The Legend of Shushan Xuanjian

Killing all the millions of soldiers in the south of the Yangtze River, the sword at the waist is still bloody!

The old monk didn't know a hero, so he just asked for his name.

——Zhu Yuanzhang in "Not Provoking the Monk in the Temple"
……

The navies of both sides approached slowly on the lake, separated by several miles.Liu Zhan's warship has an obvious advantage in scale.

Among Liu Zhan's warships, the most eye-catching ones are dozens of giant ships with painted fangs and monsters.The largest is fifteen feet long, two feet wide, and several feet high, and can accommodate eight hundred soldiers (sailors).

The giant ships line up female walls, battle grids, set up flags, open crossbow windows and spear holes, and place chariots and forts with stone and iron juice, which looks like a city fortress.Rope nets soaked in mud are often hung on the side of the ship to resist the enemy.

The huge ship has a large tonnage, deep draft, and stable navigation. It also carries a large number of soldiers. The middle cabin of the hull is airtight, which is the cockpit for the paddlers (rowers) to row together;

The giant ship is divided into three floors. During the water battle, the tall building at the stern can not only look out, but also condescendingly shoot arrows.On the first deck, the rebel cavalry rode tall horses, galloping back and forth on the deck, showing off their might.

What kind of prestige was it that Chen Honghu led the Jianghuai Navy to defeat the Silla Navy in Dengzhou?

It's a pity that Chen Honghu didn't listen to Bai Fu's words. After the victory in the naval battle, he was complacent and underestimated the enemy, which led to the annihilation of the entire Jianghuai Navy.

Today, the Datang navy, once known as the king of the seven seas, can only stand on its own warship and look up at the enemy ship.

When Liu Zhan saw that the Tang army's navy consisted of only a hundred warships and not even a single five-tooth warship, Liu Zhan suddenly felt underestimated.

Both sides formed formations on the water at the same time.

Master Liu Zhanshui set up the two dragons out of the water formation, which is a classic tactic in water warfare and requires extremely high coordination and command.Once coordinated tacitly, it is full of power.As the saying goes, the two dragons came out of the water formation and captured with both claws.

Liu Zhan's younger brothers Liu Yin and Xu Yi each led a five-tooth warship as the left and right dragon heads, and beside each five-tooth warship, there were five giant warships on the left and right guards, just like the five claws on the left and right of a golden dragon.

While Liu Zhan was triumphant, Ding Jiuqu led the vanguard navy to slowly advance, and when he was less than one mile away from Liu Yin and Xu Yi's five-ya battleship, he took the lead in attacking.

Ding Jiuqu divided the hundred warships into ten squads, and each squad was equipped with two "Junji", five bed crossbow dolphins, two thunderbolt sea falcons, and a bright red "red horse".

Ding Jiuqu took the lead, with [-] "Wangjiao" as the vanguard, rushed into the heart of Liu Zhan's navy's Erlong Chushui formation, and besieged the two main enemy ships - the five-tooth warship.

Xu Yi was caught off guard, but Ding Jiuqu took the initiative to attack, and hurriedly dispatched a fleet to meet him, trying to strangle the twenty "Jiang" in the formation.

On the deck of the giant rebel ship, the war horses neighed, the queues were neat, and there were many swords and halberds.The rebel soldiers held weapons and were ready to wait for the two ships to approach at any time. They jumped onto the deck of the Tang army's "Jiang" and fought one by one.

Just like Bai Fu's evaluation of the rebels, Liu Zhan's navy is still the way for infantry and cavalry to fight, and the warships are only used to transport troops.

It was too late, but it was soon, fifty bed crossbow loaches rushed out of the Tang army's camp with lightning speed, galloped from the top of the waves, surrounded the five-tooth battleship like a school of sharks, Siege giant ships from different angles.

The bed crossbow sea loach is full of arrows, and the arrows are placed in the arrow box, and each arrow box contains thirty arrows.Arrows are like bamboo slips, threaded side by side with thin ropes.

The bed crossbow loaders and crossbow shooters trained from the sailors (sailors) are accustomed to the speed of the loach, and they stand upright on the ship, as if walking on flat ground.

The loader has already inserted the arrow box into the fuselage of the crossbow machine, stepped on the pedal with his foot, the gear rotates, and the crossbow string is pulled.

After the stringing is completed, the loader quickly pulls the handle, and the arrows in the quiver are automatically loaded into the crossbow chamber, and the arrows bite the crossbow strings to complete the chamber loading.

The front of the crossbow body has "Wangshan", which is marked with scales, which can greatly improve the hit rate of shooting.After the arrow is loaded, the crossbowman aims at the target through "Wangshan", and adjusts the launch angle according to different distances.

The base of the "Meteor Crossbow" has a rotating shaft that can be turned up, down, left, and right to ensure that the ballista has no shooting dead angle.Even shooting upwards at the huge rebel ship from the loach was effortless.

Seeing the Tang army's loach approaching, the rebel soldiers poked their heads out from the ship's side, trying to commandeer and shoot the Tang army's soldiers with crossbow arrows.

The arrows used in the "Meteor Crossbow" use wood as the rod and iron sheets as feathers. In fact, it is a spear with feathers, which has a longer range.Before the loach entered the range of the rebel crossbow, Tang Jun's "Meteor Crossbow" had already fired.

Seeing the figures of rebel soldiers appearing in "Wangshan", Tang Jun's crossbowman pulled the trigger and shot the crossbow.

"whoosh"

A feathered spear shot out at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, from bottom to top, hitting the neck of the rebel soldier.

The soldier shot by the arrow covered his throat with his hands, screamed, fell headlong, and fell into the water from the side of the giant ship.

One crossbow bolt is fired, the loader quickly loads the second crossbow bolt, and the crossbowman continues to aim at the target and fire continuously...

"whoosh whoosh"

The "Meteor Liannu" on the fifty bed crossbows fired at the same time, weaving a web of arrows in front of the rebel ship's side, and the rebel soldiers couldn't lift their heads.

Due to the inconvenient movement of the huge rebel ships, they were unable to repel the first wave of attacks by the Tang Army's navy.The formation of the two dragons out of the water quickly became chaotic.

Ding Jiuqu commanded "Jiang" and took advantage of the momentum to charge towards Xu Yi's five-tooth warship.Unprepared, Xu Yi panicked and hurriedly turned the bow of the boat and retreated.

……

Ding Jiuqu's "Jiang" is also called "Mengchong".

The so-called "Meng" means that the hull of the ship is covered with raw cowhide to improve its defense ability.The so-called "Chong" means that it is good at charging to break through the enemy and break up the enemy's formation.
In order to strengthen the "chong" effect of the "Mengchong" warship, Ding Jiuqu changed the hull structure.The hull was changed to be as slender as a shuttle to increase the speed, and an iron attack horn protruded from the bow, shaped like a large steel cone.

Seeing the fighter plane appear, Ding Jiuqu personally steered the boat, let the boat go downwind, and took advantage of the speed to chase to the side of Xu Yi's five-ya battleship.

While the rabbit was rising and the falcon was falling, Ding Jiuqu gave an order, and the driver on the "Wanglong" decisively pulled down the gear, the oar string was released, and the propeller at the stern rotated rapidly, increasing the speed of the boat to three times.

"Boom"

The "big steel awl" on the bow of the "Wanglong" suddenly pierced Xu Yi's five-tooth battleship, like a battering hammer breaking through a city gate, knocking the giant ship out of a hole the size of a millstone.

The lake water immediately poured into the cabin of the giant ship.

The upper and lower decks of the rebel giant ship are separated, and the people on and off the deck cannot hear each other.It was difficult for the oarsmen to hear orders from the deck.

The sculls on the bottom deck of the Five-tooth battleship didn't know what happened, but they felt the hull shake suddenly, and a big hole was broken, and hundreds of buckets of cold lake water poured in from the hole.

The oarsmen were horrified, dropped their oars, and frantically flocked to the hatch above their heads.Everyone was at a loss, in a mess.

However, under the huge water pressure, the hatch could not be opened at all.In less than a stick of incense, the lake overflowed the heads of the crowd, and hundreds of oarsmen were drowned in the cabin on the bottom floor.

The five-tooth battleship was too deep, and slowly sank to the bottom of the lake, submerged in the depths of the lake bottom mud, surrounded by floating green algae...

Before the ship sank, under the cover of his own soldiers, Xu Yi quickly jumped into a small boat and sailed away from the battle like the wind.

……

The first wave of the Tang army's naval charge killed thousands of rebel soldiers (sailors) in this battle.