Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 313 - 222: Trial Pass! (10,000-word update, requesting monthly pass)_2

Chapter 313: Chapter 222: Trial Pass! (10,000-word update, requesting monthly pass)_2

A massive rock flew through the air and with a loud "bang," it landed on the bank occupied by the Qi Army, causing several soldiers who couldn’t evade in time to suffer broken bones and torn tendons.

At this time, Li Hongyun was no longer just a helpless foot soldier on the shore, but had become a commander on a warship.

The Jin soldiers’ warships had already begun to cross the river.

Historical records indicate that at this time, the Jin soldiers, being arrogant and underestimating their enemy, never thought they would encounter resistance from the Qi Army here, so they used flat-bottomed transport boats, which were shallow and relatively unstable.

But in this historical instance, the vessels the Jin soldiers were using were clearly warships, which seemed large and difficult to deal with.

So when Li Hongyun first appeared in the Battle of Niuzhu, he had no ability to fight back whatsoever and was badly beaten by the Jin soldiers.

But this time, the situation was completely different.

Li Hongyun looked at the warship he was on, where the Qi soldiers were busily getting into position with intense urgency.

A large number of soldiers were operating treadwheels in the lower deck, propelling the warship at high speed directly towards the Jin soldiers’ warships!

This was the Qi Dynasty’s formidable weapon at sea, the Sea Scorpion ship.

The so-called "Sea Scorpion" is a type of special whale, documented in historical records as: "over thirty feet in length, its skin black as a bull, and when it blows water into the air, it all turns into smoke." The Sea Scorpion ship was named because it resembled such a whale.

A vessel like this was inherently a heavy, large-scale warship. A large Sea Scorpion ship required 20,000 coins, whereas a super-large Sea Scorpion ship, thirty feet in length and capable of carrying seven to eight hundred people, required more than 60,000 coins.

This time, among the nearly hundred warships of the Qi Army, there were several dozen Sea Scorpion ships.

And the one Li Hongyun was on was the largest among them.

The number and quality of the naval vessels in this historical instance were directly connected to the achievements of Wang Wenchuan’s reform.

Li Hongyun had only made some optimizations in Wang Wenchuan’s reforms, addressing key nodes like droughts that caused him to be removed from office, thus the naval lineup was quite decent, but it was not perfect.

If it were the instance where Chuge was, countless massive Sea Scorpion ships could probably have submerged the Jin soldiers.

Nevertheless, Li Hongyun was very satisfied with the forces at his command.

The Sea Scorpion ship was much faster compared to ordinary vessels, which was due to its power not coming from simple sails or oars, but from treadwheels at the bottom.

These treadwheels were operated by soldiers stepping on them within the ship; large ships were equipped with twenty-four treadwheels, and smaller ones had twelve. When soldiers exerted full force on these treadwheels, the warships moved as swiftly as a gust of wind or a flash of lightning, far faster than the typical warships.

Moreover, as a specialized warship, the Sea Scorpion was not only agile but also deep-drafted and stable, equipped with facilities like rams, barracks for archers, and gun emplacements, giving them a massive advantage over the Jin soldiers’ warships.

Soon, the first squadron of warships arranged on the river had already met the Jin soldiers’ ships.

"Form up! Fire the cannons!"

At Li Hongyun’s command, the cannons on the warship roared in unison, and a thick fog immediately enveloped the river, drastically reducing visibility.

The cannons of the Qi Dynasty were clearly not the same as those in the later period of the Great Sheng Dynasty.

The Thunder Cannons of the Qi Dynasty indeed could not damage the enemy from a distance; they had a range of only about a hundred meters and primarily fired stones mixed with lime powered by gunpowder, far less lethal than the solid iron shots of later times.

But at this point, the primary function of the Thunder Cannons was to obscure visibility.

When the Thunder Cannons fired, not only did the explosion produce copious amounts of smoke from the gunpowder, but they also contained lime and other materials, instantly filling the area with smoke.

Taking advantage of this smoke, the squadron surged fiercely towards the Jin soldiers’ warships!

At that moment, the Jin soldiers’ fleet had just begun crossing the river. The ram of the Sea Scorpion ship fiercely struck the foremost Jin warships, creating huge holes, and river water instantly flooded in.

Meanwhile, the smaller Sea Scorpion ships continuously darted through gaps in the Jin fleet, intercepting them and rendering their naval formation utterly chaotic.

"Swoosh!"

A massive stone tore through the sky, targeting a distant Jin warship.

This time, the ones launching the stones were not the Jin soldiers from the opposite shore, but the catapults on the Sea Scorpion ship!

Compared to the Jin soldiers who could only retaliate with bows and arrows, the Qi Army’s warships clearly had more means of attack.

"Ignore these Qi soldiers, land!" a Jin soldier commander shouted loudly from a distant warship.

It was clear that the Jin soldiers knew very well that the naval power of the Qi Dynasty far surpassed theirs, so engaging in a stubborn fight on the water was an extremely unwise act.

Furthermore, Wanyan Hailing had already issued a critical order, demanding them to cross the river as quickly as possible. Thus, these Jin commanders thought that no matter how many warships were lost, they must get the Jin soldiers to the opposite shore as quickly as possible.

As long as these Jin soldiers could successfully cross the river and rapidly eliminate the Qi Army’s forces on land, then the Qi naval blockade would sooner or later collapse without a fight.

Li Hongyun was calm and composed. At this moment, it felt like he was playing a type of large-scale multiplayer role-playing game involved in a national battle.

He quickly walked to the side of the ship, holding a special crossbow in his hands.

This was the Qi Dynasty’s devastating weapon, the Divine Arm Bow!

In the Qi Dynasty, where the army was primarily infantry, the development of crossbows reached unparalleled heights, particularly the Divine Arm Bow—a critical weapon whose manufacturing secrets had been closely guarded, which led to its being lost. Subsequently, all attempts to replicate it from the Great Sheng Dynasty to modern times failed due to missing core components, never achieving the results recorded in historical texts.