Volume 5: Overlord of the Sea Chapter 554 Times Have Changed
Diu——
A bullet hit the plate-armored cavalry beside Zhang Ren, ricocheted in the direction of Zhang Ren, and passed by his cheek.
At this time, Zhang Ren also truly felt what these "invisible bows and arrows" were!
That’s right. At first, Zhang Ren couldn’t see the arrows, and when he passively discovered that the soldiers had fallen to the ground, he felt a little scared. However, as long as he paid a little attention, he could still see the trajectory of these projectiles clearly...
"No feather arrows? How can it be so powerful? And... how can there be so many?" Zhang Ren's mind was full of question marks.
Zhang Ren had never seen a projectile, but a "featherless arrow" was not a rare thing. To put it bluntly... it was just throwing stones.
It's not a decent weapon. To be precise... it's a low-level hidden weapon!
As far as Zhang Ren knows, there are two generals on the battlefield who are good at using featherless arrows. One is Zang Ba, who used to be a bandit and is now a general under Liu Bei. The other is Xu Chu, the second extraordinary general that emerged in the Wei State in recent years, who is also good at "featherless arrows"!
However, Xu Chu's featherless arrows were not meant to attack people secretly. Instead, they were stones ranging from fist-sized to head-sized, which were used to break down doors and walls. They could be called human catapults.
However, the featherless arrows of the Chu army were small and round, and were obviously made of metal...
Zang Ba can throw more insidious and powerful featherless arrows, but... there is only one Zang Ba!
After Zhang Ren covered his face with his hands, he squinted and looked forward through his fingers, and saw... these bullets were shot by the opponent using a long tubular "crossbow"!
"Hold on! The entire army continues to charge, shield soldiers fill in the positions in time, and archers shoot every ten steps!" Zhang Ren ordered.
In Zhang Ren's opinion, no matter how sophisticated the structure of the crossbow is, it still requires manpower to load it. Even the Qi crossbow before the Chu State requires manual rotation of the roller, which will eventually get tiring.
The opponent 's current rapid-fire speed...
It should be a crossbow?
However, after the crossbow is loaded once, although it can shoot multiple arrows continuously, changing the quiver is very slow!
Even if you change it faster, the number of quivers is limited after all. You can't make a crossbow quiver by hand on the battlefield, right?
No matter what, the right thing to do is to keep charging!
Zhang Ren's soldiers continued to move forward despite the attack of the Chu army. A small army formation was defeated, and substitutes immediately came up to take their places.
At the same time, the archers in the safest position also drew their bows and shot at the enemy every ten steps, and then ran to catch up with the large formation...
The performance of Zhang Renjun's army has already won honor for cold weapons... If this was a battle between muzzle-loading rifles and cold weapons, considering that there are only 3,000 Chu troops here, maybe Zhang Ren could fight them to a 50-50 draw.
Unfortunately, the Chu Army's Qi crossbow is closer to a breech-loading rifle!
In this way, not only can he squat in the trench to change bullets and use the cover to create favorable conditions for himself to shoot, but the firing rate is also far beyond that of a muzzle-loading rifle that needs to be slowly poked with a small stick.
The break that Zhang Ren had imagined never came. The enemy, with only 3,000 people, had the effect of shooting out tens of thousands of elite archers, drawing their bows continuously with all their strength. Moreover, the power of these "arrows" was even greater. Even... these tens of thousands of archers were tireless, as if they could maintain the highest shooting speed forever.
At this moment, Zhang Ren even wondered whether Huang Zhong, the legendary general of the Chu State who was able to strengthen the archers, was hiding in the opposite formation!
At this moment, "grouping together" to attack the enemy's defense line became the most meaningless sacrifice...
The "ricochet" effect allows the projectile to kill more than one person - except for plate cavalry and the front of , the power of a projectile when it ricochets is still enough to tear through the defense of any Ji-made soldier.
Plate armor is basically immune to ricochet damage, but direct projectiles have more than a 50% chance of penetrating the plate armor and embedding themselves inside!
Moreover, the closer you are to the target .
As for wooden shields... direct shots will almost certainly penetrate them, and as for ricochets... how can they hit the front? Unless you deliberately use a shield to block the sides, it will have no effect at all.
Only the Gilded Armor can be almost immune to this kind of bullets, just like Gilded Armor will not die from the stray arrows of ordinary Ji-zao soldiers on the battlefield unless it is too unlucky.
Ordinary wooden and stone warriors, when wearing armor and facing projectiles, should try their best not to be hit by the parts not covered by the armor.
Even if it is hit too many times, the wooden and stone armor may be penetrated!
This is still because of the "long-range" reason - if you go deep into the enemy camp, the armor's enhancement will be suppressed and the defense will be further reduced.
They were clearly charging steadily with the arrow formation...
Obviously the combination of troops is very reasonable...
Obviously, there were no mistakes in the coordination between melee and ranged combat...
But I can't get up there at all!
The dense military formation was peeled off layer by layer by the roaring Qi crossbows.
Screams gradually replaced the sound of war drums and became the main theme of Zhang Ren's army.
The earth wall that seemed like a joke before now became an unattainable chasm.
And on their way to the charge, they were only sanctioned wave after wave!
Gradually, the corpses of his comrades in front and the screams around him began to cause Zhang Renjun's morale to drop rapidly.
Zhang Ren beat the drums three times in a row, but failed to restore the morale, and the casualties were indeed very serious, so he had no choice but to order a withdrawal and personally cover the rear.
Fortunately, the retreat was "very convenient" because Guo Huai had no intention of pursuing.
After all, although the long-range attack of the crossbow army is strong, it is not suitable for pursuit. The Qi crossbow still needs to be reloaded every time, and shooting while reloading will definitely affect the efficiency of running.
As for rushing up for close combat?
If the other side's morale completely collapsed, Guo Huai wouldn't mind doing so.
However, although Zhang Ren had suffered nearly 30% of the casualties, the flags were still there and the drum beats were not disrupted. It was true that the morale had dropped greatly, but it was by no means to the point of collapse.
After all, the Badong Division led by Guo Huai had not been trained for long, and there were only 3,000 soldiers here, and only 8,000 in the entire Badong County. At this time, Zhang Ren had already come to join forces with Yan Yan, and his strength was ten times greater than his. Guo Huai felt that he still needed to respect him...
Zhang Ren's army retreated more than ten miles away, and then began to set up camp in a panic. Originally, Zhang Ren thought that the enemy was just a group of arrogant and unknown people, and their number was only 30% of his own. He could easily defeat them in one battle, so he didn't even set up camp for repairs.
As a result, they suffered a crushing defeat right from the start, with nearly 30% of the Ji-zao soldiers in the vanguard army being killed...
The reason why the army has not collapsed despite losing 30% of its troops is, on the one hand, because Zhang Ren did train well in normal times, and on the other hand, because more than 95% of the casualties were Ji-made soldiers - in terms of long-range combat, the armor is still very capable of "holding up"!
Increasing the proportion of generals can also help lead the army more effectively and suppress panic effects.
Another factor is... it was too fast!
Before the panic had time to spread, the troops began to collapse during the retreat, but Zhang Ren's effective organization stopped it.
Yan Yan, who was on his way, was also shocked when he heard about Zhang Ren’s “defeat in Zhiye” - facing off against 3,000 enemy troops stationed in the wild, Zhang Ren not only lost, but also lost no less than 3,000 soldiers, while the opponent... was almost unharmed?
If Yan Yan didn't trust Zhang Ren, he would even suspect that this was a spy sent by the enemy...
