The dense sprinkling of arrows and the endless splattering of ash bottles of gold poured out of continuous fire as if they were forever endless.

After many days of fierce attack, the walls of Yangping Pass have been completely stained red by flesh and blood, and there is a viscous gum like asphalt slowly flowing down, and every stone is about to brush out the slurry.

The Xiliang soldiers who were desperately attacking under the wall had completely doubted their lives, although the enemy's martial arts on the wall were sparse and weak, and they couldn't even block a knife or a shot, but their supplies were too abundant!

Moreover, those melee teams responsible for firefighting and rescue have such a high armor rate in iron armor! Even if you fall into close combat, the strengthening of defense is enough to make up for the lack of martial arts, and you may not be able to kill you if you slash twice for nothing.

What's even more exaggerated is that among the crossbowmen of the Han army, a considerable number of them wore iron helmets and even a strange whole piece of armor with a chest part much larger than a heart goggle, with the color of black iron armor.

Under the protection of this kind of armor, the crossbowmen no longer need to rely only on cross-fire to hide behind the battlements and shoot sideways like in the Great Dispersion Pass, but can expose their upper bodies generously and shoot after precise aiming, which often poses a great threat to the archers of the Xiliang Army who are raining arrows under the city and covering the city.

This weapon is actually a whole piece of iron cuirass that Li Su developed last year and is ready to be equipped with cuirassiers in the future. For infantry, wearing an iron cuirass will have a great restriction on movement, and the burden may not be able to carry it.

But for the crossbowmen who stand on the city wall and stand on the stake, it is very comfortable - you don't see that the only remaining steel armor from the First World War was used by the machine gunners in the firing point, because they didn't have to worry about not being able to walk.

And the reason why the soldiers of the Xiliang Army have not seen what this armor is so far, and can only be described as "suspicious", is of course because these new crossbowmen wearing iron cuirass have never fallen into close combat with the Xiliang people, so no one has the opportunity to get close enough to observe.

Dong Yue and Fan Chou were suspicious of life, and they couldn't understand why Liu Bei would customize a special armor for the crossbowman that could only be used when defending the city, could it be that Liu Bei was already rich to this extent? So why was he so vulnerable before? You can't just act out everything, right?

It's a pity that the sunk cost invested is already too much, and so many people have died, even far exceeding the results of the battle of Wuzhangyuan more than half a month ago.

So Dong Yue and Fan Chou are like two guys who have already bet a small half of the first four cards on the entire table when they play stud, and they are really reluctant to follow the last card.

Since Liu Bei's reinforcements haven't arrived yet, let's grit our teeth and fight for a few more days!

Dong Yue's only behind-the-scenes deployment was to listen to Jia Xu's words, and while tackling the key problems, he divided some troops and went to the vicinity of Xiguanyi, south of Yangping Pass, to camp and set up ambushes on both sides. Because it is said that the reinforcements from the southern line from the Mamingge Road and even the Jialing River must pass through the Xiguan Post to reach Yangping Pass.

As long as the valley mouth of Xiguanyi is blocked, it is impossible for the troops attacking Yangpingguan to be cut off, and they can attack until the day when the enemy's reinforcements arrive, and then slowly retreat.

On the other hand, the Xiliang Army still has some new difficulties that are gradually exposed as the war progresses, and that is their logistics.

Because the grain plundering along the way was far less than expected, and no city was broken to loot food. Therefore, at least eighty percent of the military rations eaten by the Xiliang army are transported from Chencang City. Even if it is only for ten days and half a month, the loss is very terrifying.

In fact, even if the Han army did not have reinforcements, just relying on the Yangping Pass side to defend it, at most a month, the rebels would allocate a considerable part of their soldiers to transport food, so that they would gradually lose their support.

And now, even if the shortage of military food has not completely broken out, the hidden constraints that all kinds of military supplies must be used sparingly have undoubtedly played a role: when tackling the key problems, the arrow rain suppression of the Xiliang army became more and more short, and almost only before and after the moment when the flying ladder leaned against the city wall, at most, within half a minute, the arrow rain dared to shoot openly.

Other consumables also bottomed out quickly, so that Dong Yue and Fan Chou desperately drew consumables from Jia Xu and Zhang Xiu in the rear army, and on the other hand, they had to accurately calculate the time, such as attacking for three or five days.

If you estimate that the enemy's reinforcements are about to arrive, you should collect your troops before this, and it is best to shoot almost all the arrows before you collect them, and it is best to break through them. This capacity is also the most cost-effective, and it also saves the need to run out of transportation back.

……

"Kill! Kill all the rebels and defend your homeland! ”

"Do you say that you have no clothes, and you are with the Son? Wang Yuxingshi, repair my armor soldiers! ”

In contrast, the state above the wall of Yangping Pass was very enthusiastic, and although the soldiers were not skilled in martial arts, their morale was extremely high.

After all, in the hinterland of Hanzhong in Yangping Pass, the scale of the arsenal is far from being comparable to that of Dasanguan - at the beginning, Li Su suggested that Liu Bei "stay in the Chengdu Plain and Nanzhong, train troops, and train soldiers with battles", in order to save food.

However, it is not necessary to fully allocate weapons for military training, and three soldiers can also practice with a set of weapons, and they can also practice with a wooden stick. And the weapon itself does not need to eat food to consume supplies. Therefore, in order to alleviate the pressure of wartime transportation in the future, Liu Bei, under the coordination of Li Su, has successively stored a large number of weapons needed for the future Northern Expedition in Hanzhong during the peacetime years.

Dong Yue Fan Chou's visit this time is not equivalent to kicking into an arsenal with "insufficient elite soldiers but a mountain of weapons", and there is no need to be afraid of "the opportunity to clean up the battlefield falling into the hands of the enemy and causing weapons and equipment to be captured", so of course it is to give good weapons to the peasants and soldiers.

Of course, because of the excellent weapons, the Han army never gave the Xiliang army a chance to collect the corpses under the city wall during the battle of Yangping Pass.

Either the Han army collected the corpses and buried them themselves, or the Han army threw large bundles of straw and wheat straw from the city when the battle was slightly paused, and then threw torches to ignite them, and burned the corpses to disinfect them to avoid the epidemic of plague. In this way, the opportunity for the Xiliang army to collect corpses and pick up sophisticated equipment was completely cut off, and Jia Xu used the tactics of collecting corpses once during the Great Dispersion Pass, and Dong Yue and Fan Chou could not imitate it at all.

Several times a day, Liu Bei put on his full body armor, inspected the battlefield after arriving at the pass, encouraged the troops, and listened to the latest battle situation.

Looking at the victories in the past few days, the haze that he had previously covered because of the almost complete annihilation of Wuzhangyuan was finally swept away, and he began to be able to drink a little bit of alcohol every day to relieve fatigue, and a smile was common on his face.

External victories are always the best healing medicine, to bridge internal contradictions, or to cover up the occasional missteps of rulers.

Liu Bei showed off in front of Li Su more than once: "I said at the beginning that victory and defeat are a common thing in soldiers!" As long as our army is ready, we will win the next battle! ”

And Li Su also knows this, so he didn't personally go to the front line to command the battle of defending the city in the past few days - anyway, it doesn't take much intelligence to defend the city, just hold on to it, so a good opportunity to get credit, what kind of fun does a person like him who does not lack merit have? Just do a good job in logistics scheduling, check and fill in the gaps.

However, this kind of low-key and proportionate made some of Li Su's henchmen, especially those who rushed to help before the war, who were worried that Yangping would not be able to hold on, were a little depressed.

It's time for another day when the siege is coming to an end, and the remnant sun is like blood, gradually sinking westward. Li Su finished his day's work and prepared to leave the office and go back to his temporary residence in the county seat of Chuyang to rest early. However, at the door of his residence, he was stopped by a visitor.

This visitor was none other than Zhuge Liang, a thirteen-year-old student who had only been in Hanzhong for less than ten days.

When Liu Bei's letter of help to Zhang Fei arrived, Zhang Fei was in Nan'an County, Qianwei, and Zhuge Liang was in Chengdu, where he and his brother were apprenticed to some of the internal affairs of Shu County.

I heard that Hanzhong was in danger, and Zhuge Liang had tinkered with the "flying shuttle brocade machine" and "hydraulic silk reeling car" and other machinery that Li Su had given him in the past year, and had devoted himself to studying the superficial physics and mechanical knowledge taught to him by Li Su. So Zhuge Liang begged his brother, brought dozens of guards from Li Suhou's mansion, and hurried to Hanzhong to offer treasures.

Because they were all on horseback, and they were small groups of envoys who didn't need to bring their own food, and the distance was nearly hundreds of miles closer than Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang and his party came much faster than the large army, and when Dasanguan was just abandoned by Lu Su, Zhuge Liang had already entered Nanzheng.

As soon as he met Li Su, Zhuge Liang offered a blueprint of the young man's heart, which was the "Yuanrong Repeater" improved from the Zhangzhang crossbow.

When Li Sugang saw the design of that thing, he was shocked: Ah Liang...... Could it be that I was led astray, at the age of twelve and thirteen, I didn't read the classics, the art of war, and government affairs, and only studied science and engineering for two years? That's not like inventing a repeater at the age of thirteen, right?

Later, I chatted with Zhuge Liang to understand his thoughts, and only then did I know that it was really from the time when Li Su and he discussed the mechanical structure of the automatic reciprocating shuttle shuttle with him before, Zhuge Liang had accumulated a lot of inspiration and ideas, and only then did he make the repeater in advance.

After all, the ancients rarely had the opportunity to study physics and mechanics systematically and intensively, Zhuge Liang learned things quickly, and after being dialed in by Li Su and having a cognition of the basic laws of physics, he opened the door to a new world and explored it by himself, and it is indeed extraordinary to concentrate on it for two years.

After Li Su confiscated the drawings, he only earnestly taught him to develop in an all-round way - even if he was tired of reading the Four Books and Five Classics, and the hundreds of schools of thought were basically involved, he could still take a look at those political theories and the art of war. After all, Zhuge Liang has not yet begun to learn these two categories.

This is also to avoid Zhuge Liang's skill tree being distorted by himself.

Zhuge Liang was on the rise at the time, and he didn't wait for a grand praise but only a lesson for his all-round development, and he was a little disappointed, but he still listened to the persuasion.

Because there were only drawings, Li Su asked Nanzheng's military workshop to transfer all the craftsmen who made crossbows and arrows to try to produce new products. When the battle for the defense of Yangping Pass first broke out, the finished product had not yet come out. Even though it has been a bloody battle for many days now, in fact, only a dozen semi-finished products that are not very qualified have been made, and after the craftsmen are familiar with it, the production speed is gradually getting faster -

The manufacturing cycle of the crossbow is still very long, mainly because the animal tendon as a crossbow string should be repeatedly adjusted according to the elastic torque and shrinkage rate to ensure that the force on the left and right sides of the string is absolutely uniform, so that the arrow will not be shot out of the way to one side at the beginning.

If you are in a hurry to use it in a hurry, even if it can be used and the crossbow string is evenly stressed temporarily, after the test of cold, summer and wet weather, the crossbow string will still be scrapped and replaced because of the shrinkage rate.

Zhuge Liang came today because he heard that there had been another bloody battle on the front line for a whole day, and the peasants of the defending army had also suffered some casualties, so he couldn't wait to make a contribution and persuade the master to take out the Yuanrong crossbow for actual combat:

"Sir, I heard that the craftsmen have already made twenty repeaters? Since the fierce battle on the wall is so fierce, why don't you put this first batch of crossbows into actual combat tomorrow to help?

Although it is not much, it is still worth the speed of a hundred crossbowmen to release arrows, and the narrow wall can also save the number of crossbowmen standing on the wall. The crossbow bolt does not have the shortcomings of the instability and distance of the feather feather flying shot, and it can also make up for it if it is shot at close range on the wall. ”

Zhuge Liang was very eager to explain to Li Su what he understood the advantages and disadvantages of the crossbow. He also thought that the reason why Li Su was unwilling to invest was because he was concerned about the weakness of the weapon, so he wanted to teach him to develop his strengths and avoid his weaknesses.

In order to be continuously reloaded, the repeater shoots one by one and drops one by one like a magazine feed, so it has no feathers to provide flight balance, and it is easy to roll and float. Other crossbows have lethality at 200 paces, but the power of the crossbow at 50 steps is greatly reduced, and to ensure the lethality and accuracy at the same time, it is even closer to more than 30 steps.

Therefore, when this thing is in the field, it has to retreat after shooting a round like a storm, but the overall mechanism of the crossbow machine arrow magazine is heavy, and it is inconvenient to retreat in the field. However, all this can be perfectly avoided in an occasion such as a city defense war.

Li Su listened patiently, and then continued to explain to Zhuge Liang more patiently: "Don't worry, it's not that you don't understand your ingenuity. When and where this repeater will be most powerful, I have figured it out very well in the past few days.

The reason why I didn't take it out was that the number of so many units was still too small. The second is that if this thing is taken out, it will not take two days, and the Xiliang army that has attacked the fortified will be completely desperate, realizing that it is impossible to take Yangping Pass anymore - then how can we wait for General Gan Ning to outflank the reinforcements?

Whether it's Jia Xu, Dong Yue, or Fan Chou, they have destroyed so many facilities in Sanguan County and Hechi County along the way, causing us to suffer so many losses in the materials of the fortified wall and clearing the wilderness, we can't let them run away in vain. If this thing is not born, once it is born, the first battle must be large enough to catch the enemy off guard and prevent injuries with a ruthless move.

Liang, have you ever fished? If not, this time you will go back and practice for the teacher - fishing must wait until the net is caught in the body of the fish before you can pull the hook to the death, and before that, you have to be patient and slip the fish. ”

——

PS: A little bit about the plan for the follow-up update. If nothing else, it will be pushed up on the 27th. The previously promised 6+7 additions have been added five times so far, and there are still eight left. Therefore, the eight days from the 25th to New Year's Day are all more than 10,000 words per day.

Today and tomorrow are still two watches, but in fact, the number of words is also a lot, and today there are more than 7,000 words and nearly 8,000 words, all of which are big chapters.