Chapter 41: Closing the Door and Beating the Dog

As mentioned last time, Liu Hou's blasting team immediately studied the blasting plan, carried out directional blasting, and blasted the big stone ball.

Three days later, the blasting team carved dozens of holes in the large stone balls, stuffed gunpowder rolled into a cylindrical shape with paper, and finally detonated the gunpowder in batches.

I only heard "Peng, Peng, Peng!" The muffled sound was heard, and the explosives in these small holes finally exploded the large stone balls into countless small stones. The mountain walls on both sides were not affected at all, and not even a small pebble fell.

Each explosion is low-intensity, with little impact on the surrounding environment, and relatively speaking, this explosion can be said to be quiet. Together, however, they can blast a boulder into pieces. In Liu Hou's view, this is already a directional blasting.

Liu Hou greatly appreciated their work and decided to give them credit. The demolition team was very happy, but they didn't expect that they could make meritorious contributions without participating in the charge.

The stone balls that were blown into pieces were easy to do, and there were so many Shu soldiers that they only needed to dispatch a platoon of men and horses to quickly clean up these broken stones, along with the earth, stones, and giant trees that were used to prevent the stone balls from rolling.

Although the big stone ball has been completed, it is not possible to continue the attack now, and Liu Hou must first determine whether the Dongwu people will have similar tricks.

Of course, the task of reconnaissance is entrusted to the hot air balloon unit, and what reconnaissance method is better than aerial reconnaissance. Soon, the hot air balloon returned with news that there were no more large stone balls on the top of the mountain.

Originally, the pilot on the hot air balloon also saw a big stone in the walled gate, because there was a certain distance in the air, the pilot did not notice that this stone was a spherical thing, and at the same time, the pilot also thought that this was just a stone used by the Dongwu people to block the walled gate, and did not think of other aspects, so he did not report.

After all, the Shu army attacked the cities of Eastern Wu several times, and the people of Eastern Wu liked to block the city gate with earth and stones, such as in Cangwu City. This made the pilot lose his vigilance, and he did not expect that the stone blocking the gate was completely different from the soil and stone of the other city gates.

This eventually led to a tragedy. This time, the pilot watched very carefully, and circled around the pass at the top of the mountain three times before reporting back to Liu Hou, saying that he had not seen that kind of big stone ball again.

Liu Hou was still not at ease, so he asked the pilot to draw the layout of the pass, and specifically asked them to draw what was stacked in each area above.

After Liu Hou received the pilot's sketch of the pass, he saw at a glance that an area not far from the gate was marked with the word "wood", and this area was drawn with a rectangle less than one centimeter wide and two centimeters long.

Liu Hou issued an order to the hot air balloon troops, asking them to use binoculars to scout the pile of timber and report the details to themselves.

The Dongwu defenders in Hengpu Pass saw three behemoths flying around, one would rise and one would land, they didn't know why, they only knew that these things must be related to the Shu army, the enemy had such a terrible thing, they would have been scared and trembling, if it weren't for the strict military discipline, many people would have fled long ago.

Soon, the information of the hot air balloon reconnaissance again was delivered to Liu Hou's hands, the pile of wood was a cylindrical tree, all of which were cut into about three feet in length, about thigh-thick and even waist-thick, and the number was about several thousand.

Seeing this, Liu Hou really broke out in a cold sweat this time. Fortunately, he didn't rush to attack again, these are all wood, or rolling logs. The cylindrical shape of the tree can be rolled down the sloping mountain path, and the length of three feet is just right for rolling in this narrow mountain road.

Although the power of such a tree body is far less than that huge stone ball, but it is better than the number, if the Shu army wants to strengthen the pass, the Eastern Wu people release these rolling logs on the top of the mountain, it is definitely another massacre situation.

No matter how powerful the muskets and thunderbolts of the Shu army are, they are useless, and the range of these things is far less than that of rolling wood. Not only can the rolling log roll far away, but it also has the skill of group killing. As long as the Dongwu people threw down dozens of these rolling logs every time, the Shu army on the entire mountain road would be cleansed.

Each wave of logs will be from the top of the hill to the corner where the large boulder can be blocked. That's a few hundred meters, almost a thousand meters away.

Even if it is bombarded with artillery, the killing distance and lethality may not be as good as such a wave of rolling logs. What's more, because of the difficulty of transportation, the speed of the artillery was very slow, Liu Hou led the team to march all the way at high speed, leaving the artillery far behind, and it was not known when they would be transported.

Fortunately, the artillery was not delivered in time, otherwise, under the bombardment of the big stone ball, it is estimated that the artillery truck would not be spared, and it would even be driven down by the big stone ball, causing more casualties of the Shu army. Of course, the possibility of artillery blocking this large rock is not ruled out.

Now that the enemy's strength has been discovered, it is necessary to respond in a targeted manner, and this is the truth that knowing oneself and knowing that the enemy will not be defeated in a hundred battles.

If it is the era of cold weapons, even if you know that the enemy has stored a lot of rolling logs here, there is no good way to use human lives to consume these rolling logs. However, now that the Shu army has entered the aviation era, where is it necessary to do this, just launch an air strike.

This time, three hot air balloons were dispatched together, one filled with fire oil and the other two with thunderbolts. As the three hot air balloons slowly floated to the pass at the top of the mountain, the pilot of the hot air balloon filled with fire oil smashed all the oil canisters on the pile of rolling logs, and then threw a torch down.

The raging flames burst out in an instant, and the rolling tongue of fire almost burned the hot air balloon above, and the frightened pilot on the hot air balloon hurriedly threw sandbags and scrambled into the air to avoid these flames.

The fire suddenly rose, and the Dongwu army in the pass quickly reacted, and they picked up the guys and rushed up to put out the fire. Of course, there was not much water available on the top of the mountain to fight the fire, so the Soochow soldiers picked up some cloth or clothes and tied them to the front of a wooden pole or spear to put out the fire.

However, the remaining two hot air balloons had been waiting for a long time, and at this time, they were condescending, and when they saw a large number of people, they threw thunderbolts down, blowing up the firefighters on their backs.

The Soochow defenders no longer dared to gather near the pile of rolling wood to fight the fire, and instead dispersed to avoid the bombardment of two hot air balloons.

The rolling wood itself is a dry wood, belonging to the best firewood, now to pour the oil on the fire, after the fire boils, it will soon become a prairie fire, thousands of wood soon become a pile of super bonfire, the rolling heat wave scorched so that people within a few feet can not approach.

The other two hot air balloons were even more unforgiving, and when they saw that the fire was out of control, they gave up blocking those who rushed up to put out the fire, and turned to bombing the city gates, barracks and other buildings.

Of course, this process is not so smooth to say, the wind on the mountain is stronger, the pilot control zhì to take the hot air balloon is very difficult, the two people desperately pedal the propeller in turn, only to barely stop the hot air balloon in the pass for a stick of incense time, after a stick of incense, they can no longer maintain the position of the hot air balloon, blown away by the mountain wind.

But the time for this incense stick was enough, and the Eastern Wu army in the pass was already in chaos, and the rolling logs they relied on for defense were all burned. The vine armor army, which had been blocked in the mountain road for a long time, swarmed up, and rushed to the gate of the city without encountering the counterattack of the Eastern Wu army, because the Eastern Wu army on the city wall and in the city gate was either killed or scared away and fled for their lives under the key care of the hot air balloon.

The Shu army piled up hundreds of catties of gunpowder at the city gate, and then hid far away, when the lead burned out, there was a loud bang, and the city gate was blown to pieces, but fortunately, there were not many Dongwu people near the city gate, and the explosion did not cause many casualties.

After the blasting, the vine armor army rushed up and smashed into the pass, on one side was the recuperated and invulnerable vine armor army, and on the other side was the panicked and headless flies of the Eastern Wu soldiers, the results of the battle did not need to be guessed at all, it was a one-sided situation.

The Dongwu people were slaughtered lightly, and the Shu army was angry with the big stone ball put by the Dongwu people, causing more than 500 casualties in the Shu army, and killing the Dongwu soldiers one by one.

When Liu Hou went up to the pass, he found that the defenders of Eastern Wu had almost been killed, and there were no prisoners left.

But he also knew that it was no wonder that these rattan armor troops, after all, their comrades, clansmen and even brothers and relatives were pressed into meat sauce by these Dongwu people, which made them have a deep hatred with these defenders, and they were suppressed on the narrow mountain road for a long time, and they had already harbored a fire in their hearts. Not letting them vent out now could cause even more chaos.

Now that the incident has happened, Liu Hou will not punish these soldiers for a few Dongwu people, although this matter is obviously in front of him, he has to pretend not to know.

This matter was exposed in this way, and the poor Dongwu people died in vain, but Liu Hou did not punish the Tengjia army, but it does not mean that he does not pay attention to the impact of this matter.

After the battle, Liu Hou ordered his troops to stay on the pass to rest, and at the same time asked the soldiers to step up the repair of the damaged pass in order to deal with possible reinforcements from Eastern Wu. The key point is to intensify the ideological education of these barbarians during the period of recuperation of the troops, and to give them discipline lessons again and again, so as to carve the sense of discipline into the depths of their bone marrow.

Liu Hou did this in order to prevent his own troops from slaughtering the city in the future. Fortunately, this time, the Tengjia army slaughtered a pass, a purely military military fortress, and there were no civilians in it.

In the future, if he enters the hinterland of the Central Plains, there will be more big cities with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of civilians, and if there is another thing where his army gets out of control and wantonly slaughters, then he, the prince of the Han Dynasty, will not have to be the prince.

The results of this rectification campaign were remarkable, and it laid a solid foundation for this unit to become a strong and iron army that was forbidden by orders in the future.

After counting the results of the battle, this time the 5,000 Eastern Wu soldiers guarding the pass were all wiped out, and only a few dozen wounded were rescued after Liu Hou arrived at the pass and stopped the Tengjia army from further slaughter.

The Shu army was crushed to death by the big stone ball, and later attacked the pass and sacrificed more than 50 people, most of whom were burned in vain because they accidentally rubbed the fire source in the pass where they were on fire everywhere, and ignited the rattan armor on their bodies;

Others accidentally ignited their rattan armor because they were hit by people who were scurrying around with fire and pain; There are also some who saw that the rattan armor on their comrades was on fire, and kindly went to put out the fire, but they were set on fire.

In short, it is a chain reaction caused by the ignition of the rattan armor on the body of a few people. Fortunately, the others reacted quickly enough to dodge in time, so that the chain reaction did not continue, otherwise the number of casualties would have been even greater.

Knowing that more than 50 soldiers had died in vain, Liu Hou became depressed again, and wrote another letter to Zuo Ci overnight, urging him to organize the strength of the research institute and strengthen the research on the subject of rattan armor fire prevention.

Within a few days, Liu Hou received battle reports from Guo Youzhi and Zhao Yun, saying that Yangshan Pass and Huangji Valley Pass had been successfully captured. Of course, the two troops also had their own damages, but the battle losses were very few, but it was Liu Hou's troops who attacked Hengpu Pass, and they died the most because of the big stone ball.

At this point, the Shu army has achieved all its strategic objectives, and the trend of closing the door and fighting dogs in the Lingnan region has been formed. Liu Hou's dream of King Nanyue has been realized for the most part, and the rest is only a matter of time.

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