Nearly 100 crossbows fired in a volley, and the rain of quenched arrows was as terrifying as a sky-destroying storm, even the most elite heavy armored cavalry could not stop its power, and Kong Peng's command was dominated by light armor bows and crossbows and spear cavalry, so he naturally did not dare to approach in front of Nanjian Gorge easily, but it did not mean that Kong Peng, who was supervising the battle in Yuchicheng as the governor of the rebel army, was helpless. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

In addition to being the only remaining powerhouse of the Four Great Dao Dan Realm in the Pinglu Oasis, Kong Peng had served in the Northern Army for a long time before Luo Cao Weikou, not only him, but even the leaders of several Kou under his command had rich experience in smelting the army.

In view of the strong penetration of quenched gold arrows, they selected solid wood that had grown for thousands of years in Yuchicheng to make a large number of double-layered or even multi-layered tall tower shields.

This kind of tower shield is also extremely bulky, but it is mounted on wheels, and it is propelled forward by three or five strong warriors, and it can also effectively resist the continuous fire of the machine's crossbow.

This kind of tower shield car made of thousand-year-old solid wood is still much lighter than the precision cast iron shield with the same defensive power, but under the strong suppression of the logistics supply line by the elite army war bird battalion, whether it is an iron shield car or a tower shield car, Kong Peng wants to build a sufficient number in Yuchicheng, but it is not possible to achieve it in three or five days.

Ye Qinglin, Ye He and other generals still hoped that before Kong Peng, Zhang Xiong and other thieves could create enough targeted weapons in Yuchicheng, Tianaishan, and Xiqiang Wangcheng, they could take advantage of their existing advantages to deal a devastating blow to the more than 30,000 rebels gathered in Yuchicheng.

Ye Qinglin's consideration is reasonable, the Divine Machine Chariot and the Mechanism Repeater are strong, but the number is still too limited, once the iron shield vehicle built by the rebels forms a scale, on the battlefield with a larger number of people, the role that less than a hundred Mechanism Repeaters can play will become extremely limited.

The counterweight catapult was less technical and easy to imitate, and once the rebels were able to build a catapult in Yuchicheng, their advantage in this area would be weakened.

In addition, although it is unlikely that the Demon God Temple will directly participate in the battle again, the rebels can still recruit the Imperial Bird Monks from the depths of the desert west of Pinglu to strengthen their War Bird Battalion, and their absolute superiority over Tiele Ridge will be slowly weakened.

Chen Hai didn't want to take the risk at this time, so he was in a hurry to fight Kong Peng in Yuchi City.

Although Chen Hai and Dong Ning handed over the battlefield command at the western foot of Tiele Ridge to Ye Qinglin, the elite army deployed at the west entrance of Nanjian Gorge was not something that Ye Qinglin could command.

After deducting the elite army at the west entrance of Nanjian Gorge, Ye Qinglin's army was expanded to 30,000 after the four surnamed children were recruited, and it was difficult to talk about the advantage in the face of the soldiers and horses led by the Black Mountain Wuzun Kong Peng.

Chen Hai still hopes in his heart that the real decisive battle can be delayed until after next spring, or later.

The Zhang clan seized the Xiqiang royal city and established themselves as kings, with the support of the Demon God Temple and the Tibetan Qiang State, they have not been able to effectively control the Pinglu Oasis in the past six months, and most of the cities are still neutral, which means that the Ye family has ruled the Xiqiang Kingdom for more than 400 years, and still has a very strong foundation in the Pinglu Oasis.

At this time, they gained a foothold in Tiele Ridge and formed a direct confrontation with the rebels, and it was actually beneficial for them to delay the time.

And a more important reason is that Chen Hai wants to take advantage of the current war pressure to forcibly promote the government military system in Lucheng.

Although at this time, Zhao, Zhou, Yang, and Gu all agreed to move to the west of Tieleling after the war to govern a city, but once there is no pressure of war, it is difficult to say whether they will lead the children of most clans to withdraw from Lucheng and whether Ye Qinglin will keep his promise.

In particular, the secret of the lake mud and sand mine is hidden at the bottom of Tianhang Lake on the inner side of Lukai Gorge, and once the curtain is officially unveiled, all promises will become pale in the face of huge interests.

In order to ensure that the Elite Capital Protectorate can have absolute control over Lucheng after the war, he can only take advantage of the great pressure of the war and the least resistance to forcibly promote the government military system.

Chen Hai's first step was to transfer Ding Shuang from Montenegro, and first be responsible for reorganizing the forces left behind after expelling the Zhang clan from Lucheng.

As one of the five surnames in Lucheng, although the Zhang family can only be regarded as an insignificant small clan within the Jinyan Prefecture, it has 170,000 acres of cultivated land and pastures several times the area between the west bank of the Luhe River and Tiele Ridge.

On the west bank of the Luhe River and at the eastern foot of the Tiele Mountains, Chen Hai organized 12 military government tunzhai to govern the land under the original Zhang clan, and incorporated more than 5,000 slaves and dependents of the original Zhang clan and more than 30,000 people into the military government, and rewarded the officials with military merits.

Without affecting the current farming and animal husbandry production, this measure alone has recruited 6,000 more elite new soldiers for the elite army.

The elite army had previously requisitioned 12,000 elites from Montenegro, 6,000 elites guarded Lucheng, and 6,000 elites cooperated with the Ye royal army to guard the west entrance of Nanjian Gorge.

Of the 6,000 newly recruited soldiers, Chen Hai did not plan to spend half a year or even more training an army alone, but directly sent them to the west entrance of Nanjian Gorge, where Wu Meng, Ran Hu, and Fan Dachun took over, and directly inserted them into each small battalion in the ratio of one to one, directly expanding the strength of the elite army at the west entrance of Nanjian Gorge to 12,000 people.

In a short period of time, the average strength of the elite troops stationed at the western entrance of the Nanjian Gorge will be somewhat reduced, but as long as there is no large-scale war before next spring, the new soldiers will be able to quickly adapt to high-intensity training and become familiar with the battlefield; at the same time, a number of military attachés at the grassroots level will be trained, and these military attachés at the grassroots level will be the basis for the implementation of the government military system.

For the slaves and vassals belonging to the four clans of Zhou, Zhao, Yang and Gu, the practice of the Elite Protectorate could not be so straightforward and rude, but implemented a redemption policy acceptable to all parties, that is, for the slaves and subjects to whom the four surnames belonged and were willing to join the Elite Army to fight, they were all redeemed from the hands of the four surnames at the expense of the Elite Protectorate.

The price offered by the Elite Protectorate for each sturdy slave and his family was ten catties of quenched iron, which was a very high price in the slave market of the Pinglu Oasis, after all, after a large-scale war, the four clans could still take a large number of people from their enemies as slaves.

On the one hand, Zhao Yang and Zhou Gu Si hoped that the elite army would become stronger, and in the future, they would be able to cooperate with the royal army more effectively and fight the rebels more effectively, but on the other hand, they could not refuse such an offer.

As well as the fields and pastures of the four clans on both sides of the Luhe River, the Jingjue Protectorate was also redeemed for purchase.

In the whole winter of the seventy-sixth year of Emperor Yitian, more than 200,000 catties of quenched iron materials and more than 2,000 sets of armor were directly imported from Juquanling into Lucheng, which were transferred to the hands of the four clan brothers as ransom funds for 7,000 slaves and their families and hundreds of thousands of fields.

Ye Qinglin was also happy to accept such a redemption policy, after all, a large number of armor, bows and quenched iron materials were transferred from the Elite Capital Protectorate to the hands of the four surnamed clans, which also directly strengthened the strength of the Ye clan's royal army, and at the same time did not increase the Ye clan's debt to Hexi.

During this period, not only the elite army stationed in Lucheng was expanded to 10,000 people.

At the same time, Chen Hai also took over an iron mine and a smelting field left behind by the Zhang family after expulsion from Lucheng, and moved half of the craftsmen and craftsmen in the Black Mountain Craftsman Camp to Lucheng.

Chen Hai also requisitioned manpower to dig a stone stairway leading to Lukai Gorge from the source of the Luhe River.

Lukai Gorge is located more than 3,000 meters above the source of the Luhe River, and the terrain is extremely dangerous.

In the past, Lucheng would never have thought of going to great lengths to build a city on Lukai Gorge, and naturally would not have thought of digging a stone staircase with a height difference of more than 3,000 meters, but the disciples of the Demon God Temple once approached Luhe from the mountains in the south, and Chen Hai built a fortress on Lukai Gorge at this time, and also demolished a defensive array in Lucheng and deployed it to Lukai Gorge, which seemed to be a legitimate reason.

Of course, before the stone stairway was excavated, a large amount of manpower and materials were directly carried by the giant vultures.

The smelting furnace was directly dismantled from Zhang's iron smelting field; it was only the treatment of quenched iron materials, which required an extremely high furnace flame temperature, but for Juquanling at this time, secretly sending a set of high-grade flame gathering rune arrays over was also a matter that people did not know.

On the first day of entering the seventy-seventh year of Emperor Yitian, the foundry of Lukaixia had successfully smelted the first furnace of quenched molten iron and poured it into the blank mold of the arrow halberd that had been formed in advance.

Of course, these actions can't be hidden from Hexi.

Hexi controls the entrance to the desert in the west, and can roughly count the quenched iron materials imported into the desert, and you can know where the problem is by accounting for the two phases, so when Lukaixia smelted the first furnace of quenched iron materials, Chen Hai also specially invited Ge Xuanqiao and Du Linan to the scene to observe.

"......" Du Linan looked at four or five thousand catties of red-hot hot iron, the parting mold was cooled and formed, and the blanks of fifty quenched war halberds and war spears were quickly cast in front of his eyes, and he didn't know what to say when he opened his mouth.

Quenched iron material is just a general term, even the Xuanti iron bow used by Chen Hai at this time, strictly speaking, it is only quenched iron, but the content of Xuanti refined iron is relatively higher. If such an iron bow is completely cast with Xuanti fine iron, the bow body alone will weigh twenty or thirty thousand catties, who can use it?

In the world, according to the content of extremely precious gold and iron such as Xuanti fine iron and purple dust gold, quenched gold iron was divided into nine grades.

The ninth-level quenched iron material can usually be used to forge the top-grade mortal iron armor, and the eighth to sixth levels, corresponding to the yellow-level lower-grade to high-grade Xuanbing, can be refined into the Dao Seal and the forbidden circle.

The Xuanti Zichen Halberd used by Chen Hai at this time was based on the eighth-level quenched iron material, smelted into 300 catties of Xuanti refined iron and 200 catties of Zichen sand gold, and the halberd weighed more than 1,200 catties, but it could only be regarded as a fourth-grade quenched iron.

And the pure Xuantian fine iron and purple dust gold are several times more precious than the top quenched iron, but a piece of Xuantian fine iron that is not much larger than the broad bean weighs nearly 100 catties.

The quality of the placer mud mined at the bottom of Lukaixia Lake is higher than that of Juquanling, and it can directly refine close to the eighth-level quenched iron material.

The hundreds of elite disciples of the Demon God Temple were so close to this unimaginable sect resource, and in the end, they were bluffed back by Chen Hai?

"Ge Old Ancestor, half of the quenched iron materials produced here can be supplied to Hexi, but this secret may not be able to be kept for a long time. Chen Hai said to Ge Xuanqiao.

"You gave the Demon God Temple a condition to allow them to occupy Changle City in the west of the Pinglu Great Oasis, whether it is to leave a back door so that the Taiwei Sect can add a Taoist courtyard here," Ge Xuanqiao sighed softly, "It makes no difference if I stay in Taiwei Mountain or cultivate in this Lukai Gorge. Besides, Dong Ning, this girl has also grown up watching since she was a child, and I don't want to see any accidents happen to her......"