Chapter 13: The Death of the Hot Air Balloon

On this day, Liu Hou ordered 10,000 rattan armor soldiers, 3,000 musketeers were responsible for the main attack, and the rest of the men and horses were led by Guo Youzhi, who was responsible for blocking and delaying the rescue of Ding Fengbu by the other two Eastern Wu armies.

There is nothing fancy about this battle plan, and it is a real and hard-hitting battle plan. What the Shu army is most afraid of now is to fight hard, and what Lu Xun is most afraid of is what kind of conspiracy Lu Xun is engaged in.

The Shu army dispatched troops as usual, and took a good position below the high ground and prepared to attack.

This is a small hill with a height of about 50 meters and a slope of about 30 degrees, which can not even be called a mountain, it can only be regarded as a piece of high ground, but this high ground is relatively large, enough to accommodate 50,000 Eastern Wu soldiers.

The Soochow army had a number of defensive lines on the hillside, each of which usually began with a row of repulsors, that is, obstacles made of wooden branches.

This thing may not be very strong, but if you want to figure it out, you have to spend a lot of time first.

In the course of this week, he is usually stabbed in the heart by the pikemen who have been prepared for a long time, or becomes a live target for the archers behind him.

There was a trench behind the barrage, and the pikemen hid in it, using their spears to stab the enemies who tried to destroy it.

Behind the trench is a low wall, which was rammed on the ground from the earth in which the trench was dug. Countless archers hid behind the low wall and looked down the hillside to shoot.

A row of red deer barricades, a ditch, and a low wall formed a line of defense. Liu Hou sent a hot air balloon to fly into the sky to reconnoiter the enemy's situation, and found that the Dongwu people had arranged three lines of defense for such a defensive line!

This made Liu Hou very depressed, he only had 40,000 people, and the other party had 200,000, why did these Dongwu people look like big bad wolves, but they themselves were like little white rabbits, hiding in the thatched hut and shivering.

It seems that he has become prestigious, otherwise, with a five-to-one ratio of troops, the Dongwu people will not only defend and not attack. And looking at their appearance, they attach great importance to this defensive battle, are cautious, and are well prepared for it.

Liu Hou did not pay much attention to the defensive preparations made by the Eastern Wu people, and he believed that with the strong firepower of his troops, it would not be difficult to attack them.

However, as soon as he launched the attack, he knew that he was wrong. Liu Hou first dispatched a battalion of musketeers, and under the protection of a group of rattan armor soldiers armed with rattan cards, launched a tentative attack.

Due to the condescending position of the Eastern Wu soldiers, the range of bows and arrows was greatly increased, so, for the sake of prudence, Liu Hou lined up in front of the musketeers with a group of rattan armor soldiers holding huge rattan cards. As mentioned above, this kind of rattan is very large and lightweight, which can be easily lifted above the head and used to block the arrows thrown down.

The two sides shot a round up and down the mountain, but the Eastern Wu people shot arrows, and the Shu army shot buckshot. Liu Hou immediately discovered a problem, although the Shu army was under the protection of the rattan card, although there was not much damage, to Liu Hou's surprise, the damage to the Eastern Wu army was not great.

Liu Hou observed with a telescope for a long time and found that the Eastern Wu Army also had a large shield in front of it. This shield is large, enough to be a man high, and it is supposed to be the legendary tower shield. Crucially, the lead bullets fired by his own musketeers were unable to penetrate these tower shields.

This really surprised Liu Hou, when did Dongwu develop such a bullish shield? Of course, Liu Hou didn't know that after the Hong army he led showed its might in Jingzhou last time, his firearms troops had already been hung up by Wei and Wu.

The two countries have been fighting wars for many years, and the wise and resourceful people of the DPRK and China are like carps crossing the river, and there are countless of them, and their keen understanding of the changes in the shape of war is far beyond Liu Hou's imagination.

There is such a terrible weapon in Shu, how can they not pay attention to it, since they are concerned, how can they not think of a way to take measures to deal with it.

In addition to sending countless spies to try to steal the secrets of Shu's firearms, they are also actively researching ways to deal with these firearms in their own country. The tower shield in front of Liu Hou is one of the coping methods of Dongwu.

In addition to being tall, the most special thing about this tower shield is that it is covered with iron sheets, and in the middle is a thick wooden plank, lined with cowhide. This kind of tower shield has amazing defensive power, and the battle that is taking place proves that even the muskets of the Shu army cannot penetrate it.

However, it is obvious that the weight of this tower shield is definitely not light, and a strong man can barely carry it, but it takes two people to carry it away to charge with the shield.

Fortunately, this kind of tower shield is wide enough, and two people huddle together to carry a shield, which can cover two people at the same time, and then a row of shields is lined up side by side to form a shield wall, and then neatly advance, which is indeed a terrible weapon of war.

Liu Hou saw this metallic shield in the Dongwu defense line from the telescope, and his brows furrowed. The elevation angles of the artillery were insufficient, and in such terrain it was not very convenient to use the artillery. So, the old way, Liu Hou ordered the hot air balloon troops to be dispatched.

The ten hot air balloons were divided into two, five on Liu Hou's side, and five on Guo Youzhi's side.

Watching the five hot air balloons fly over the hillside, drop thunderbolts, and blow up the tower shield defense line of Dongwu, Liu Hou had a bright smile on his face.

Soon he couldn't laugh, though, and he realized again that he was wrong, this time very wrong.

The sound of "whoosh" sounded, and more than a dozen arm-thick javelin-like objects were shot into the sky.

"Bed crossbow!" I don't know who shouted it. Liu Hou also immediately reacted that the Dongwu people must have modified the base of the bed crossbow so that they could fight in the air.

Previously, bed crossbows were generally mounted on the city walls, and could only be fired from the front. Although it is also possible to adjust the elevation angle to change its range, this adjustment is very limited, basically the elevation angle will not exceed 45 degrees, because if it exceeds 45 degrees, it becomes a projectile, which is meaningless for the bed crossbow.

Now, for the first time, the Shu army has seen a bed crossbow with an elevation angle of more than 45 degrees, and this change in the bed crossbow of the Eastern Wu army is obviously aimed at the hot air balloon of the Shu army.

Liu Hou watched more than a dozen bed crossbow arrows shoot at the five hot air balloons, his eyes were split, but he couldn't do anything.

These bolts were not just one arrow, they were all wrapped in a strip of cloth soaked in fire oil underneath their arrows, and they had been ignited. In other words, these crossbow arrows are rockets.

More than a dozen rockets swooped down on the five hot air balloons like a dozen meteors moving in the opposite direction.

In just an instant, three hot air balloons were hit, some hit the basket, some hit the airbag, and no matter where they hit, the arrows all burned up without exception. It happened so fast that no one could stop it.

It was only at this time that Liu Hou reacted. He immediately issued an order for the flag soldiers to issue a flag message, so that the hot air balloons that were not hit by the arrow should be urgently lifted into the air and out of the battlefield, and those who had been hit by the arrow should make an emergency landing, so as to ensure the safety of the pilot's life as much as possible.

Watching the flames on the three hot air balloons in the air grow from small to large, from sparks to bright prairie fires, the soldiers on both sides of the war invariably stopped attacking, their hearts were full of shock, and they all raised their heads to look at this shocking scene.

Liu Hou's heart was dripping blood, but it happened in the air, he had already done what he had to do, and he had no way to save them.

At this time, the four pilots on the hot air balloon with two baskets on fire jumped down one after another, the wind was strong in the sky, the fire rose very fast, and it was already threatening their safety, and they had to jump out of the basket.

"Yikes! ......" The people on the ground who were watching all let out an exclamation, and both the soldiers of the Eastern Wu Army and the Shu Army were stunned by this tragic situation.

Immediately afterwards, an even more shocking scene occurred, only to see the two burning baskets "boom" and "boom" twice, and they were blown apart. There are a lot of thunderbolts in the basket, and if the fire burns through the basket, it will naturally ignite the thunderbolts.

The shocking scene was not over, because the people on the ground saw three bright red giant flowers bloom in the sky. It turned out to be the pilot who had jumped out of the basket earlier, opened his parachute one after another, and was now slowly drifting down.

Huang Yueying successfully developed a parachute at about the same time as the development of the hot air balloon (see Chapter 28 of Volume II), but this thing was also listed as a military secret by Liu Hou, and only the pilots and relevant officials knew about it, and only when pilots were training to parachute, they would be used in remote, uninhabited places, and had never been displayed in the eyes of the world.

This is the first time that a parachute has been used in full view, because this is an emergency that needs to be saved, it is a time when it has to be used, and according to the pilot's code, it can be used at this time.

Soon, everyone found that these big red guys were not flowers, but like umbrellas, three big red umbrellas, and there was a person hanging under each big umbrella, and many people sighed that the Shu army was really a strange thing. Even the soldiers of the Shu army were the same, they had never seen a parachute, and their surprise was not much different from that of the Eastern Wu army.

How come there are only three umbrellas? Didn't four people jump out? Soon they found the fourth man, because he smashed into the position of the Eastern Wu army at a very fast speed, and with a "peng" sound, a circle of high dust was splashed.

The others didn't understand what was going on, but Liu Hou, who was watching with a telescope from a distance, knew in his heart that the unlucky pilot was probably stunned by the air wave when the basket exploded, or he was directly killed, and he didn't have a chance to open the parachute, so he died on the spot.

The corpse fell from the sky, causing a commotion on the Soochow position, in which the pilot who was thrown to death caused a terrible, bloody and cruel scene, in order to avoid you regurgitation, I will not say it here.

Speaking of the three pilots alone, because when they parachuted, they were just above the main formation of the Soochow Army, and when they opened the parachute, they were already very close to the ground, and the near ground and the high altitude were different, and the wind speed was relatively small, so the three parachutes were basically not blown away far, and all of them fell in the formation of the Soochow Army.

The three pilots naturally became prisoners of the Soochow. It was the first time that the Shu army fell into the hands of the enemy and became a prisoner, and he was still such an important person, Liu Hou saw this scene from the telescope and became sad again.

But now is not the time to be sentimental, there are still three hot air balloons floating in the sky, one of which was shot into an airbag, the material of the airbag is cowhide, which is not easy to burn. However, the crossbow arrow pierced a large hole, causing the airbag to leak, and the guide to the hot air balloon kept decreasing in height.

The other two hot air balloons were unscathed, and the pilots on them took emergency measures to take off, and the hot air balloons quickly flew to an altitude of more than 400 meters, and then stepped on the propellers and returned to the direction of the Shu army.

Seeing this, Liu Hou breathed a sigh of relief, these two intact hot air balloons don't need to worry anymore, they have been out of the range of the bed crossbow, and they are not afraid of any more danger.

Now it's the airbag leaking hot air balloon that is the most worrying, the pilot on it has been stepping on the propeller with all his might, but this behemoth, it's really not so easy to move it.

Even though the pilot exerted his strength to feed, the hot air balloon still moved slowly towards the Shu army's position. Liu Hou made a rough estimate according to the speed at which the hot air balloon landed and the speed at which it flew, and estimated that the leaky hot air balloon should not return to the formation of the Shu army before landing, and at most return to the middle of the large array of the two armies.