The 50 boats left in winter were frozen due to the river, Bailiyan let the royal guests take them into the Posong River to move freely, and when they returned in the spring, there were already 68 ships, and the total number of ships exceeded 500, there were more than 120 ships of 3,000 stones, 27 ships of 4,000 stones, and 4 ships of 5,000 stones, which were second only to all the families in the heyday of the navy of the Xianguo State.

Due to the serious shortage of sailors and oarsmen, the more than 500 ships are still mainly used for the transfer of troops and baggage. The Jin Xuedi Naval Army ceased to exist, and the water outside the gate was under the control of the coalition forces at this time.

Later in the day, Bai Liyan inspected the 50,000 people who had landed, and all the Xian soldiers arrived with the ship, except for 300 who continued to stay in Chubigon to take care of the finances, and of the original 2,000 people, less than 1,200 were alive at this time, and in Parvins alone, more than 270 people were killed.

Fifty thousand javelins, oil, and gunpowder arrived in Kelownas along with the ship.

At the beginning of the year, the flow of oil in the valley stopped completely, but the reserves in the valley were very abundant. Gongliangxiu was quite prescient, digging deep ditches in the depression three miles north of the wellhead, blocking the path, and channeling oil into the depression to accumulate for future needs.

There is not much gunpowder in the valley, and there are only more than 2,000 catties of gunpowder this time, Bailiyan did not let the ship unload, and the original ship was transported back, and tens of thousands of catties were replenished. Due to the large amount of sulfur and nitrate obtained from the previous siege, Bailiyan did not lack gunpowder in his hands.

Two days later, the navy was handed over to the royal guests, loaded with grain, grass, livestock, baggage and sundries, and more than 80,000 people, and left Kiros one after another. At the same time, Sikong Nan took over the Baihe cavalry, and Baihe served as his deputy, and selected more than 3,400 veterans who were skilled in cavalry warfare from the coalition army to supplement the cavalry, so as to strengthen training.

Riots in various localities have been unprecedentedly active since the beginning of spring, and they have been shooting themselves in the foot.

Due to the fact that the Jinxuedi people had previously detained the women and children of the Central Plains in various cities as hostages, and suffered repeated defeats, the economy and people's livelihood outside the customs were unprecedentedly impacted, and the foundation of their rule was greatly shaken. Of course, there is also the credit of Bailiyan.

In late March, there was a hidden movement among the Jinxuedi people on the east bank of Dolanton, and the news was soon reported to Bailiyan:

"What? Explode! ”

"Yes, my lord, according to General Jiao Muhua's report, there has been a faint explosion on the east bank recently, and the Jinxuedi people may have seized our army's gunpowder, or they have discovered the mystery and made gunpowder."

"This is impossible, it can be heard across the river, it can't be the sound of one or two catties of gunpowder exploding, at least more than a dozen catties."

"Could it be that the Kincherdi have seized our gunpowder and are ready to use a stone machine to throw the Dolandon River and attack our army?"

"It's not possible, but our army didn't lose a lot of gunpowder, did the Soviet division and Gongliangwen ever lose it?"

"My subordinates haven't heard of it, could it be that Jin Xuedi has touched the door and prepared gunpowder by himself."

"It's not impossible to say that this is possible, but after several days of testing, I always feel that it doesn't look like it, could it be that they have artillery!"

From the previous capture of prisoners, intermittently received news that the Moon God King Brenduo's successive defeats in Qianyue Mountain were attacked by the new weapons of the coalition forces, which were similar to gunpowder and had the characteristics of tubular launchers, and it cannot be ruled out that the Jinxuedi people imitated them after they were captured.

The ingredients of black powder are just charcoal, sulfur and nitrate, which are formulations, and do not need to be prepared by chemical reactions.

What really worries Bai Liyan is the artillery, the sound of explosions for several days can be transmitted across the river surface one mile wide, which shows that it is used in a closed cluster, and the charge of gunpowder is very large. If it is bundled into a medicine bag and launched with a trebuchet, it is dangerous and poor, and the fuse may be extinguished during the flight, or even explode in advance.

Due to the rush of time, limited conditions, and no time to make technical improvements, the reliability is very poor, and most of the time it is thrown away as gifts.

At present, the biggest threat to the Jinxuedi people crossing the river is not the coalition infantry cavalry, but the coalition navy, the trebuchet trajectory is parabolic, can only be aimed indirectly, it is difficult to inflict heavy damage on the column fleet, only the artillery can be aimed directly at the dense fire, the relatively straight trajectory is very suitable for attacking surface targets.

In addition, there has been no air attack by the Flying Eagle Beast in the past two months, and it may be that the Jinxuedi people are equipped with artillery, and the Flying Eagle Beast has been transferred to the north to attack the ground artillery fire of the Central Plains Army.

Considering all kinds of indications, in view of the fact that the Changsun Tianchuan has been more than five years now, the appearance of artillery is a high probability event.

Thinking of this, Bai Liyan and Jiang Jie hurried out of the city and arrived at the west bank of Dolanton at dusk. The west bank defense area is now guarded by Jiao Muhua and Su Hong, and the first to discover the situation was Jiao Muhua:

"See the general!"

"General Jiao doesn't need to be polite, Ben will ask you when the explosions on the other side will appear."

"About four days ago during the day."

"In which direction?"

"Manibarsa, five miles south of here."

"Mani Barça?"

Bai Liyan took out her binoculars and looked south, and suddenly felt puzzled.

The width of the Manibasa River five miles to the south is about 300 meters, which is not wide or narrow, and if the Jinxuedi people are equipped with artillery, they will fire on the east bank, and from the projectile being disemboweled, to falling into the camp of the coalition forces, they need to fly about a mile in a straight line, and considering the arc trajectory, they need to fly at least 600 meters, so the arrangement is very intriguing.

The coalition camp was only a mile away from the camp of Jinxuedi on the east bank, and the width of the river was half of it, but the rudimentary trebuchets of the coalition army could not shoot on the opposite bank.

Bai Liyan couldn't help but suspect that the artillery of the Jin Xuedi people might be a complete short-legged cannon, which could only fire one mile, or rather, they captured the artillery from the Changsun Kingdom, which was higher than this level, and after imitation, the technology had regressed.

Thinking of this, Bai Liyan and Jiao Muhua said:

"Is there an explosion at night?"

"There are, and more than during the day."

"Then we waited like this tonight, and we would have liked to see what was sacred. Go and prepare some light meals. ”

"No!"

After Jiao Muhua retreated, Jiang Jie asked:

"My lord, did the Jin Xuedi people get a powerful weapon?"

Bai Liyan nodded:

"Well, we'll have it in the future."

Compared with the direct use of gunpowder for rudimentary explosions, the emergence of tubular firearms was an important turning point in the practical application of black powder.

The earliest artillery was still a stone tool cannon hewn from stone, firing stone projectiles, with a range of only one or two hundred meters. Bronze cannons were replaced by copper cannons because of their chamber pressure was not as good as pure copper, while the early iron cannons were mostly cast iron, and the chamber pressure was not high, coupled with the constraints of smelting technology, the development of iron cannons was relatively slow, and they were replaced by copper cannons. But with each change of technology, it was accompanied by an increase in the caliber and range of artillery.

After dark, they kept watch until midnight, and did not hear the sound of explosions. In the early hours of the morning, tiredness struck, Bailiyan couldn't stay sleepy, and went into the camp to take a nap.

When the sky was in the dark, there was an explosion on the east bank, and dozens of projectiles crossed the Dolandon River and fell into the coalition camp, and several people were shot in a hurry, and the huge projectiles either shattered the heads or pierced people, and the wails were endless.

Bailiyan hurriedly issued the account when he heard the news:

"Jiang Jie, Jiang Jie!"

"My lord, my subordinates are here!" Jiang Jie came in a hurry, untidy, and his helmet was still crooked.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know, just now dozens of iron pills fell from the sky and killed several people."

Bailiyan suddenly realized when he heard the news:

"Quick, give the order to the whole battalion and retreat one mile west!"

"No!"

The new annexed army was still in a mess, and the military attachés at all levels could not control it, and after the projectiles killed a few people, they began to flee in panic.

Bai Liyan took Jiang Jie and the guards, climbed on the war horse and quickly left the camp, and soon tens of thousands of people fled for their lives behind him, without order and discipline, like a group of rabble.

"Damn, this is for Lao Tzu!"

Baili Yan scolded, and Jiang Jie hurriedly said:

"My lord, most of them are Jin Xuedi's eyeliner report, deliberately leading the adults here, so that they can secretly observe with binoculars on the other side, and wait for us to be unprepared, and hurt people with this weapon."

"That's right, otherwise you would have been careless yesterday if you could look at the time so accurately!"

The Jin Xuedi people successively seized telescopes from Qianyue Mountain, and the number was more than that of Bailiyan, Su Fangyi, and Gongliangwen, and in a sense, the coalition forces were at a disadvantage in terms of vision.

Last winter's strangulation, so that the local Jinxuedi villagers either died or fled, luckily to take advantage of the familiarity with the terrain, the coalition battle line stretched too long, too deep, these villagers secretly passed through the coalition defense line, for the Jinxuedi people on the opposite bank to penetrate into the vicinity of the coalition army as an eyeline, and then pulled the artillery to the shore overnight, early in the morning suddenly shelled, so unexpectedly killed Bailiyan a surprise.

The shelling lasted three quarters of an hour, with white smoke rising from the opposite shore visible to the naked eye, and the attack continued nine rounds of shelling, each with an interval of five or six minutes, which was shockingly short.

Each shelling was done by firing the dozens of guns in the same position, rather than alternately, and the interval between each fire was only five or six minutes, which meant a qualitative change in reloading techniques.

For a long time after the appearance of breech guns, gunpowder was loaded from the muzzle, and now the gunpowder is poured into the muzzle from the barrel, and then the gunpowder is smashed into the chamber with a pestle and compacted, poured into the projectile, and finally ignites the fire door to shoot the projectile. After the black powder is fired, the chamber needs to be cleaned to remove the residue from the chamber and then recharged.

Depending on the caliber, the preparation time before and after can range from as little as ten minutes, as much as one moment, or even more. As this number of shots increases, the barrel temperature soars, and the naked gunpowder will cause the gunpowder to be loaded into the overheated chamber and ignite and explode.

Until the advent of the medicine bag technology, the cumbersome loading of gunpowder was eliminated. The cylindrical cartridge bundled with gunpowder is directly fed into the gun chamber to increase the loading speed while effectively isolating the high temperature contact between the gun barrel and the gunpowder, increasing the number of firings. Although it was only a layer of paper covering gunpowder, it took two or three hundred years for the earthlings to make small progress.

Bai Liyan could almost conclude that the Jin Xuedi people, who had just used artillery, had already learned the medicine bag technique.

The fundamental reason why trebuchets, which were also long-range weapons, were eventually replaced by artillery was that they could not be standardized in production and consumed manpower, and their efficiency was far less than that of artillery. And the distance that breech guns can easily reach, trebuchets are often expensive, and most of the time there is no guarantee that the same model will have the same range.

The manpower required to launch and operate the trebuchet ranges from a dozen to hundreds. And with a conventional artillery with a few people, two horses can easily accomplish more than a trebuchet can do.