Today's Li Zhongyi does not dare to say that he is excellent in equestrianism, at least he can be called skilled in horsework. galloping on horseback, wielding a knife to kill the enemy, Li Zhongyi did not have the slightest problem.

This person was forced out!

Since the rise of the military, Li Zhongyi has always emphasized the combat capability of rapid response and rapid strike. After all, the Khitans in the north relied on the help of war horses and had an overwhelming ability to run and assault long-distance races.

At the beginning, although the total strength of the Northern Song Dynasty exceeded one million, there was no danger to defend, and it was necessary to garrison troops everywhere and fortify everywhere.

On the contrary, the Khitans, under the command of good generals, rushed at an astonishing speed.

The Song army in history is actually far less weak than ordinary people remember, and at the tactical level, it has always won more and lost less. However, strategically, the entire Great Song Dynasty has always been in a situation of being passively beaten.

Compared with the Khitans, the total strength of the Song army has an advantage, but because the border areas are full of gaps that can be broken through to the south, it is the side that is always at a disadvantage in local forces.

Li Zhongyi used to be only a vice president at the department and bureau level, with superb medical skills, but he did not understand military affairs. Since the establishment of the Hechi army, in addition to emphasizing organizational discipline, Li Zhongyi has always been concerned about the long-distance running ability of the entire army, as well as the logistics supply ability in the process of running.

Sun Tzu's Art of War said: Win with righteousness, and match with odds!

Artillery against artillery, Armageddon between tanks, PK between fighters, this is the royal road of head-on confrontation!

Li Zhongyi started his career by virtue of military exploits, and of course he knew in his heart that even if the elite soldiers selected from his guards were elite soldiers who had been killed for a long time, as long as they did not fight for many years and kept messing around in the pile of flowers, sooner or later they would become a fancy stand that could only serve as a guard of honor.

Therefore, Li Zhongyi took advantage of the dawn when the sky was still bright, suddenly rushed to the camp of the Guards, and randomly took the Zuoxiang A battalion out of the city to slip away.

"The Fourth Army is gone?" Li Zhongyi waved his hand at Yang Wushuang, who was hurrying up to meet him, signaling that he didn't need to be polite.

Yang Wushuang had long known Li Zhongyi's temper, and in the barracks, everything was just to win the battle, and all the red tape that had nothing to do with it was simple.

However, with the continuous expansion of Li Jiajun's strength, Li Zhongyi's prestige became more and more compelling, "Smack! Yang Wushuang still put his legs together and thumped his chest in salute.

Li Zhongyi shook his head helplessly, as his status grew, he missed more and more the happy days of drinking and eating meat in a big bowl without restraint.

It's a pity that it's now a situation of burning oil. Objectively speaking, Li Zhongyi is only a stone's throw away from the supreme dragon chair of Da Zhou.

Li Zhongyi knew very well in his heart that although the arrogant soldiers and fierce generals under his command did not say anything, they had long since stopped taking the hundreds of thousands of so-called elite forbidden troops in the imperial court in their eyes.

In the Senate's operational plan, the Khitan Iron Cavalry with hundreds of thousands of armor that has been pressed on top of the head has always been the top priority of the Senators' repeated deliberations.

"My lord, we have always wanted to meddle in the grassland, but we have no chance to find it. Unexpectedly, the king of the Xi clan was so considerate, he just wanted to fall asleep, and he met a pillow, as if he was dreaming. ”

Yang Wushuang, as the acting chief of the Senate Division and the head of the transferred troops, naturally knew that the Third Army was going north on a starry night, what was the picture?

Li Yunxiao learned from Li Zhongyi, curled her lips and smiled: "Taking Yuguan is equivalent to putting shackles on the Khitans, completely separating the east and west parts, so that they can't take care of both the end and the end. I haven't figured it out before, but now, I really have to admire the foresight of the lord, high, really high. ”

Everyone likes to listen to sycophants, Li Zhongyi couldn't help touching his chin, and said with a pleasant smile: "At the beginning, I just used Yuguan as an idle move, the purpose was to block the connection between Khitan Tokyo Road and Nanjing Road, so that it would not dare to go south rashly." Now it seems that it came in handy. ”

"My lord, I have never been a thief for a thousand days, but there is no reason to prevent thieves for a thousand days. We have the help of the sailors, and we can reinforce Yuguan from the sea anytime and anywhere, and we will be caught off guard by the Khitans. The Khitans have never understood the reality of Yuguan, so they can only hoard heavy troops west of Yuguan to prevent our sneak attack. ”

Yang Wushuang is also an understanding person, when the lord is happy, he doesn't take the opportunity to have fun and have fun, then he is the No. 1 fool in Tianzi.

Li Zhongyi curled the corners of his mouth and smiled slightly, he gathered troops in Yuguan this time, but in fact, he learned the methods of later generations.

I think that at the beginning, every time the spring ploughing or autumn harvest of the North Bang Country, the South Bang and Eagle Sauce Countries would carry out special military exercises in the border areas close to the North Bang.

Although the country has some industrial base, it has long been unable to meet the needs of the global market, and most of its national economy is dominated by agriculture and fishery.

Due to the high latitude of the North Stick Country, agricultural production is just a season of spring planting and autumn harvest, so that the United States and South Korea coalition forces are so lively, the million army of the North Stick Country must be all on guard, dare not invest in agricultural production, it can be described as miserable, the more tossed the poorer it becomes!

Li Zhongyi had already planned to advance into the Central Plains and compete for hegemony, but the problem was that with the Khitans staring at him, he was afraid that the fishermen would profit.

The Khitan people are located in the sixteen states of Yanyun, and the Hebei and Henan of the Great Zhou Dynasty have no danger to defend, and Yelu Xiuge can lead 100,000 horsemen to the south in minutes, which spoils the overall situation of Li Zhongyi.

Li Zhongyi thought clearly, instead of always worrying about Yelu Huge's southward movement, it was better to take advantage of the geographical advantages of Yuguan and the mobility of the sailors, and suddenly increase the troops in Yuguan, and the Khitans in Youzhou were caught off guard.

In addition to the First Army, which was stationed in Yuguan, with the assistance of the naval division, Li Hongyi successively transferred the Second, Third, Fifth, and Fourth Armies to Yuguan.

When the sailor division turned, the cavalry battalion directly under Li Zhongyi, as well as all the guards, would also follow north to Yuguan.

As for the defense of Kaijing, Li Zhongyi still followed the old rules and planned to hand it over to Zhou Daozhong, the commander of the naval division.

Yang Wushuang was about to speak, but he saw a strange carriage dragged by two horses slowly driving out of the team behind Li Zhongyi and heading straight for the Licheng River.

Li Zhongyi saw Yang Wushuang looking at the special two-horse trailer in a daze, and couldn't help but curl the corners of his mouth, and asked Yang Wushuang: "Do you know what this is?" ”

Yang Wushuang had never seen such a strange carriage, but after all, he was the acting chief of the Senate Division, and he was much better informed than touching people, so he hesitated for a moment and said hesitantly: "Could it be that thing was done?" ”

Li Yunxiao glanced at Yang Wushuang, he thought to himself, the second Yang in the army, one is Li Zhongyi's protégé, the other is the acting chief general of the Senate Department who holds military orders, and they are all smart people, it is not surprising that they can guess the size of the gun truck that Li Zhongyi has painstakingly built up after so many years.

That's right, Yang Wushuang guessed correctly, the two-horse trailer in front of him was actually the artillery and trailer developed by Li Zhongyi by borrowing the rich copper materials of the Goryeo Kingdom.

It's a pity that although there are more than 300 bronze cannons cast by borrowing clay molds, however, most of the artillery pieces have various cracks with potential safety hazards, and there are only ten that can really be used to test the power of the riverside.

As for the arquebus that Li Zhongyi has been thinking about, alas, even if you don't mention it, a lot of manpower and material resources invested in it have not made a splash so far.

After so many years of exploration and experimentation, Li Zhongyi's thoughts about the arquebus have changed from expectation to disappointment, and from disappointment to discouragement.

The core part of the arquebus is actually the barrel. Although the steelmaking technology is not mature, it can take more time to refine a furnace of good steel, but the cost is amazingly high.

What's worse is that the difficulty of drilling out a qualified barrel completely exceeds Li Zhongyi's imagination.

Drill pipe tools that are hard and sharp enough, as well as tools for smoothing the inner pipe, these two have always been in front of Li Zhongyi, and they have always been insurmountable!

Artillery, because it fires iron balls, its caliber is larger, and if you look for a group of young people in their early teens, thin arms and legs, you can also smooth out the inner chamber.

The arquebus barrel is too thin, but without a suitable drill pipe and bore tool, Li Zhongyi can only be at a loss.

Li Zhongyi knew in his heart that now that he could not find effective tools and could not produce qualified barrels, arquebuses could only be remembered in his dreams.

Fortunately, Goryeo has a lot of copper reserves, but the metallurgical technology of the Goryeo people is extremely backward, and they are not good at using coinage at all, but it is cheaper for Li Zhongyi.

As for the labor cost of casting copper cannons, it is the last thing Li Zhongyi needs to worry about. From the hundreds of thousands of Goryeo slaves and miscellaneous servants, 500 sturdy craftsmen were selected to help toss the clay molds of the copper cannons under the deterrence of leather whips and steel knives, which was more than enough.

As long as the kung fu deep iron pestle is sharpened into a needle, the current efficiency of 3 to 1 cannons, over time, will inevitably become 20 to 1, or even 10 to 1, or even 5 to 1.

Li Zhongyi looked at the officers and soldiers who were unloading the guns, and his attention quickly focused on the axles of the gun wheels, and he was full of emotion in his heart: War is still a game that really burns money.

After two thousand catties of pig iron were smelted into steel, after repeated calcination and kneading, only one main shaft of the gun carriage was obtained. The price is also expensive, and a total of hundreds of thousands of catties of pig iron were wasted before finally finding a way to create a load-bearing spindle.

In addition, the wheels of the gun carriage are also a lot of trouble. After repeated experiments, nearly 300 cast iron wheels were completely reimbursed, and Li Zhongyi finally determined that the support width of the wheel hub was 12 banners.

It's hard to get started!

Objectively speaking, the cost of making artillery is very high, the production efficiency is low, and the production cycle is long. However, even if it takes as little as half a year to build a complete gun carriage, it is several times stronger than three years to get a strong bow.

After the officers and soldiers set up the cannon, aimed the muzzle at the center of the river, and filled it with gunpowder, everyone took refuge more than 500 meters under Li Zhongyi's orders.

Five observation posts equipped with monoculars, according to Li Zhongyi's prior instructions, scattered in front of the river beach under the wharf, staring nervously at the river.