At the beginning of the Yaling Gorge, due to the local terrain, the Shang Shui Army only moved out of 500 of the 300 of them, and almost defeated the 5,000 advance cavalry of the Qiang tribe in one go.

And now, listening to the tone of His Royal Highness King Su in front of him, it seems that the Shang Shui Army has another incredible weapon of war?

"Catapult ......"

Sima An secretly muttered to himself about this "another weapon of war of the Shang Shui Army in addition to the repeating crossbow".

In all fairness, he was no stranger to catapults.

In fact, I believe that the vast majority of generals in the world will not be unfamiliar with catapults, after all, this siege weapon has joined the war and attack history of the Central Plains countries for a long time.

Generally speaking, any general who leads an army to attack an enemy city knows how to make a catapult, and even Sima An knows how to do it.

However, Sima An would never be naïve to think that the catapult in his impression would be the same thing as the catapult mentioned by His Royal Highness King Su in front of him.

For example, the five hundred repeating crossbows, in Sima An's impression, did not have the power of a heavy crossbow at all.

But the problem is that the area around the land is all plains, where can I find stones to polish the "stone bullets"?

"Is Your Highness worried that there is no material nearby to polish the 'Stone Bullet'?"

Sima An asked tentatively.

The so-called "stone bullet" refers to the integrated natural rock, the power of this kind of stone bullet in the siege of the city, is simply appalling, sometimes, a stone bullet is enough to destroy a city wall, so that the ancient means of defense, the city wall, is no longer as effective as hundreds of years ago.

It may take months to build a wall, but it may take a blink of an eye to destroy a wall with a catapult.

It is no exaggeration to say that the advent of catapults has made the city wall a means of defense almost an ornament, making mankind's attainment in "destruction" a big step forward.

However, after listening to Sima An's inquiry, Zhao Hongrun shook his head and said calmly: "There is no need for stone bullets, this king has prepared a special ...... Let's call it a "barrel bomb" as a catapult projectile. ”

"Barrel bombs?"

Sima An's face showed a little strange look.

Suddenly, he turned around as if he was aware of it, and happened to see some merchant soldiers driving several four-wheeled carriages nearby, and immediately, several merchant soldiers lifted the green cloth covering the carriage, revealing wooden barrels neatly stacked on the carriage.

"It's ...... Could it be oil? ”

Sima An asked tentatively.

Zhao Hongrun nodded, then shook his head again.

Seeing this, Sima Anxin comprehended, and asked again: "Is it fire oil?" ”

At this time, Zhao Hongrun also noticed the behavior of those Shangshui soldiers and glanced back.

In the Wei State, the so-called "oil" refers to the edible oil that is generally used for stir-frying, after all, for the people of the Wei State, meat is still not a common home-cooked dish in the country, and there are still a considerable number of Wei people who only eat some vegetarian dishes all year round, of which pickled vegetables are the majority.

But what if you want to eat greasy meat?

If there is no spare money at home, the Wei people will go to the market to buy some white meat, that is, the fattest fat meat in the most pork, use them to boil a pot of pork, hide it in the kitchen, and use these lard to fry vegetables from time to time in the future, so that the vegetarian dishes are stained with some meat and greasy.

After all, the technology of refining pure oil from rapeseed in this era is not very strong, so the refined rapeseed oil is not only thick in color (black), but also mixed with many impurities, and the taste is very bad for stir-frying.

Generally speaking, Wei people from poor family conditions will use rapeseed oil as a raw material for oil lamps, after all, it is far cheaper than candles.

However, at this moment, the wooden barrels carried by the soldiers of Shangshui were not filled with the oil or fire oil that the Wei people saw every day, but the black viscous substance called "black water" by the locals of Guizhou by Zhao Hongrun to the officials of the Smelting Bureau and the officials of the Cangbu to the barren land of Qiandi and transported it to Daliang.

Petroleum!

Today, there is no artificially refined oil that is purer and more suitable for burning than this oil produced in Guizhou.

"Thirty. …… Shen Yu ordered Wu Ji to assemble thirty catapults. ”

After some hesitation, Zhao Hongrun finally decided to take out only one-tenth of the catapult.

After all, what he was facing at the moment was the city of Yu, and the city was inhabited by the Sanchuan tribe of the Qiang and the Qiang tribe, not the Qiang people.

Therefore, as long as he scares and scares the other party and forces the other party to surrender, Zhao Hongrun can be regarded as achieving his goal, and there is no need to use all the catapults with the goal of "destroying the entire tribe on the other side".

After all, once oil is on fire, it is easy to extinguish.

What the? With sand?

Do you think you can use sand to extinguish a fire caused by the burning of oil?

Not at all!

The sea of fire caused by the burning of oil, this is already a disaster that belongs to the category of natural disasters, and it is not something that can be extinguished by manpower, and the only thing people can do is to hide far away and silently watch the sea of fire extinguish naturally after burning everything that can be burned.

To tell the truth, although the catapult carried by the merchant army is a dismantled part, it is not all a piece, and some of the really troublesome joints are actually assembled by the Smelting Bureau, after all, the Smelting Bureau is after the assembly is completed, and then disassemble it into several large parts.

Therefore, it is not very difficult to assemble these catapults again.

But unfortunately, due to the first contact with this kind of thing, the merchant soldiers who were responsible for assembling it were in a hurry, so Zhao Hongrun asked Shen Yu and other guards to go over to guide, after all, the guards often followed Zhao Hongrun in and out of the smelting bureau, and it was not a problem for them to assemble this kind of catapult.

During the period when the Shang Shui Army was assembling the catapult, Sima An asked Zhao Hongrun in confusion: "Your Highness, like this kind of catapult, isn't there three hundred Shang Shui Jun?" Why only 30 planes? ”

Zhao Hongrun sighed slightly when he heard this, and said melancholy: "Because this king doesn't want all the people of Sanchuan in the land to die here. Besides, even thirty catapults are probably ......"

Hearing this, Sima An's eyes widened slightly, and he almost blurted out the words "Your Highness, don't hesitate any longer, hurry up and use all the catapults".

Fortunately, in the end, Sima An swallowed the words that almost blurted out back into his stomach, and asked in wonder, "It's just thirty catapults...... Is there anything special about these catapults? ”

Zhao Hongrun smiled faintly.

Although these catapults were developed by the Metallurgical Bureau, the accuracy of the bombs was greatly improved, but this was not the cause of Zhao Hongrun's troubles, the real reason was those "barrel bombs", that is, the barrels filled with oil.

This is the big killer!

"The general will understand later."

Dropping a sentence, Zhao Hongrun got up and walked to the front, because in the front, the soldiers of the Shang Shui Army had successfully assembled thirty catapults under the guidance of Shen Yu and other sect guards.

"Gao Kuo, planting tricks, there are more than a dozen stone bullets on the carriage of the merchant army, bring two or three to this king."

"Yes!"

Gao Kuo and Chong Zhao hugged their fists to lead their lives, and after some searching, they found a cart of stone bullets and moved two of them over.

I saw that these stone bullets were exactly the same, as if even the weight was almost the same.

It is no wonder, because these stone bombs are test bombs used to adjust the calibration schedule and distance, and the weight of a stone bullet is the same as the weight of a barrel of oil.

"Wu Ji, Zhai Huang, this king is here to teach you how to use it, you are optimistic."

Zhao Hongrun called the generals of the Shang Shui Army to him and told them to carefully observe his movements.

But in fact, not only the generals of the Shang Shui Army, but even the generals of the Dangshan Army also crowded over, after all, everyone wanted to see and see, which was enough to match the power of the crossbow's 'another sharp weapon'.

I saw that under the attentive gaze of all the generals present, Zhao Hongrun walked to one of the catapults loaded with test stone bombs, raised his right hand, and used the method of "self-distance measurement" to estimate the distance between the catapult and the distant city. "Note: Autologous ranging, that is, without the help of any measuring tools, the approximate distance to the target is estimated by the human body. Because it is more troublesome to explain, I will not introduce it, and if you are interested, you can search on the Internet on your own. It is said to be the basic skill of artillery.'

After testing the distance from the earth, Zhao Hongrun closed his eyes and simulated a parabola in his mind, anyway, his super memory was enough to simulate and calculate a complex parabolic angle formula.

"What is His Royal Highness King Su doing?"

"I don't know...... Just look at it. ”

"Oh."

Seeing that Zhao Hongrun was motionless with his eyes closed, the generals whispered.

Come to think of it, even if they know that Zhao Hongrun is calculating, they can't understand it, after all, the use of contemporary catapults is still at the level of "blind cats catching mice", to put it bluntly, it is Mengbei!

As for whether it can be hit, then it is only left to fate.

"Whew, it's so stressful...... If this test bomb is too biased, it will be really ......."

Muttering in his mouth, Zhao Hongrun repeatedly corrected the direction of the catapult and the angle of the throwing rod, and tinkered for a while, and only then tried to throw the bomb when he saw that there was no negligence.

"Bomb throwing!"

With Zhao Hongrun's words to himself, the catapult shook the ground under his operation, and then, the stone projectile was thrown high by a strong reaction force, flew more than a mile, and smashed above the city gate on the south side of the city.

Hearing only a bang, the historic city tower above the city gate was smashed to the ground and collapsed, causing many people and people of the Shan tribe to exclaim.

"Hit ...... Hit! One hit! …… Yay!'

Zhao Hongrun's expression gradually changed from surprise to surprise.

"Take it! The fat pig on the other side, this is the anger of the birds! ”

It may be a relationship that hits the target with one blow, even Zhao Hongrun can't help but raise his arms excitedly and celebrate himself.

Behind him, the generals who were originally planning to open their mouths to praise and compliment His Royal Highness King Su in front of them opened their mouths and were at a loss.

Can they honestly agree that His Highness called the Shan and the Qiang people who betrayed them on the other side a 'fat pig', but 'the wrath of the bird'? What is that?

“……”

The generals looked at each other, and even Sima An touched the beard on his chin with a puzzled expression. (To be continued.) )