After waiting for more than ten days, the firearm that Boss Qian asked for came as promised. However, the firearms were not packed in cargo boxes, but were equipped on Perak soldiers. At this moment, Cao Ergou led 246 soldiers, in addition to the two companies from Hengyuan Town and 44 reconnaissance personnel under Yuan Shanhu, to build an artillery position in front of the Qianjiazhai Gate. According to Cao Ergou's ultimatum, if the four captured scouts were not handed over before noon, the Thunderbolt Army would definitely uproot Qianjiazhai.

This Qianjiazhai is located on a mountain rock thirty miles west of Huojing City. Although its village is only more than dozens of acres, but three sides are up to dozens of meters high cliffs, only one side of the walled gate is a flat gentle slope, but also easy to defend and difficult to attack the place, there are nearly 1,000 people in the village. Its walled wall is seven meters high and five meters thick, and is compacted with loess inside and wrapped with stone outside, which is stronger than the general state and county city walls. In addition, the Qian family has strong financial resources, there is no shortage of money and food, and the weapons are excellent, and there are even a few trebuchets in the village. Sensei said that ordinary bandits could not attack, and even the officials and soldiers of Qiongzhou and Huojing County were helpless. Strong force is also what it relies on to buy and sell private salt. When the Mongols captured the fire well, they also persuaded them to surrender because they were difficult to gnaw bones, but the Qian family also refused to join the Mongols. On the one hand, he was reluctant to accept foreign rule, and on the other hand, he hated the Mongol invasion for disrupting the trade routes and cutting off his financial resources. The Mongols were helpless about this, although there were many garrisons in Qiongzhou and Huojing, but they had to guard against the Song army in the direction of Jiadingfu and Ya and Jiezhou, so they did not attack Qianjiazhai in a big way. Ouyang Xuan also let Cao Ergou salute first and then the soldiers because the Qian family refused to surrender to the Mongols, otherwise the behavior of kidnapping the soldiers to blackmail the Thunderbolt army would destroy the Qian family village even if the casualties were great.

Just after the ultimatum, Cao Ergou gave the order to open fire. After all, this military operation was on the border of Qiongzhou and belonged to the sphere of influence of Yu Xing of Jiading Prefecture. In order to quickly resolve the battle and prevent the interference of the officers and troops caused by excessive movements, Cao Ergou did not bring the field artillery recently developed by the Thunderbolt Army, but still brought a light tiger squat cannon and a mother and son cannon. The new field artillery not only has a range of up to three miles, but also has a fast rate of fire and great power, and if it can easily blast open its gate with solid shells, even if Wanjiabao and the iron-clad gate of Hengyuan Fort under construction will not be able to withstand a few shots before they will collapse. It's just that the new artillery is too heavy, and although a wheeled gun carriage is added, the mobility of mules and horses is still insufficient due to the lack of mules and horses.

As soon as the Perak Army shelled a few rounds, the gates of Qianjiazhai were opened, and the captive scouts were released. In fact, in these rounds of shelling, the tiger squat cannon and the mother and child cannon only left shallow bullet marks on the stones of the wall, and could not blast open the heavy wooden gate, but the dense shotgun had a very large penetration power on soft targets such as the human body. Although the shrapnel only injured a few unlucky ghosts and a few livestock, the shelling ignited the livestock fodder stored in the village, and the fire ignited the surrounding houses. Although the fire was quickly extinguished, it caused great panic among the villagers.

Qianjiazhai, who is engaged in business and robbery, is naturally very well-informed, and they are very clear about the remarkable deeds of the Thunderbolt army, and they know the power of artillery. They even found out that the one who led the army to attack was Cao Ergou, who took Dayi City lightly, and this was the number one general under Ouyang Xuan. Since the rise of the Thunderbolt Army, rumors about Ouyang Xuan have become more and more evil, and even later there are rumors that the god of heaven descends to earth, and he will cast spells to summon the god of thunder and fire to destroy those who disobey his will. "Thunderbolt from the sky, invincible", this prestige is not boasted, but fought in a battle. Although Boss Qian doesn't believe rumors, it is always a fact that firearms are powerful.

As a mercenary businessman, Boss Qian had no determination to fight the Perak army to the death, and tied up the Perak army scouts just to extort igniters to deal with the Yibo bandits who robbed the caravan. He didn't expect that the Thunderbolts would move their troops for a few soldiers and travel long distances to attack him. Originally, he thought that the Thunderbolt army would retreat with difficulty, but he didn't want this artillery to be sharper than he imagined, and what was even more terrifying was that he didn't know when the artillery fire would end! Will it become more and more ferocious? After weighing the pros and cons, he ordered the gate to be opened and sent back to the captive scouts, and took his relatives out of the gate to negotiate with the Thunderbolt army. The reason why Boss Qian dared to do this was that on the one hand, the Thunderbolt Army and the Mongols he hated had always been tough and had a good record, which was in line with his appetite, and on the other hand, based on his businessman's way of thinking, he firmly believed that everything in the world was a benefit, and except for things that did not share the sky, he could spend money to eliminate disasters. Based on this mentality, although he took the Thunderbolt scouts captive and kept them under strict supervision, he waited for them to eat and drink, more like a guest than a prisoner.

To say that this money boss guessed Ouyang Xuan's psychology very accurately. Before leaving, Ouyang Xuan specially explained to Cao Ergou the principle of handling this matter - even if the thunderbolt army is far away, he will be punished, and he will be magnanimous and forgiving to those who repent. Seeing that the four scouts who had been released were in good health and had not been mistreated by Qian Jiazhai, Cao Ergou agreed to the request for negotiations. He originally planned to send a death squad to blow open the gate with explosives packs, and as long as the gate was broken, he could go down with a blow. It's just that Cao Ergou is an expert in leading troops to fight, but he is a layman in negotiation, and the negotiation is handled by Zhu Xuanzi, the manager of the accompanying trading company. After reading the information sent back by Yuan Shanhu, he was keenly aware that Qianjiazhai was extremely important for the Perak army to open up trade routes in the Southwest Yi and Fan regions. Therefore, the principle of saluting first and then fighting for this force was determined, and every effort was made to win over this force.

At present, the Thunderbolt Army is developing rapidly, and the area under its control is rich in products, but only Ouyang Xuan knows that it is now facing development bottlenecks, especially the lack of several strategic materials will seriously restrict the next development of the Thunderbolt Army. The areas controlled by the Perak Army not only lack salt, hemp, cotton, and other daily necessities, but also lack important minerals such as copper, silver, tin, and mercury. To expand trade with the outside world, in addition to obtaining urgently needed strategic materials, you can also obtain a large amount of capital. During this period of time, whether it was fighting, clearing wasteland, or building fortresses, the consumption of money and food was too fast, which made Li Shuang, who was the consul in general affairs, and Yang Xiucai, who was in charge of finance and taxation, both big, and when they saw Ouyang Xuan, they complained about the lack of money, food and materials.

At present, the trading companies of the Perak Army do not have much business, and most of the few buying and selling transactions are within a few dozen miles of Yokohara Town. The reason for this is that the war not only destroys the economy, but also blocks the trade routes, so that although the profit of trade activities is very high, due to the small volume of transactions, the inconvenience of the road and the need for armed escorts, in fact, do not make much money in settlement. The reason why the trading company still exists is because the Thunderbolt army is in dire need of strategic materials such as salt, seeds, and linen from the outside world. In the past few months, the businesses of industrial companies, mining companies, and construction companies have been thriving, and their scale has expanded a lot, but only the trading companies are half-dead, so anxious that Zhu Zhuozi is on fire but helpless.

Ouyang Xuan, Zhu Zhuozi and others also discussed the way to break the business situation many times, but they were at a loss for this dilemma. Due to the Mongol control in the north, there were only three major trade routes available to the Thunderbolts at present, from south to east. The first is to take the waterway, through Meizhou, Jiading, Luzhou, Chongqing, and then along the Jiangdong to Lin'an, the second is to go through Jiading Mansion and then to Xuzhou Shimenguan, to the south to Banzhou and Luo's ghost country and Dali country, the third to the west of the tea horse road, as the name suggests is to the southwest Yi Zhubu, the Xifan Zhubu business road, the two sides trade the largest commodity is tea and horses, but also trade other specialties. For the Perak Army, the first two routes are too far away, not only requiring a lot of capital investment but also a long time to operate to be effective, the third route is short, but the road is extremely difficult, along the way the Yibo tribe customs are extremely fierce, and some are even proud of robbery and murder. Even a person like Boss Qian, who is also a businessman and a bandit, has relied on years of extensive money and wealth to make friends with the tribes along the way, and finally opened up the joints along the road. It's just that the Mongol invasion broke the political balance of some Yibo tribes and made the trade routes dangerous again. Ouyang Xuan took a fancy to the connections of the tribes along the Qianjiazhai and the trade road, and was sure that Boss Qian was unwilling to ruin his years of hard work, so he sent Zhu Zhuozi to negotiate.