Tibet.

Chapter 1425 Arrival in Zhenla
Twenty miles away, the Chola warships also discovered the Tang army warships in the distance.

The commander, Rajinder, was as excited as a beast that had found its prey. He shouted, "The Tang warships are coming. Let them have a taste of our hellfire!"

Throughout the Indian Peninsula and its vicinity, the Chola Kingdom's warships have always been the strongest, sweeping away the navies of all small countries. Even pirates would flee when they saw their warships.

The reason was that they had a powerful weapon, Greek fire. They bought kerosene from the Arabs. Their tactics were very simple. When the two ships approached, the Asan soldiers of the Chola Kingdom immediately threw clay pots filled with kerosene onto the other ship like raindrops, and then ignited them with rockets.

This one move allowed the Chola warships to run rampant for hundreds of years, and had long made the Chola naval generals arrogant and overbearing.

Just like India has bought the BrahMos missiles now.

The ships of the two armies gradually approached each other and quickly dispersed, and began to fight one-on-one on the vast sea.

What Li Chengshi did not expect was that it was the artillery that took the lead. Two miles apart, more than a dozen artillery pieces fired at the same time. Five of the iron mines pierced through the ship's wall and exploded inside the ship. The two 3,000-stone ships were instantly blown to pieces.

Li Chengshi suddenly realized that artillery would be the real killer weapon in future naval battles. It would not require any close approach to the enemy, but could sink enemy warships from miles away.

Unfortunately, they did not have many artillery pieces, only twenty. Li Chengshi felt regretful and thought that he should have taken all the 200 artillery pieces in the Quanzhou warehouse with him.

Although there are not many artillery pieces, arrow mines and explosive arrows are also powerful weapons against the warships of the Zhu Luo Kingdom.

The Tang army could attack the enemy at a distance of between 200 and 100 steps, while the Chola soldiers' throwing distance was only 30 steps.

This difference of more than one hundred steps was enough to put the Chola fleet into an irretrievable situation.

Each heavy crossbow was fired from two hundred steps away, although there was no problem firing from three hundred steps away. However, the sea was different from the land. The wind was high and the waves were rough. The sea breeze had a great impact on the arrows, especially when the ship was moving. It was easy to miss the target, but it was much easier at two hundred steps.

The reason why the arrow mine is called an arrow mine is that first of all, it is an arrow with a sharp arrow tip, and the spherical fire mine is one inch below the arrow tip.

The arrows nailed to the wall of the ship, and it exploded with a loud bang. Fire burst out and thick smoke filled the air. Of course, the warships of the Chola Kingdom were far from comparable to the sturdy ships of the Tang Army. A single arrow torpedo could blast a hole ten feet wide. The sea water rushed into the ship, and there were screams and wails everywhere on the ship.

Faced with the powerful firepower of the Tang army, the Zhu Luo warships were completely vulnerable. In less than an hour, nearly sixty warships had sunk. The commander Rajinder was in despair. He only hated himself for being so hot-headed that he agreed to help Hu Lin, that bastard. Now he just wanted to escape.

As soon as his warship turned around, Li Chengshi's main warship had already caught up with his warship. When they were a hundred steps away, the main ship of the Tang army turned sideways, and the huge paddles rolled at a rapid speed, parallel to the enemy's main ship.

At this time, two hundred Tang army soldiers raised their crossbows and fired two hundred explosive arrows at the enemy warship. The arrows exploded as soon as they touched the ship. The two hundred explosive arrows actually blew the entire ship wall into pieces. The ship broke into two pieces, fell upside down on the sea, and quickly sank.

All the Tang army soldiers were stunned. No one could have imagined that the Chola warships were so fragile. How could such warships still sail in the sea?

In fact, Chola ships never sailed in the deep sea, but always sailed along the coast and hid when a storm came.

Seeing the main ship being sunk, the remaining forty-odd warships turned around and fled, but it was impossible for them to escape. How could they sail against the wind?

The Chola warships were like trapped wild boars, and were chased and killed by the Tang army's warships one after another. The remaining 43 warships were all sunk without exception. The Tang army did not take prisoners of war. The soldiers, holding bows and crossbows, shot all the Chola soldiers lying on the broken wood on the sea. All 10,000 Chola soldiers sank into the sea to feed the fish.

At night, 20,000 soldiers of Linyi were exhausted marching on the official road. Linyi was divided into two major tribes, the Coconut Tribe in the north and the Areca Tribe in the south. The two tribes were deeply separated, equivalent to two countries, which were forcibly twisted together by Linyi. Since the kings and nobles of Linyi were almost all from the Coconut Tribe, the Areca Tribe had been suppressed.

In fact, today's Vietnam can also be called the northern coconut tribe and the southern betel nut tribe. The conflict between the two major races has been an unsolvable knot in Vietnam for thousands of years.

The 20,000 soldiers marching on the official road were all soldiers of the Betel Nut tribe. They were willing to fight the Zhenla people and plunder their property, but they were unwilling to do so when asked to save the capital of the Coconut Tribe.

The eldest prince Hu Lin was particularly anxious and kept urging the soldiers to march. He refused to stop and rest even at night. The soldiers were already exhausted and complained.

At this time, many soldiers noticed that there was a hissing fire on the side of the road, and the fire was burning rapidly and spread rapidly to the official road. Before they could react, a series of huge explosions were heard along the ten-mile-long official road.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The soldiers were blown to pieces, and many were blown into the sky. Twenty thousand soldiers screamed in fear and fled in all directions. Then, the two-mile-long official road suddenly caught fire, and the raging fire engulfed thousands of soldiers in an instant.

The 20,000 soldiers were in complete chaos. At this moment, a low horn sounded, "Woo--"

A cavalry of 3,000 men came charging at high speed. At this time, the soldiers of Linyi Kingdom had completely collapsed. No one wanted to resist the killing of the Tang cavalry. Only the eldest prince Hu Lin led 2,000 soldiers to fight. However, seeing the Tang cavalry charging like a landslide, the soldiers of Linyi Kingdom were frightened and turned to flee. The eldest prince Hu Lin turned around and urged his horse to flee. Arrows shot at him like raindrops. He was hit by dozens of arrows in the back and fell off his horse with a scream.

The Tang army soldiers chased them all the way, but found that except for those who were killed in the explosion or burned to death, the other soldiers were almost nowhere to be found.

In fact, it was normal. There was a forest not far from the official road. The soldiers fled into the forest. In this case, they must have fled back home. Who would be willing to fight for the coconut tribe? Moreover, they were also frightened by the iron fire bombs and kerosene of the Tang army. In particular, the tragic scene of countless soldiers struggling in the flames made all the soldiers who saw it extremely frightened. They could not forget it even if they closed their eyes.

Ten days later, the navy landed at the mouth of the Zhenla River. Not far away was the Chola's old nest, Angu City. Seeing the bad situation, the 300 Chola soldiers guarding the city abandoned the city and fled. However, these lone soldiers soon fell into the hands of the Zhenla people and were all brutally killed.

At this point, all the 10,000 Chola soldiers who had gone on an expedition to the South Seas were wiped out. Not a single soldier escaped, not even a single survivor. Along with hundreds of warships, all of them sank to the bottom of the South Seas.

The Chola Kingdom certainly did not come to do charity, they came to plunder wealth and food. The Linyi Kingdom mainly occupied territory and also plundered some property. As for food, the Linyi Kingdom did not want it and gave it all to the Chola Kingdom.

The Tang army was frightened when they entered Angu City. There were a thousand households in the city, but there was no resident. All the houses were filled with looted property and food, which made Li Chengshi scared. Fortunately, the Chola soldiers did not burn the houses when they fled, otherwise the loss would be too great.

Li Chengshi immediately ordered people to count the grain, and it was all rice. In addition to the rice in each room, there was also a mountain of rice in the warehouse. This was rice looted from the official warehouse, about 800,000 shi.

The scattered rice in each room totaled about 300,000 dan, not counting the 500,000 dan of rice in the Champa warehouse.

At this time, Du Huan advised: "Looking at the style of the Chola people, you can tell that they are despicable. They even robbed women's copper jewelry. I guess they have robbed the locals clean. It is better to return the local people's food and money to win their hearts. We will have to rely on them to grow rice in the future."

Li Chengshi nodded and ordered the news to be spread. Soon, Zhenla people who came from all directions lined up outside the city of Angu.

For twenty consecutive days, 300,000 shi of grain and countless looted properties were distributed to the people of Zhenla. For a time, there was thunderous cheers, and the people of Zhenla praised the Tang army as the army sent by the Buddha.

Unexpectedly, Queen Elaine of Water Zhenla also came to Angu City to pay homage to the commander-in-chief of the Tang army.

(End of this chapter)