In the clairvoyant mirror, the details are revealed.

Most of the three-story castle towers above the Nanxun Gate are made of brick and wood, and although the outer pillars and walls are made of brick and stone, the long windows and portals are all wooden, and the beams and columns inside the rafters of the roof are also made of wood. Even if it is made of thick and sturdy wood that has been treated with fire and corrosion protection, the wood is still wood, and under the impact of the roaring solid iron cannonballs, it will break and explode like tofu slag.

Two solid cannonballs rushed straight into the fence of the two-story tower, piercing through several stone walls, shattering several portals, and breaking seven or eight wooden columns, only to be blocked by a thick wall near the direction of the city. In this process, the broken bluestone wood bursts and flies, and the scene is spectacular.

The cannonball hitting the oncoming wall was no less impressive than the shock of the solid cannonball that hit the building above the tower. Bianliang is the capital of the Great Zhou, the capital should have the atmosphere of the capital, in addition to the towering and tall city wall, it is natural to take into account the perception, in order to show the panic of the Great Zhou. Therefore, even though the cost is huge, the walls near the left side of the gate tower are built of large fired bricks. The purpose of this is not only for aesthetics, but also because the structure of the rammed earth wall is structurally easier to reconstruct than the rammed earth wall. After all, a variety of axles and empty chambers need to be installed at the city gate in order to control various facilities such as the city gate, suspension bridge, and rockfall. However, although the bricks were also extremely strong, they were not as strong as the rammed walls and the walls made of quarried lazurite. When the iron shells hit the bombardment, the bricks shattered and broke like rain. Three cannonballs hit the city wall on the upper left side of the city gate, and after three dust flowers erupted, the area of the broken blue bricks reached a radius of two zhang. Although only the outermost layer of bricks has fallen off, it is clear that the inner bricks will also be damaged under the impact.

In this era, and for thousands of years before that, the construction of the castle walls was basically based on rammed earth walls. This is because the rammed earth city wall is easy to build, the process is simple, the cost is low, and more importantly, once the rammed earth city wall is solidified, it is as tough as steel and can not be destroyed easily. In terms of cost performance, it is a very cost-effective construction method. But the downside, of course, is that it is not aesthetically pleasing. Rammed earth walls, as the name suggests, are just earthen walls. Clay, loess, rice soup, straw, etc. are mixed together, stirred evenly, poured into the wall-building plywood, and vigorously tamped. It can be mixed with wood as a skeleton to increase its stability. With proper proportions and firm ramming, the rammed earth wall after drying is extremely strong. From ancient times to the present day, rammed earth walls have been the most popular method of building large-scale walled houses. Li Tang Chang'an City is so prosperous and majestic, but in fact, most of the palace walls are rammed earth walls. It's just that the exterior is pasted with fired masonry and strip stones, for the sake of beauty.

There is no doubt that the walls of Bianliang, the capital of the Great Zhou Dynasty, are also rammed earth walls. However, on the left side of the city gate, the city wall made of bricks is generally used. It's actually about showing a kind of strength. Bianliang, the capital of the Great Zhou Dynasty, is the center of the world. A holy place in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. Bearing and solemnity are not spoken by mouth, but to be displayed. How high the walls, how wide the streets, how beautiful the buildings, and how grand the momentum is, these are the direct impressions of this city to the people who live here and those who visit. Therefore, the city gate is crossed

It is solemn and majestic, and the taller and more gorgeous the tower, the more it has a card and a bearing. Of course, the function of the city wall is to have a strong protective capacity, and it is too long, too tall and too large, and the firing of bricks does not meet the needs of maximum defense and is very expensive. Therefore, the part of the city wall is still rammed earth, but for the sake of beauty, some bulldozing and repairing have been done on the outer wall, and the means of sketching and drawing joints are just eye-catching. But at the more than 20 city gates and towers in the inner and outer cities, it is time to show the strength of the Great Zhou.

Of course, this obviously sacrificed the ability to protect some of the towers, but this sacrifice was minimal. On the one hand, the structure of the castle tower part needs this kind of masonry structure that is easy to dismantle and disassemble, so as to facilitate the layout of various internal empty rooms and functional units. On the other hand, in this day and age, there is no such siege method that can make the brick tower a breakthrough in the siege. After all, all siege methods are achieved by capturing the city walls or capturing the city gates and towers, and there is no precedent for destroying the city walls as a siege method. To put it bluntly, if the conditions permit and the financial resources allow, the rammed earth wall is not the first choice for construction, and the means that people hope to use to build the city wall by burning bricks and building the city wall to build houses. After all, it's sturdy, convenient, and beautiful, so why not?

It is precisely because of the above many reasons that this siege method of the Luoyan Army can be implemented, and at least theoretically, it can be absolutely done. Lin Jue is not a reckless man, of course he knows the structure of the city wall of Bianliang City, and knows its weaknesses, so he will use this siege method to attack the city. He knew that a more powerful explosive shell might be needed against a rammed earth wall. Solid shells smashed into the rammed earth wall and smashed a large crater at most, trying to collapse the solid rammed earth wall, even if it was just talking. For example, it's like smashing a dirt bag with a stone, no matter how you smash it, I'm afraid it won't collapse. However, the masonry structure near the left side of the tower is different, and if it is smashed to a certain extent, the tower will collapse like a building block. Fragmentation of masonry will fall off directly, which will form huge potholes and damage, which will make the structure above more unstable, which is the cause of collapse.

Lin Jue's heart was extremely concerned about the destructiveness of the iron lump smashing onto the city bricks. When he saw the situation of falling bricks and stones in the clairvoyant mirror, and saw the shape of the huge damaged grooves left by the cannonballs on the wall, Lin Jue was extremely relieved. That shows that his judgment is not wrong. This siege tactic is brutal but absolutely effective.

"Fire!" In Liang Qi's hoarse roar, the roar of the second round of landslides and earth cracks resounded through the heavens and the earth. Above the tower, before the panicked defenders could get a respite, the towers began to shake up and down, the walls began to burst with gravel and dust, and the creepy click of the pillars and railings erupted from inside the tower.

"It's over, it's over. The castle tower is going to collapse. Run, the tower is about to collapse. The defenders in the tower let out a cry of terror, and they ran frantically towards the walls on both sides, which was now the safest place, because the other side had clearly concentrated the bombardment on the city gate.

"Don't run around, don't leave without permission, otherwise military law will deal with it." The generals defending the city shouted loudly, preventing the soldiers from fleeing on either side.

"The tower is going to collapse, the gate below has been shattered, their men have already begun to attack, they are going to attack it." Some soldiers reported loudly.

The city gate guard poked his head out and looked down at the city, and sure enough, he saw that the other party's soldiers and horses attacking the city were swarming, and the number seemed to be small, only six or seven thousand people, and they were pushing carts and shields, and they didn't know what kind of troops they were. But he didn't have time to think about it.

"Put down the Dragonstone. Fast! The gate keeper roared.

A soldier quickly entered the empty room inside the city gate from the stairs, and manipulated the machine shaft to put down the thousand-pound Broken Dragon Stone. The Broken Dragon Stone is just a saying, it is actually the last resort to block the city gate, which is a thousand-pound iron gate. Once the gates are broken, this is the last resort to seal them. Once the iron gate was lowered, the city gate hole was completely sealed, and it was completely impossible to enter and exit. This is actually a last resort, because after putting it down, it will get stuck and can never be recovered. But the general defending the city felt a great threat, so he decisively issued this order.

In the rumbling sound, the iron gate of thousands of catties fell suddenly, and the three city gate holes were completely sealed by the iron gate. However, he didn't know that the other party's attack method could not be solved by blocking the city gate. And the soldiers and horses under the city that rushed to the direction of the city gate were not formal siege soldiers and horses, but 3,000 soldiers and horses of the engineer battalion escorted by 3,000 shield soldiers. When General Shenwei's artillery attacked, they had to rush to the front of the city tower in advance to build a pontoon bridge over the moat to solve the problem of the subsequent cavalry charging into the city.

The third and fourth rounds of shelling followed. The upper and lower towers were already shrouded in smoke and dust. In particular, the majestic and gorgeous three-story city tower can already be described as full of holes at this moment. After four rounds of shells, more than a dozen shells smashed into the city tower, and the supporting pillars had collapsed and broken, and the entire city tower was already crooked and crumbling. The defenders in the tower had to evacuate outside the towers on both sides at this moment, and there were very few soldiers left in the towers.

The fifth round of bombardment came mercilessly, and this time I don't know whether it was a mistake in the muzzle or a deliberate adjustment, seven out of ten shells smashed into the tower, which dealt a fatal blow to the already crumbling tower. The last dozen or so pillars supported on both sides were hit by seven or eight columns, and after the break, the entire city tower had already made a terrible creaking sound, like the terrifying sound before the tree broke, which made people's hairs stand on end. No matter how the guards threatened, the defenders in the tower did not dare to stay, and thousands of soldiers fled and fled frantically.

The tower tilted crookedly to one side, thinking that it would collapse with a bang, but when it was tilted to an angle, it suddenly stopped there, forming a delicate balance, and it did not collapse. The soldiers on the city wall and the soldiers of the Luoyan Army under the city all looked at it and couldn't help but admire its stubbornness. However, suddenly a breeze blew, and the stubbornness of the castle tower seemed to be vulnerable under the breeze. A half-broken wooden pillar snapped and snapped, and the next moment, the entire three-story city tower collapsed like a building block. Smoke billowed and stones and wooden strips flew and burst in all directions, falling down from the city walls. When the smoke and dust soon cleared, the towering three-story tower with flying cornices was gone, leaving only the ruins of the city walls.

This scene was galloped by horses on the royal street, and dozens of generals such as Chen Jue, Zhu Zhirong, Wang Jun, and Yuan Ping, who had just arrived on the street on the left side of Taixue, were in full view. Everyone witnessed the gate tower in front of them fall like child's play, and they looked at each other in astonishment, terrified.