The 18th day of the first lunar month in the tenth year of the Republic.

In the chilly spring, an iron-gray dragon is moving forward like a rolling mountain road where Yanshan Mountains, Taihang Mountains and Hengshan Mountains meet.

This area is called Feihukou or Feihu Valley, which is called the Sanggan, and the inside and outside. It is one of the eight paths of Taihang, and it is the key path connecting the land of Youyan and the place of the same place. It has been a place that military strategists must compete for since ancient times.

The terrain of Feihuyu is of course very dangerous. The altitude here is between 5,000 feet and 9,000 feet. The northern slope of the mountain road is close to the Huliu River Basin in Weizhou, and the southern slope of the mountain is a valley of the upper reaches of the Juma River with rocks lying across the turbid and turbulent flow. The mountain road is narrow, with only fifty or sixty steps at the widest point, and only two steps up and down at the narrowest point, so that a carriage can only pass by.

Since Weizhou, where Feihu Trail belongs to, is the territory of the Jin Kingdom, it has been a key area fortification in the past few years. Many obstacles have been set up on the already narrow and difficult roads, and a large amount of wood and stone were blocked in the narrowest section.

So the gray army that is passing through the Flying Fox Trail is now extremely difficult to walk. From time to time, it will pause and wait for the engineers ahead to clear the roadblocks and repair the road.

In addition to the difficulty of roads, the load of this army is unprecedented! Whether it is the general or the soldiers, everyone carries a large bag of luggage, and the soldiers in it are also wearing armor and carry weapons. All the horses are not carrying people, and their backs are full of supplies. There are also many tall camels, even carrying light one and a half pounds of cannons (machine weight), and they are walking in the team with a whimper.

Wu Yiyong was also in the queue. He leaned on a wooden stick and also gaited his leg (this was the method Wu Haogu thought of a few years ago), carried a large bag of luggage, and walked on the mountain road with difficulty. The surroundings were all officers and soldiers of the Hedong Legion Army Command. He is now the general army aircraft of the Hedong Legion, that is, the chief of staff of the Legion, walking along the flying fox trail with the team.

His status is like an ordinary infantry, and he is carrying his luggage on the Song Dynasty. It is impossible to put it on the Song Dynasty anyway.

However, the Republican Army is this rule! Everyone is a citizen, and although they have ranks, they are not from heaven or earth. Moreover, the Republican Army emphasizes the youthfulness of officers, one is to give new employees who have been graduating from the Knights Academy; the other is to make this current situation - the energetic and energetic officers can inject extraordinary vitality into an army in the era of military revolution!

This vitality is not only because the officers are physically strong and positive, and can share the joys and sorrows with the soldiers, but also because they do not have so many rules and regulations and dare to try new technologies and new tactics.

Just in front of the Jiyi Column where Wu Yiyong was located, a team of musketeers carrying heavy mesh rope guns were marching!

This is a single-soldier musket weighing 20 kilograms. It must be assumed that it can only be fired. So the musketeers have to carry a bracket with them, and you can imagine the weight you carry.

The firing mechanism and buttstock of the musket are designed with reference to the Tianjin crossbow (Tianjin crossbow has a buttstock). When shooting, the gun body is mounted on a bracket and the buttstock is pressed on the shoulder. Only in this way can the huge recoil of this musket be offset!

The most critical part of the barrel of the musket is made of iron plates, with a caliber of seven minutes. It can fire one or two pieces of projectiles and break through the wart armor 150 steps away!

However, the accuracy of this kind of musket is not very good, and its effective range is only a few dozen steps, which may be worse than that of Tianjin crossbows.

Of course, the destructive power of the musket is incomparable to that of Tianjin crossbows. If you wear a good quality wart armor and add cotton armor inside, more than a dozen crossbow arrows at a distance of dozens of steps may not be fatal.

But if it is replaced with one or two bullets of heavy muskets... it will be a soul-wrenching shot! Even if it hits all fours, it will have to cut hands and feet. If you survive, you will never go to the battlefield again.

However, the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Great Zhou Republic were not satisfied with this weapon named "Eight-Year-Old Match Rope Gun" and did not intend to be equipped for a while. However, after the combat plan to detour Hedong was proposed, the situation changed.

Because the approaching road of Hedong is too difficult to walk, and heavy artillery is difficult to pass. In order to make up for the lack of firepower in the troops, some of the crossbow soldiers had to be equipped with "Eight Years of Republic of China" match-rope guns.

In the winter of the eighth year of the Republic, thousands of crossbowmen who belonged to the First Division, Second Division and Eleventh Division of the Republic Army all became musketeers, fiddling with the "Eighth Year of the Republic" that they had made day and night.

By the way, this new weapon was allocated by the Tianjin Artillery Factory and the Yanshan Artillery Factory. The key component of the gun barrel was also forged by technicians from the two artillery factories with low-carbon crucible iron sheets. The inner chamber was cut with a drilling machine, and the quality was still very good. It was not the same as the blow-off rifle of the Ming and Qing dynasties in history, so it can be used with confidence.

The troops gradually stopped moving forward, and tens of thousands of people stopped on the narrow mountain road.

"Stay on the spot! Eat some dry food..."

"No noise!"

The officers' commands were heard one after another, and Wu Yiyong looked up at the sky. It was not yet lunch time, so the troops should not stop moving forward unless they encountered some obstacles.

Two messengers ran along the narrow mountain road to Wu Yiyong and saluted: "Lieutenant General, the front team encountered an unidentified army near Xiaolingan."

The Xiaolingsan is the highest point on the Feihu Path. From the Xiaolingsan to the north, you can look at the Weizhou Basin, and to the south, you can look down at the Feihu City from a high place.

"Unknown identity?" Wu Yiyong asked, "Is it the Jin soldiers? It's the Song soldiers?"

"have no idea."

This answer is a bit surprising.

Wu Yiyong frowned and said to Zhang Xuan, the deputy military officer beside him: "Dingwu, I'll go and have a look. You go to the Central Army first."

"Okay!" Zhang Xuan said, "Yongzhi, you should be careful... Maybe there is an ambush."

"Maybe it was Xiao Gan's men." After saying that, Wu Yiyeng threw his backpack to a personal soldier, then recruited several guards, and then strode forward.

His analysis was not unreasonable. Because the Jin soldiers obviously did not intend to defend the Feihu Trail to the death. After the vanguard of the Hedong Legion came out of Zijing Pass, the Jin soldiers guarding the Feihu Trail ran away. So there was no battle all the way over.

Perhaps the Jin soldiers near the Pingxingguan area to the west of Feihu Path also retreated. In this way, Xiao Gan's men could advance eastward to support him.

However, Xiaoling'an is not close to the bottle-shaped pass, so Xiao Gan's troops came too fast, right?

...

"Military, check the equipment!"

"The inspection is completed!"

"complete!"

When Wu Yiyong arrived at the bottom of Xiaoling's saddle, a team of musketeers had already formed a formation and was conducting the final equipment inspection.

The brigade of swords and shields were lined up behind them. Under the sunlight, sharp swords flashed with dazzling light.

About half a brigade of Republican infantry have entered the battlefield!

It turned out that what they encountered here was not Xiao Gan's troops, but a team of troops from Zhaoyi's army.

The Jin soldiers stationed in Xiaoling'an were quite righteous. Before they ran away, they sent people to inform the nearby Song army that Feihu Trail was a crossroad, with the main road facing east and west, and the deputy road facing north and south, connecting the third entrance to Dingbei. Zhaoyi's army stationed there and built a fortress. After receiving the news of the Jin soldiers' retreat and the invasion of the Zhou army, they immediately sent troops to Xiaoling'an.

"There are at least one battalion of Song troops! There are no artillery, but they are equipped with crossbows. We tried to attack once, and they fired at least ten rounds of volleys! There have been long-standing chest wall fortifications, but there are no trenches and no Luzhai...

We plan to use a mezzanine to shoot at them from a distance to see if they can exhaust their archers' physical strength."

"When will we launch a general attack?" Wu Yiyong suddenly spoke. The officers around him all raised their heads, and everyone looked solemn.

"If it is confirmed that the enemy has only one battalion," Wu Yiyong said, "then you attack as soon as possible, don't delay, soldiers are very fast! Now the Song army knows that we are advancing towards Hedong, so time is precious!"

A colonel of the Great Zhou Republic Army said to Wu Yiyong: "Lieutenant General, it is expected to launch a general attack in half an hour."

"Half an hour?" Wu Yiyong shot him with a sharp gaze, "Why not right away? Is the Zhaoyi soldiers in the first battalion unbeaten? Do they still need to exhaust the strength of the archers? We don't have wart armor?

Immediately impact! Be sure to take the Xiaoling Salon within one hour! Do you know what to do?"

Wu Yiyong has never been a kind person. It may be because he went to the battle to kill people at the age of thirteen, or it may be related to his education in the process of being an officer since he was a child. His personality is a bit cold and fierce, and the light from his sharp eyes can stab people.

Moreover, he was quite strict with his subordinates and never showed mercy when he was scolded.

In addition, he didn't care much about the life and death of the soldiers!

Zero casualties have never been his goal!

Under his urging, the First Brigade of the Army, which was leading the formation, quickly organized the first round of fierce attacks. The infantry of the brigade slowly moved forward in a dense array. The front was the gunmen carrying heavy muskets, and four or five rows were listed, all of which were covered with armor, with face armor protection on their faces, and the whole was the moving iron man.

Behind them were sword and shield soldiers, who also formed a dense formation, but did not carry a shield, but a hand cannon - a grenade. They pressed a wooden handle under the cast iron ball filled with gunpowder, lit it and threw it out with force.

This type of hand cannon was developed earlier than a musket. It was originally used to deal with the bastion - it was used to dig trenches to approach the periphery of the bastion and then throw the hand cannon. However, during the experiment, it was found that the hand cannon often was not thrown at a sufficient height, so it was a bit useless. Therefore, it was delayed for a while, and it was not equipped for the Hedong Legion last winter.

After the grenadiers, there were brigades of sword and shield soldiers using long-handled axe guns. Now the sword and shield soldiers in the Zhou army do not necessarily use sword and shield, but have evolved into the titles of hand-to-hand combat and melee combat troops.

The weapons used are also very diverse. There are swords, shields, grenades, and axes and guns, which are usually served by elite infantry with high martial arts skills.

The battle formation composed of muskets, grenades and axes rolled towards the position defended by Zhao Yi army and crushed away!

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Chapter completed!