At noon, Yuan Zongdi was ready for battle. His main battalion did not participate in today's general attack, because Yuan Zongdi was always a little worried and needed to guard against what Li Guoying had left. When the sun arrived at the agreed position, before Yuan Zongdi gave the order, he heard a dense war drum suddenly sounding from Li Laiheng of Tongyuan Gate, and Yuan Zongdi laughed: "The little tiger is really angry. ”

Yuan Zongdi then also ordered the drums to be beaten. In the morning, the troops responsible for the feint were rotated, and a new group of troops began to attack the city in earnest. The soldiers have been recuperating today, and if the Qing army has invested all its fresh forces, it will be difficult to withstand this large-scale attack of the Ming army.

On the main offensive position of the Ming army, the Qing army found that the offensive of the Ming army suddenly became fierce, almost all the ladders shook violently at the same time, and a large number of Ming troops were pouring into the city. The Qing shooters who were sticking to the shooting hole seemed quite calm, but they all let out an exclamation for a moment, fired their bows and arrows in a panic, and beckoned others to hurry over to help.

Song Liang, who was resting under the city, was also awakened by the sound of an urgent horn, and he had to throw down his rice bowl and run up the city wall again at the urging of the officer. After a quick glance next to the shooting hole, Song Liang saw that the ladder outside the city was full of soldiers of the Ming army, and through the shooting hole, he could see that a large number of enemy soldiers under the city had run to the city wall and gathered around the foot of the ladder. Now there was no place for archers on the battlements, and the armored soldiers of the Qing army also swarmed up, pushed up to the battlements, brandished knives and spears and poked under the city walls.

Song Liang and all the other shooters crowded around the shooting hole, shooting out as fast as they could. The strong men carrying the oil pot could not find their place when they went around, and fearing that the officers would accuse them of being afraid of the enemy, they rushed to the firing hole, and poured boiling oil and asphalt out of this outlet without thinking.

"Don't mess around!" Before a few shooters had time to warn, a few cauldrons poured out along the shooting holes, and the hot oil that suddenly poured down poured several Ming soldiers from the ladder, but the viscous asphalt did not flow out, and when it met the wall, the cooled part stuck to the four walls of the shooting hole, blocking the shooters' vision and shooting boundary.

"The thief's meticulous work!" The officer, who was busy directing the battle of the armored soldiers, turned around and saw this scene, and with a wave of his sword, he cut off the head of an unarmored soldier who was carrying a pot and separated it, and then shouted at the other people who carried the pot: "Get out!" Don't go to work yet! ”

When the soldiers retreated in horror, the officers turned again to urge the men on the battlements to fight, and even forgot to let the unarmored soldiers take their freshly cut down companions; And Song Liang and several of their shooters also gave up the blocked shooting hole and moved to another position.

Under the city, Lao Qingyan and his companions in charge of covering moved forward to the position of the city wall. As the Ming army began to attack fiercely, the gap in the battlements was full of armored hand-to-hand soldiers of the Qing army. The Qing army's action of pouring boiling oil on the city has basically stopped, but from time to time some wood and stone are dropped. However, the throwing accuracy of these heavy objects was not as accurate as before, and it was obvious that they were thrown by the armored human wall across the battlements and the front row. Lao Qingyan didn't even bother to observe how the stones flew around: despite the dense Ming army under the city, it was still difficult for them to knock people down.

Some Qing soldiers seemed to be killing up, and Lao Qingyan saw that there was actually a strong man carrying a stone and jumping onto the battlements, lifting the big stone high above his head, intending to throw it down with all his strength to the Ming soldiers who were climbing.

"Warrior ......"

Seeing this scene of not being afraid of death, Lao Qingyan couldn't help but think of this word. The Qing soldier was almost immediately hit by the Ming shooters, and he was carrying a large stone and an upside-down onion from the city of Chongqing, smashing a large pool of blood on the ground.

Similar situations occurred from time to time, and it can be seen that the Qing army has already felt the crisis. The shooting hole diagonally down the city wall kept shooting feather arrows. These shooting holes were like the mouths of poisonous snakes spitting letters, constantly spitting venom at the Ming army. Some of the arrows even had a fire on them - rockets are usually used by the besieging side, and siege shooters are afraid to guarantee that they will hit the enemy behind the wall, so they set the arrows on fire in the hope of igniting something, or increase the damage when they happen to hit. Even when Deng Ming besieged Gaoyou Lake, he knew the Qing army's camp well, and still used rockets to attack.

In order to ensure the accuracy of the bow and arrow, the defender generally does not ignite the arrow. But now the Ming army is climbing, and the Ming army on the ladder can be called close to the Qing army shooters behind the shooting hole, so the Qing army does not need to think about the accuracy problem, and also ignites the bow and arrow to increase the damage effect against the enemy.

Now next to Song Liang's shooting hole, there is already a stove and a bucket of asphalt, and many of his companions dip it in the asphalt first, and then light the arrows on the stove and shoot them out. However, Song Liang and a few old comrades-in-arms did not do this, they just roasted the arrows on the fire when they were queuing, and used them to attack the Ming army without dipping anything.

Although there was no flame, and it didn't look so imposing, Song Liang knew that the damage to the Ming soldiers was no less than that of the arrows with fire, and the armor-piercing effect was even better: before the battle, someone asked if he should prepare some dirty things to smear the arrows, such as dung and the like. This filth often caused terrible inflammation and killed the wounded, but the officers dismissed it. It was only during a long siege of attrition that the idea of poisoning the arrows in order to kill the wounded of the opposing side was considered, and in the eyes of the officers and soldiers who were more than in battle, this tactic was hunting rather than fighting. Just like the current hot red arrow, although they do not understand the principle, the Qing soldiers also know that the inflammation caused by a red-hot weapon is smaller than that of a weapon that has not been heat-treated, and sometimes a soldering iron is deliberately used to treat the wound in order to treat the wound.

However, the outcome of the battle does not depend on whether the wounded enemy can be put in bed tomorrow morning, or if he dies of inflammation after three days, but whether the enemy can be immediately incapacitated and withdrawn from the battlefield. Once the scorching arrow enters the human body, the enormous pain it causes can make this enemy no longer a threat in the blink of an eye, and it is impossible to restore him to combat ability in a short time with a simple bandage.

The sound of Jin Ge intersecting could already be heard on the battlements, and the armored soldiers gathered at the head of the city were taking weapons to beat the shields held above the heads of the Ming army. The Ming army at the top of the ladder will defend with shields with all their might, although they are attacked by the Qing army condescendingly and have no ability to fight back, they may not be able to immediately encounter the fear of their lives. And the Ming army hiding behind him would poke up with spears and other things, and sometimes the Qing army was accidentally stabbed by a spear that suddenly came up from under the shield.

Therefore, it became important to attack the unprotected lower body of these Ming troops from the firing holes. Beads of sweat began to appear on the foreheads of Song Liang and his companions, but they continued to shoot. Whenever a Ming soldier was shot in the leg or foot by them, he would fall from the ladder screaming. From time to time, the crossbow arrows of the Ming army drilled through the shooting holes, and even if these all-iron hard arrows were shot on the hole wall, sometimes there would be a vigorous ejection, injuring the Qing shooters who were too close.

The person in front of Song Liang was swept in the eye by an iron arrow that bounced in, and immediately blood flowed from his face, and he fell to the ground covering his eyes, constantly rolling.

"All-iron's crossbow arrows......" Seeing the tragic situation of that companion, Song Liang also had palpitations. He had just burned the arrow red, and was about to lean over to find his target, if it hadn't been for this person squeezing in front of him, the crossbow arrow might have swept in his face.

The Ming army's equipment was astonishing, and I heard that when they were fighting with Deng Ming in the past, the Ming army had used all-iron crossbow arrows, but Song Liang was still in Xi'an at that time, and today he finally saw this weapon with his own eyes - this is something that the relatively poor Shaanxi Green Battalion cannot afford.

The Ming archers did not pose much of a threat to the shooting holes, and it seems that all of them had used rockets to attack the Qing troops on the battlements, while their crossbowmen counterattacked the Qing shooters. They must have been very close to the city walls, but because the Qing army's stone throwers and archers were suppressed behind the battlements, and because they were covered by a large number of Ming infantry, they could safely attack the shooting holes without worrying too much about the Qing counterattack.

When Song Liang finished shooting and went back to iron another arrow, another crossbow arrow came in from below and hit a Qing army archer who was preparing to attack, and this archer plunged into the hole and swallowed his breath without saying a word.

The other Qing archers dragged the dead bodies out of the shooting holes, threw them aside, and continued to attack the Ming army......

Burst.

There was another dull sound, and another Qing army archer was killed by a crossbow arrow. As the Ming army got closer to the city, the Qing army's attention became more and more attracted to these vanguards, and the Ming army's crossbowmen became more and more active. Counterattacks on the shooting holes became more and more frequent, and the accuracy was constantly improving, and it was clear that they had pushed very close to the walls.

However, Song Liang and the others did not have time to deal with these threatening targets, every time Song Liang occupied the shooting hole, he only had one or two breaths to use, if he didn't shoot the arrow in his hand quickly, the officer would scold his mother.

As the Qing archers had guessed, Li Laiheng's crossbowmen had already touched the edge of the city wall. Lao Qingyan stood between the two ladders and loaded his crossbow machine, a position where no stones would fall, and also avoided the observation of the shooters behind the shooting holes of the Qing army on both sides.

After loading the crossbow arrows, Lao Qingyan would suddenly jump out and shoot at the shooting hole of the Qing army. If it's heads-up, the crossbowman shoots against the shooter on the wall protected by a shooting hole, and there is definitely a loss or a win. But now the situation is completely different, Lao Qingyan knows the position of the enemy's shooter very well, and in such a tense siege moment, he can always see the face of the enemy shooter in the hole, and there will be no problem of not being able to find the target. And it will not be easy for the enemy to pick out a crossbowman like him in the sea of people, let alone aim and attack in time.