At the beginning, the sneak attack was indeed successful, and it caught the Guishan army by surprise, with many casualties.

However, Guishan's commander was General Sote, an old friend of the Han army, and he responded quickly, lighting a large number of lights in the camp, and then forming a phalanx of firecrackers and forcing the Han army back with a salvo.

Although Li Wei knew from the military intelligence report that the Kushan Empire was equipped with imitation muskets before leaving, he was still startled when he encountered it suddenly.

Fortunately, he kept his composure enough not to order his men to charge, but to engage the enemy in a firefight.

The range, power, and rate of fire of the Central Army were all superior, and after a while of the two armies, Sote had no choice but to retreat on his own initiative.

Out of caution, Li Dao did not pursue, but hurriedly reported the news that he had encountered the musket army of the Kushan Empire to Fa Zheng.

The king of Botiao also received the report of Sauter as soon as possible, and heard that the Han army had come to a cavalry division, and the whole division was equipped with muskets more advanced than himself.

Only then did he feel that there was a problem with his intelligence source, and began to make great efforts to rectify the intelligence agency, temporarily relieving his revenge, but urging the Royal Academy to quickly develop better firearms, and to find ways to expand the production capacity of firearms.

The Kushan Empire was located at the intersection of Eastern and Western civilizations, and because it began to develop firearms on a large scale and manufacture firearms, it also made gunpowder formulas and firearms manufacturing methods begin to spread to Western countries many years earlier than later generations.

The first country to benefit was the Kushan Empire's powerful neighbor to the west, the same vast Sabbatical Empire.

The Sabbatical Empire is closer to Western civilization than the Kushan Empire, so it retains a lot of the essence of ancient Greek civilization and accepts new things faster than the Kushan Empire.

It learned that the gunpowder and firearms technology originated from the ancient empire in the East, so it sent a large number of merchants to trade with the Han Dynasty.

These caravans were naturally mixed with a lot of intelligence personnel, and even young scholars, whose purpose was to obtain the advanced invention and production technology of the Han Dynasty.

The favored Ministry of State Security is naturally a spy who has uncovered many secret whereabouts and stealing intelligence.

However, the firearms technology of the Han Dynasty is very popular, such as black powder, detonators, and even flintlock pistols and grenades, which are not strictly controlled by the army, can be bought on the black market.

Many of the bounty hunters of the slave privateers did not get their firearms from official sources.

Even firearms became a commodity for the Han caravans to trade with distant countries, and they were continuously exported to more distant countries.

The Han Central Army only kept the relatively new high and new technologies such as smokeless gunpowder and artillery strictly secret, and those technologies and firearms that had been eliminated could of course be exchanged for money.

Otherwise, where did the Central Army get so much military spending and replace it with new muskets?

The new single-shot breech rifled gun has already begun to be put into production, that is, the Marquet rifle, which later became a classic rifle.

Because the Central Army has been reequipped with front-loading smoothbore flintlock pistols, and the number of them is huge, so as a transition, the first step is to change the smoothbore to rifle, which can improve the performance in a short period of time to the greatest extent and give the smoothbore gun a new life.

Of course, this is only a transition, and the Central Army will eventually have to replace all Ma's rifles, that is, rear-loading firing needle single-shot rifles.

Marhals rifles, of course, are rifled, and from it onwards, all rifles are rifled, using copper-cased bullets, with a smaller caliber, only a third of an inch.

However, because of the use of smokeless gunpowder and copper-shelled bullets, the range, rate of fire, and power are much greater, and they can easily shoot 400 to 600 zhang, and the accuracy of the hit is not the same.

It is now being produced in small quantities and distributed to snipers throughout the army to replace their front-loading rifled guns.

And because it is a rear-loading rifle, the soldiers of the Central Army can finally use the lying position to shoot, and the significant increase in the hit rate also makes the formation of the musketeers no longer have to be so densely arranged, which also greatly improves the survival chances of the soldiers as well as the lying position.

The emergence of these two advantages has also brought about major changes in the daily training of the Central Army, and the tactical formation must also be adjusted.

In particular, the opponents faced by the Central Army have also begun to enter the era of firearms in great strides, and even have their own muskets, which must be dealt with and changed.

There have also been changes in equipment, and the armor on the soldiers has become thinner and lighter, and it is not far from being completely abolished, which also makes the soldiers continue to reduce their weight and become more and more mobile.

The sapper shovel has once again become the standard for the officers and soldiers of the central government, whether it is infantry or cavalry, they are required to learn to dig fortifications, and officers must learn to build positions.

In addition to the new muskets, the Central Army also joined the army with field artillery, which was only five inches in caliber, used lighter materials and had a longer firing range.

The accompanying gun carriage was also much lighter and more suitable for maneuverability than the gun carriage on a warship, and the pitch angle of the gun was increased.

In June, Guo Jia, the great military division of Wei and the most trusted right-hand man of Cao Cao, the king of Wei, finally passed away because of the continuous aggravation of his illness.

Cao Cao, who was overly sad, was seriously ill himself, and he held a state funeral for Guo Jia, buried near the capital of Wei, and was to be buried with his mausoleum in the future.

Before his death, Guo Jia had been working hard to realize the full firearms of his mobile corps, and was giving priority to replacing the imitation flintlock pistol, but the production was too low, and the number of equipment of the Wu and Wei families had to be balanced, and the equipment progress was slow.

After Guo Jia's death, Cao Cao could only accept Xiahoudun as the commander of the Tiger Legion, that is, the commander of the mobile legion.

He felt that in the past year, the Central Army had not made any major moves, so what must be brewing?

The calmer it is, the bigger the conspiracy behind it.

Guo Jia is dead, Lu Bu will definitely not let go of this opportunity, Cao Cao ordered the whole country to enter a state of alert.

In particular, the prefectures and counties bordering the Central Army are all in good spirits.

Now it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain intelligence from Chang'an, and their Ministry of State Security and Intelligence have eliminated many Wei and Wu spy personnel and organizations.

In July, Cao Cao did not wait for the Central Army's large army, but the number of warships of the Central Navy in Jiaozhou Bay continued to increase, and even a detachment of the Yellow Sea Fleet was established.

Lu Su became the commander of the detachment with his excellent record.

The Yellow Sea Fleet now controls all the sea from Jiaozhou Bay to the mouth of the Yangtze River.

The navy of Soochow had been blocked by the Central Navy in the Yangtze River, and the galleons of the Yellow Sea Fleet had even sailed as far as the coast of Huiji County.

However, the development of navigation technology did not bring about war, and some Guanzhong chaebols themselves built some small sailing ships of two or three hundred tons using new technology and began to trade at sea.

(End of chapter)