When the explosion first sounded, although it brought a lot of momentum, the main sailors gathered in the Jiujiang area did not feel much of a sense of crisis. There didn't seem to be any enemy ships on the lake under the moonlight, and if it was just a windfall for a few water ghost death squads, it would be impossible for someone so familiar with the nature of the water to dare to take such a big risk to attack. At best, the water ghosts of a few dozen to a hundred people are not at all a threat to a large army with hundreds of capital ships.

However, the fierce fire and the subsequent explosion were obviously not just one, but continued to unfold from sparse to dense. At least the blasting mines of 1,000 catties are at least not much less powerful than 10 kilograms of modern explosives, and for those inland river warships that are not too strong and huge, they can often blow up the entire ship into two sections in one explosion or quickly sink to the bottom, and often the personnel do not even have time to escape.

The commander of the Ming army in the Jiujiang area never expected that there would be as many as 1,000 people who threw themselves into the underwater attack this time. Thousands of officers and men of the underwater demolition squad can use special pedal wheels to sail underwater in a more physically economical way, and at the same time reach a certain speed. Although the speed of the mine in the shape of a water drop may not be able to keep up with the enemy ship during the day, it is more than enough to carry out the blasting mission at night.

In just a few minutes, along with the propulsion devices that continued to spit out fierce flames from the surface of the lake, and even the subsequent explosions, at least 100 of the more than 300 main warships that had gathered in the Jiujiang area were sunk, and dozens of officers and men on board were forced to jump into the lake to escape in fear, after all, the distance from the shore here was not as far as that in the sea. Although some half of the ships escaped the siege because of some flaws in this attack, there is no doubt that it is largely unfeasible to use the advantage of sailors alone to run amok between the two lakes in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Such a large-scale blasting attack was not just carried out once in the Poyang Lake area, although the results of the subsequent large-scale blasting attacks were far less than before, but they basically expelled the southern naval forces in the Huguang area. When tens of thousands of troops crossed the rivers and lakes in two ways, Changsha, Wuchang and other places also gathered and fell in the face of the stronger and stronger offensive of the Vietnam War. However, in order to sweep away the main force in the south as quickly as possible, after occupying Changsha, Wuchang and other places, the army led by Zhou Dayong did not continue to divide troops to attack in the depths of Huguang and Jiangxi, but prepared to prepare for the final attack from the upstream.

Although the night raids and explosions in the area of Poyang Lake have achieved great results, they have also made Zhou Dayong aware of the limitations of this combat method. In order to effectively launch a decisive offensive along the waterway of the Yangtze River, not only should there be more troops, but it is also obvious that ships and even water battles must be more prepared.

Just when the team attacking Huguang made decisive progress, the main force of the volunteer division led by Xiao Xuan also converged with the main force of about 30,000 people of the Third Army and the Fourth Army of the Middle Route Army in Hanzhong, which had just been conquered, and soon broke through Chaotian Pass and Guangyuan along the most important Jinniu Road leading to the hinterland of Sichuan, and the troops approached Jianmen Pass.

After a certain period of training and consolidation, after a certain period of training and consolidation, the combat performance of the volunteer division became stronger in the face of opponents who were not inferior. Even Qin Liangyu before didn't expect that the legendary Son of Heaven Forbidden Brigade would have such strength.

After the war, Qin Liangyu was also very sober, and did not invest the main force of the Sichuan army in the decisive battle from Hanzhong to Guangyuan, and when the strong enemy soldiers approached the Jianmen Pass, the whole of Sichuan still had about 200,000 combat forces after training and expansion for more than a year, and there were as many as 100,000 troops that could be invested in the defense of the border passes.

Compared with the garrison force of Shu at many times in history, there is no doubt that at this time, due to the reproduction and development of economy and population, the troops that can be effectively mobilized in Sichuan also make the previous methods of bypassing the Golden Bull Road or attacking along the side of the road to avoid the Jianmen Pass also become risky.

Xiao Xuan believed that the Sword Gate Pass, which could become a moat in the era of cold weapons and had never been broken through from the front, might not be able to effectively resist the main force of the Lord's Volunteer First Division at this time. However, when the child who was scouting from the hot air balloon in the air came some news about the size of the enemy's forces after the pass, it also made Xiao Xuan feel some pressure and unknown.

"When we were in Hanzhong, the gunpowder captured by our army was not small, how was the testing and reorganization going?" Xiao Xuan asked the officer of the artillery battalion of the volunteer division.

"On the march, the work of reorganizing and testing the captured gunpowder was already underway. In addition to the previous batch of ammunition transported from Xi'an, which had already been conquered, and the third and fourth armies already carried with them, the gunpowder in the team has reached a scale of about 150,000 catties, and the artillery and blasting-related ammunition alone has reached 500,000 catties... ”

It was only after preliminary calculations that Xiao Xuan gave up his plan to break through the attack by blasting with cannonballs or heavy shotguns. The flight distance of a shotgun with a simple burial explosion is not high, and if it flies above the Sword Gate or even beyond a certain range of depth, it is likely that the effectiveness may be greatly reduced under the protection of the heavy shield prepared by the enemy.

In the end, Xiao Xuan's choice could only be to carry out effective and accurate artillery bombardment outside the Jianmen Pass, and there may be some possibilities to break through the pass with the attack of the volunteer division.

The hot air balloon carrying the carefully selected toddler rose into the air again during the day, and in order to maintain its own safety, it had to keep a distance of at least two miles or so from the Jianmen Pass. It was at this time that the test firing of artillery began.

Due to the limitations of the terrain, the artillery position under the Jianmen Pass could not be placed in a position of hundreds or hundreds of guns at a safe distance, and only the artillery positions of 54 light guns of the improved version of the second general gun of the three artillery squadrons could only be placed. In order to maximize and maintain firepower, at least three light guns are prepared near each gun position at any time, and a gun crew uses at least four field light guns, and when the barrel begins to overheat a little, the guns are replaced in turn in order to maximize the firepower. The Second General Cannon put into battle was also a 150-kilogram artillery reprocessed from iron-clad copper, which could hit a projectile at least three miles away when firing with a fairly good charge, and could almost launch a heavy shotgun at a distance of two miles when firing a shotgun. Make sure that the predetermined scenario seems to be completely sufficient.

(End of chapter)