The Nanqi River and the Dongqi River were both called Fei (Xiang) water in ancient times, and they entered the river and Huai, giving birth to the two historical cities of Hefei and Shouchun. In the vicinity of Hefei, the Nanqi River and the Dongqi River converge together, and the name of Hefei comes from this water. The "Battle of Weishui" made Weishui famous all over the world. Among them, the Nanqi River, also known as Shishui, passes through Hefei City, flows into the Yangtze River through Chaohu Lake, and is the "mother river" of Hefei.

Anhui is a hard-hit area with frequent floods. Chen Ke knew that after the liberation, the Republic of China had spent tremendous manpower and material resources to control the Huai River, and it took 20 years for the Republic to govern the Huai River purely by relying on a huge net investment of astronomical scale. If it weren't for the fact that Anhui had been a hot spot for revolution from 1907 to 1911, Chen Ke would not have dared to set up his base in Anhui at first.

It wasn't until Chen Ke personally arrived in Anhui that he realized that he had made the mistake of "carving a boat for a sword". The Anhui floods faced by the Republic were different from those in Anhui in 1907. First of all, although the Manchu Qing Dynasty was rotten, it was still necessary to manage the river. Since the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Beiyang has occasionally governed the Huai River, and the subsequent Jiang Guangtou regime has no interest in the governance of the Huai River.

In 1938, Jiang Guangtou ordered the Huayuankou embankment to be blown up, and the Yellow River flowed southward, forming a large area of the Yellow River in southeast Henan. The Yellow River is not only devastated by the people of Henan, but also the water of the Yellow River rushing south directly into the Huai River. It was not until 1947 that Chiang began to rebuild the Yellow River embankment in order to block the offensive of the People's Liberation Army, hoping to turn the large shallow river channel into a "barrier" that was difficult to cross. Chen Ke is a native of Zhengzhou, where Huayuankou is located, and he often rides to the Yellow River with his friends on holidays. It can be said that this period of history cannot be more familiar.

In 1937-194, the Yellow River also had a direct consequence of the Yellow River's annual siltation of more than 1 billion tons of sediment in the plains and rivers. Experts have even likened the Huai River to a "river without an ass", almost to the point of "talking about yellowing". They say that the main stream of the Huai River, which starts from Bengbu, has to climb a slope more than two meters high to enter Hongze Lake, which has long been a dangerous hanging lake.

Since the formation of the Yellow Flood Area, Anhui has been seriously flooded, and it has been raining and flooding in Anhui even more, with light rain and small waterlogging, and drought without rain. Chen Ke has never understood that some people are still bald heads, and he doesn't know if these people have the face to face the people who are struggling in pain and unfortunately dying in the floods in Anhui.

It was now 1907, and although the Huai River problem was serious, it was not as tragic as that of later generations. At least in Chen Ke's view, Anhui in the Huai River basin is still a convenient area for waterways and navigation. In the Anqing Campaign at the beginning of the year, if it weren't for Chen Ke's fear of startling the grass and snakes after attacking Hefei, the most economical route for the troops would have been to take two rivers and enter the Yangtze River through Chaohu Lake. Now Li Yuanhong's troops are taking the completely opposite path, they enter Chaohu Lake from the Yangtze River and reach Hefei through the Nanqi River.

At this time, the Nanqi River is still very wide, through the hydrological data seized by the People's Party from Anqing and Luzhou Prefecture and the results of personal surveying and mapping, the bottom of the Nanqi River is 30~80 meters wide, the water depth elevation is 6~6.5 meters, the water depth is 7 meters during the flood period, and the water depth is about 8 meters during the flood period. The People's Party now lacks heavy artillery and cannot pose an effective threat to the navy of the Hubei New Army.

The concept of "scientificization" has basically been completed in the theoretical training of the top level of the People's Party, and none of the high-level and middle-level comrades have gone to believe in the Dragon King. As soon as Chen Ke proposed the "iron lock Hengjiang", Hua Xiongmao explained the concept of cement piles in detail, and everyone immediately began to work. This time the troops were dispatched, and Chen Ke had actually completed his plan a long time ago, so he specially brought You Gui with him. You Gu is directly responsible for the production of cement, glass and ceramics. She had long wanted to come to the battlefield to see it, but this time it was useful.

The soldiers are very familiar with the female secretary of Youbei, and many of the officers have worked under the female secretary of Youbei. The female secretary personally led the team, and everyone was full of enthusiasm. In the shallowest part of the Nanqi River, the mixing frame was fixed with boats and rafts, and small cement piles were sunk first, and then large cement piles were sunk. In a day and a half, the depth of the water at these three obstacles was increased from more than five meters to one and a half meters. Non-motorized boats were free to pass, and the steam-powered ships of the Hubei New Army were not able to pass at all.

Without cement and cement irrigation technology, it would be a fool's dream to create a barrier at the bottom of the river in a short period of time. If you don't have cement, you have to use stones, because if the stones are small, they will be washed away by water, and if the stones are too big, they can't be carried in a short time. Once you have cement, it only takes a certain amount of time to build as big an obstacle as you want. And You Mu not only works, but also conducts training in cement knowledge. The unit that created the obstacle this time was the newly built "engineering corps" in the base area, and Chen Ke set the level of the engineering corps extremely high. In the future, the engineering corps will be under the jurisdiction of the engineering corps and the railway corps, and Chen Keyan made it clear that the commander-in-chief of the future engineering corps will be only half a rank lower than the national defense chief. In other words, the commander-in-chief of the engineering corps and the general political commissar will directly become members of the CMC, and they will be one of the strong contenders for the vice chairman of the CMC.

Now the engineering corps is temporarily subordinate to the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, and the director and political commissar of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense is temporarily concurrently served by You Gui, so You Gui is also in charge of a powerful paramilitary force as a woman without military rank. No one in the Central Military Commission dared to make irresponsible remarks about this, because this engineering corps was not the same as "engineers," and the "engineers" of the People's Party were combat units. The engineering corps, on the other hand, were expanded from the cement-burning unit that You Gou personally led last year. This is the army that You Gui has brought up single-handedly.

Some local civil affairs cadres were worried that these barriers would obstruct future passage of waterways, so Zhang Yu directly showed everyone the new diving equipment made by the People's Party. This is a type of marine diving equipment. The most striking of the diver's outfit is a hand-cranked air supply, an iron breathing apparatus with a glass viewing window, and a supply tank made of silk and bamboo tubes, which allow the diver to set up explosives underwater. After the Battle of Hefei is over, these three underwater interception walls will be blown up. After blasting, larger blocks are salvaged to reinforce the river, leaving smaller ones at the bottom.

Zhang Yu said to the comrades who suddenly came to their senses: "Our People's Party has always paid attention to the beginning and the end of its work. Secretary You Yu had already thought about such things. ”

Regarding Zhang Yu's sycophancy, You Wei just smiled heartily, and then ordered the engineering troops to evacuate the construction site. More than a year ago, when Chen Ke personally led a team to rescue the people, there were only six or seven loyal party members that Chen Ke could trust. Zhang Yu also served as You You's deputy, and You Yu knew very well that he was now superfluous to say anything except laughing.

The BJP itself stresses science and attaches great importance to intelligence gathering. Their only worry is whether Li Yuanhong has forgotten what he learned in the Beiyang Sailor Academy back then. If Li Yuanhong forcibly marched without emphasizing science, the ships of the Hubei Navy would definitely run aground, and that would only delay everyone's time. If Li Yuanhong had lectured on science and meticulously surveyed the waterway, he would have obediently divided his troops into two routes, and the People's Party would have opened its pockets long ago and waited for the Hubei New Army Army to throw itself into the net.

Li Yuanhong undoubtedly did not forget his old job, and the pilot survey boat soon reported an anomaly at the bottom of the river. After receiving this news, Li Yuanhong felt an indescribable discomfort. He knew that his "teacher" Yan Fu was now a high-ranking official of the People's Party, and the military operation of the Hubei New Army this time was called "exterminating Yan Chen's bandits."

Li Yuanhong personally went to the front to check, and saw that on the water surface of the wide Nanqi River, there was a neat water pattern, which divided the narrowest part of the Nanqi River into two. It is an undercurrent that forms on the surface of the river when the flow of water is forced to flow upwards after the flow of the river is suddenly blocked by an underwater obstacle that crosses the river. Li Yuanhong is from a naval army, and he can better understand the meaning of this obstacle. What an organizational ability to create an obstacle tens of meters long. Li Yuanhong was shocked.

Of course, if this shock was known to the officers and men of the engineering corps under You's command, they would have made a fuss by laughing at Li Yuanhong. The engineers only used up more than 2,000 bags of cement and thousands of bamboo cages. More than 2,000 bags of cement can be produced in five days at the base. It took only five days to compile these double-decker cages. The reed mat, which is used as a mold partition, can be used repeatedly and consumes less time. Compared with this siege, the engineers generally believed that the construction of various water conservancy projects in which they participated was a headache. There are abundant mapping data and equations, and simply stacking up a temporary obstacle is not very technical to calculate the speed of the water flow and the impact force.

Faced with this obstacle, Li Yuanhong was frightened. He summoned his staff and began to discuss the matter. Now between the Nanqi River and Hefei, the spies of the Hubei New Army pass unimpeded. Every piece of information they reported was that "no trace of the BJP could be found", and the staff officers did not know why the BJP had built such a barrier. The only thing that can be determined is that with this obstacle, the Hubei New Army must disembark and walk to Hefei, fifty miles away. It does take a lot of time, but the boat and most of the official ships are able to pass through this underwater obstacle. In other words, this obstacle only stopped the steam-powered gunboats of the navy.

"Lord Li, the soldiers are fast. I'm waiting so fast, I think the rebels want to stop us in this way, right? "There are staff officers who put forward this point of view.

"How long does it take you to build something like this underwater?" Li Yuanhong asked.

The staff officer was immediately speechless, and the construction of such a thing was by no means an overnight achievement.

"My lord, I'm afraid this thing was built by the bandits a long time ago. And we walked fifty miles in just one day. Now that Tanma is coming and going, no matter what the bandits think, we can make a lot of achievements after occupying Hefei City. Why worry about such a small obstacle? "There are also impatient officers who suggest so.

Although Li Yuanhong thought the same thing in his heart, he felt that he couldn't be cautious. After thinking for a while, Li Yuanhong said: "Stay in place, let's take a look first." ”