"Boom boom boom..." Amid the rumbling cannons, the city walls of Hanzhou continued to wail in pain, the blue bricks covering the walls continued to fall, and gravel splashed everywhere.

The Shu soldiers on the city wall were all scared to death and shivered.

The ground under his feet kept trembling, and with the support of his own teeth, Han Zhengsheng barely stood firm.

At this time, Han Zhengsheng turned his head and looked around, his eyes full of his eyes, all of whom had no intention of fighting.

"Boom..." Suddenly, a shell hit the pillar of the city gate tower, and immediately collapsed, pressing countless generals down.

"Oh...it hurts so much..."

"Mom, my legs..."

"Ah..." A soldier whose body was half pressed under the pile of chaotic wood was pierced, and his colorful intestines were exposed, and he seemed to be unable to survive.

An unlucky guy happened to be hit by the falling wooden beam and died completely. However, the blood and white brain mass flowed out of his head were flowing all over the ground, making him look particularly cunning.

War is so cruel. In the blink of an eye, the living person becomes a dead ghost.

"Ship Han, my Ship Han, the Northern Army has the help of ghosts and gods, and this battle cannot be fought again..." A commander who built a wide range of industries in the city rushed over and hugged Han Zhengsheng tightly, eager to surrender and preserve wealth and power.

"Oh, it's too late to say anything now." Han Zhengsheng knew very well that if the Northern Army surrendered before the general attack, if the Northern Army surrendered, it would be possible to preserve wealth.

However, when the Northern Army launched a general attack and surrendered again, the value of the city was too far behind.

More importantly, Northern Emperor Li Zhongyi did not give Han Zhengsheng the opportunity to delay time at all, and the ultimatum was issued so quickly that it was outrageous.

To put it bluntly, Li Zhongyi has no sincerity to surrender, he is just pretending to behave on the surface.

"It's too late to say anything now. You can only defeat the Northern Army so that everyone can have a way out." Han Zhengsheng has been guarding the border for many years and has killed countless Tubo people. He is not a coward who is afraid of death at all.

As soon as these words came out, Han Zhengsheng's old subordinates shut up one after another. The originally shaken morale of the army gradually gathered together again.

Everyone knew in their hearts that after being bombarded, the daylily would be cold after surrendering to the Northern Army.

"For the sake of the present plan, we must grit our teeth and hold on. We cannot easily let the Northern Army break the city. Otherwise, you and I will be imprisoned." After all, Han Zhengsheng was a long-time general, and he opened his mouth and hit the officers' fatal point.

"I listen to Han Shuai."

"Nothing else, I'll fight."

"Yes, fight."

Han Zhengsheng's words reversed the morale of the army that was about to collapse completely. It is not unreasonable!

However, despite Han Zhengsheng's face showing a firm look, he actually had no confidence in his heart.

The Northern Army had built so many long-tube weapons, and the power of the continuous bombardment was far beyond Han Zhengsheng's imagination.

It sounds simple to say to fight to the death. In fact, even the shadow of the Northern Army cannot be seen. Even if you want to cut people with a knife, it is impossible. How can you fight to the death?

However, Han Zhengsheng understood even more that if he could not hold on, his identity, status and family would be gone!

However, ideals are full and reality is skinny.

The city walls trembled one after another, and it had been an hour since Han Zhengsheng was already a little numb.

Amid the rumbling roar, the arrows on the city walls were already covered in holes and incomplete.

The confidant officers around Han Zhengsheng kept falling down, and fewer and fewer officers dared to approach the stack of arrows.

The situation was getting worse and worse. Han Zhengsheng had been holding the hilt of the knife tightly, but he could not swing it out to cut people. Because the enemy had not yet set up a ladder to climb the city.

About an hour later, accompanied by a dense roar, deafening cheers suddenly came from the northern army's phalanx.

"The city gate is broken, the city gate is broken!"

Han Zhengsheng's head buzzed. He racked his brains to think, but he couldn't figure it out. The Northern Army had not even approached the city gate, so why was the city gate broken?

"Didi..." The charge whistle sounded, and the Han army's large troops rushed into the northern gate of Hanzhou like a tide.

Li Zhongyi put down the monocular telescope with satisfaction and said with a smile: "The power of artillery is not something that can be stopped by bricks, stones, and rammed earth!"

Yang Wushuang smiled and said, "You once said that the large-scale emergence of artillery has left no famous generals in the world who defended the city."

Li Zhongyi nodded and said, "Confucianism only values ​​classics, history, and collections of books. It regards craftsmen as vulgar slaves, and despises the technique as strange and ingenious skills. This is the fundamental reason why our Central Plains dynasties have repeatedly failed to be defeated by the barbarians."

"The barbarians in the north were good at riding horses and bows when they were young, and their ability to fight maneuvers was naturally formed. If we did not pay attention to craftsmen and technology in our Central Plains, how could we reverse the innate strategic disadvantages?" Li Zhongyi sighed softly, "If machine guns can be invented, the riding and shooting that the barbarians in the north are good at will become entertainment activities that cannot be cut down. At that time, even if they were unwilling to give up, they could only lie on the ground, learn to be able to sing and dance, learn to be enthusiastic about guests, and learn to obey the court."

"Machine gun? Uh... I dare to ask the emperor, what is this?" Yang Wushuang thought to break his head, but he didn't know what a machine gun was.

Li Zhongyi thought for a moment and explained: "It is a small-tube cannon that can be fired continuously."

He could only introduce this, otherwise, Yang Wushuang would not understand at all.

Long before Li Hu served as the military commander, Li Zhongyi had secretly summoned dozens of old craftsmen and divided them into two teams.

These two teams enjoy the highest level of security treatment. One team is responsible for developing a clamp gun, while the other team is working hard to study flintlock guns.

War fights the logistics supply capacity, and essentially, it fights the transportation costs of food and other materials and the consumption costs of soldiers.

In the long-term competition with the northern barbarians, since the prairie barbarians could quickly transfer cattle and sheep, the Central Plains army could not get food on the spot even if they entered the prairie, which caused an embarrassing situation of a labor force expedition and in vain.

What’s even more troublesome is that the cost of long-distance grain transportation is extremely high and the transportation route is quite long.

Once the food supply of the Central Plains army is cut off by the cavalry of the northern barbarians, it is likely to face the tragedy of annihilation of the entire army.

As for the current extremely low level of metallurgy and other technology, the machine gun is obviously an impossible fantasy, and Li Zhongyi has never had such a dream.

As for the comb or flintlock rifle, as long as you persist in spending money to do experiments, Li Zhongyi has every reason to believe that it will definitely be successful invented as few years or as many as ten years.

According to Li Zhongyi's idea, he must go past the mezzanine and enter the era of flintlock.

Once the flintlock rifle can equip the troops in large quantities, it will only take half a year to train a qualified soldier in the Han Dynasty at most.

Correspondingly, it will take at least ten years for each tribe on the grassland to train a qualified riding and shooting warrior.

The population of the Central Plains dynasty was far greater than that of the nomadic peoples on the grassland. In addition, the training cost of the Central Plains dynasty was reduced by more than twenty times in the blink of an eye. How could the barbarians of the grassland continue to fight?

After twenty artillery pieces burst through the city gates, Li Yongtang, the commander of the artillery army, touched his chin and sighed: "The power of the volley is still great, and the city gates were smashed in just a few cannons. Previously, the fire of one after another was obviously not effective."

Wu Gan, the commander of the Bnar Bn, saw that his boss was in a good mood at the moment, leaned over and smiled with a saliva: "The emperor once said that practicing true knowledge is revealed. Now, you have found the right solution, which is also a great achievement."

Li Yongtang glanced at Wu Gan and scolded him in anger: "Wu Gan, have you also learned to flatter?"

Wu Gan was both Li Yongtang's old subordinate and his confidant, so he would not be scared away. He smiled and said, "The power of the concentrated artillery volley is amazing. I'm afraid the emperor and the old man have also seen it."

Li Yongtang was said to be thoughtful, and he was secretly proud of himself, but he didn't show any signs on the surface. He deliberately cursed with a stern face, "Why don't you hurry up and pack up your artillery team and prepare to enter the city?"

Unexpectedly, as soon as Li Yongtang finished speaking, the messenger rushed over and the emperor summoned him!

Wu Dan turned his back and smiled brightly, but he didn't dare to laugh out loud.

Li Yongtang glared at Wu Gan viciously, turned over and followed the commander to meet Li Zhongyi together.

As soon as they met, before Li Yongtang could salute, Li Zhongyi smiled and said, "It's a good fight, it's very good. It's just a volley. The volley is powerful."

The etiquette between the monarch and the minister cannot be abolished!

Li Yongtang did not dare to be careless at all. He stood upright, beat his chest hard and saluted, and said loudly: "The commander of the artillery army, Li Yongtang, the minister, paid a visit to the emperor." The military was solemn and meticulous.

Li Zhongyi was distracted and had to wave his hand and said, "Forget it. You, you, I have forgotten the words after you interrupted this."

No one is perfect, there will be gains and losses!

Li Yongtang is a typical technical officer, who is down-to-earth and attentive in his work and is willing to use his brain to study artillery matters. However, his emotional intelligence as an official is not so high.

If Liao Shanhe was present, he would have put aside the red tape for the time being, first cooperate with the emperor's emotions, and make the emperor happy.

Li Yongtang is not good at making fun of him. Even though he has thousands of words, he can't speak witty words and rolls his eyes in a hurry.

Li Zhongyi knew Li Yongtang's personality very well. Seeing that he was so uncomfortable, he couldn't help but smile and comfort him: "Look, I'm just telling a joke, it's okay."

Li Yongtang breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn't know how to answer the emperor's words, and he was so anxious that he broke out in a cold sweat again.

Li Zhongyi couldn't help but sigh secretly. A dull and taciturn technical practitioner like Li Yongtang is actually at a very disadvantage in the officialdom.
Chapter completed!