Amid the sound of artillery, Lu Bu led the soldiers of the third regiment close to the camp of the ninth town. At 5:30 a.m., the shelling stopped, the signal flares rose one after another, and the soldiers of the three regiments poured into the dilapidated camp like a tide under the leadership of Lu Bu, and the outer fortifications were basically blown up, and the soldiers quickly passed through the gap.

"One company and two companies on the left flank, three companies and four companies on the right flank, five companies and six companies in the middle direction, the fire company occupies the high ground and the junction, and the seventh company blocks the direction of the enemy's escape!" According to the plan made in advance, the soldiers attacked the enemy camp in a company unit, and the sound of gunfire like beans rang out. Despite the loss of control and the heavy shelling, the Ninth Town did not give up its resistance.

Under the organization of middle and lower-ranking officers, the soldiers of the 9th Town, who were in a chaotic formation, began to resist the onslaught of the 3rd Regiment. But these resistances, which seemed so weak in the face of machine guns and mortars, were quickly crushed by the three regiments, and the surrendered enemy troops knelt to the side, holding their guns aloft, waiting for the moment to become prisoners.

"Raise your hands and surrender, surrender your guns and don't kill, Chinese don't fight Chinese!" As the three regiments deepened, the slogans spread to every corner of the battalion, and the enemy troops who hid and tried to resist, as well as the enemy troops who were chattering that they could not find themselves, cautiously came out and surrendered to the three regiments. The slower-impacting units became prisoner-of-war containment teams, and under the blows of the three regiments, resistance collapsed, and more and more enemy troops fled to the rear of the battalion.

Even the pre-prepared Seventh Company could not hold back all the deserters - the area that needed to be defended was too large, and there were too many deserters. Deng Chengpao, who felt alive after a night's rest, was first shocked by the firepower of the Nationalist Army's artillery regiment, and then witnessed a very simple battle of annihilation, and the victory was so easy that Deng Chengpao had a sense of unreality in his sleep. After a day of blood station, the Ninth Town, which had suffered heavy losses on its side, was wiped out in the blink of an eye, and it seemed that the losses of the three regiments were very small. Could it be that this is the strength of the National Army? The gap with the Forces nouvelles is too great.

When the battle of Liuyang was basically over, the First Division of the First Army successfully arrived near the Wuchang Railway Station, and under the assistance of the soldiers of the advance brigade stationed at the railway station, they got off the train and formed a whole team, and launched an attack posture against more than 4,000 people from the Seventh Town, who were confronting more than 3,000 soldiers from the Eighth Town and the National Army at the railway station.

Faced with the dilemma of being flanked from both sides, the seventh town that could not be saved for a day was in a dilemma, Wei Guangtao and others in the rear learned that Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army had no intention of attacking on a large scale, and the ninth town was defeated again, and Ding Zhenze's nineteenth town hesitated, knowing that the general trend of this battle had gone, it was better to withdraw to Jiangsu to rest and prepare for the offensive of the national army in the near future.

Taking advantage of the fact that the first division was not ready, the soldiers of the 7th Town drove and slowly retreated, aiming at the direction of the river bank. Lu Gan, the commander of the First Division, immediately ordered the pursuit, and he couldn't run for nothing! The twenty guns that were the first to be launched did not open fire for fear of accidentally injuring the soldiers of the pursuing 1st Division, but the guns in the hands of the soldiers were enough to bring the 7th town to a crumble.

The 500 Qing soldiers in charge of the break resisted for only a few minutes, and then they broke back in the mortar fire and bullet rain, and the retreat of several thousand Qing troops turned into a rout, and the two sides now competed in the speed of running, and the Qing Army's Seventh Town was also inferior to the well-trained soldiers of the 1st Division in this regard.

By the time they reached the riverbank, more than half of the soldiers in the 7th Town had been captured or wounded, and the pursuing 1st Division saw victory in sight, and at the present pace the enemy had no time to board the ships.

"Boom!" Several puffs of green smoke rose from the British warship, and several shells fell among the soldiers of the 1st Division, instantly knocking more than a dozen soldiers to the ground.

"Hidden!" The soldiers quickly lay on the ground, and Lu Gan, who was not far behind, saw this situation and immediately ordered the artillery regiment to aim at the British warships by telegram.

The artillery regiment of the 1st Division has 48 105-caliber howitzers, of which 18 remained with the 1st Infantry Corps in Liuyang, and now has 30, as well as 8 122-mm howitzers. The greatest convenience of transportation by train was the possibility of transporting heavy equipment, and the trucks of the artillery regiment were also unloaded from the trains, and then began to transport these guns to the riverbank positions, ready to counterattack the British warships.

The three British warships bombarded unscrupulously, and Lu Gan did not even consider whether to ask his superiors for instructions before counterattacking, and it was the basic consensus that the entire revolutionary government must be tough in the face of the aggression of the foreign powers, not to mention the genetic man who was a staunch nationalist.

Through the telescope, Lu Qian could see that these were three destroyers, and the caliber of the guns did not exceed 100 mm, which was not on the same level as the artillery of the artillery regiment. Moreover, three British ships were moored on the water, so the artillery could easily hit them. However, the artillery regiment did not carry too many armor-piercing shells, on average there were ten armor-piercing shells per gun, which was fine, and those old destroyers, even with high-explosive shells, were enough for them to drink a pot.

The infantry of the 1st Division withstood half an hour of shelling from the British ships, and they were covered with heavy casualties by the fire of dozens of guns from three warships, and in the process, the remaining 2,000 soldiers of the 7th Town raced against time to board the passenger and cargo ships that docked. Several heavy fire companies of the 1st Division tried to set up crane guns and mortars, but were soon targeted by the guns of the warships, and the British sailors showed a very high level of design, preparing to hit those heavy fire positions on the undulating Yangtze River.

The preparation of artillery with more than 100 mm was a tedious matter, and even with the mobile artifact of trucks, the artillerymen took more than half an hour to complete the placement of the artillery positions. Fortunately, the Wuchang railway station was less than three kilometers from the river bank to the north, and the artillery was able to set up positions with only a slight maneuver.

"Tell the artillery regiment that not a single enemy ship can be let go!" Lu Qian said to the herald. The distance is close, the shore is water, and the artillery is advanced, and if the three destroyers are allowed to escape under such a combat environment, Lu Qian will definitely dismiss the commander of the artillery regiment.

Thirty-eight artillery pieces of more than 100 mm caliber were scattered over a radius of tens of thousands of square meters, and observers calculated the coordinates, and one artillery gun took the lead in firing and firing test fire. The shell fell into the water about seven hundred meters from the right side of one of the destroyers, the observers continued to revise the coordinates, and the second shell was fired and landed in the area between the three destroyers.

The three British warships had already sensed that something was wrong, and it was not a good thing to be targeted by land artillery fire, especially the thin-skinned destroyers, and the three destroyers immediately anchored -- this was not the carelessness of the British army, but the warships of the British had not been threatened for more than half a century in China, and there was nothing worthy of increased vigilance on the part of the glorious British Royal Navy in this terminally ill country. Of course, the British sailors reacted fast enough, but the artillerymen reacted even faster.

"Artillery regiment, three consecutive armour-piercing shells salvo, put!" At the end of the test firing, the 38 guns of the artillery regiment opened fire at once, and the whistling armor-piercing shells formed a barrage of barrages and fell on the target on the river.

"Boom!" One destroyer was the most unlucky, having been hit with two armor-piercing shells in the first salvo, and the thin armor was easily torn apart like papier-mâché. The armor-piercing shell burrowed into the belly of the ship and exploded violently, and another armor-piercing shell tore a large hole in the bow of the ship. More than ten seconds later, a second round of shelling followed, and the three destroyers were like a leaf on the Yangtze River, swaying in the wind and waves.

Falling anchor was the biggest mistake of these three destroyers, otherwise they could at least escape with their speed. The most time was wasted by putting away the iron anchor, and by the time the steam engine was started, the fifth round of shells had already flown out of the muzzles of the guns, and the only destroyer that was not injured was hit by this round of shelling with three shells, one of which hit the engine compartment, rendering it incapacitated.

Fifteen minutes later, one of the three destroyers was sunk, and the other two were also heavily damaged in several places, sinking into the Yangtze River within ten minutes after the artillery regiment stopped shelling.

Although he did not know what impact this encounter would have on the revolutionary government, Lü Liang was still excited about it. Lu Gan, the commander of the first division, did what he wanted to do but hesitated to do, and after the excitement, Lu Liang had to pay for the excitement at this moment. Three destroyers were sunk, and the British would definitely have asked for an explanation, or simply sent troops. For the empire on which the sun never sets, such a big loss was enough for them to make the decision to send troops at home.

At the military level, there is no need to worry about the actions of the British for the time being, and the anger of the British at the diplomatic level has spread throughout the Prime Minister's Office, and Lu Liang was forced to eat the spit of the British council in Guangzhou for a minute, and then waved his hand to let people send off the guests. Under the stunned gaze of the British, Lu Liang said leisurely, we are not wrong in this matter, Britain wants peace or war, and the Chinese revolutionary government will accompany it!

The Russo-Japanese War was Lü Liang's greatest chance, but he would not grovel because of the strength of the British, and Lü Liang would not hesitate if he had to go to war with Britain. As for now, the most important thing is to pacify the two lakes and take the south of the Yangtze River.