Fenghou

Chapter 540
The puppet Qi army was busy building a big camp. They wanted to build a plank-wall barracks. If they wanted to accommodate [-] troops, the scale would have to exceed a middle county. Such a huge project would take five to six days at the fastest to complete.

As night fell, the construction site was brightly lit, and thousands of soldiers were still busy day and night.

The [-] troops were resting three miles to the east. Li Cheng deployed three defensive patrols on the periphery, and [-] spies were in charge of guarding the periphery, including the first batch of grain and grass materials accompanying the army, which were also extremely tightly protected.

Li Chengcheng was worried that the Song army would attack the logistics at night, so he ordered that no tents be built before the camp was built to prevent it from being destroyed by the Song army's fire kites.

But in addition to the temporary camps for the [-] troops, there are also more than [-] three-thousand-stone ships moored on the banks of the Weihe River. Inside the ship, it has not been unloaded yet.

For this reason, Li Cheng ordered [-] troops to be stationed on both sides of the Weihe River to focus on the defense of the fleet.

However, the Song army was at home. No matter how tight Li Cheng's defense was, in the eyes of the Song army who was familiar with the terrain and rivers, there were still loopholes.

The flaw lies in the water surface of the Wei River, which is about a hundred feet wide. At night, soldiers standing on the bank can see the river surface thirty feet away at most. If there is no starlight and moonlight, they can only see a dozen feet away.

As a result, the water surface in the middle of the Wei River became a blind spot for soldiers on both sides of the strait. Li Cheng didn't realize this, but the Song Army scouts knew it clearly.

In the middle of the night, the moon shone through the thin clouds, looming, and the water surface of the Wei River was sometimes bright and sometimes dark. There were three puppet Qi army patrols on each side of the bank, monitoring every move on the water.

But right in the middle of the Weihe River, a group of sampans came silently. These sampans were actually pieces of wood with the front end slightly raised. Swim and hold the board.

The sampan walked close to the water surface, passed through the blind spots of the patrolling soldiers on both sides, and slowly approached the Weihe fleet under the cover of night.

There were seventy soldiers in total, and every two soldiers were in charge of a large ship. The soldiers were close to the inside of the large ship, and the patrolling soldiers on the shore could not see them. .

Every large ship is covered with tarpaulins, and under the tarpaulins are all kinds of military supplies, basically kerosene, gunpowder, battle flags, war drums, tents, medicines, copper coins and other supplies, all of which are shipped from Fengxiang Mansion Supplies, grain, grass, armor, siege weapons, etc. are transported from Jingzhao in carts.

The soldiers of the Song Army didn't need to climb onto the big ship. They just unscrewed the leather bag and threw all ten bags of [-]-jin kerosene onto the ship. into the hull.

Immediately afterwards, one after another torches were thrown onto the big ship. There was a bang on the ship, and the flames spread rapidly. The soldiers dived into the water one after another and swam westward.

"Fire!"

The patrolling soldiers on the shore yelled.

'when!when!when! The rapid alarm bell rang, and countless soldiers woke up from their dreams, got up and ran to the banks of the Weihe River.

Many soldiers poured water on the big ships with buckets, but it was meaningless. Thirty-five large ships became more and more fierce, thick smoke billowed, and the kerosene in the ships was also ignited. Dozens of large ships were engulfed by the flames.

At this moment, the two burning ships suddenly exploded violently, the ground shook, the huge shock wave overturned hundreds of soldiers on the shore, the two ships were blown to pieces, and sawdust scattered everywhere.

The huge explosion woke up the [-] puppet Qi troops ten miles away. The soldiers stood up one after another, looked at the distant fire point, and talked a lot.

Even the people in Chengji County were woken up by the loud explosion in their sleep. Many people were terrified and didn't know what happened.

Chen Qing stood on the top of the city and looked at the flames more than a dozen miles away. There was a rumbling explosion and the city shook slightly.

Yang Zaixing asked in surprise, "Is the power of gunpowder so powerful?"

Chen Qing nodded, "If you use a huge wooden box with several thousand catties of gunpowder to blow up the city, the city wall will definitely be blown down, but we don't have such a strong capital. If we squander a few thousand catties of gunpowder, we can only spend a year. It only produces a few thousand catties."

"But if you encounter a particularly difficult city, such as Pingliang City, can you still have a luxury once in a while?"

Chen Qing said with a smile: "That's okay. In fact, I wanted to create an iron-shelled fire mine. It must be very powerful, but it has never been successful. Fortunately, we have fierce fire oil, which is as powerful as we captured Pingliang City." , the army cooperated tacitly, didn't they all succeed?"

Yang Zaixing nodded, "You are right. The key is to be practical. I also think it is more practical to shoot poisonous nails from gunpowder barrels to deal with the Jurchen horses."

Chen Qing said with a smile: "In any case, after destroying thirty-five large ships, Li Cheng's idea of ​​using ships to attack the city has come to naught. I guess he will organize the delivery of kerosene and gunpowder. The next step depends on Liu Qiong." How to intercept it."

At this moment, Li Cheng and Guan Shigu rushed to the pier. Li Cheng looked at the ship that was almost burnt to the skeleton, his eyes burst into flames with anger, and he whipped at a general, "Why didn't you unload the cargo last night?"

The general knelt on the ground and cried: "I am worried that the cargo will be attacked by the enemy when it is unloaded on the dock. It is safer to put it in the ship."

"You idiot! Are you safe now?"

Li Cheng's teeth were itching with hatred, and he whipped the whip at the general across his head and face.

Guan Shigu hurriedly stopped Li Cheng, "Du Tong, the matter has come to this point, it is useless to blame him, we can only try our best to make it up!"

Li Cheng said angrily: "How do you save it? Our kerosene and gunpowder have all been burned, and the warships are gone. I still want to use warships to help attack the city, but it is impossible now. What should I do?"

"I can only ask Wan Yanchang for help, and ask him to continue to allocate kerosene and gunpowder. There are still some in the spare warehouse of Jingzhao City, which can be sent out. I remember that there are still [-] large ships on the Weishui River, so I will use them to transport them." Goods, just to be strictly protected by the army, so that they cannot be attacked by the Song army again."

Although Li Cheng didn't want to beg Yan Chang again, he had no choice but to nod, "That's the only way, let Luo Ying lead the army to guard!"

At dawn, the Song Army's Nancheng city began to launch fire kites, dozens of them were covered with kerosene, and the burning fire kites were ejected out of the city and flew to the huge observation deck two miles away.

The fire kite is the weapon with the longest range of the Song army. The maximum range can reach three miles. It is no problem to deal with the observation deck with only two miles. The large fire kite of the Song army is already very stable. It is divided into two types, one is kerosene Kites, one is a gunpowder kite.

Today, the kerosene kite was fired. The belly of the kerosene kite was filled with kerosene mud. One by one, the kerosene slammed into the observation platform head-on with precision. On the back and back of the platform, fire sludge was scattered and began to burn inside.

Not long after, a puff of thick smoke emerged from the observation deck, getting bigger and bigger, and flames also appeared. Dozens of soldiers on the observation deck were terrified and rushed down to flee.

A quarter of an hour later, the flames grew bigger and thicker, and the smoke billowed, engulfing the entire viewing platform.

Half an hour later, the blazing observation deck collapsed, and the defenders on the top of the city cheered.

Overnight, the puppet Qi army suffered two setbacks in a row, and their morale was hit. The soldiers were especially worried about another sneak attack at night.

For this reason, Li Cheng had to change his plan, abandoning the construction of a slab-style barracks, and changed it to a fence-style barracks. In this way, the barracks were successfully installed in one day. Thousands of large tents, all food and supplies were carried into the camp.

Craftsmen began to assemble large siege weapons, including large trebuchets, heavy siege ladders and nest cars.

In the northwest corner of the barracks, hundreds of torches were burned on wooden stakes, illuminating the operating workshop covering an area of ​​tens of acres like daylight. Hundreds of craftsmen were busy assembling, and blacksmiths wielded hammers to forge iron chains, clanging and clanging. .

In another corner, dozens of craftsmen are assembling heavy-duty trebuchets. The principle is similar to that of Song Jun's heavy-duty trebuchets, but the pseudo-Qi army is a traditional trebuchet, that is, a soft rod. A boulder weighing one hundred catties was thrown three hundred and fifty steps away.

The projection ability of the hard rod is weaker, but the accuracy is very high, especially suitable for siege. It is a patented invention of the craftsmen of Xihe Road.

At that time, Jingzhao City was the base camp of the Song Army and the Xixia Army, and a large amount of military supplies were stored in the city. After the Jin soldiers occupied Jingzhao City, these heavy weapons that were difficult to transport became the trophies of the Jin soldiers.

But these years have basically been exhausted by various wars. The large-scale siege weapons brought by the Puppet Qi Army this time are the last batch of inventory in Jingzhao City, a total of [-] heavy-duty trebuchets.

"When will these heavy trebuchets be assembled?" Li Cheng asked the lead craftsman.

The lead craftsman quickly bowed and said: "General Qi, we have assembled the siege ladder and the trebuchet at the same time according to the general's request. It will take about three days to complete the assembly."

"Twenty trebuchets took three days, I thought you could finish them in one night!" Li Cheng was really dissatisfied.

"No! No! No!"

The lead craftsman quickly explained: "Not only are there trebuchets, but there are also heavy siege ladders and pontoon bridges. The number is huge. We have already rushed to work overnight after we completed it in three days."

Li Cheng walked to the pontoon bridge. They had to use the pontoon bridge to cross the wide moat. The pontoon bridge was made of large wooden boxes, fastened together with iron chains, and covered with planks.

Li Cheng originally planned to fill the river, but the amount of work was relatively large, so he considered filling the river later and crossing the river with floating bridges first.

Seeing that each of the large wooden boxes had been completed, Li Cheng's face softened a lot, and he nodded, "Then I'll give you three days to complete the big rewards and delay the heavy punishment!"

The leading craftsman said bitterly: "We must finish it on time!"

(End of this chapter)