While the Japanese officers were standing on the bridge of the battleship Nagato, drawing their swords and shouting for revenge, on the battleship Wuyishan of the Ming Empire, the silent soldiers of the Ming Empire were pushing a huge cannonball into the chamber of the artillery.

The soldiers who spent the years adrift at sea working inside the dimly lit turrets were fundamentally different from the sailors who lay on the deck watching the clear sky and the lively seabirds. Their work is not so romantic, because most of the time they can't see the sky or the ocean.

The battleship's giant cannon has a super-large caliber and anti-sky power, but also inherits various shortcomings of the giant cannon. Although these guns rely on the power of the machine, they are convenient when adjusting the angle, but when loading shells, they are not so refreshing.

These cannons had to be returned to a fixed angle so that they could aim their tails at the various loading machines that had been fixed in advance before they could be reloaded. Therefore, the rate of fire of these cannons is not fast, and they can only rely on constantly bombarding the opponent to adjust their firing angles in order to hit the enemy in battle.

Of course, there is an easier way, which is to rely on the solid armor of the battleship, find a way to close the distance to the enemy, and then fire at a more certain distance in order to hit the target. This is a double-edged sword, because when you are more likely to hit the opponent, the opponent is also more likely to hit you.

The Ming Navy warships, which had an advantage in artillery range and a slight advantage in the quality of their soldiers, naturally did not want the Japanese Navy to come up and fight a close-range artillery battle without technical content at this moment, because the naval warships of the Ming Empire were not known for their armor level.

The technical drag made the warships of the Ming Empire only use a slightly outdated power system, and this power system restricts not only the speed, but also the weight of the battleship itself - if the weight is exceeded, the speed of the battleship will become slower. So the battleships of the Ming Empire were not the best of this era, and it can only be said that they only stayed at the passing line: in terms of tonnage and artillery technology, they were the class of battleships.

Japan was not much better than the Ming Dynasty in this respect: Japan learned from the British, so it only learned second-rate technology in the hands of the British. The Japanese had serious problems with the layout of their warships, and the excessive pursuit of speed and firepower led to the fact that most of the Japanese battleships were not of a strong and heavy type.

So in this naval duel that broke out in the northern seas, the Japanese Navy and the Ming Navy fought to the death at a distance of about 20 kilometers. Finally, in the 7th round of shelling, the shells fired by the battleships of the Ming Empire once again formed a sidecar, and at this distance, the shells of the Japanese Navy were also only a short distance away from the Ming battleships.

"Reload the shells! Keep shooting! Adjust the shooting elements, we don't have much time to waste! Inside the turret, one of Daming's artillery firing commanders desperately encouraged his subordinates: "Faster!" We're about to hit the enemy! ”

His men struggled to shove a cannonball into the chamber of the gun. And on the bridge of the command ship at this time, Lu Chongwen received a telegram from the motherland from his adjutant: "To the battleship Wuyishan: the Northeast rebels to attack Mukden, the fleet of the Beihai Division has set sail to help, please hold on until the last moment!" ”

After reading the telegram in his hand, Lu Chongwen casually threw the paper on the chart table, then looked at his adjutant with a wry smile, and said sarcastically with some helplessness: "The enemy has hit the doorstep, and the group of rice buckets in the intelligence department haven't even found any news......"

It's no wonder that he commented on the intelligence department of the Ming Empire so disdainfully, the two departments of Dongchang and Jinyiwei were still dogs a few years ago, but in recent years, they have hurt a lot of vitality because of each other. Needless to say, the European countries that are far away, and even Japan, which is close at hand, do not have any real information. Compared with the eyes of all Japanese parties operating in the Ming Kingdom, the Ming Dynasty, which is almost ignorant, is it invincible?

Although he was angry, the battle still had to continue, and what worried Lu Chongwen was the northeast rebellion on the telegram - if this war was not a Japanese provocation, but a conspiracy of the Jin Kingdom and Japan against the Ming Empire, then this battle seemed to be only one part of the whole war.

"We have to play here what Japan doesn't want to see!" This thought jumped out of Lu Chongwen's mind, he knew that if everything was planned by the Japanese, then the outcome of this war would be only the defeat of the Ming Dynasty. However, if Japan is attacked by surprise here, it will be able to gain the initiative in the war in other links.

Just as he was thinking about these trivial things, the No. 2 main turret of the battleship Wuyishan fired a salvo. Because the previous shot was a sideburn, this time the firing still selected part of the firing data from the previous firing. Huge black smoke erupted from the battleship's gun barrel, and then the red flames rolled up and rolled the black smoke in all directions, and the two shells just drew a parabola and rushed towards the Nagato, the flagship of the Japanese fleet.

At the same time, a loud bang came from the rear of the Wuyishan, and this explosion attracted the attention of all the officers on the bridge of the battleship Wuyishan. They looked to the other side of their ship, where the cruiser Khingkaihu was blazing with blazing fire, and the black smoke from the explosion obscured the other Japanese fleet that was firing in the distance.

No one spoke, and Lu Chongwen also knew that his situation was already quite bad, and the Xingkaihu was hit, which plunged the Ming fleet, which was already at an absolute disadvantage in numbers, into an unprecedented crisis. Now the remaining battleship Wuyishan is no longer safe on both wings, and what is even more terrifying is that on one side of the ship, the battleship Wuyishan does not have a single main gun that can fire back.

Just when Lu Chongwen was thinking hard and trying to come up with a solution that best of both worlds, the cruiser Xingkaihu continued to desperately return fire on the Japanese fleet on the other side with the few remaining cannons on the deck during the explosion. It was exploding and sinking, it was tilting and pouring into the sea, but the tiny artillery was still roaring, as if to vent the unwillingness of a people.

"Keep turning! All artillery aimed at enemy ships! Fight to the death! Lu Chongwen clenched his fists, looked at the smoke rolling on the sea, and let out a low cry from his throat.