Britain, Germany, France, and Russia, Germany and Russia, benefited from Lin Fei, and did not say much, Britain wanted to make peace with Germany in secret, but Germany, which saw the hope of victory in the war, refused.

The entire 422 bloody case was over, but Lin Fei knew very well that the incident of the Son of the Sea and this incident had deeply stimulated the Western powers, making the Western powers realize that they must act as soon as possible to help the Qing State solve Huaxia, otherwise the fat of the Qing State would be eaten up by Lin Fei alone.

Lin Fei realized that what he could do now was to solve the Qing court as soon as possible, so Lin Fei instructed Wei Zelong to take Nanjing as soon as possible, completely annihilate Li Hongzhang's department, and liberate a large area along the southeast coast of the Qing Dynasty.

Wei Zelong immediately led the troops, divided the troops into two routes, advanced by land and water, marched into Nanjing, and the first obstacle encountered in attacking Nanjing was the Jiangyin fortress.

Wei Zelong originally thought that attacking the Jiangyin fortress by land and water could make the defenders of the Jiangyin fortress suffer from the enemy on their backs and take care of themselves, and the Jiangyin fortress was within reach, but he did not expect that on the first day of the march, on April 25, it suddenly rained heavily, and the roads in the countryside were muddy and difficult to walk.

From Shanghai to Jiangyin, there was originally an official road connection, this official road has been funded by Chinese merchants to build a cement road, but I did not expect that when the Qing army retreated, tens of thousands of people were mobilized to completely dig the cement road, so that it was impossible to march at all.

The land advance was blocked, and Wei Zelong could only order his troops to march by water.

Pre-war reconnaissance had learned that the Qing army stationed in Jiangyin at this time had more than 100,000 naval and army personnel, including more than 90,000 military personnel and more than 10,000 naval troops.

The armament of the army is similar to that of the Qing army, and there is no need to repeat it, the navy is equipped with 40 steam gunboats, which are called the "Jianglong class", and each gunboat does not have a separate name, and is distinguished by number.

Each gunboat had a displacement of just over 200 tons, a length of 40 meters, a width of 15 meters, and a draft of only 2 meters.

The Jianglong-class steam gunboat is equipped with two 75 mm caliber naval guns produced by the British Armstrong Company, one in the bow and the other in the stern, and on the two sides of the gunboat, each equipped with two 11 mm caliber Hatch Chase six-barreled machine guns.

In addition to steam gunboats, sailors also have all kinds of "home-made torpedo boats", the so-called home-made torpedo boats, that is, fishing boats, tugboats, supply ships, and other auxiliary ships are loaded with torpedoes, and in wartime they act as death squads, rushing towards the Huaxia warships and firing torpedoes.

Originally, the intelligence department could estimate the number of torpedo boats unearthed based on the number of torpedoes owned by the Qing army, but before the war between China and the Qing state, the United States secretly transported a large number of torpedoes to the Qing country, which made it impossible for the intelligence department to accurately estimate the number of torpedoes owned by the Qing army.

The idea of the earthen torpedo boat came from Li Hongzhang, who originally designed to kill Lin Fei on Liugong Island, filled eight auxiliary ships with explosives, and crashed into Lin Fei's ship, but was sunk by Lin Fei's battleships, and Lin Fei also took advantage of the situation to take the Liugong Island naval base, and wiped out the fleet that the Qing State had painstakingly built in one fell swoop.

At that time, Li Hongzhang regretted that he did not install torpedoes on auxiliary ships, and after the Liugongdao incident, Li Hongzhang arranged for manpower to install torpedoes on many ships.

In addition to the water combat force, the Qing sailors also have shore combat forces, this force is the shore defense battery, there are two high mountains near Jiangyin, one is called Xishan, the other is called Dongshan, the Qing army has arranged coastal defense batteries on these two mountains, each battery is equipped with three 305 mm heavy guns, and the vicinity of Jiangyin City is strictly protected.

Wei Zelong saw that the Qing army's defense was so tight, and he couldn't help but sweat for the naval commander Hua Hai, can the naval warship move so many gunboats and shore defense batteries?

With the hydrological conditions of the Yangtze River, the Emperor-class cruiser with a displacement of up to 8,000 tons cannot be used, which requires the use of the Dragon-class cruiser, the displacement of the Dragon-class cruiser is only 3,000 tons, which is very suitable for fighting in the Yangtze River.

Wei Zelong transferred a total of four dragon-class cruisers, the dragon ship, the dragon ship, the dragon ship and the blood dragon ship, this is the last batch of dragon-class cruisers in China, after the emperor-class cruiser and the dynasty-class battleship entered service one after another, the dragon-class cruiser stopped production, and the old warships such as the Tianlong ship and the Yunlong ship joined the Maritime Guard.

Four Dragon-class cruisers do not seem to be enough to compete with the steam gunboats and home-made torpedo boats like the wolf pack of the Qing Dynasty, so Huahai transferred ten Leopard-class high-speed transport ships into the war zone, although the Dragon-class cruisers are no longer produced, but the Leopard-class high-speed transport ships are still in production, Lin Fei originally planned to use the Emperor-class cruisers as the basis to produce another type of high-speed transport ships, but after calculating the cost, he finally dispelled this idea.

The Huaxia Navy had assembled fourteen combat ships, which was enough to fight the Qing army, but Hua Hai did not dare to order the fleet to be dispatched because he was afraid of the Qing army's two batteries in Dongshan and Xishan.

Hua Hai decided to first kill the Qing army's two batteries in Dongshan and Xishan, and then take out the surface troops of the Qing army.

At this time, Lin Fei had already transferred all eight Monkey King airships to Shanghai, which were under the command of Wei Zelong.

Hua Hai applied to Wei Zelong for the command of the eight Monkey King airships, and Wei Zelong immediately issued an order to hand over all the eight Monkey King airships to Hua Hai's command, and Hua Hai then ordered that the eight Monkey King airships be dispatched to bombard the Qing army's Xishan Fort and Dongshan Fort.

Lin Gecheng, the commander of the Monkey King's airship, suggested to Hua Hai that he also launch a strike on the Qing steam gunboat anchored in Jiangyin, but Hua Hai rejected this suggestion after some consideration, Hua Hai believed that the Monkey King's airship was not very accurate when dropping bombs, and it might not be able to accurately hit the enemy ship, so it was better to concentrate firepower to kill the Qing country's battery.

On 28 April, the Battle of Jiangyin officially began, and eight Monkey King airships took off from Shanghai and went straight to the east and west mountains of Jiangyin.

At the same time, Yu Bing led the Blood Phoenix Special Forces to secretly form a bombing guidance group, rushed to the West Mountain and East Mountain, and released colored smoke on the ground to guide the Monkey King airship in the air.

The reason why the Yubing and Blood Phoenix special forces were sent was because the hair of the Qing women, like the hair of the Chinese women, would not be discovered, and the lessons of the Battle of Shanghai had already shown that hair was the most important obstacle to the infiltration of the Chinese army.

Yu Bing led the girls, dressed as peasant women of the Qing Kingdom, and quietly rushed to the vicinity of the fort, lurking, and waiting for the appearance of the Monkey King's airship.

At ten o'clock in the morning, eight Monkey King airships appeared in the sky, and Yu Bing immediately ordered the female soldiers to release smoke, which was bright yellow and could rise more than a hundred meters high, and could be seen from a distance.

Monkey King Airship saw the smoke column from a distance, and immediately flew towards the smoke column, near the smoke column, the bombardiers saw the fort and artillery, the Qing army's artillery was placed in the open air, and there was not even a camouflage net on it, which was clear from the sky.

When the Monkey King airship flew towards the fort, the Blood Phoenix special forces on the ground quickly retreated, and the bombs thrown by the Monkey King airship were very unsound, in case they exploded, they would be in trouble.

Soon the Qing artillery entered the range of the Monkey King's airship, and the bombardier aimed at the gun and dropped the aerial bomb, although the aerial bomb was equipped with a stable tail and optimized the aerodynamic shape, but the error was still not small, and none of the first wave of bombs fell on the turret.

The Qing army began to raise their guns to fight back, they pointed their guns at the sky and pulled the trigger, but the bullets fell to the ground far away from the Monkey King's airship.

After throwing the first wave of aerial bombs, the Monkey King airship flew over the fort, and then threw the second wave of aerial bombs, which finally hit the Qing artillery.

The explosive power of the aerial bomb is even stronger than that of the 280 mm grenade on the Dynasty class battleship, and as soon as the aerial bomb falls within 50 meters of the gun, the gun will lose its combat effectiveness, and the barrel will be bent by a violent shock wave.

The power of the aerial bomb also shocked the Qing army on the fort, although they had heard that the Chinese airship was very powerful, but they did not expect that the Chinese airship was so powerful, the bomb dropped, it could blow up the barrel as thick as a human leg (although the caliber of the artillery used by the Qing army was only 305 mm, but the barrel wall was very thick, so the gun body was very thick).

The Monkey King airship threw out all the aerial bombs, all the artillery on the Qing army battery turned into scrap metal, the Monkey King airship then retreated, Hua Hai immediately used intelligence relations to reconnoiter the damage to the Qing army battery, three hours later, Hua Hai determined that the artillery on the Qing army battery had been destroyed, so he ordered the naval fleet to attack Jiangyin.

The Qing Dynasty's Jianglong-class gunboats were immediately dispatched to intercept the Huaxia fleet, and a major battle was about to be fought on the Yangtze River.

Seeing that a big war was about to break out between the two sides, the Monkey King airship suddenly flew to the Qing army camp and dropped a string of aerial bombs.

This bombing was completely blind, because the Monkey King airship had no idea what the buildings on the ground were used for, and they couldn't even find where the ammunition depot of the Qing army was and where the coal depot of the Qing army was.

In order to overcome the difficulty of blind bombing that cannot accurately destroy targets, the Monkey King airship uses incendiary bombs.