Fighting a siege battle with a strong emphasis on speed, but for the defenders of Xiangning City and the few civilians inside, it was an ordeal. From the beginning of its establishment, the Blood Qi Army has had an obvious game style and Ye Tao's personality traits. The Blood Qi Army always pays attention to rationality, coordination, command, technology, equipment, and preparation...... A series of keywords not only make the Blood Qi Army the most well-equipped and well-trained army in the world, but also temporarily hide the surging blood and edge of the Blood Qi Army's tens of thousands of soldiers. The Blood Qi Army almost never encounters a decent enemy, and they are always tepid and unhurried in battle; The Blood Qi Army usually doesn't look much at trophies and other extraneous things, and many soldiers and officers of the Blood Qi Army don't care about money at all, let alone looting, and the Blood Qi Army's meticulousness in collecting the spoils of war is far from being comparable to their attitude when they fight.

And now, the time pressure pressed down layer by layer made the soldiers of the Blood Qi Army have to unleash all their fanaticism behind reason and refinement to fight a fearless battle.

However, fanaticism doesn't mean not using your brains. The reason why the Blood Qi Army has become the strongest army in this era is mainly because of the extremely high level of culture. In the past, although the Dongping army was strong, many of the generals were born in generals, and they were agile but relatively deviant in their understanding ability and tactical literacy, and often commanded operations with animal instincts. In the Blood Qi Army, it is turned over, and the mind and tactical literacy are the first considerations, and after these two aspects are recognized, it is in terms of riding and arching archery that must meet the quality requirements of an officer. To say that the command during the war is strict and accurate, no army can compare with the Blood Qi Army. In the past, even in Dongping, the lowest rank of an officer was a captain, which was also a command of 100 people, but now, the command has been extended to a group of five. In the Blood Qi Army, everyone is qualified to be the commander of this five-person group. The powerful non-commissioned officer class assured the Blood Qimen that they would really be able to fight to the last man as long as they were ordered to hold on.

When attacking Xiangning, this kind of wisdom that bursts out in the midst of urgency is especially important. As soon as dawn broke, Zou Shuangwen walked around the camp, carefully checking the preparations of the troops. In the faint morning light, the soldiers of each battalion had already gotten up and washed up. In front of the fully equipped field kitchens, soldiers are lining up to receive breakfast. With the personality of the Blood Qi Army, everyone will obviously not be excited by the egg and sausage added to the meal before the battle, and everyone's expectation of the big battle also makes Zou Shuangwen a little more confident.

Throughout the camp, soldiers could be seen wiping their weapons and armor for the last time. Checking the weapon before the battle and re-wrapping the mixed rope around the hilt to make it easier to handle is already a very fixed and very ceremonial procedure before the Blood Qi Army makes a big move. In the heavy equipment battalion part, a stone-throwing car, a ballista, and a god arm bow have been assembled, and those experienced technicians have been waiting for breakfast and drinking tea while watching the soldiers make detailed adjustments according to the ruler after completing the assembly.

What surprised Zou Shuangwen a little was that the brigade led by Li Mingtao, a disciple of the Ye Clan's workshop, was urgently fiddling with those ladders at this moment, as if he was urgently installing some kind of device on them.

The ladder is rarely used by the Blood Qi Army, but it doesn't mean that they haven't bothered to it, the ladder they use has begun to be popularized in the whole army of Dongping, their ladder is equipped with sharp steel teeth on the side that touches the city wall, and for those battlements made of brick and stone, sometimes a string of sparks can be smashed out, knocking out a deep mark on it, and those earth, or the battlements built with the secret soil method cement in various places, rely on the huge kinetic energy of turning the ladder, often can directly penetrate into the city wall. There are clearly marked anti-slide blocks on each step of the ladder. The ladders in Li Mingtao's hand are the latest updated style, and the anti-slip blocks on them are not cut out of wood, but are shoveled out of grooves on the pedals of the ladders, and then glued the rubber blocks into them. Although the rubber production of Yazhou has grown rapidly in recent years, it cannot withstand the urgent demand of the whole army in Dongping for this new material, and rubber is like a national strategic resource. Except for the Yip's Workshop and the Qi family's shipyard, which can allocate a part of the rubber for civilian products, almost all of the rubber is used in military-related fields. Everyone knows that if you want to use the ladder, it is time to fight, even if you can reduce the casualties of the soldiers by one percent, it will definitely be at any cost, and the improvement of the ladder is still quite sufficient, but due to the relatively complex process of this ladder, only the Blood Qi Army and a part of the light infantry units in Yunzhou have updated this kind of thing.

Zou Shuangwen didn't know much about technology, and felt that the equipment of the Blood Qi Army was now difficult to improve, and seeing that Li Mingtao was doing something about these things without approval and reporting, he hurriedly rushed up and asked, "Li Mingtao, what are you doing?" ”

"General," Li Mingtao stood upright, struck his right fist on his left chest, and gave a military salute in a regular manner, saying: "It is an improvement that the last general came up with temporarily, and when he got up in the morning, he had a flash of inspiration, so that the ladder would not be pushed down when he hit the city wall, and it was too late to report for a while." I also ask for the general's forgiveness. ”

"Won't be pushed down?" Zou Shuangwen perked up and said, "Take me a look." ”

Li Mingtao led Zou Shuangwen to the open space in the camp where the construction was intensive. The improvement they made was very simple, on both sides of the ladder was to add two long poles that were firmly connected to the ladder and had a certain range of movement, and after the ladder was built on the city wall, the long poles naturally drooped to the ground, and a wide base was quickly installed and placed on the ground. In this way, the contact between the ladder and the ground is not a point, but three points that form a triangle, and in the vertical direction, it is also a stable structure that forms three points. This design limits the density of ladders placed on a single combat surface, but it also makes them really difficult to topple from any direction. It's just that this kind of long pole can only be made temporarily according to the specific length of the city wall, because they can't really get close to the city wall for actual measurement, and the soldiers also need to operate on the spot, such as sawing off a little bit of the long pole at any time when it is long, if it is short, you must move the stone pad. And this kind of operation must also be carried out against time, and the enemy at the head of the city will not sit idly by and watch them carry out these tasks.

Although Zou Shuangwen doesn't know much about technology, in the atmosphere of the Blood Qi Army, from the beginning of the army to the present, the most basic concept of the triangular structure is still the most stable. He was pleasantly surprised and asked, "How many ladders have you changed?" ”

"Four have been changed, and these are the last two." Li Mingtao said calmly: "The city wall assigned to us is only a little wide. In fact, it is enough to expand four. Two units are spare. ”

"I'm going to take these two and put them on the north city wall for Ah Xing's brigade. You both face each other. Zou Shuangwen made a decision immediately. A powerful weapon determines a tactic, and this ladder determines that they must be able to steadily throw troops towards the city wall, and at this time, one breakthrough is obviously not as good as two breakthroughs. If the opponent's forces cannot be concentrated, then their advantage of strong individual combat effectiveness will be brought into full play. “

Li Mingtao didn't argue and nodded. He said: "General, there is less than an hour before the formation attack, and our battalion can still change two units out, let's do it!" ”

Zou Shuangwen's reaction was even more violent than Li Mingtao's, and he convened a small combat meeting in Li Mingtao's battalion, and less than ten minutes later, a short meeting lasting two minutes showed everyone the certainty of a quick victory. The soldiers in Li Mingtao's brigade who participated in the improvement of the ladder were all retained, and the soldiers with engineering and technical backgrounds in other battalions were also selected to renovate as many ladders as possible in one hour. After the start of the battle, the soldiers will be given more than an hour of rest before returning to their original units to fight.

It was half past seven in the 24-hour day according to Ye Tao's Tissot watch shop. The horns sounded neatly in the various camps of the Blood Qi Army surrounding Xiangning, and the soldiers were originally scattered sitting and chatting or wiping their weapons to prepare, as soon as they heard the horn sound, they sent each other their pre-battle blessings, and the excitement or indifference was more and more obvious in different people. They walked seemingly casually towards the gate of the camp, but when they left the camp, they had already formed a neat procession, and the majesty formed by the neatness and order on the head of the city made people feel more and more frightened.

Twenty minutes later, the whole army was ready to attack, and two airships flew over Xiangning, taking in all the movements in Xiangning City. The heavy equipment battalion was even more ruthless this time, for the first time, they ignored safety orders and pushed two super-heavy ballistae onto the front line, which could be stopped ten paces away from the range of the catapult at the head of Xiangning City. It's a dangerous distance, and if the wind doesn't go the right way, they'll have to be beaten. But the soldiers of the heavy equipment battalion need this feeling of bayonets, the stimulation and pleasure of this nerves tense at any time, and they also need this distance to smash the heavy fire oil bombs directly into the city gate of Xiangning. The gates of Xiangning were made of treated oak wrapped with copper skin, and they estimated that they could directly melt the copper skin on the outside, turning the wood into cinder. At this distance from the Xiangning City Gate, they didn't feel any risk of being attacked by the enemy out of the city, Zou Shuangwen was behind them, and there were a thousand elite cavalry and a thousand longbowmen protecting them. Fifteen hundred light and heavy infantry were mixed in, sitting neatly behind them to rest, recuperating to see when they would be able to dispose of the gates, and they were waiting for the moment to rush straight into the city. The expectant but skeptical gaze of these people is the best encouragement for the soldiers of the heavy equipment battalion.

At 7:58 a.m., the two super-heavy ballistas of the Heavy Equipment Battalion creaked, the torsion spring group was tightened, and a moment before the ammunition was loaded, Zou Shuangwen's general order arrived: "Two gliding shells, followed by a free attack with ordinary fire oil bombs." Zou Shuangwen also played tricks. And immediately, a shell of a narrow shape was loaded on the rails......