movable arrow tower, made of strong bamboo and wood.Push it to the edge of the city wall, and the crossbowmen on it can condescend and shoot arrows at the defenders from a high place.

The building slot is divided into several layers. In addition to archery and stone throwing, there is also a springboard, which can be built on the city wall after approaching, allowing soldiers to directly climb the city, with multi-functional composite combat power.

The troughs are combined with rushing cars, ladders and other weapons to attack the city. They are powerful, and the offensive of arrows raining down can make the defenders suffer.

……

Li Guangbi looked at the siege equipment swarmed by the Yan army, stroked the tiger's beard with his hand, sneered, and ordered decisively: "The trebuchet is ready!"

Suddenly heard dozens of loud noises, looked for the reputation, and saw the flames on the top of the city towering into the sky, and thick smoke billowing.

"Marshal, it's not good!" A messenger came stumbling over.

This messenger had followed him for many years, and if something major hadn't happened, he wouldn't have lost his composure like this.Li Guangbi's heart tightened, and he suddenly had a bad premonition.

"Why panic?" Li Guangbi asked in a deep voice.

"Marshal, the trebuchet...the trebuchet..." The messenger was frightened, hesitating, and the words didn't convey the meaning.

"What happened to the trebuchet?" Li Guangbi was anxious.

"The city has come to work carefully, and more than half of the trebuchets have been destroyed!" The orderly gritted his teeth and told the bad news.

"Oh!" Although Li Guangbi was always calm, he felt dizzy at this moment.

It turned out that during the Battle of Taiyuan, the two brothers Sun Dashan and Tu Xingsun, according to the design drawings of Huarazmi, made a giant trebuchet for the Tang army——Daxuan.

Compared with the trebuchets in the Central Plains, this kind of trebuchet has a larger volume, a longer range, more accurate projection, and infinite power, which made Shi Siming suffer a lot.

Shi Siming took advantage of the fierce battle in Zhongli City to transfer Li Guangbi away from the North City, and attracted the attention of the Tang Army to the South City and Zhonglu City.

Then, they secretly dispatched dead soldiers and secret agents to destroy many trebuchets on the city at all costs.

This is the real reason why the Yan army dared to attack Beicheng.

Without trebuchets, how to defend against large siege equipment such as ladders and floor slots?

This has become Tang Jun's number one problem.

……

　When he was fifteen or twenty, he won the horse riding on foot.

　　Shoot and kill the white-fronted tiger in the mountains, and be willing to count the yellow beards in Yexia!
　　Turned to fight for three thousand miles in one body, one sword was once a millionaire division.

　　The Han soldiers fought like a thunderbolt, and the captives were afraid of tribulus.

　　Wei Qing is undefeated by Tianxing, and Li Guang has no success due to odds.

　　Since it was discarded, it has decayed, and the world has been smashed into a white head.

　　In the past, flying arrows had no full eyes. Today, weeping Yang gives birth to his left elbow.

　　He sells Guhou melons by the side of the road, and Mr. Liu is in front of him.

　　The vast ancient trees connect the poor alleys, and there are few cold mountains facing the Xu Yu.

　　Swearing to make Shule out of Feiquan is not like making wine from the air in Yingchuan.

　　The array under Helan Mountain is like a cloud, and the feathers cross each other and hear every day.

　　The festival ambassador Sanhe recruited young men, and the five edicts came out of the generals.

　　Try to brush the iron clothes like snow, and talk about holding the sword and moving the stars.

　　I hope that the Yan bow shoots the general, and the shameful order will be more and more Ming Wujun.

　　Don't dislike it in the old days, it is still worthy of feats in the first battle.

　　——From "The Veteran's Journey" by Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty

　　References

　　1. "Atlas of Chinese Cold Weapons", Jiang Fengwei, Liu Ziwei, Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2020st edition, November 11.

　　2. "Through the Wall and Through the Wall-A Sectional View of Chinese Classical Ancient Architecture", Li Qianlang, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009st edition in October 10.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)