Chapter 193: Gods and Buddhas in the Sky Are Against God
Chapter 193: Gods and Buddhas in the Sky Are Against God
This time, Shao Quanzhong felt dizzy and fell down.
But he woke up soon, jumped up, ran out of the tent, jumped on his horse, and headed straight for Mawu Village.
Shao Quanzhong's horse was a Qinghaicong given to him by Gansu Governor Tao Maolin after he entered Gansu for the war.
In his previous life, the Qinghai warlord Ma Bufang gave his cowardly son a BMW like this one. The young marshal could catch up with a Mercedes-Benz train on this horse. It was truly an unparalleled steed.
Shao Quanzhong was an excellent rider, and with him riding such a powerful horse, the guard platoon could not catch up with him at all. So he rode alone and took the risk to reach Mawu Village.
When Shao Quanzhong arrived, Tian Xing was in a coma.
According to the guards, Brother Tian was just unlucky. An enemy shrapnel bomb exploded in front of Tian Xing's horse, knocking him unconscious and causing him to fall off his horse. He was hit by shrapnel in his legs and abdomen, and lost a lot of blood.
Now Tian Xing's bleeding has been initially stopped by the medical staff, but blood is still oozing out from the gauze on his abdomen.
When Shao Quanzhong arrived, Tian Xing woke up slowly with an unusual blush on her face.
"Second brother, you are here. I feel like I am dying soon. I have not fulfilled my promise to help you seize the throne, and I am leaving. After I die, there is no need to transport my body back to my hometown. A real man's home is the whole world, so why should he be buried in his hometown? I want to be buried here, turn into a fierce ghost, and kill villains for you, second brother..."
"No! Brother, you can't die! I order you not to die!"
Shao Quanzhong's vision became blurred, and he stopped Tian Xing from continuing. He mounted his horse, ordered someone to tie Tian Xing to his back, and rode away.
Normally, the injured should not ride on a horse, as it would aggravate the injury, so it is better to rest. However, Tian Xing was about to recover, so he could not care less.
The better the horse, the smoother the ride. Shao Quanzhong was also a good rider, so he controlled the horse with his legs and held his elder brother with both hands, trying to reduce the bumps on his brother's body as much as possible while constantly talking to him.
"Brother, you must hold on and don't pass out. I'll take you to the headquarters. The genius doctor Wu Anye is there and he will definitely save you. When we became sworn brothers, we said that we would share wealth and glory in the future. You must not die. You must wait until I accomplish something great. Then you must come with me into the Forbidden City. I promise, I promise to drive away the Tartars for you, brother—"
Tian Xing knew that his second brother was not very concerned about expelling the Tartars. As long as he could have the final say, he didn't care whether the Qing Dynasty was overthrown. But now, for his own sake, he promised to expel the Tartars. This brotherhood was absolutely sincere.
Hero Tian gritted his teeth and said, "Second brother, I will try my best to hold on, but I don't know if God will give me this opportunity..."
On his way back, Shao Quanzhong ran into the guard platoon led by Hu Liuniang. Shao Quanzhong's horse passed by in a flash, and Hu Liuniang had no choice but to lead the guard platoon to chase him.
Shao Quanzhong rode his horse directly to the tent of the command headquarters' medical team and shouted loudly. The medical soldiers inside came out, helped Shao Quanzhong off the horse, untied Tian Xing, and sent him into the tent as quickly as possible.
Shao Quanzhong was so focused on riding his horse that his legs were shaking and his back was covered in Tian Xing's blood.
Wu Anye, the genius doctor who ranked second in comprehensive level in the world and ranked first in surgical skills, personally performed the operation on Tian Xing immediately.
Remove the shrapnel from the abdomen and thighs and stop the bleeding.
During the operation, Tian Xing had already fallen into a coma. When the operation was over, Doctor Wu came out with a serious look on his face.
"Fortunately, Shao Zhongcheng's horse was fast and he was brought to the scene in time. Tian Xietong still had a 30% chance of survival. However, one shrapnel injured his thigh and another injured his liver and kidney. Even if he survives and recovers, Tian Xietong's Qinggong skills will be ruined, and I'm afraid it will be difficult for him to have children in the future."
Ahem, my eldest brother is already 38 years old, and he is still a laughingstock, a frequent visitor to brothels, and he has never thought about getting married and leaving offspring. It doesn't matter whether he leaves offspring or not, but this 30% chance of survival is really low.
Lin Bozai was urgently promoted to the commander of the right brigade, and the attack on the fortress continued.
Five days later, Tian Xing, who had been in a coma, woke up. The 30% chance of winning the bet on his life was successful, and Shao Quanzhong won his most successful gamble.
Tian Xing held Shao Quanzhong's hand and sighed, "I was unconscious and had already reached the Naihe Bridge. I was about to drink Mengpo soup, but the gods in the sky stopped me and pulled me back. It seems that you, my second brother, are the Purple Star descended to the earth. I, who follow you, must also be among the twenty-eight constellations. There are gods who bless me and prevent the evil heaven from taking me away."
Shao Quanzhong's mood improved. "Brother, you must be protected by gods. Even the evil heaven dare not offend gods. I think that when Wenxiu got into trouble in Shanghai, it must have been the gods and Buddhas who dealt with the evil heaven. That's why my wife was fine. It's the same for you, brother. The evil heaven can't touch you."
Tian Xing sighed, "The only thing I can do to help you, my second brother, is to persuade those former rebel friends to surrender. Now that the Taiping Army and the Nian Rebellion are no longer viable, I can't really help them. If they die, they die. It's a pity that the gods and Buddhas don't agree. So I'll just keep living. I can't do Qinggong anymore, so my nickname Skywalker is useless. But I, a useless person, must live to see the day when we win, and I'll go into the Forbidden City with you. You promised me to drive out the Tartars, so you can't forget it."
"Brother, don't you know what kind of person I am? When we knocked our heads to the ground, we shared life and death. You will always be my good brother." Brother Tian's life was not in danger and he survived a near-death experience. Shao Quanzhong was finally lucky.
Ten days later, better news arrived. Three months earlier, ten batteries of heavy artillery newly ordered from Britain had been delivered on a chartered clipper ship.
After actual combat testing, it was found that the original light field gun was actually not very useful due to the introduction of the new Williams rapid-fire gun.
The Williams rapid-fire gun would not be replaced by the new version of the light field gun until new materials emerged and reliable high-speed breech-loading guns were produced.
As for the time when this new version of light field gun was released, Krupp invented the crucible to make large steel blocks around 1870, and the British Thomas improved converter steelmaking process was successfully developed in 1878.
It is now 1865. The open-hearth steelmaking method invented by France has already appeared, but no one has thought of applying it to cannons. Shao Quanzhong will not remind the French, but he cannot get the technology from his enemy either...
Therefore, all the guns purchased this time were Armstrong 180-pound heavy siege guns, which were transported using several steam tractors that had just been assembled at the "Xi'an Steam Tractor Assembly Plant".
Historically, this thing was only copied by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau in 1886 during the Qing Dynasty. At that time, European artillery had been updated due to the emergence of new artillery steel technology, and the old artillery steel technology was leaked out.
Now, if we don’t get the artillery steel technology, the Hailing Arsenal will not be able to imitate it until 1886, and it looks useless even if it only looks good.
What? Research the cannon steel technology yourself? If you can make that stuff yourself, it's not impossible, but it must be later than 1886... So for now, heavy artillery has to be purchased.
The difficulties of transporting this nine-ton thing by water are hard to describe.
When the heavy artillery arrived, Shao Quanzhong was worried: there weren't enough gunners?
Unexpectedly, the artillery battalion commander Zhou Shengchuan solved this problem.
Zhou Shengchuan joined the Huai Army in Anhui in the first year of the Tongzhi reign, when Shao Quanzhong conquered Chen Yucheng. Shao Quanzhong had vaguely heard of this person in his previous life, but his fame was much less than that of Nie Shicheng, Song Qing, and Ma Yukun, so he did not pay much attention to him.
As a result, those who can leave their names in history, even if they are "not very famous", are not comparable to ordinary people.
The training of breech-loading gunners is very difficult, and requires very high levels of geometry. The current gunners were all taught hand-in-hand by Emery before he went to Prussia.
In the following years, Britain even went against the grain and reversed history by switching to muzzle-loading rifled cannons simply because "training breech-loading gunners was too difficult."
It was not until later that the guns of the battleship HMS Thunder exploded due to double shells being loaded by mistake. British officers and soldiers finally became fed up with the difficulty of loading muzzle-loading guns and the difficulty of checking whether they had been loaded twice, and finally changed back. Britain took a detour in this regard, which was called the "lost fourteen years."
Even the British Empire, the world's number one empire, faced a shortage of artillery talent. It was even more difficult for the Qing Dynasty. Zhou Shengchuan was a leader in the artillery. After Emery left, he was appointed as an artillery battalion officer.
As a result, this genius in artillery quietly simplified Emory's formal training method according to his own understanding and compiled it into twelve chapters of "Artillery Operation Regulations."
This simplified version of the Qing Dynasty's artillery operation regulations allows gunners to become basically qualified artillerymen through rote memorization, without the need for them to be experts in geometry.
He quietly trained the auxiliary personnel in the artillery battalion who transported and loaded artillery shells into qualified gunners.
In his own words, "The gunner is a master of geometry. He knows how to fire the cannon and why it is fired in that way. Others don't know why they fire in that way, but I have that tube, so I can fire and hit the target..."
When Shao Quanzhong learned that he had such a pragmatic genius under his command, he was overjoyed. He himself was a pure pragmatist and immediately felt like a close friend to Zhou Shengchuan.
He immediately promoted all the practical talents he had trained who knew how to fire artillery but did not know the principles behind it to be main gunners. Ten 180-pound siege heavy artillery companies, plus the original four mixed heavy artillery companies, formed a heavy artillery reinforcement regiment.
The remaining two companies of light field artillery were not wasted, and the original artillery reinforcement battalion was reduced in size to become a reduced light field artillery battalion.
The first battalion of this regiment and the rapid-fire artillery company were organized into an artillery brigade.
Zhou Shengchuan rose rapidly through the ranks, from a battalion officer, skipping the rank of deputy battalion commander, battalion commander, and deputy assistant commander, and directly became assistant commander of artillery, that is, commander of an artillery brigade, on the same rank as Shao Hengzhong and Lin Bozai.
The world's first modern fortress artillery regiment and the first modern field artillery regiment were established by the Prussians last year. In order to attack the Jinjibao fortress group, Shao Quanzhong organized the world's first modern siege heavy artillery regiment.
(End of this chapter)