Contrary to the good situation in the mountains, the situation at the bottom of the mountains is getting worse and worse. Scattered people escaped the hunt of the Mongol cavalry and fled to the mountains, bringing bits and pieces of news from the bottom of the mountains. It is said that Xiong Ben recruited many bandits in Yongkang City, and also lured a large number of fleeing people, and now has more than 300 bandit soldiers under his command, and the population of nearly 1,000 people is threatened. The dilapidated Hengyuan village was plundered by the Mongolian cavalry, and dozens of bandits and nearly 100 people under Xiong Ben, who guarded the village, were either killed or fled, and the village was now empty. After the Mongol army retreated, Xiong Ben sent a small number of mountain bandits to haunt the vicinity of Hengyuan Village from time to time to show that he had not given up the jurisdiction of Hengyuan Town.

Also risking his way into the mountains during this time were the messengers of Chongqing Mansion. Pan's letter asking Ouyang Xuan to transfer troops to Fucheng became more and more urgent, and his tone became more and more severe, but in the eyes of the Thunderbolt Army, this was purely a bluff from the outside. Although Ouyang Xuan ignored Pan's orders, he was also very sympathetic to the innocent people in his heart. It's just that he also clearly realized that with the current strength of the Thunderbolt army, it didn't have much advantage over the field army of the Southern Song Dynasty official army, and it was really Meng Lang to fight against the Mongolian iron cavalry.

The current weakness of the Thunderbolt army is, first of all, too small in number. Compared with the tens of thousands of people dispatched by the Mongolian army and the official army in a campaign, the standing army of the Perak army has only 1,000 people, and another 500 people who are half-out of work, and even if they are all dispatched, there are only 1,500 people, which is less than a fraction of the Mongolian army and the official army. If this bit of the Thunderbolt Army's family background reaches Fucheng, with the urine of Pan's control, it will definitely be rushed to the front and used as cannon fodder, and it will soon be consumed. At present, the combat strength of the Perak Army is divided into three parts, namely the field battalion, the garrison battalion and the internal guard battalion. The internal guard battalion was expanded and upgraded from the original guard force, with a total of 400 people, and consisted of a guard company, a reconnaissance company, a counter-espionage company, and a hoe company, with Dong Hu still in charge. Functionally, the guard company is responsible for the security of military and political leaders and important institutions; The reconnaissance company is responsible for collecting military and political intelligence information from the outside world; The counterintelligence company is responsible for preventing the infiltration and sabotage of various forces, as well as the leakage of advanced technology. The Mongols were extremely good at using spies to spy on the situation and stealing techniques, as well as spreading rumors, assassinations, and arson. The hoe company is specially designed to deal with traitors, and can even use physical methods such as assassination. Under the surrender of the Mongol army, many Song officers and soldiers surrendered, and it is no exaggeration to say that the main force attacking the Southern Song Dynasty was a new annex army composed of generals and soldiers. The garrison battalion has five companies of 500 people, which is a semi-full-time reserve force. In addition, the garrison battalion conducts military training for men between the ages of 16 and 50 in the mountains, and the five companies can be expanded to 3,000 men in case of an emergency.

The shortcomings of the Thunderbolt Army are also due to the lack of experience in warfare. At present, the core combat strength of the Thunderbolt Army is the field battalion led by Ouyang Xuan, with the original five companies plus the newly established Tang Xiangwei's sixth company, with a total of more than 600 people in six companies. The field battalion belongs to a new type of army based on firearms, and although its combat strength is superior to that of the government army, it has also beaten the Xiong Ben bandits to the point of running away several times. But after all, the army has been formed for too short a time, and it has not experienced the tempering of vicious battles. According to the estimates of Li Shuang, Yu Zhu and other high-level officials of the Thunderbolt Army, under the condition that the number of people is not much different, the current combat strength of the field battalion is comparable to that of the forbidden army of the Southern Song Dynasty and the new annexed army of the Mongols, but it is not as good as the Han army in the Mongolian army, and if it faces the cavalry of the Mongolian headquarters, it has no chance of winning. In addition to the cavalry of the Mongol army, there were also a large number of "Han army" and "new annex army". The Mongol Han army consisted of various ethnic groups in the northern part of the former Jin rule, including the Han princes and the armies of other ethnic minorities, such as the Khitan Liu Heima. The "new annex army" is an army composed of the Southern Song Dynasty soldiers.

The lack of combat strength of the Thunderbolt army is also due to the shortcomings of many firearms. One of the shortcomings of firearms at present is that the production technology of artillery and grenades is still immature, and it has not formed a crushing advantage over cavalry. For example, the current grenade fire method relies on the fire rope burning, the explosion time is not easy to grasp, and the explosion will generally occur after two seconds when thrown on the ground, and it is easy to be dodged by the cavalry, which will lead to the infantry being easily attacked by the Mongolian light cavalry on the march, and there is no effective counterattack. If the grenade is improved to the method of drawing the cord to ignite or explode on touch, it will be necessary to mass-produce mine mercury and glass. When the Mongol army launched an attack in the plains, it was often used to charge with heavy cavalry, which was a tank in the era of cold weapons, with three layers of heavy armor on men and horses, and it could not stop its charge with spears and giant shields alone, but the light guns, tiger squat cannons and grenades were too small to break through the three layers of heavy armor. The breech-loading gun was powerful enough, but it was bulky and too slow to be carried on the march. The Mongol army also learned to make and use gunpowder weapons during the long war with the Jin and Song dynasties, and although they were far less sophisticated than the Thunderbolt army, their battle-hardened elite were not afraid of firearms. Only the development and mass production of high-power new gunpowder and the continuous improvement of the artillery casting process can make the Mongols no longer bloodthirsty and become good at singing and dancing.

The second disadvantage of firearms is their vulnerability to bad weather. It may be that the stars are shining, and the previous battles of the Thunderbolts have encountered good weather, and there is no bad weather that affects the use of grenades or artillery. But some time ago, when the caravan went to Qiongzhou to buy salt, it encountered a rainy day in Dayi County. When the bandits rushed towards the caravan in the rain, the accompanying guards threw grenades, but only two of the more than a dozen grenades were thrown, and the rest were dumb due to the dampness of the gunpowder. Although the guards fought desperately to repel the bandits, the losses were not small. In response to the problem, the industrial company also improved the waterproof packaging and strengthened the packaging of gunpowder packs and grenades with grease cloth, but there was still no better solution to prevent firearms from getting damp in rainy days.

The third shortcoming of firearms is that the level of production and manufacturing technology is still very low, and the production capacity has not been raised, especially the yield rate of the gun barrel has been very low, and the pass rate is only about 40%. There are even more than a dozen potholes on the barrels of some unqualified guns, some of which are extremely rough in their inner chambers, and some whose caliber deviations exceed the specified values, and these unqualified guns all need to be recast, so that the current artillery equipment of the field battalion is less than 50 percent of the number of establishments. As for the musket, he couldn't count on it, Ouyang Xuan asked the skilled blacksmith Hu to try out the barrel, and it took him more than a month to drill a qualified barrel, and if you add accessories and other polishing, it would take three months for a skilled craftsman to make a qualified musket. Moreover, although the musket produced was powerful, the rate of fire, accuracy and range were inferior to that of bows and arrows, and only after a large number of equipment could they be fully utilized by salvo fire.