Li Tianyang's fleet sailed from Bengang in less than two hours, and they encountered Yuan Laoba's huge fleet on the water only a few dozen miles away from Bengang!

"Fifteen miles northeast, a large number of ships are approaching, and they are expected to meet us in half an hour!" The experienced Wu Gouzi once again personally acted as a lookout, climbed on the warship leading the way, and signaled to the fleet behind him.

"It's coming!!" Li Tianyang's heart was relieved, he had been a little worried for so many days, but after he really wanted to fight with the other party, Li Tianyang's heart was not so panicked!

"Artillery ready, ammunition loaded!" Unhurried, Li Tianyang ordered.

This is the first time that Li Tian has raised their team, and Yan is facing an opponent who is stronger than them. Although in Bengang in the past few years, because of the shortage of steel materials, Li Tianyang and their own blacksmith workshops and artillery workshops have been idle for most of the time, but in the past six months, how much time, because of the smooth promotion of maritime operations and the fact that the Bengang camp has begun to be self-sufficient, there is basically no need to buy it from outside, and the scale of the workshop is getting bigger and bigger, so that the monthly money earned is also increasing, which makes Li Tianyang have enough capital to start arming his team.

First of all, Li Tianyang spent a huge price to take the line of the Portuguese in Macau, and purchased a full five Shenwei General Cannons from them, which was later called the Hongyi Cannon. Each cannon cost Li Tianyang almost three thousand taels of silver, filling in all the income of more than half a year. At the same time, Li Tianyang also bought a relatively small power, but the price and cost performance of a little more expensive Franc cannon, which is a large amount of silver expenditure.

These Western devils are really too shrewd, and it is precisely because they have mastered the complete artillery-making process that there is an endless stream of people who want to buy cannons from them, not only pirates want to buy cannons from them, but even the shoguns of the Wa Kingdom, and even the government of the Ming Dynasty, are also contacting them to ask about the price of buying cannons. It is precisely because of the strange goods that they don't have to worry about at all, their own cannons can't be sold, and the market price of their own is only two thousand silver for the general's cannon, and in the end they were fried to three thousand taels.

In addition, the pirates who have been strangled in the surrounding waters for a long time have more or less gained something, and the Franc cannon that can fire five or six pounds of lead bullets alone has captured seven or eight of them, together with the cannons that Li Tianyang has collected over the years, finally Li Tianyang and their team have a certain amount of long-range firepower.

As a person who has crossed over from the afterlife, how could Li Tianyang not know the general trend of firearms in the future, and how can he not understand the power of cold weapons in the face of hot weapons. Therefore, although they themselves do not have enough resources and conditions to study, study, or even develop and improve the specifications and power of existing firearms, it does not mean that Li Tianyang and them will stand still and wait for their own weapons to be developed.

What I want to say here is that Li Tianyang bought these big general cannons from the Portuguese, which he regarded as killers, the basic specifications: the standard nine-foot-long cannon body, the inner wall is about three inches, the lead bullets fired can reach more than ten catties, and the firing range is an incredible effective range of ten miles, that is to say, in the vast sea, from the time Li Tianyang detected the enemy with their unique sea surface level, to after they were fully equipped with firearms and ammunition, The enemy probably happened to be within the range of Li Tianyou's team.

However, the biggest flaw of such a weapon is that it is too heavy, a cannon has a weight of more than 3,000 catties, plus the recoil of the cannon when it is fired, with the 'V' shaped structure of the Ming Dynasty Fu ship, the left and right walls of the ship are simply not capable of such a huge impact, so such a cannon can only be installed in the bow or stern. However, Li Tianyou's Crazy Shark warship, because it is an imitation of a Western warship, can place powerful cannons such as the Great General Cannon at the left and right ends.

With these reasons, Li Tianyang had no choice but to settle for the second best thing, using a relatively large number of Franc cannons with relatively small power and range to fill the defect that there were no firearms on the left and right sides of the battleship. It's just that because the price of these cannons is relatively high, and the control of the Ming Dynasty is quite strict, Li Tianyang can only use some of the warships in a centralized manner. In this way, of the more than 20 warships belonging to the Bengang camp, only thirteen warships were equipped with artillery, and only four warships were equipped with the general's cannon.

Li Tianyang knew very well that with the power and crosshairs of the current cannons, the probability of hitting the target was much higher than that of scattered use, so at least five or more Franc cannons were placed on these thirteen warships, and as for the small cannons with a shorter range and less powerful such as the Tiger Squat Cannon, they were despised by Li Tianyang, but each warship lost two on it as a defense against the enemy when attacking their warships.

"The Great General Cannon Ready!!"

The Crazy Shark that rushed in front of it made a flexible sharp turn, and the hull of the ship suddenly turned sideways, and the hull on the left side was aimed at the direction ushered in by Yuan Laoba's group of pirates. However, the rest of the warships stabilized their hulls one after another, aiming straight at the faint black dots that appeared on the sea in front of them.

At the same time, the pirates of Yuan Laoba's pirate team finally discovered more than 20 warships that appeared in front of them, and one by one the pirate ships were shocked by this sudden scene, and suddenly each ship was the pirate leader shouting at the sailors on board to respond to the enemy's shouts. It's just that what they didn't expect was that when they found the enemy on the opposite side, Li Tianyang and them had already been waiting for them, and they had prepared the first powerful cannonball to welcome Yuan Laoba and them.

"Cannons!! Hurry up and set me up with a cannon!! Yuan Laoba was also careless, he didn't expect that he would be intercepted by Li Tianyang's fleet halfway, so he didn't release a fast boat to reconnoiter the surrounding sea, and when he saw Li Tianyang's fleet, the warships of the two of them were already getting closer and closer, and they were about to reach the farthest distance of the general's cannon.

(End of chapter)