Repeating crossbows are actually not suitable for defending cities.
Of course, this does not refer to the kind of repeated crossbow that can be held in front of a soldier (such as the Zhuge Liannu), but to the repeated crossbow developed by the Smelting Bureau.
The fundamental difference lies in the penetrating power of Wei's new continuous crossbow. It is powerful enough to shoot through ordinary shields and can easily penetrate the human body.
Using this kind of repeating crossbow on flat ground, he will show a killing ability that scares the world. For example, in the two appearances of Yaling Gorge and Luocheng, these cold metal lumps, their kills completely surpassed that of the Shang Shui Army.
The soldiers personally carried their weapons and went into battle.
Especially when combined with a crossbow arrow that is as thick as a finger, one crossbow arrow can often penetrate the bodies of several enemies in a straight line, and the killing index is not inferior to the combination of a catapult and oil barrel bombs.
Unfortunately, once such killing machines on the ground are placed on high places, such as city walls, it cannot be said that they lose their power, but it is undeniable that the effect will decrease sharply.
Quite simply, because of the angle, repeating crossbows placed on city walls often burrow straight into the ground before fully utilizing their powerful penetrating power, completely unable to demonstrate their proper killing capabilities.
There is no way, this is the drawback of this kind of extremely penetrating repeating crossbow: they can only show their killing ability that frightens the world when they are on flat ground.
Because of this, when Zhao Hongrun planned his tactics, he did not deploy the five hundred serial crossbows on the city wall, but on the inside of the West City Gate, and used the method of opening the West City Gate to lure the slaves who had been cut off from their return.
The soldiers rushed into the city gate regardless of their safety.
Compared with the extremely wide west city wall, how big is the city gate opening? It is only five or six feet long.
In such a narrow passage, it is the best terrain for Wei's new serial crossbows to show their most terrifying side.
Those Shang Shui soldiers in charge of the repeating crossbows didn't even have to aim at all. As long as they aimed the repeating crossbows roughly at the city gate, they could easily harvest the lives of the slave soldiers on the opposite side who came to the door.
Of course, they did not do that. General Yi Jia, who was in charge of commanding the 2,000-strong merchant navy here, "kindly" waited for the slave soldiers to run out of the city gate, and then ordered his soldiers to launch an offensive with repeating crossbows.
If we were to use any word to describe the scene of almost one-sided massacre at that time, I am afraid that devastating would be a good adjective.
Because the soldiers of Shangshui under the city could clearly see that under the fire of five hundred repeating crossbows, the tens of thousands of slave soldiers were like rice in the field blown down by the hurricane.
Fall to the ground.
What's even more shocking is that the slave soldiers rushing in front fell to the ground, and the following slave soldiers rushed over again, so that the merchant navy soldiers repeatedly saw the enemy troops rushing over, falling to the ground, rushing up, and falling to the ground.
, my stomach was churning.
Especially those Shangshui soldiers who were responsible for dragging out the corpses afterwards were already vomiting while holding on to the city wall as soon as they reached the city gate. Even the veterans who looked relatively calm had obvious signs of embarrassment on their faces.
Disgusted look.
"Hey, new recruit, are you okay?"
"It's okay, don't worry about me, I just...vomit..."
Looking at the new recruits who were holding on to the city wall and vomiting, some veterans shook their heads, suppressing the turmoil in their hearts, carefully looking for a place to stay from the flesh and blood everywhere, and preparing to drag these corpses one by one to an open place in the city for burial.
, so as not to breed epidemics.
How miserable...
A veteran came to a corpse soaked in blood and sighed silently.
In his eyes, the owner of this corpse was really unlucky. The head was smashed, red and white stuff flowed all over the floor, and the small right arm and right foot were missing. The whole body was like a sieve, and it still remains to this day.
The blood is trickling out.
If you guessed correctly, this unlucky guy should have been hit by multiple crossbow bolts, so that not even a whole body was left behind.
Suppressing the feeling of nausea in his stomach, the veteran of the Merchant Navy did not dare to take a big breath and dragged the body to the city for burial.
Because the air here, especially under the city gate, has an extremely pungent smell, so strong that it can almost make people suffocate.
It's no wonder, after all, more than 20,000 Jiejiao slave soldiers died inside and outside the city gate in a very short period of time, creating a passage that was half a person high.
"I hope there are still uneaten grain bags on our army's baggage trains..."
From the side, an old soldier whispered.
After hearing this, a recruit who finally cheered up asked curiously: "Why do you say this suddenly?"
The veteran glanced at him and said calmly: "Can you still swallow the mutton?"
The new soldier looked at the veteran with confusion, as if he was saying: What's wrong? The mutton of the Sheang people is very delicious.
Suddenly, he was stunned and looked down at the bloody corpse being dragged with some understanding. He couldn't help the churning in his stomach and vomited all the food he had eaten in the morning.
Yes, after witnessing the sacrifice under the crossbow with my own eyes, I believe that I will avoid meat for a long time.
"Stop procrastinating and get to work quickly!"
Two thousand people held Yi Jia behind and shouted.
The Shangshui soldiers who were responsible for carrying the corpse sighed, and under the sympathetic eyes of those in charge of the crossbows in the distance, they dragged it to the corner of the city and buried it in a newly dug hole.
"Tell me, why do these Jiejiao slave soldiers keep rushing in even though they know that there will only be a dead end if they rush up?"
A young-looking recruit couldn't help but ask.
Not far away, a middle-aged veteran with a beard on his face heard this and said coldly: "(Chu Guoyu) Because if they rush up, they will die, but their relatives will live; but if they don't rush, they will die, and
Their relatives will also die."
Hearing this veteran state this sentence in the dialect of his motherland, the veterans nearby couldn't help but fell into silence, because the familiar language of their motherland reminded them of who they used to be.
Isn't this the case for the soldiers of Chu State? Are they any different from these Jiejiao slave soldiers?
While the Shangshui sergeants in the city were carrying the corpses of the enemy soldiers and burying them, just as Wu Ji had guessed, outside the city, the Jiejiao slave soldiers, blocked by the sea of fire, still had no intention of giving up the attack.
Or to be more precise, they dare not give up the attack.
However, unlike fires caused by other factors such as firewood, the burning core temperature of oil reaches a point that humans cannot pass through. It is not a hundred degrees or two hundred degrees, but a high temperature of a full 1,600 degrees.
What is this concept?
This means that when a slave soldier desperately tried to rush through the sea of fire, trying to rush through the flames, his feet had already turned into charcoal before he stepped on the burning black oil.
And his whole body had already been scalded to death by the hot air hitting his face.
That’s why it reads so fast;.
This is what many slave soldiers have proven with their own lives: people cannot cross this sea of burning fire with billowing black smoke.
Therefore, the slave soldiers retreated slightly, to a distance where the heat wave coming towards them was not enough to burn them to death.
But these slaves, who had been domesticated by the Jijiao people for a long time, had no courage to escape at all. They just waited at a loss, waiting for the Jijiao people's orders.
But even so, it also attracted scolding from some Jiejiao governors.
"(In Chinese) Why stop?! Ah? Why stop?!"
I saw a Jiejiao cavalryman who was acting as the supervisor of the battle team came here on horseback, and used the riding whip in his hand to beat the surrounding slave soldiers indiscriminately.
Within a radius of ten feet, he was the only Jiejiao cavalryman, and the others were all slave soldiers enslaved by their Jiejiao tribe.
However, no one of the slave soldiers who clearly had an absolute advantage in numbers dared to resist. They just subconsciously held their heads with a look of fear on their faces.
It is not difficult to guess that if they had the courage to resist, how could there be so many slave soldiers here unable to kill that Jiejiao cavalry?
It's a pity that they don't dare.
"(In Shen language) Fire...that fire...can't get through it...just died in vain..."
Probably after the Jiejiao warlord whipped several people, a slave soldier told the former in broken Heian language the reason why they stopped.
"(In the language of the Yi people) Can you make it through?" A hint of doubt flashed in the eyes of the Jiejiao Warlord.
No wonder, after all, people in this world still only understand the temperature of fire at the level of firewood, animal fats, and vegetable oils. The core temperature of burning of these three is only about 500 degrees at the highest. Therefore, in their understanding
, people can cross the sea of fire, as long as they don't take into account the sequelae of being burned by the fire.
Obviously, the Jiejiao Warlord in front of him would not care whether the slaves would be killed or injured in the sea of fire. After all, what he had to do was to order these slave soldiers to attack, attack, attack, and gradually consume the Wei army in the city.
His physical strength caused the latter's blade to curl up and his arrows to be exhausted.
"(In Shen language) You, you, you, go over there!" Pointing his horse rein at a few slave soldiers at random, the Jiejiao warlord issued a cruel order.
Perhaps because someone had already tried it, one of the slave soldiers hesitated.
Seeing this, the Jiejiao tribesman showed some anger on his face, and he immediately drew his sword and chopped off the head of the slave soldier, and then scolded the slave soldiers: "Go over!"
"..."
The few slave soldiers who were unfortunately selected had no choice but to grit their teeth and rush towards the sea of fire.
It's a pity that even if they endured the increasingly scorching heat and managed to rush into the sea of fire, before their feet could step into the fire, their whole bodies burst into flames and turned into bodies.
The charred corpse fell limply into the fire.
No wonder, after all, the burning temperature of oil is too high, enough to "ignite" humans.
After witnessing this scene with his own eyes, the Jiejiao warlord frowned, and then gave up the idea of letting the slave soldiers continue to die.
It didn't take long for this matter to reach the ears of Bitatu, the leader of the Jiejiao tribe who was at the rear.
It seems that those people are not deceiving. The Wei people can indeed use a kind of black water to attract sky fire as a weapon...
Bitatu didn't feel sorry for the lost slave soldiers, he was just thinking about ways to defeat the Wei army.