Chapter 34: The Periscope

As mentioned last time, Zhang Bao raised a question: why the place guarded by the dozen or so people with hoes was the superficial part of the tunnel.

Guo Youzhi replied: "The reason is very simple, because looking at the posture of these people, they know that this place can be easily dug with a hoe. That is to tell us in disguise, the tunnel here is very close to the ground. In fact, there is another important reason for choosing this place as the opening, that is, except for these ten or so people, there are no soldiers guarding here, and it is a relatively weak place in defense. ”

When everyone heard Guo Youzhi's analysis, they also nodded frequently, agreeing with his point of view, and then everyone began to discuss how to open a hole in this place without realizing it, and then kill these dozen guys who pretended to be farmers with lightning speed.

On the evening of the second day of the meeting, at the edge of a pond in Changsha City, fifteen Eastern Wu soldiers gathered around a bonfire, roasting and eating while roasting the fire. They roasted not any game, but steamed buns and some vegetables.

In this war-torn era, it would be good to have something to fill their stomachs, and where would they dare to have meat, if they were not on an important mission, they might not be able to get such a good meal. However, although these steamed buns and vegetables are vegetarian, they are half-roasted and have a unique flavor to eat.

They are three soldiers, there are five men in one army, and fifteen people in three soldiers, and tonight it is their turn to be on duty, and the other three soldiers will take their place at dawn. Their task is simple, after receiving the predetermined signal, they dig the tunnel as quickly as possible to divert water from the nearby pond into the tunnel.

This task seems to be easy and safe, at least, with the Shu army already under the city, it is better to stay here than to wait for death on the city wall. That's right, just wait for death.

They have all heard some rumors, which are spread by the soldiers who fled back from Guiyang and Hengyang, the legend says that the Shu army has a very terrifying weapon, which is a kind of divine thunder that falls from the sky, as long as a thunder sounds, where the thunder is blown up, no matter who is killed or injured.

In the past two days, they have also seen the terrible nature of these divine thunders, it is said that many people were killed in the military camp, and later the metropolitan governor had to disperse the soldiers in the military camp into the houses to avoid the divine thunder of the Shu army.

Then, the city walls, city gates, and fortifications were bombarded by divine thunder, and I don't know how many people died on the city walls. Fortunately, the Metropolitan Governor let everyone dig a hole in the ground, and as soon as the monsters of the Shu army that released the gods and thunders came, everyone drilled into the hole, but the thing was small, damp, dark, and stuffy, and it was really uncomfortable to stay inside. But for the sake of their lives, no matter how uncomfortable they are, they don't dare not drill.

Not far from these three people is a hole, this hole is not connected to the tunnel, it is a separate pit, as long as there is any wind and grass, they will jump into this hole for the first time, and its behavior is very similar to that of the gopher that can make holes.

Just when these people were less than ten paces away, which was the most superficial part of the tunnel, the Shu army had accurately found this location by measuring and calculating. Now, there are a lot of people gathered here, but they are all in the tunnels, so the Dongwu hoe soldiers on the ground still don't know anything.

They didn't know that danger was coming, but they still talked loudly and made trouble, and even one of the soldiers secretly hid a gourd of bad wine, which he was very proud to show off. A fellow soldier grabbed a sip next to him, and soon, others joined in the scramble. As a disciplined army, alcohol is absolutely forbidden in the barracks.

Nowadays, it is rare to see a gourd wine, and even the worst of the bad wines are attractive enough. And the soldier who took the wine out to show off was obviously a generous person, and let everyone share their "fine wine" one by one, but unfortunately the wine was too small, and the gourd turned around two or three times in the crowd, and everyone only drank two or three sips, and the wine gourd was empty.

The Shu soldiers in the tunnel were padded with multiple layers of soft cloth under their feet, and they walked silently like kittens. In addition to tiptoeing, all their movements are also very gentle, trying to avoid the sound of weapons colliding. Everyone doesn't say a word, and communication is achieved through gestures or writing.

The hardest part were the engineers in charge of the excavation, who were armed with a shovel that was only the width of the palm of the hand, a pointed and sharp mouth, and a wide and smooth end of the handle. Instead of ramming the shovel into the dirt from a long distance, they gently pressed the tip of the shovel against the dirt, then pressed the end of the wide, smooth handle with both hands, pressed the shovel into the dirt with yin force, and finally dug out the mud.

Originally, the end of the handle of this shovel was made so wide and smooth that it was easy for both hands to press on it, so that the shovel could be more easily pressed into the dirt.

This excavation method does not make a sound, but the excavation efficiency can be imagined, they have been digging for two hours, and they have not been able to dig into the ground in this position, which is considered to be the most superficial. However, all the personnel involved in the excavation were very careful and patient, and still dug carefully in this inefficient way.

The reason why the Shu army in the tunnel is so tiptoeing is to escape the listening of the urn of the Eastern Wu army, as long as there is no sound, the sonar will naturally lose its effect.

The underground Shu army engineers dug for another hour, the time had come, everything was quiet, and after the three hoe soldiers on the ground had eaten and drunk, they fell asleep around the fire and fell asleep, leaving only one person still awake on duty. His task was to wake up the others as soon as the superiors gave the signal to dig, and then dig together, and from this point of view, it was really enough to leave a person awake, not including, of course, tonight.

With a soft "snort", a small black shovel pierced out of the ground, revealing half of the shovel head, and immediately retracted again. The hoe soldiers of Soochow, who were awake on duty, heard the noise, turned their heads to look this way, and by the light of the bonfire, they did not see anything. It was an open open space by the pond with no place to hide.

In the tunnel, when a Shu soldier pressed a shovel on the dirt above his head, he directly pierced the ground. Fortunately, he was clever and took the shovel back before the hoe soldiers turned their heads to look at this side, avoiding the consequences of being discovered.

A waiting soldier immediately stepped forward, covered the hole with a black cloth to prevent the light from penetrating the tunnel to the ground, and then pushed several people involved in the excavation next to him, signaling them to stop digging first. As soon as they saw that there was a place covered with black cloth, they knew that they had dug into the ground, so they all stopped. The rest of the work will be a little different, but you have to be more careful.

Next, instead of pressing the shovel deep into the soil and digging down the soil in large chunks, they scrape the surface of the soil layer by layer, so that the "skin" of the ground is slowly scraped thin and smooth.

In less than a quarter of an hour, a square "thin skin" was scraped out, and the Shu army in the tunnel had even seen grass roots exposed.

There is only a thin layer of "dirt", or turf, in this square area, and if someone steps into this range on the ground at this time, there is no doubt that they will fall into the tunnel.

However, now the Shu army can't let this piece of land wear it out, it is still useful, at least it can be used as a cover for ugliness, covering the actions of the Shu army under the ground, and not letting the people of Eastern Wu see it.

In order to prevent this "thin skin" from collapsing, the engineer brought a wooden board one foot square, which was exactly the same size and shape as the "thin skin". It's just a fist-sized hole in the middle.

They put this plank on top of their heads on this "thin skin" and used several wooden stakes to hold it up, so that the "thin skin" was supported by the plank, and even if someone walked on it, it would not fall off. This qiē arrangement is all planned in advance. At the beginning of the brainstorming meeting, everyone put forward various possibilities, and in the end, they solved each problem one by one, improved one by one, and finally made a very detailed action plan. There are even details in the plan such as using wooden planks to support the thinned ground.

After these things were ready, one of the engineers walked over to the small hole in the middle of the plank, took out a spearhead, aimed it at the small hole and slowly pressed it. The sharp spearhead lightly pierced the "thin skin" in the small hole and poked out of the ground.

The spearhead is still painted black, avoiding reflection in the firelight, making it harder to spot in the dark. Even so, the engineer retracted his spearhead as soon as he pierced the ground, refusing to let it stay on the ground for another second.

After the engineer retreated, he was followed by a company commander of the special forces unit, and the special forces led by this company commander were the elite of the Cobra special forces, the trump card of the trump cards.

But now he had neither a crossbow nor a sword in his hand, but a brass pipe, also painted black. There is also an elbow at both ends of this copper tube, which looks like a particularly long Z-shape.

The company commander walked under the hole in the plank, slowly stretched the copper pipe in his hand out of the ground, and then put his eyes on the elbow at the lower end of the copper pipe, and looked at it carefully. Some unknown Shu soldiers around felt inexplicable about the company commander's grotesque behavior, thinking that he was crazy, what was there to look at in a copper pipe, and what else would there be in it except for the black rumbling?

Only a few people know what the company commander is doing, and what kind of treasure is the copper pipe in his hand. That's right, the company commander was reconnoitring the enemy on the ground, and the copper pipe in his hand was naturally a periscope.

This periscope is the "important" task that Liu Hou gave to Zhang Xingcai. At the beginning, Liu Hou drew the drawings and handed them to Zhang Xingcai and asked her to develop them. The copper pipe part is very simple, and you can create it by just finding a coppersmith, and there are many such craftsmen in the Shu army.

It's just that if it was just a copper pipe problem, Zhang Xingcai would not be so interested. What intrigued Zhang Xingcai was the mirror inside the periscope. Due to the high requirements for the reflectivity of the mirror, which is intended for use at night, it is obviously not possible to use traditional copper mirrors.

So Liu Hou thought of using glass mirrors, of course, at this time, they had not been able to make glass with high transparency, so Liu Hou also used the old method: using crystal. Liu Hou's army attacked the city all the way, and every time he captured a city, he could get a city's treasury, and the treasures in the treasury were naturally surnamed Liu.

In order to make a few more pairs of telescopes, Liu Hou paid attention to collecting crystals along the way, so he still had some inventory on hand, and at this time he just took them out to Zhang Xingcai and asked her to use them to make the mirror surface of the periscope.