After Zhao Xingde retired, Wang Yan's deafening reminder was still circling in his mind. The night outside is as dark as ink, the Liao people still drive the Han army and the people to attack the city more than once, the sound of fire and cannons continues, the soldiers at the head of the city are busy shooting arrows and throwing stones, and sometimes several screams pierce the night sky, there are wounded soldiers sitting and lying everywhere in the city, and the sound of moaning is endless, as if they are in the hell of Shura. Zhao Xingde only felt tightness in his chest and panting, returned to the barracks, couldn't sleep, and simply got up and wrote a letter to vent the boredom in his chest.

"Minghuan, Shaoyang Zhujun, my brother has heard the words of the wise, the sage makes the law, ordinary people accept it, the sage emperor is not in the law of etiquette and righteousness, this person is different from beasts. The first birth of the people is as solid as a beast, the flesh of the weak, and the food of the strong. The law hangs above, such as the constancy of the stars, and people live below it, then the body is safe and calm, and you can live and die. As Ming Huan said in the past, the power and the national law system, although those who are as respectful as emperors and virtuous as saints, will also be under the law. What a word! Whoever is superior to beast is able to be united. If the false power and strength are suspended on the law, the superior will eat the weak meat, and the lower will be separated from morality, and each will live in the deep and simple, fearing that others will harm themselves. In this way, the etiquette will collapse, morality will not exist, and people will return to the beasts out of courtesy and righteousness. It is the old man's benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, and punishment, and in addition to the criminal administration, it is the way of Diyi birds and beasts. For the sake of the above, he does not follow the etiquette and does not obey the law, this so-called handsome beast and cannibalism? The Tao is great about benevolence and righteousness, and the teaching is not about etiquette and criminal politics. The soul of all things is the soul of man, and if you follow the way of the weak and the strong, you will be sad if you leave the place of China and the return of the beasts. ”

Zhao Xingde wrote a full page of paper, and it was not until he vented his stomach that he was full of inopportune inopportune papers, and then he put a stack of letter paper into the book of scriptures and righteousness, and fell asleep. Since writing the reply letter insulting the royal family of the Khitan court, the Liao army sent cavalry to cut off the communication outside the city of Hejian the next day, and the city could not even send military letters. Now the military newspaper received by the imperial court is still a daily letter from Tong Guan on a sea boat.

At dawn the next day, Su Wenyu asked Zhao Xingde to go to the archery range to reorganize the army. When Zhao Xingde put on a shackle and came out of the barracks, Su Wenyu almost thought that he was a different person, and looked at him in surprise. Joy and anger are invisible, full of anxiety and boredom, and Zhao Xingde, who is full of worries, is now a living person. The gentle Confucian scholar in the past seemed to have changed overnight, adding a sense of evil spirit, and becoming a majestic and self-respecting commander. Even Zhu Houwu, who had just been executed, was still there, and seeing Zhao Xingde's appearance at this time, he didn't dare to provoke recklessly.

"What's wrong?" Because Su Wenyu was a little abnormal, Zhao Xingde asked uncertainly.

"It's nothing," Su Wenyu put away his originally somewhat casual aura and said solemnly, "The six commanders are all lined up at the arrow range, waiting for General Zhao's instructions. ”

"There's nothing to teach," Zhao Xingde handed over a manuscript of the military order that had been rushed overnight to Su Wenyu, "Let the ten people who practiced first yesterday demonstrate, and then command after the army, and practice one by one according to the military order." Those who make slow progress will be served with sticks, and those who are still not good at training will be beaten with fifty sticks and then expelled. Whoever dares to defy the military order, behead. ”

"Yes. Checkmate. ”

He stepped into the arena with a calm face, and in a moment, the arrow range, which was still a little noisy, was silent, and the three thousand soldiers looked at Zhao Xingde with a fearful look in their eyes. Last night, Zhu Houwu, who was beaten with a military stick, disappeared, and the command yamen announced that Zhu Dutou was hit by an arrow and fell off the city when he was patrolling the city, and the big guys knew it, but no one dared to say that it was not.

Originally, Zhao Xingde was a punishment for Zhu Houwu who was raised high and gently put down, although it frightened some new soldiers, but the officers and veterans were a little disdainful of him, but after experiencing Zhu Houwu's unclear death, yesterday I heard about the two thousand soldiers who witnessed the conflict between Zhu Houwu and Zhao Xingde, and suddenly re-acquainted themselves with the new commander of the firearms battalion. The 1,000 soldiers newly transferred by Wang Yanxin were even more rumored to be under the control of the king, "If the firearms battalion does not obey the orders of Commander Zhao, how much will be cut and how much will be supplemented." "No one wants to put their neck on the killer knife.

"The blacksmith's workshop received five hundred firecrackers to make iron spear heads, and the number of firecrackers was not enough." Su Wenyu said. This group of soldiers of the Bow Horse Disciples was the least implicated in the factions in the Hebei army, and in order to facilitate the command, Wang Yan sent all of them to Zhao Xingde's command.

"Then use a seven-foot spear instead. Let's practice marching in the queue first. Zhao Xingde said in a deep voice. The contradiction between reality and ideals, power and system was forcibly suppressed by him, but during the training of the fire camp, Zhao Xingde's antipathy to power was transformed into an almost paranoid pickiness about the system and unity. He set the basic commands of the firecrackers as twenty-four, and the soldiers were required to complete the important ones from the start, marching, to the important ones such as stabbing with guns, stabbing with guns, raising guns, igniting fires, collecting guns, and stabbing with guns, to the insignificant sitting, lying down, and marching. Even standing, sitting postures must be consistent.

The heads of the capitals who could not satisfy him, the military envoys, Zhao Xingde did not hesitate to kick them away and promote them to replace them. More than a dozen people in the Gongma Disciples have been promoted, Wu Jian has been the head of the capital, and Su Wenyu has become the Marquis of Yu. In addition, Zhao Xingde also replaced the original army commander with a large number of soldiers who responded flexibly to military orders, and the people who were replaced also withdrew from the fire battalion, and the command yamen almost replenished twice as many personnel as quickly as possible for him to choose, Zhao Xingde always gave priority to those soldiers who had stayed in Yixue and had a good face.

Zhao Xingde asked Wu Jian to go to the treasury to select an iron skull for the fire battalion that could not only protect the head but also not block the view, and finally after the exchange, the three thousand soldiers replaced the iron helmets of the unified system. Because the effective range of the fire gun is shorter than that of the bow and arrow, Zhao Xingde imagined that in the future, the fire gun battalion might march in the rain of arrows for a long time to attack and assault, and issued the best light infantry armor among the soldiers of the battalion to avoid arrows, but because the fire gun battalion also has the design of winning hand-to-hand combat after being equipped with spear stabs, the blacksmith workshop hung a whole piece of iron armor on the chest.

The distribution and replacement of military quarters in the Song State has always been loose and arbitrary, and it has become customary for the old and new armor uniforms to be different in the same army, and the 3,000 soldiers of the Fire Gun Battalion finally reached the same level. In this way, no one dared to go against the command system of the Fire Gun Battalion.

Every day, a batch of guns with guns and spikes will be sent to the shooting range, and Zhao Xingde is still training the soldiers of the fire gun battalion to fire firearms. In order to avoid unnecessary losses of gunpowder, he only planned to let the soldiers use a single batch of gunpowder to shoot a single round of gunpowder before finally going to the battlefield. Even the usual ignition action only lights the medicine primer inserted in the empty barrel.

However, when training the soldiers to load gunpowder and put on iron firecrackers, they still encountered trouble, most of them could hardly maintain a military posture and proper charging at the same time, and a few of the soldiers who were in a hurry almost cried in a hurry, some actually packed two parts of medicine into four parts, and some people were nervous and stuffed seven or eight iron bullets, almost reaching the mouth of the gun.

"The soldiers are all rough people, and the training time is short, I'm afraid it will be ......" Su Wenyu saw that several people were dragged down to beat the military sticks, and he couldn't help but feel a little anxious, these people didn't deliberately violate military law, they were really at a loss, he was a little worried that the military sticks would be beaten too much, but they would delay the training of the fire gun camp, you must know that these bow and horse children have no roots in Hebei, Wang Yan transferred them to the fire gun camp, and Zhao Xingde quickly arranged actual duties for them, in the eyes of the rest of the Hebei soldiers, The children of the bow horse were born, and these officers were afraid that they were all marked with the word "Zhao". Wang Yan gave so much preferential treatment to the Fire Gun Battalion, naturally he had repaid considerable expectations, and if the Fire Gun Battalion's training could not be completed within 15 days, or if it was defeated, the consequences that would follow would be quite serious.

"Then cancel the charge and reload." Zhao Xingde had already noticed this problem, he was fiddling with a fire gun in his hand, thoughtfully, this branch was specially picked out by Han Tie Dan for him, saying that it was marked with a secret mark of the workshop, and it belonged to the first batch of high-quality products that were made and passed the inspection of Yousi, even if three parts of medicine were used, they would definitely not explode.

"What?" Su Wenyu exclaimed.

"Wrap the powder and the gun with silk and put it in the chamber of the fire gun in advance." Zhao Xingde gently twisted the thin belt of clothes, the Great Song Dynasty is rich in this extremely light and thin fabric, after burning, there is almost no ash, "The wooden stick behind the spear stabs just reaches the chamber of the gun, and it can almost fix the position of the gun and the medicine bag," he picked up the spear, Han Tie Dan's unbelievable design, but he had no intention of inserting willows, and had the purpose of fixing the preset guns and medicine bags, "This little bit of position is just stuffed between the wooden sticks and the guns with cotton." Zhao Xingde said in a deep voice, he just tested a shot, and found that a little cotton was stuffed outside the gun, which not only did not affect the launch, but was more powerful.

In this case, the first action of the fire gun battalion approaching the enemy army is to squat down in the front row to prevent the enemy from approaching, the rear row unloads the gun spur, supports the fire gun, ignites, fires, and then puts on the gun stab, hands the fired fire gun to the person in the back, and then hands the back row to hand over the fire gun that has been unloaded with the gun stab, repeats the action of igniting the fire gun, when the enemy is bombarded by the fire gun, the formation has a tendency to collapse, the whole battalion launches an attack, and uses the spear to start hand-to-hand combat.

"Every firebolt only needs to be sounded once," Zhao Xingde muttered, "It is the soldiers who will decide the victory or defeat!" ”

Su Wenyu nodded approvingly, no one has tried this thing much, and no one can say that the effect is not good, but fortunately, after this thing is stabbed, it is slightly better than the ordinary spear, especially the three hundred axes and guns and three hundred iron halberds, which are all sharp weapons for hand-to-hand combat, and are assigned to tall and strong soldiers with flexible skills.

Zhao Xingde asked the fire gun battalion to concentrate on practicing the process of issuing guns according to the military order, almost to the point of being extremely familiar and flowing, and later, when eating and sleeping, he suddenly beat the drums and gathered, so that the soldiers lined up in the shortest possible time, and few people ate military sticks. As for the hand-to-hand combat technique of the spear that relied on the decisive victory, the fire gun battalion did not take time to train, because the gun stick was originally the Song army's housekeeping ability, whether it was the head of the battalion, he would not be able to play with two guns and sticks, and he was embarrassed to eat and drink with people and play money.

This year's cold winter seems to have not gone for a long time, on the third day of the first month of March, Wang Yan, the commander of the Hejian army, decided to attack the city and invite the Liao army, Zhao Xingde's Huojiao battalion as a strange soldier, was hidden in the Chinese army's infantry array, to give the Liao Tiebi battalion a surprise.