Xu Shiyang knew he had a firepower advantage.

But this firepower advantage does not necessarily lead to victory, after all, the opponent just has no artillery, not that their own firepower is very strong, and they can quickly overwhelm the opponent with cannonballs.

The power of the 8-pound and 4-pound general cannons is not enough to destroy a large ship in a few salvos, and the accuracy is not enough.

Therefore, Xu Shiyang repeatedly emphasized the discipline of the first round of fire, hoping to put Li Jun closer and suppress their morale with a round of ferocious firepower.

For this purpose, the first round of shooting becomes a top priority.

Li's fleet quickly approached, and soon approached to the point where Xu Shiyang could clearly hear the majestic drums of the opposing army's front army.

But he still did not give the order to open fire.

The Qi fleet began to turn in front of Li's army, as if to avoid Li's front army, and cut to the left along the flank of their advance.

Li Feibao, who watched all this, sneered.

The Qi army can't dodge, because the two wings of the plum blossom array have "petals", and this kind of close flank to avoid the impact will soon be flanked by the right army and the Chinese army.

That's why pirates love the Plum Blossom Formation - it's so close that no prey can get rid of it.

The Qi fleet was divided into two groups, the first column of ten medium-sized Fu ships cut in from the left flank of Li Jun, and the latter group of small ships did not have time to follow, so they could only turn in advance and cut in from the right flank.

In this way, although the Qi army violated the queue discipline set by Xu Shiyang before the war, it inadvertently formed a two-sided attack on the Li army's forward.

The distance between the Qi army and the Li army was less than 30 paces, and the two sides were about to pass by, Xu Shiyang Xu became angry and ordered loudly:

"Fire!"

Boom Boom!

The "Deng Yingzhou" was the first to speak, and the two 8-pound guns in the front and rear and the three god machine guns on the side opened fire at the same time.

The sound of the cannon was the order, and then the other medium-sized ships following behind the "Dengyingzhou" began to join in the fire salvo.

Fifty guns of various kinds on 10 warships fired at the same time, and fifty flames accompanied by a deafening sound of cannons, like a firecracker, flashed from the bow of Deng Yingzhou to the stern of the last ship in the queue, and then flashed back to the bow of the ship from the stern.

A white smoke dragon soared above the head of the Qi Provincial Fleet, and was quickly blown away by the sea breeze.

At this time, the Divine Cannon took advantage of its high rate of fire, and in the short period of minutes that the two sides staggered, each Divine Cannon fired 3 shells at the opponent.

Ten rounds of 8 catties, ten rounds of 4 catties and ninety rounds of 2 catties of shells swept the forward of Li Jun's plum blossom formation.

After a while, a series of muffled cannon sounds sounded on the other side of the Li army—it was a small gunboat that had been divided into the left flank of the Li army, and lost no time in firing at the forward of the Li army.

More than 150 iron balls from both sides drilled into the hull of Li Jun's striker.

The planks of the seagoing ships of this era were not heavy, and even the large ships could not withstand the close bombardment of light artillery.

The new 8-pound cannon can even penetrate a layer of ship's plank, kill all the pirates encountered along the way, and then drill out from the other side of the hull after stirring up the human body and various cabin items into a black flesh and blood!

The power of the 4-pound cannons seems to be just right, and after they penetrate the side of the large ship, they will change their trajectory, jump around in the cabin, kill any life they encounter, and then run out of kinetic energy and stay in the cabin.

The kinetic energy of the 2-pound Shenji cannon is insufficient, and a considerable part of it cannot penetrate the hull of the large Fu ship, but they can smash countless pieces of wood on the bulkhead of the ship, which are as sharp as knives, and the lethality of the unarmored sailors is equally amazing.

In just one close-range volley, one of the petals of the plum blossom array was plucked out.

Li Feibao, who was located in the Chinese army, looked helplessly at the ten large ships of the vanguard army, two of which had already started to catch fire, two of them stopped in place and remained motionless, and the remaining ones were also injured a lot, with heavy casualties, and seemed to have lost their combat effectiveness.

Almost ten ships were killed in an instant, Li Feibao's eyelids jumped, and he suddenly realized that today's matter might not be good.

Sure enough, more signals came, and another group of about thirty Soqi provincial ships poured out of the narrow waters between the north and south Chenghuang Island, this group of ships did not join the battle with Li Feibao, but made a big circle, bypassed the battlefield, and chased the transport team that was desperately escaping towards Lushun in the distance.

Li Feibao scolded secretly, although there are also big ships over there, but each one is full of all kinds of goods, the speed is not fast at all, and there are not so many crews to resist, if the escort fleet does not help, it will definitely not be able to escape the pursuit of the light ships of Qi Province.

What's more, Li Feibao didn't know if there were naval guns on those small ships.

Worse still, he couldn't afford to lose every ship in the transport fleet.

Because in addition to the New Year's coin, the other transport ships are all goods transported to Liaodong by the wealthy families in the south of the Yangtze River, all of whom are wealthy gentry, and their ancestors are officials in the imperial court and even now there are family members who are big officials in the court.

After all, the imperial court in Jiangnan was a noble and lowly court.

"Call the rear team to stop them!" Li Feibao shouted: "Hold them back!" Can't let them get close to the convoy! ”

As a result, ten more ships turned around and turned to intercept Xu Shiyang's non-cannon fleet.

The real main battlefield has become 20 to 30, and Li Feibao's strength advantage has been weakened a lot.

However, at this time, Li Feibao also accumulated a little formation advantage, his left, center and right three teams lined up, and Xu Shiyang's two fleets were equivalent to rushing out of the long snake formation in the middle gap of his fleet, at such a close distance, the two sides would inevitably engage in a broadside battle.

Sure enough, when the Qi Provincial Fleet tried to pass through both sides of Li Feibao's Chinese army, his left and right teams quickly seized the opportunity to rush up.

Xu Shiyang's two groups of ships still concentrated their firepower as much as possible to attack Li Feibao's Chinese army.

The bronze general cannon was the first to speak, and 20 rounds of 8 or 4 catties of cannonballs slapped at Li Feibao head-on, and a 4 catty cannonball pierced the guard plate of Li Feibao's flagship, bursting out countless pieces of wood, and several pirates hiding behind were pierced in the face, all of them covered their faces and rolled around on the deck.

The shell kept bouncing on the deck, swept to three other people, and jumped into the sea from the other side of the ship.

Then another 8-pound cannonball pierced the guard, and this shell was even more powerful, flying low on the deck after penetrating the ship's side, cutting 7 or 8 pirates in half in one fell swoop, and then crashing headlong into the foremast of the large ship.

The thick mast made an overwhelmed sound, snapping and snapping, and the huge sails covered the front half of the ship in exclamation.

In an instant, Li Feibao's Chinese army suffered heavy losses.

Fortunately, the temperature of the cannon has not yet dropped, and in order to prevent the bore from exploding, each firing in this attack must be completely cleaned beforehand, so the rate of fire is very low.

After one round, although the distance was closer, Xu Shiyang's fleet only fired half of the ammunition equivalent to the previous salvo, and Li Feibao's Chinese army suffered much less losses than the previous army.