Chapter 355: Cannon Fire

Zhu Ling was in a terrible mood at the moment. Wingdings: ♦︎♦︎⬧︎♦︎◆︎⌧︎♦︎♦︎□︎❍︎

The high walls and deep moats of Chang'an are generally recognized, and Zhu Ling believes that this is the biggest reliance of this battle.

When the Former Han Dynasty was the capital, the city wall was already three feet and five feet high.

Later, because it was located in the Three Qins, it had to face the threat of the Xiongnu in the early days, and later there were the rebellions of the Qiang and Hu.

For various reasons, the walls of Chang'an have been raised all the time, and now it is five feet high (nearly twelve meters), which can be said to be the most powerful in the world.

Therefore, although there are few soldiers and generals in Chang'an, Zhu Ling is not worried.

How can a five-foot-high wall be easily conquered without the death of thirty or fifty thousand people?

Therefore, seeing that the enemy army was only more than 10,000 people, and most of them were cavalry, Zhu Ling found it difficult to take this army seriously. When defending the city, he was more worried about Xiahou Yuan, who had not been heard from until now.

Now that Lu Zhao was dead and no one was with him, if General Xiahou Yuan's army failed, then I'm afraid...

Inexplicably, Zhu Ling began to worry about his situation, and even had a crazy idea in his heart:

If General Xiahou died in the battle, he would have made great contributions in helping Zhong Sili to repel the enemy in Chang'an, and it might be...

But in just half a day, an ordinary stone mill that could be seen in a farmer's house launched a shocking blow to Chang'an City, which also made Zhu Ling wipe his sweat and understand:

He was too optimistic too early.

While sending someone to inform Zhong Sili of the matter, Zhu Ling ordered the news to be blocked and asked the soldiers to clean up the place.

But unfortunately, part of this stone mill, which seemed to weigh three or four hundred kilograms, was deeply embedded in the city wall and could not be moved at all.

This stone mill was placed here like a magnet, attracting the attention of the surrounding Cao soldiers, and they naturally thought in their hearts:

If this thing hits me...

So the surrounding Cao soldiers all had different thoughts at the same time, and their steps involuntarily stepped back two points.

Zhong Yao came very quickly, and regardless of Zhu Ling's obstruction, he directly climbed up the city wall and came to the stone mill to take a closer look.

"This stone mill flew up directly from the enemy camp?" Zhong Yao was surprised.

Zhu Ling thought that Zhong Sili didn't believe it, so he hurriedly said and gestured that he was concentrating on defending the city at that time, and saw this thing rising from the enemy camp as fast as thunder and rushing straight to the city wall.

"The enemy army must have the help of ghosts and gods!" Zhu Ling swore his judgment.

"The help of ghosts and gods?" Zhong Yao's tone was subtle, but he didn't say anything in the end.

Looking at the military camp outside the city from a distance, even here you can see the enemy camp is brightly lit and people coming and going.

According to Zhu Ling, the enemy army did not continue to attack after throwing the stone mill.

But they did not take advantage of the situation to attack the city. Instead, they seemed to go directly to cook. It seems that today's battle has ended here.

Zhu Ling carefully expressed his guess:

"I am afraid that the immortal master in the enemy army can only throw a huge stone a day."

"As long as the Si Li gives an order, I will go out of the city tonight to attack at night, find the immortal master and chop him off with a knife!"

Zhong Yao was immediately at a loss whether to laugh or cry.

He naturally did not believe in ghosts and gods, and he had also heard of the thunder chariot used by Cao Gong in the Battle of Guandu.

Therefore, although he did not understand why there was such a huge force to drive this stone mill, he had a vague guess in his heart.

Upon hearing Zhu Ling's plan, he immediately shook his head and said no, with a thoughtful look on his face:

"This is not the immortal master... or a warning."

Then he reminded Zhu Ling:

"Tomorrow... if Liu Huangshu's troops attack the city, tell the soldiers to be careful... if there are many boulders like this, then..."

Zhong Yao was careful when he spoke, and the soldiers around him also stretched their ears, and finally heard Zhong Yao's explanation after thinking:

"Then you can... no need to fight to the death."

"No need to fight to the death?" Zhu Ling repeated with a strange look on his face, and then saw Zhong Yao nodded calmly to confirm.

Looking at Zhong Sili's leaving figure, and thinking about the square formation of strong crossbows shooting at the time of the strong martial arts water, Zhu Ling finally muttered:

"No need to fight to the death? Isn't that simple?"

As the defender, there is not much that can be done, facing the attackers, they can only counter the moves.

And today's siege is destined to make Zhu Ling unforgettable for life.

The same is true for Huo Jun.

The imagined siege should be to build a ladder like the one used to attack Yangping Pass, and then he would lead his troops to climb the city first.

As long as he could capture Chang'an for Lord Xuande, he would not be able to repay Lord Xuande's kindness even if he died in battle!

But what is the siege in front of him now?

The four "feet" of the catapult were rammed into the ground with wooden stakes to support the giant arm above, one end of which was hung with a heavy stone, and the other end was slightly longer with a bullet bag at the end.

Yesterday he watched this thing easily throw a 400-jin stone mill onto the wall of Chang'an without any effort.

It takes three or five strong soldiers to carefully lift the stone mill, let alone throw it, but this catapult can do it.

And at this time, there are eight such huge machines.

Huo Jun watched Zhuge standing on a high place, with his master's sword hanging on his waist, and then pointed his feather fan at Chang'an and shouted:

"Prepare for artillery fire!"

So the soldiers carefully lifted stone mills, mortars and other heavy objects weighing hundreds of pounds and put them into the ammunition bags.

Seeing that the catapults were loaded with ammunition, Kong Ming waved his feather fan vigorously:

"Fire!"

Huo Jun subconsciously held his breath, watching as there was a strong soldier under each trebuchet. At this moment, they all swung their axes and chopped down, cutting the hemp rope in front of them.

The hemp rope was connected to a live iron hook, the end of which was on the side of the long arm of the trebuchet. Once released, the heavy objects weighing a thousand pounds fixed at the end fell down.

The heavy ammunition bag was lightly lifted up at this moment, and after a thrilling semicircle, the heavy objects in the ammunition bag were thrown out.

The soldiers in charge of the artillery fire did not even look at it. After the launch, a strong soldier immediately stepped forward to turn the winch connected to the heavy object at the end of the trebuchet.

As the strong soldiers exerted their strength together, the heavy object that fell to the ground was raised again, and the end of the ammunition bag fell again.

The strong soldier holding the axe immediately hung the live hook on it and fixed it again with a hemp rope, so that the trebuchet returned to the unfired state.

Looking at the meticulous and orderly movements of these artillery soldiers, Huo Jun felt that they were full of strange beauty.

It turns out that engineering products can be as exquisite as the well-cloud ladder, benefit the people like the water power plant, and be as neat and uniform as the "strong crossbow reciprocating formation".

And now they can appear on the battlefield in such a violent posture!

Zhu Ling had no leisure to sigh at all.

The eight flying stones were almost all aimed at the top of the city wall, but there were more or less differences in the details.

Three of the flying stones added three gaps to the top of the wall like yesterday, and three extremely cruel pictures painted with blood, intestines, etc.

The remaining five completely flew over the city wall and flew into the city, making a bigger noise.

Some of the stone mills smashed through four courtyards without slowing down, and directly hit the stone table in the courtyard and knocked it away. Then, these stones that were dead in the past turned into giant beasts and rushed forward, destroying everything they could touch.

A mortar directly broke an old tree that two people could hug together, and then continued to roll forward and knocked down many things. Then the tree slowly fell down and crushed the lintel of the courtyard.

All the soldiers on the city wall saw all this clearly, and then the city wall was left with only a hissing sound.

"Here it comes again!" A soldier shouted heartbreakingly.

Zhu Ling hurriedly looked back and saw eight more flying stones flying from Liu Huangshu's camp and attacking the top of the city wall.

And one of them was heading straight for his position.

Zhu Ling's soul was surging, and he ran to the right for his life.

This was a heavy stone mill, which began to fall halfway, and still embedded in the ground at the top of the city wall without slowing down after smashing the parapet.

The broken parapet was shattered into pieces, and the rammed earth fragments were also given extremely high power, which made the surrounding soldiers wail continuously.

The largest piece of it flew a very short distance and hit Zhu Ling's head with great force while he was running away.

So the general who was defending the city fell down immediately, and at the same time, he felt that all the sounds he heard were moving away from him.

Zhu Ling heard a soldier shouting: "The general was smashed to death!"

Then there were messy footsteps, and he could even hear the direction of these footsteps, which should be to go down the city wall and give up defending the city.

Then Zhu Ling knew nothing, and he fainted.

When Zhu Ling regained consciousness again, he felt a little breathless.

After a while, his hands and feet regained consciousness, and he pushed away the messy earth, bricks and stones and half-pulled corpses on his body with effort, and Zhu Ling stood up blankly.

The helmet that saved his life had been lost. After smoothing his messy hair, Zhu Ling stood up blankly. The first thing he did was to run to the city wall to observe the situation.

It should have just entered the night. There was no bright light outside the city like last night. The lights in the camp were sparse now, which made Zhu Ling suddenly happy.

But then he laughed at himself. How could such a sharp weapon be defeated? Most likely Chang'an has been taken!

Although he was reluctant, Zhu Ling still slowly walked to the side close to the city, took a deep breath and looked out.

Sure enough, there were many more lights in Chang'an at this time than yesterday.

Rubbing his face, Zhu Ling was immediately frustrated.

No matter how he looked at it, there was only one answer: Chang'an had been lost.

This answer made him pace back and forth on the city wall: What should he do?

While pacing back and forth, Zhu Ling was startled and hurriedly ran to the city wall again to look out as much as possible.

He saw a long line of fire, winding from afar.

As a general, he knew very well that it was soldiers marching at night with torches!

Zhu Ling couldn't help but have hope in his heart:

Calculating the time, it must be General Xiahou who has returned!

Although it was cold on the top of the city and he was hungry, Zhu Ling was willing to endure it for General Xiahou.