Yu Yunwen, who was in Taiping City, learned of the latest military situation and Yang Congyi's final battle plan on the same day, so he immediately ordered to increase the mobilization of forces in various states and counties to gather in Taipingdu, and at the same time personally sent people to Jiankang to recruit reinforcements to come to support and prepare for the worst for Jiangfang.

In the early morning of the next day, the fourth watch.

Bonfires were lit in the Taipingdu camp, and piles of bonfires lit up the river beach in the dark, but they could not disperse the dense fog in the river and could not break through the hazy river surface.

Wearing clothes and armor, lighting a fire and cooking, five miles along the river, tense and orderly, in full swing.

An hour later, an order was given, and the ship went ashore.

One after another, warships and loyal naval ships braved the thick fog and sailed into the Yangtze River.

At dawn, the river was covered with dense fog, and there were only four warships and more than 20 loyal and righteous people left on the Taipingdu River.

The five thousand defenders looked at the misty river, all of them were worried, they didn't know whether it would be the Great Song warship or the enemy's river crossing boat that would appear from the fog at the next moment, 500,000 enemy troops, they only had 5,000 people, and they could resist?

Ma Hong and Yuan Hua stood on the bank of the river, looked at each other, and were silent, if the enemy crossed the river, they would be the last line of defense, and no one knew who would go and who would stay.

As the sun rose, the fog gradually drifted away, and the surface of the river became clearer, and at a glance, there were no boats in the river, except for islands and flowing water.

The dense fog in the river dissipated, and the field of vision widened, and across the river three or four miles wide, I could faintly see the opposite bank, but I couldn't see anything except the dim yellow.

However, if you can see the wide river surface clearly, and make sure that there are no enemy ships in the river, and there are no enemy ships at this time, it means that the battle ahead is relatively smooth, and the enemy has not broken through the first line of defense of the Jingwu Army.

The soldiers who have been on guard by the river for a long time are at ease.

Unlike Taipingdu, at this time, on the river more than one mile away from the enemy's camp and two or three miles away from the mouth of the river, the warships of the two sides formed a confrontation situation, and a big battle was about to break out, and the atmosphere in the river was unprecedentedly tense.

The upper Jingwu army, headed by Su Zhong, led 20 warships and led 100 loyal and righteous civilian ships, and lined up two miles on the upstream river where the enemy ships gathered in formation.

Twenty warships of the Jingwu Army in the lower reaches, led by Yang Congyi himself, lined up in a horizontal formation on the river three miles away from the enemy's ships, one in front and one in the rear, separated by more than ten zhang away, interspersed with the Yangtze River more than a mile wide, and 100 loyal and righteous civilian ships were densely arranged behind, blocking the Yangtze River more than a mile wide in three layers.

One by one, the Jin people rowed out of the estuary and entered the river in formation, looking from afar, dense, I don't know how many, and their fleet is still growing.

Knowing that the Jingwu army had already intercepted in the upstream and downstream formations, the Jin people did not hesitate at all, and there was a great tendency to pour out.

Whether it is for the elite army or for the Jin people to cross the river, this is a decisive battle, victory is life, defeat is death!

The number of enemy ships is still growing, and the size of the fleet is growing.

The opponent's combat intention and method are obvious, that is, to use a method similar to that of a large cavalry to rush into formation, and use a huge fleet to break through the defense line composed of only a few dozen elite warships upstream and downstream.

In the wide river, a limited number of elite military warships will definitely not be able to block the impact of a thousand ships, even if they can stop hundreds of ships, the remaining hundreds of ships will be able to rush through the defense line and cross the Yangtze River.

This is the plan and expectation made by Wan Yanliang and his former commander of the army to cross the river, and they have long found out how many Song troops there are on the other side of the river, so they are full of confidence in this battle, and defeat is not within their consideration.

The only thing that worries them is how many boats they will have to pay for crossing the river this time, after all, at present, people are not the most important thing for them, the most scarce thing is boats, without boats, even if there are more soldiers, they can't cross the Yangtze River, they care more about boats than soldiers, they don't lack people.

Yang Congyi and Pan Cheng were clear about each other's combat intentions, and Su Zhong and Xue Wang were also very clear.

Therefore, their countermeasures are also very simple, arrange troops, defend the Yangtze River, and stand still!

The sun is rising, time is passing, and the size of the Jinren's fleet is still increasing.

Today's crossing of the river must be a blow, the Jin people up and down, from the emperor to the soldiers all think so, the Great Song soldiers who are lined up in the river to wait for the enemy also think so, the Jin people can run out of the Yangtze River alive, they will win, they can't get out, the Great Song Dynasty soldiers will win, so this is an offensive and defensive battle with a huge disparity in strength.

For this battle, Yang Congyi never thought of putting the battlefield at the Taiping Ferry, and at the beginning of the fight, the battlefield he had set for this water battle was at the gate of the enemy camp.

In his opinion, instead of letting the enemy out and desperately chasing and intercepting them, it is better to fight with them at the gate of the camp, so that the enemy's generals and soldiers watching the battle can also see how much they have to pay to break through the first line of defense.

And breaking through the first line of defense does not mean that they can cross the Yangtze River, because there is a second line of defense behind them, and there are even a third and fourth lines of defense on the river bank.

No one wants to die easily, their homes are not threatened, their relatives are not suffering, they have no reason to die, they can't fight and come back next time, they are robbers, they know it.

Who has ever seen a robber rush into someone else's house to rob something, knowing that the other party was prepared for each other's swords and guns, and knowing that he would die? If there really is, then this is not a robber, this is really unable to live, if you don't rob it, you will die immediately, but Jin Ren is not this kind of robber.

Therefore, Yang Congyi's strategy is very simple, he wants to fight head-on with superior warships outside the enemy's military camp, so that the generals and soldiers on the riverbank can see with their own eyes how their own army struggles in the water and how they lose their lives!

Because Yang Congyi knows that this can cause fear, not hatred and anger, and that no one in the Jin people knows that this is a war of southern aggression that they themselves tore up the 20th peace conference and unilaterally provoked it, just to satisfy the selfish desires of some people.

Seeing countless ships capsizing and sinking in the Yangtze River, the fear of the Yangtze River will only deepen further, and the next time someone wants to cross the river, then we must consider whether to let them die, there may soon be resistance, and even some people will come out to disobey the order, and then if you want ordinary soldiers to cross the river and die, it will be impossible!

Yang Congyi wanted to solve the problem of Yan Liang's crossing of the river through this battle, so that they would not dare to cross the river lightly. From the current situation, if he is allowed to cross the Yangtze River, with the current military strength of the Great Song Dynasty, in less than three days, the Jin people will rush straight to Lin'an, and there will be no resistance along the way, Jiangnan will be lost in an instant, and if the rich land in Jiangnan is lost, the Great Song Dynasty will die, which is the result he definitely does not want to see, after all, he is now a Song person.

At three o'clock in the morning, the enemy ships were finally assembled.

With a distant and loud horn coming from the direction of the enemy camp, the enemy fleet began to move.

I saw them lined up in a neat formation, with the estuary as the middle line, the soldiers were divided into two routes, all the way upstream, all the way downstream, thousands of ships were mighty, densely packed, covering the river more than one mile wide and three miles long!

"Trebuchet ready, the farthest distance!"

Hearing the enemy's horn and seeing the enemy ships dispatching, Yang Congyi and Su Zhong, who were in charge of the operation upstream and downstream, gave orders almost at the same time.

The herald quickly conveyed the order to the standard-bearer, and the standard-bearer on the main ship immediately raised the flag and passed the order to the warships on both sides, and the warship that received the order immediately passed it to the neighboring warship.

In a short time, the orders of Yang Congyi and Su Zhong spread throughout every warship of the Jingwu Army, which had been waiting for a long time, and the trebuchet, which had already adjusted its orientation, was adjusted to the same projectile angle in a very short time, and the maximum firing range could reach three miles.

At the same time, a large oil lamp was lit on the deck of the drenched warship.

Yang Congyi stood on the deck of the main ship, and saw that the enemy ships were rapidly approaching, and the distance between the enemy and us was less than two miles, and within two quarters of an hour, the ships of the two sides would collide, but the rear team of the enemy ships was still out of range at this time, and the best time to shoot had not yet arrived.

The anxious, nervous, and somewhat excited soldiers stood beside the trebuchet piled up with stone bombs soaked in tung oil, ready to drop the bombs, and seeing that the enemy ships were getting closer and closer, they could not wait for the order to attack, so anxious that they threw inquiring glances at Yang Congyi's location from time to time.

Two Miles..... One and a half miles..... One mile!

"Full speed attack!"

Seeing that almost all the enemy ships were within range, Yang Congyi ordered loudly.

"Ready!"

The general's flag next to the trebuchet was raised, and the two soldiers, who had been preparing for a long time, each held an iron hook, hooked a stone bullet soaked in tung oil, lit it on the lamp, and immediately put it into the prepared bomb frame.

"Put!"

With a wave of the school flag, the flaming stone projectiles soared into the sky, flew over the river, and swooped straight into the rear of the enemy army.

The fire-carrying stone projectiles of the main ship flew out, and the other nineteen warships seemed to see the order, and after an instant, nineteen burning stone projectiles rose into the air and went straight into the enemy ship!

A moment later, black smoke rose from some ships on the river three miles away.

"Ready!"

"Put!"

"Ready!"

"Put!"

.........

With a quick order, one after another the flaming stone projectiles flew into the enemy formation, some fell into the river, and some hit the enemy ship.

The stone bullet is not a stone bullet, but a fired clay pot containing a kind of black oil that flows out of the ground and can be burned.

The burning stone bullets fell from the sky, smashed the enemy ship, the clay pot broke, the black oil flowed, and it burned when it caught fire, the flames spread, the enemy ship instantly fell into the sea of fire, the soldiers were on fire, screaming and running, and the ship immediately lost control and went with the current.

After each of the Jingwu warships fired twenty incendiary stone projectiles in a short period of time, the rear of the enemy ships was in a sea of fire, and almost none of the ships escaped the overwhelming and indiscriminate attack.

"Medium Distance Preparation!"

Seeing that the enemy ship had lost its way to retreat, Yang Congyi immediately gave another order.