In the case of a series of bad news that he had been receiving from the beginning, the Yidu Arsenal in charge of the blacksmith Cao suddenly came with good news, and it was a very good news, it was said that Wang Yong should be happy, but Wang Yong couldn't believe it.

Thinking about it, there were 12,000 elite Xianbei cavalry who came to attack the military workshop, but they were defeated by only more than 1,000 defenders and thousands of armed craftsmen, not to mention, they unexpectedly killed and wounded nearly 3,000 Qi soldiers.

If Wang Ze was here, he would definitely give a thumbs up and praise, and he really didn't deserve the sentence 'We workers have power', and the men in the land of Sanqi were really good enough.

However, Wang Yong was a little unhappy about this good news for the time being, what he was most concerned about now was where the gunpowder weapons used by the defenders of the Yidu Arsenal in the battle came from, whether they were made by themselves or were they delivered privately against the order?

These things are what Wang Yong is most worried about at present, you must know that the lethality of gunpowder weapons is very large, even if it is a gunpowder weapon made of black powder at this time, the power that explodes once it explodes cannot be underestimated.

Since the beginning of the spring and summer of this year, after Wang Yong carried out a comprehensive military and political reorganization under the auspices of Liu Xin, the logistics, food supply, armor and weapons, war horses, etc. of all the troops under Wang Yong were uniformly allocated by the Xia Gongfu stationed in Qingzhou City.

All orders such as the transfer of troops and horses are the responsibility of the general, and if there is no emergency, the transfer of troops and horses without permission will be severely punished, and since then Wang Yong has always felt that he has a very strong control over the troops and horses stationed in various places.

But now, in the Yidu Arsenal, which is in charge of his most trusted blacksmith Cao, he unexpectedly found that there were traces of a large number of gunpowder weapons on the battlefield.

If this kind of thing really happened as Wang Yong guessed, the meaning of it is self-evident, and if there is a problem here where even Cao Blacksmith is in charge, then do the other troops stationed in the prefectures and counties of Sanqi also have problems that they don't know.

Wang Yong couldn't help but worry, because if this kind of thing really happened, then it meant that Wang Yong had lost control of the army at the bottom to a large extent, and at least there may be a loophole in the management of the army to some extent, which was unacceptable to Wang Yong, after all, the vast majority of the generals who controlled the army were his old subordinates in the past.

However, when Wang Yong talked to Cao Blacksmith, he carefully observed Cao Blacksmith's expression, and found that Cao Blacksmith next to him was not abnormal at all, but it seemed that Wang Yong was indeed thinking too much, and he didn't need Wang Yong to knock on the side to test it, so Cao Blacksmith told the matter as it was.

After Blacksmith Cao recounted the scene in detail, Wang Yong knew that the gunpowder used on the battlefield outside the city was actually a new type of gunpowder inadvertently developed by a Taoist priest.

The power of this gunpowder explosion is far more than the best black powder produced so far, even compared to the digestive glycerin explosives used by Wang Yong when he successfully buried tens of thousands of Qi troops before, of course, nitroglycerin is still not as practical as this explosive because it is more dangerous.

If you have to put the blacksmith furnace of the gunpowder workshop and the weapons forging workshop together, isn't this the old birthday star eating arsenic - looking for death?

Therefore, not only did the Yidu Arsenal not set up a gunpowder weapon workshop, but even the defenders of the Guard Workshop were not equipped with any gunpowder weapons, which caused the defenders to lack weapons of mass destruction when the Qi army attacked, and once the Qi army almost attacked.

At the most critical moment of the Qi army's attack, the Taoist priest named Chen Kun, who had been helping the soldiers defending the city to treat the wounded, suddenly took out a large jar of yellow medicine and said that this was explosives, and made Cao Blacksmith and others, who were accustomed to black powder, laugh at him.

Chen Kun is a Taoist priest sent by Qingzhou Haotian Daomen to preach in Yidu Arsenal for a long time, and belongs to the third level of Haotian Daomen's Taoist level, because the scale of Yidu Arsenal also has a population of tens of thousands, which is not much smaller than the nearby Yidu County, so Zhou Chengcheng, who is in charge of Qingzhou religious affairs, raised the temple level of Yidu Arsenal to a level of Yidu County.

Everyone knows that the Taoist priests in ancient China were actually ancient chemists, and in order to refine the elixir of immortality, it can be said that everything was put into the alchemy furnace, although the Haotian Daomen has expressly prohibited the refining of the elixir, but in order to treat the patient, it is still possible to refine some medicinal materials.

Because the Ordnance Workshop has been making weapons day and night for the front armies of Jeju and Jibei County in the past six months, everyone is very busy on weekdays, and there is no one to come to the Haotian Temple at all, and only when there are many people coming to worship every ten days off, but Chen Kun, who is in charge of the teaching affairs of the Ordnance Workshop, is idle now.

So Chen Kun had nothing to do and began to study some messy things, for more than a year, because the world was full of war and injury medicine, in order to refine a kind of green alum as a medicinal material, half a year ago Chen Kun from the yellow iron ore near the arsenal, after a variety of tests, refined a liquid similar to green alum but thick and corrosive.

This liquid was called sulfuric acid in later generations, but at this time Chen Kun only knew that this thing could be used to make green alum, and later Chen Kun went through hundreds of messy experiments to carry out various proportions, and at the end of October last month, he used hundreds of raw materials such as this liquid and saltpeter, and finally made a yellow powder.

Originally, Chen Kun was going to make gold sore medicine, but because of the cold weather, Chen Kun lit a fire in the house, and in an experiment, because he accidentally put the medicine powder close to the stove, Chen Kun was almost killed by the yellow powder he made, but fortunately, Chen Kun only put a dose of less than three coins in the tray at that time.

Even so, Chen Kun was still blown up, Chen Kun was very surprised, although he knew that his drug development test had failed and was in danger of great disaster, but Chen Kun knew that he had invented a new type of explosive that was more powerful than the black powder made by the sect leader Liu Qing.

Of course, this is because Chen Kun did not know that Liu Qing had made nitroglycerin explosives with the help of Wang Ze, but the danger of nitroglycerin explosives was too high, so its practicality was still far inferior to the yellow explosives invented by Chen Kun.

Seeing that Blacksmith Cao didn't believe him, Chen Kun used a small bamboo tube to hold some yellowish medicine powder and threw it into a large ceramic basin burning with a pile of wood, and the coarse porcelain basin, which was a finger thick, was blown and cracked in one fell swoop.

Now it's okay, facts speak louder than words, Cao Blacksmith stopped talking nonsense, more than a dozen catties of powerful yellow explosives were filled into cast iron cans, and after being ignited, they were fired with bed crossbows, and they were immediately shot into the newly launched military formation of the Qi army.

At that time, in order to quickly take down the Yidu Arsenal, the generals of the Qi army outside the city specially selected more than 500 of the most elite Xianbei warriors in the army to charge the wall of the arsenal, and at the same time, more than 3,000 ordinary soldiers cooperated with these 500 people to attack.

Although there were many people in the city defending, the main general of the Qi army knew that if there were no unexpected circumstances, it was inevitable to take the city in front of him. But it was because of the existence of Chen Kun, an outlier, that the accident happened.

More than a dozen gunpowder bullets with a charge of about one pound were fired into the Qi army formation from the high city wall, and a series of huge explosions suddenly sounded, and hundreds of elite Qi soldiers just rushed to a place dozens of meters away from the city wall, not to mention that nearly a thousand ordinary Qi soldiers died.

The general of the Qi army was taken aback and thought that it was a plan, if he continued to attack the city, and continued to throw this kind of infinitely powerful thunderbolt out of the city, wouldn't it be useless for all the cavalry under his command to be killed? Therefore, the commander of the Qi army hurriedly withdrew all the Qi soldiers who were besieging the city to a safe place several miles away.

But then the general of the Qi army realized that he was really thinking too much, if there were really a large number of such powerful thunderbolts in the city, why not use them in the first place? Even if you want to keep it secret, you should increase the amount of input when you use it for the first time just now, so that you can kill and injure a large number of the living forces of the Qi army in the first wave.

Now that I think about it, I am afraid that there will not be too many high-power weapons in the city, and the main general of the Qi army, who has figured it out, finally decided to attack again, but unexpectedly, at this time, the Tanma who was patrolling near Qingzhou City hurriedly came to report, saying that a large number of reinforcements had entered Qingzhou City from the east. It's easy

Immediately after that, the next wave of horses reported that at least 5,000 cavalry passed directly through the city of Qingzhou and came to the Yidu Arsenal, and at this time, the Qi army attacking the Arsenal had been reduced from the original 12,000 people to nearly 3,000 people, and the biggest loss was the last one that was killed and wounded.

Although there are still nearly 9,000 Qi cavalry injured, it is not serious, but there is still a certain combat effectiveness, but most of these people were shocked by the huge explosion, and more importantly, these Qi army's war horses have never heard such a loud sound and are seriously frightened, and these situations have greatly affected the combat effectiveness of the Qi army.

After thinking about it, the commander of the Qi army finally had to order the whole army to withdraw quickly, although the enemy army who came to support was only 5,000 cavalry, but the horse exploration also detected that there were nearly 10,000 infantry troops in Qingzhou City, in case the infantry army came after being entangled by these cavalry, then the situation was very unfavorable to the Qi army.

When Wang Yong arrived outside the arsenal outside the city, the Qi army had just left, but what the Qi army didn't know was that the Cao blacksmith on the head of the city was not far from the site of the big explosion, so one by one they were also shaken lightly, and they were all dizzy and hiding behind the battlements.

Although the tens of thousands of Qi troops who attacked the Yidu Arsenal were repulsed and suffered heavy casualties, the situation that Wang Yong has to face now is still very grim, and the situation is not optimistic.

Pi Jinghe, who had occupied Le'an County before, waited for the Qi army infantry that crossed the river from the north of the river, and handed over the defense of Le'an County to these infantry troops, and then Pi Jinghe led all the cavalry to go to the east of Qi in several ways, all the way to recruit Haoqiang, Futu sect believers, etc., who were very dissatisfied with Wang Yong, and went straight east to Gaomi County east of the Wei River, and there was a great posture of pacifying the Zhuzhou County of Qidong in one fell swoop.

Not to mention that the Hu Lawyers Association in the middle road occupied the city of Jinan in Qizhou, because of the strong troops, they also took advantage of the situation to occupy Changbai Mountain and Linzi City in the east, and Murong Yi, who took over all the troops of Jeju and Jibei County in the western battlefield, launched a powerful offensive against Yuan Jia's troops stationed in Jeju and Hu Bingchang's troops stationed in Jibei County.

Because the 100,000 troops that crossed the Yellow River from the north bank of the Yellow River and attacked Qizhou by the Hu Lawyers Association were mainly troops originally stationed in the plain counties on the other side of the Yellow River in Jeju, and only some cavalry was mobilized from the Jeju front, so the initial mobilization of troops failed to attract Wang Yong's attention, and it did not affect the offensive of the Qi army against Jeju and Jibei counties.

The city of Jinan, the governor of Qizhou, was quickly breached on the same day because it did not receive Ge Wei's military report in time, and the only defenders in the city could not destroy some facilities in the city in time, so the Hu Lawyers Association obtained hundreds of thousands of stone grain gathered by Wang Yong in the city, most of which were military rations that were ready to be transported to the front line of Jeju and Jibei County, and some of them were reserve grains in the city, but now they all belonged to the Qi army.

What made Wang Yong even more depressed was that the arsenal in the city was enough to arm more than 100,000 troops, and all the weapons that were also in the hands of the Hu Lawyers Association, with the occupation of Qizhou by the Hu Lawyers Association, which cut off the retreat of Wang Yong's front-line army, the heroes and the rest of the Sanqi that had been hidden before and a large number of monks and other dissatisfied with Wang Yong began to come out.

The hatred of these people for Wang Yong was unparalleled, and they enthusiastically joined the army of the Hu Lawyers Association, and were armed by the Hu Lawyers Association with the weapons prepared by Wang Yong to fight against Wang Yong's army.

Bad news continued to come one by one, Wang Yong's spirit has been numb by the blow, following the disappearance of Lu Wen, there is still no news of Pu Yangxun, the assassin of Qizhou, Cheng Xueying, and Zhou Cheng have no news, because the loss of Qizhou has cut off the east-west traffic, and now there is no news of the hundreds of thousands of troops on the front line of Jeju and Jibei County.

Immediately after Wang Yong to Qingzhou City, Han Biao, Zhou Guang, Luo Huan, Zhou Duo's nearly 10,000 infantry troops marched to Changle, suddenly encountered the cavalry of the Qi army brigade that was marching east after retreating from the Yidu Arsenal Workshop to chase Pi Jinghe, and both sides were shocked when they saw each other, and they hurriedly carried out an encounter.

But fortunately, although he suffered a little loss this time, Qi Jun suffered a greater loss. Before returning to Qingzhou, Zhou Duo, the leader of the crossbow battalion, carried a lot of Zheng rockets and other long-range strike weapons, although this time the infantry lost more than 2,000 people, but they relied on the long-range strike of the crossbow battalion to wipe out nearly 4,000 Qi cavalry, which made these Qi cavalry who had already failed once extremely depressed.

However, these more depressing things for the Qi army are still to come, especially when this group of cavalry rushed to the city of Gaomi County to see Pi Jinghe, and learned that this group of Qi troops did not capture Qingzhou City, not to mention, they didn't even take down the Yidu Arsenal Pi Jinghe was even more annoyed.

He angrily whipped a powerful Qingzhou warrior who led the way in front of him, if it weren't for the fact that you said that Gaomi County and even the entire prefectures and counties in Qidong were empty of troops, how could we let Qingzhou City not take the unjust road that ran so far.

But now, Qingzhou, Yidu and Yidu Arsenal have not been able to take it down, not to mention, even the Gaomi County, which was originally said to be empty in the army, has more than 20,000 defenders, and it is not a militia that has only undergone simple training, but a relatively strong infantry army.

If I had known that there were more than 20,000 defenders here in Gaomi County, why would I still come here, it would be better to go directly to capture Qingzhou City first, and then advance to both sides with the Hu Lawyers Association who occupied Qizhou.

Speaking of which, Pi Jinghe remembered that Dugu Yongye, who had fled back to Northern Xuzhou outside Jiaozhou City, had swept the entire mountainous area of central and southern Shandong, and recovered the huge land of several prefectures and counties in Northern Xuzhou and Southern Qingzhou, which can be described as infinitely beautiful.

But Dugu Yongye was not satisfied, and attacked Jiaozhou on his own initiative, which really made him almost attack the hinterland of Sanqi, but in the end Dugu Yongye still failed, this is a coffee table with a lesson from the past!

However, although Pi Jinghe regretted passing the fighter in order to make a mistake, Pi Jinghe was not worried that he would fail, and now unlike in the past, Dugu Yongye's defeat was mainly due to Wang Yong's mobilization of more than 20,000 elite soldiers from the front line of Jibei County to aid Jiaozhou City.

However, now Wang Yong's main forces have been blocked on the front line of Jeju and Jibei County west of Qizhou, as long as the armies on both sides of Huluxie and Murong Yan, who now occupy Jinan City, attack from east to west, it will not be long before Wang Yong's hundreds of thousands of troops who have neither reinforcements nor food and grass can be annihilated.

Compared with the troubled Pi Jinghe outside the city, the main general of the defenders at the head of the city said loudly to the generals around him: "The little marquis is really clever, knowing that the Qi army came back to attack Gaomi County, and we didn't catch up with the battle of Jiaozhou City, and now let this group of Qi troops sink into the sand and fold under Gaomi County!" ”

Now the commander of the defenders defending Gaomi County is none other than Zhao Kun, who had previously stopped Dugu Yongye's fleeing army at Guan Shuai Pass, although Dugu Yongye abandoned the brigade of soldiers and horses and fled quietly, but the more than 4,000 Qi cavalry who fled with him were all captured by Zhao Kun.

When Wang Ze and Wang Yong arrived in Jiaozhou City respectively, Zhao Kun, who escorted the prisoners of war of the Qi Army, had just arrived, and because of boredom, he couldn't rush to Jiaozhou City in time to see the prince Wang Yong.

Wang Ze only stayed in Jiaozhou City for less than a day before leaving, first 1,000 soldiers escorted thousands of unarmed and tied hands of Qi troops to Jiaozhou Port, Wang Ze decided to transport all these prisoners of war to Changguang County to build fortifications.

The hard-working Shen Sanshui still had to stay in Jiaozhou City, and Wang Ze also transferred most of the troops under Shen Sanshui's command, leaving him only 1,000 veterans and 3,000 recruits to guard Jiaozhou City.

The original 2,000 veterans and tens of thousands of recruits and militiamen in the city, as well as more than 2,000 people from Xu Yong's department of Qingzhou thieves who had newly defected to Wang Ze's side, a total of more than 15,000 people, were all assigned by Wang Ze to Zhao Kun's hands, plus the 4,000 people under Zhao Kun's department, a total of nearly 20,000 people, all of whom were transferred to Gaomi County by Wang Ze to garrison.

Now that the Qi army on the southern road occupying South Qingzhou and North Xuzhou is seriously damaged, coupled with the strict defense of Guan Shuai Pass, there is no need to be careful that the Qi army will fight from the south, and Gaomi County is blocked in the north of Jiaozhou City, as long as it is held here, Jiaozhou City does not have to worry about loss.

After two days of gathering, Pi Jing and the army outside Gaomi County expanded from less than 30,000 people at the time of departure to nearly 40,000 people, but only 20,000 of these 50,000 people were the original team, and it was not without losses along the way.

The Qi army lost nearly 7,000 people just in the attack on the Yidu Arsenal, and only about 5,000 people remained in the 12,000-strong team, but fortunately, because they continued to recruit soldiers along the way, there were more than 10,000 people when they arrived in Gaomi County.

However, Zhao Kun in the city didn't know this, he pointed to the remnants of the original three Qi Haoqiang who had newly joined the Qi army outside the city and said strangely: "Why are these Qi troops too cold and miserable!" ”