Three Kingdoms.

  Chapter 1246 The First Crossbow in Pingyang City

The Wuqiu Xinghou camp, which was under attack, was completely destroyed. The raging fire burned all night, and almost everything that could be burned was burned. There are bright or dark fires dancing everywhere.

  Wu Qiuxing, who is familiar with military books, subconsciously avoided the problem that he should have been worried about, because in his mind, there was a problem that he thought was more serious...

  If he loses his army and goes back, what will Yang Biao think of him, and what about his future?

  It’s like a gambler sitting at a poker table. When he finds out that he’s losing money, he often doesn’t stop in time.

   Don't these red-eyed gamblers know that even if they press on, the vast majority of people can still lose, and they will lose worse and lose faster?

   No, they all know, but they all feel like they're one of the lucky few...

   Just like Wu Qiuxing.

   The sound of shouting and killing echoed in this piece of heaven and earth, hitting the Pingyang city wall and splashing in all directions, as if the collision produced boundless murderous aura!

Guan Qiuxing's soldiers kept running back and forth in Pingyang City, and groups of soldiers filled in, and then came back with casualties, like waves hitting the Pingyang city wall. The same as above, and those catapults under the city, although the power is amazing, but this thing is a kind of weapon at the moment, and it is not accurate at all. There are many, but it is still too many to fall on the heads of Wu Qiuxing's own soldiers.

In the afternoon, Wu Qiuxing's soldiers climbed up a small part of the second ring city wall. Although they were quickly driven down, this almost made Wu Qiuxing see the dawn of success, and also stimulated him to be even more excited Unknowingly, even he leaned forward, getting closer to the city wall of Pingyang.

  With the commander pressing forward, the soldiers under him naturally had no reason to retreat.

  By Wu Qiuxing's side and behind him, there are flags representing various troops, one by one inserted into the ground, like a screen made of flags. Among these flags, apart from Wuqiu Xing's own command flag of the Chinese Army, the most eye-catching ones are two bright and beautiful flying tiger flags, one blue and the other red, fluttering in the wind, which represent that Wuqiu Xing's army is considered to be The two most elite pawns!

Guan Qiuxing suddenly waved his hand, pulled out a red flying tiger flag, turned his head to look at Wang Zhong and said, "Your Majesty Wang! You have raised troops for a while, and now the defense of Pingyang City is in a state of decay. You can lead the troops straight Attack the east gate! A Tiaoshipao and Yunlou will help you out, and you need to ascend the city within an hour!"

  Wang Zhong was stunned for a moment, but finally lowered his head to accept the flying tiger flag, turned around and left.

Arrows from both sides intertwined densely in mid-air, and in every attack window, there were countless people fighting each other to the death. One side was desperately trying to break into Pingyang City, while the other side was desperately trying to stop Wuqiu Xing's soldiers. Erosion advances. In the sparks of swords and guns, the battle between cold weapons is undoubtedly the most cruel and violent performance. From sunrise to midday, and then from midday to west, the number of casualties of soldiers on both sides soared rapidly. , No one can know how many people have fallen and how many people will fall during this period of life-and-death scuffle at the top of the city!

  At the east gate, a catapult has been ignited by a rocket, and the fire is rising and can no longer be extinguished. The remaining two catapults smashed the stone bullets towards the city wall of Pingyang with all their strength, and pushed them to such a distance again and again. Wherever it passed was a **** mess!

Although Wu Qiuxing attacked Pingyang City with an advantage in military strength, and as the attacking party, he could choose the location of the attack, and he had the advantage of being able to concentrate his troops to carry out an assault, but as a Chinese Han, in terms of defending the city His experience is quite sufficient, so even though Wu Qiuxing had the assistance of siege equipment, he was unable to quickly open up the situation and make a breakthrough. Even the battle drums that had been roaring all day in the city seemed to be a little weak now.

  As Wu Qiuxing's subordinate, Wang Zhong naturally had no room for bargaining, because Guan Qiuxing didn't ask for opinions, but directly issued military orders, so he naturally had to follow them.

   I have been attacking for a day now, if this breath of strength is vented...

  Wang Zhong didn't dare to think too much, he could only roar, urging the soldiers to wait up the ladder and cloud tower, and **** the city wall!

  Although under the oppression of the catapult and the cloud tower, Wang Zhong struggled to climb up the Pingyang city tower, but those infantry in heavy armor, coupled with sharp long blades, have always been a nightmare for siege soldiers. Even if Yang Biao was willing to spend a lot of money to ration Guan Qiuxing's soldiers, they still had to climb ladders, so how could they be wearing heavy armor?

Therefore, in terms of equipment, even though Wang Zhong fought **** with all his strength, the soldiers of Guanqiu Xing under him were still in a panic. The wooden shields in the hands of the soldiers of Guanqiu Xing, who were fighting against the heavy infantry in Zhengxi, were crushed by the sharp swords. He was slashed crookedly, wearing only half armor or even no armor, and couldn't resist the sharp blade. After being killed, he stumbled and cried, and basically had no power to fight back. With the aid and support of the catapult, Wu Qiuxing's soldiers could not reach the top of the city at all!

In order to preserve this piece of land that had finally come to the fore, under the leadership of Wang Zhong, hundreds of Wuqiu Xing soldiers also fought bloody, every step was bloody, the two sides refused to give an inch, exhausted all their strength, hacked and killed each other, There was a stalemate for a while.

  Different from Guan Qiuxing who stands out from the crowd, if Xun Chen hadn't been surrounded by guards carrying large shields and command flags by his side, he would actually look no different from ordinary Western Conscript soldiers.

   Of course, if you pay attention to observation, there are actually differences.

Although it is the same helmet and tube sleeve armor, there is a five-petal pattern inlaid with gold thread on the ear pads on both sides of the seemingly identical helmet, and there are also such patterns under the sleeves on both sides of the tube sleeve armor. pattern.

  It is also available on the belt.

   It will be the gold pattern, the school will be the silver pattern, the military officer will be the red line, the village chief will be the blue line, and the team rate will be the black line.

   is very simple, but very practical.

  When Zheng Xifeiqian came up with such tricks at first, most people were still a little puzzled, but as time went by, they gradually tasted the mystery, and Xun Chen was naturally one of them.

   Especially in melee, when the formation is scattered, such as now.

Guan Qiuxing had been looking for Xun Chen and the others below the city, trying to attack with catapults, but looking up the city from two hundred steps away, the soldiers who conquered the west seemed to look the same. He couldn't tell where Xun Chen was at the moment, and naturally he couldn't talk about the key attack areas.

In addition, for the melee at the head of the city, even if the queue is broken up, as long as there is a lieutenant colonel in it to say hello, it will naturally gather again. The methods are gathered in one place, and the benefits brought by the differences are naturally needless to say.

   It's just that changing the army's equipment has always been a big project, so now, only the soldiers near the water near Pingyang are ready. As for other places, it still takes some time.

Since dawn, we have been fighting until now. Although Wuqiu Xing has a large number of soldiers, people are not made of iron, especially fighting with cold weapons. Several times, if it weren't for the fact that most of the pawns Xun Chen sent out last night were just pretense and didn't exert much strength, the city at this time might have been consumed and dried up by Wu Qiuxing's tide-like offensive.

Although Xunchen City has dry food and water to replenish, there are not many people who can fill their stomachs in turn during the battle. In addition, the loss of energy cannot be replenished by some rations and drinking water, so Xunchen No matter how difficult it was on the city wall, Chen would not have mobilized less than 2,000 cavalry in advance.

   But at this moment, Xun Chen watched Wu Qiuxing's soldiers rushing up wave after wave, and then retreated wave after wave, guessing that the momentum of Wu Qiuxing's soldiers was gradually reaching the moment when they were almost completely exhausted...

   "Turn up the ballista!" Xun Chen looked at Wuqiu Xing's main formation who was getting more and more urgent and getting closer to the city, and ordered in a deep voice.

  Wu Qiuxing has a catapult, but why is there no related research in Huang's workshop?

It's just that under the influence of General Fei Qian of Zhengxi, there is really not much interest in catapults that are relatively bulkier and more intimidating than direct lethality. In addition, the previous research direction has been climbing the bow Crossbow technology tree, so for large long-range weapons, Huang's workshop still focuses on researching crossbows.

Although the technology of the catapult is not complicated, the weight of the stone bullets thrown is also higher, and the power of a single shot is much stronger than that of the ballista, but it doesn't matter if the stone bullets are thrown, and it doesn't even matter where they are thrown. Unknown weapons do not match Fei Qian's character at all, so what is good at the top will be effective at the bottom. In addition, although the ballista is not a parabolic shooting track, it is sometimes affected by obstructions, but in the Han Dynasty. In the era when there was no gunpowder for boosting, the effective range of the three-armed six-string ballista with pure physical force was already four hundred steps. If it was the maximum range, it would not be five or six hundred steps!

  Of course, any airflow in the air will cause the crossbow gun to deviate in flight. The farther the distance, the greater the deviation. At the maximum range, the so-called aim is basically a joke, and what you shoot depends entirely on luck.

However, as a crossbow gun, after all, there are still some differences. Unlike ordinary crossbow bolts, there is a saying that a strong crossbow cannot penetrate Lu Jin. Even at the end of the range, the self-weight of a crossbow gun can still hurt people, but it is not very powerful. That's it. But if one is shot at a limb at close range, the huge kinetic energy will directly penetrate the torso, and even tear the torso apart, which is a very normal phenomenon.

In fact, if you want to increase the shooting range, it is not impossible, but there is a cause and effect. If you want a long range, you need a stronger crossbow arm, and the crossbow arm in turn requires a greater twisting force to open the bow. The material of the ballista itself naturally has higher requirements, and if it is all replaced with iron, the weight, hehe...

In addition, Huang's workshop has done experiments, even if it is replaced with iron thorn wheels, ten people are needed to pull the three-armed ballista. If it is safer, twenty or even thirty people need to be arranged for rotation. Otherwise, halfway through the bow, the ballista's crossbow arm will be hit in the air because of the unloading of energy. It only needs to be like this, and the ballista will be basically scrapped...

The steel used in the ballista is all made of steel. Even so, some parts still need to be made of wood, otherwise it is too heavy to carry. Even so, the precision requirements between the parts of the ballista are still very high , especially the parts such as Wangshan, crossbow machine, hanging knife, etc., some require precision, and some require toughness, which are different. Therefore, for ballista technology, the gold content is extremely high, and it cannot be imitated by just a random person with a blueprint.

  Of course, the most important thing is that the cost is also expensive...

Over the past few days, Feiqian has only deployed fifty ballistas in Pingyang. Most of them were originally arranged in the inner city, so they were not easily displayed. Now Xun Chen has also transported twenty to the outer city wall. Waiting to drink a pot for the unsuspecting Wu Qiuxing.

  The current shooting range is just right. Wu Qiuxing, who is beyond the distance of two arrows, would normally struggle even with a strong crossbow, but for the ballista, it happens to be within the range where it can exert its maximum power.

  If it was normal, according to Xun Chen's temperament, he would not make such a black hand against Wuqiu. Although the troubled times are gradually rising now, the ancient style of Spring and Autumn is still appreciated by the disciples of the gentry. The so-called romantic heroism of the majestic formation, the brilliant master, each relying on his own means in the battle, and drinking heavily in the next battle is still very popular. Jia Xu naturally has no psychological burden to do this kind of thing that the coach secretly ruthlessly does, but for Xun Chen it is not his wish.

However, when Xun Chen learned about Taoshan, the anger in his heart could no longer be restrained. In his opinion, let alone one Wuqiu Xing died, even if there were ten or hundreds of Wu Qiuxing, it would be impossible for him to die. We still need to be buried with Cai Yongcai!

   Therefore, Xun Chen would rather face the threat of Wu Qiuxing's crude catapults, and hide the ballista until the end before using it. What he wants is a one-hit kill!

  A team of swords and shields stepped forward, covering the craftsmen of the Huang family next to the ballista that was about to aim, so that they would not be injured by the arrows. Because of the opening surface, a crenel could accommodate at most one ballista, and only ten ballistas could be dispatched on this section of the city wall, and there was no room for the other ten, so they were transferred to the east gate for support.

"Spot on it!" Xun Chen stood beside the craftsman of the Huang family who operated the ballista, and even said to several craftsmen, "After one blow, his army will be in chaos! Therefore, there is only one chance to kill him! General Zhengxi will definitely reward you for this beast!"

  The craftsman of the Huang family bent down to return the salute, and solemnly said: "I understand!"

  Accompanied by the creaking sound of the winch, crossbow guns as thick as arms were placed in the greased slots, and the crossbow strings were hung. The craftsmen of the Huang family began to adjust the angle of the crossbow, and stuffed the figure of Wuqiu Xing under the city into the crevice of the lookout mountain...

Seeing the sun setting towards the west, Guan Qiuxing felt a little anxious in his heart. At this moment, he suddenly heard a "boom", the clear and powerful sound almost covered up the noisy voices inside and outside the city, and penetrated into every corner of the city. In the hearts of those present!

   Guan Qiuxing shrank sharply in his heart, and looked up following the voice, only to see a thick black line flying out of Pingyang City, heading straight towards here with a whistling sound!

  (end of this chapter)