On the 29th day of the 12th lunar month, Ganning took fifty big blessed ships and three thousand soldiers from Baqiu Port, secretly set sail at night and galloped towards Hanyang and Xiakou downstream.

These big blessed ships were supervised by Lu Su since last winter. They were originally built in Jiaozhou, but later their technology matured. This spring, they also expanded production at the shipyard in Changsha County located in Dongting Lake.

After more than five years of deep cultivation of the shipbuilding technology of Liu Bei's camp, from the initial narrow and long hull with stable fins to the later simple longitudinal keel. Then to the current cross-section of the leaf-shaped ship bottom, frame keel structure with ribs and dragon tendons.

The quality, speed and other navigation performance indicators of the ship have reached the blessing ships of the late Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty in later generations. The waterline surface has a smooth and beautiful shape, and the resistance is definitely the best among the ships of the same era, and it is very suitable for breaking waves and sailing with cross wind.

The early shipbuilding techniques of Liu Bei's family, such as the stable fin structure used to increase wave resistance, actually learned by other princes such as Cao Cao and Sun Ce, and were no longer unique.

Simple vertical keel bones are now there, but Sun Ce's camp, who is best at water warfare, did not imitate them - but this is not Sun Ce and Zhou Yuben, but because Cao Cao needs to consider the navigational performance of crossing the Yellow Sea and colonize Sanhan and Danluo Island, we must pay attention to the improvement of the horizontal wave resistance structure strength brought by the keel bones.

Sun Ce did not need to cross that far sea, and there was no need to do so, so he did not imitate and develop. Zhou Yu made the building ship wider and more stable. Even if the speed was slightly slower, the melee combat power of water battle was still stronger than that of the narrow keel boat.

All of this led to the fact that when Gan Ning, the Baqiu guard, returned to his old career and began to play a guest role in pirates, the ships of the Eastern Wu camp could no longer catch up with him. He could fight guerrillas if he wanted to fight guerrillas.

Even if Zhou Yu's ship's melee combat power is far greater than that of these "non-professional warships" at Ganning? At least the decision to fight or not is in Ganning.

From Baqiu to Xiakou, it is generally windy and smooth. Because the wind in the middle of winter is mainly northwest wind, the Yangtze River surface flows from southwest to northeast, so most of the time the sailboat is exposed to wind on the port side.

The traditional Chinese straw mat hard sailboat is good at using crosswinds, similar to Western schooners.

However, in history, the crosswind efficiency of inland ships during the Qin, Han and Six Dynasties was not very high. The main reason is that the hull is too fat and blunt, and the efficiency of converting lateral tangent pressure into longitudinal thrust is not high, which leads to much higher thrust bonus during tailwind than the crosswind.

But Gan Ning used the Fu Ship type, the bow is already a little raised, and it is still a shuttle-type wave-breaking, so the side wind pressure conversion efficiency is much higher.

Initially, even if there was no wind power, relying on the speed bonus of the Yangtze River flow and rowing oars, we could travel 150 to 200 miles a day in this section, and Ganning's ship rushed to more than 300 miles a day and a night.

(Equivalent to a speed of 8 kilometers per hour or 5 knots, modern sailboats can easily be used along the side wind. Three days ago, I took a sailboat between the Fish Cave in Fuxian Lake in Kunming and the Cherry Blossom Garden. I looked at Baidu Map. I went back in less than an hour and there was no water flow on the side wind. Ancient ships used wind power with poor efficiency, but this was going downstream)

Gan Ning set sail at night on the first day, so the first 100 miles was sailing at night, and it was not intercepted by Zhou Yu at the entrance of Dongting Lake. The next day, Fo Xiao organized a boat to chase him, but he could no longer catch up.

However, because I didn't know how large the enemy ships that sneaked over were in the dark, Zhou Yu could not use the army to make trouble immediately. He could only try to send a sentry ship and a land fast horse scout to notify Xiakou to be on guard.

Unfortunately, the 170 to 80 miles of the whole day during the day was a relatively weak area between Dongting Lake mouth and Xiakou. It was impossible for a fleet to be stationed along the way to intercept it at any time, so no one caused trouble for Ganning.

Ganning is faster than Zhou Yu's fast horse messenger. On the evening of the 30th day of the twelfth lunar month, it had arrived at the river surface more than 60 miles west of Xiakou. Then, while the night was dark, it passed through the Xiakou river surface again before Zhou Yu called the police.

The length of the Yangtze River from Baqiu to Xiakou is 400 miles (not a straight line distance, including the twists and turns of the Yangtze River), while Ganning can sail downstream for nearly 500 miles in 18 hours a day, two nights, and of course, it can pass through both key positions at the beginning and one tail in the dark.

In this way, there was no more Jiang Shuai Army troops in the first-level alert state.

Further east, there are the rear of the Eastern Wu camp. Even if there are strongholds stationed by heavy troops, the troops will be huddled in the city. They will only mobilize out of the city to intercept the enemy situation, and the reaction speed is not enough.

Ganning's troops worked very hard. During the New Year, they were still driving the boats on New Year's Eve, and they were sailing and slashing through the Xiakou with speed. On the first day of the Chinese New Year, they were not idle all day, and they passed Jiangxia and E County in the afternoon.

In order to maintain morale, Gan Ning gave each soldier in the army three bowls of rice wine, two kilograms of bacon, a salted fish, soup cakes and vegetables to every soldier on New Year's Eve.

Along the way, the Wu army saw that the fleet was huge, so they really didn't dare to snatch the enemy easily. Seeing that it was getting late, Gan Ning was embarrassed to let his brothers not have enough time to celebrate the New Year, so he decided to officially start a grab. By the way, the supplies sent to reward the soldiers for the past two days were also replenished.

He was also observing along the way, noting that Jiangxia seemed to have many troops stationed, and the huge city could protect the people outside the city and wealth. If he really wanted to rob Jiangxia's people outside the city, he would probably flee into the city with valuable goods as soon as possible.

Therefore, Gan Ning let Jiangxia go to the throne of the enemy. Seeing that there were not many soldiers in the city of E County, but there were many people scattered in the farmlands next to them, so he took E County to grab a little.

Before he set out, Li Su also told him to try to go to Lujiang, Chaisang or even downstream, and rob the coast of Danyang again. Jiangxia County will leave some hand. After all, it was Liu Biao's former nominal land. It was just that Huang Zu's fear was recruited by Sun Ce. After this battle in the future, Li Su would also want to restore Jiangxia, which would be too bad for the people to be taken over.

Therefore, if it weren't for the New Year's Eve and the first day of the Lunar New Year, Ganning wouldn't have to break this example in E County.

But before Gan Ning took action, he also made three rules and explained: "E County is the only burning point in our former Jingzhou, which is the only burning point in Jiangxia County. If you have fun today, you will endure it tomorrow. After Chaisang, you will be more willing to take action and burn the war to the territory that Sun Ce has been running for many years!

Also, when setting fire to villages and towns, no slaughter is allowed, but there is no need to warn you. We will set fire to the northwest along the upper vent, so that the people will naturally escape to the southeast."

If you warn the people in advance, you will easily cause trouble for yourself. You may organize resistance and may also create opportunities for the enemy to assemble reinforcements.

Therefore, Gan Ning cannot be too kind. This dynasty would just not kill the people in the enemy-occupied areas. It is still possible to burn houses and grab some things to weaken the enemy's war potential. Many famous generals' battles were directly won by burning the city and fire attacks.

Later generations did this before the Sui Dynasty destroyed Chen, destroying agricultural production in the southern and eastern Chen river areas for many years. It can only be said that for the territory that had just been liberated, the people above would not invest in the enemy's rear. Ensuring that the people in the restoration area would not burn and plunder the people in these revived areas was the bottom line that the royal army must adhere to.

However, although the city in E County is small, there are still one or two thousand regular troops and several militia defending the city. As Gan Ning's fleet docked and began to set fire and robbery, some soldiers in the city rushed out to try to stop it.

The only one who led the army was a Sima. Because of insufficient manpower, he did not dare to rush to the town that had already burned flames to put out the fire and directly resist Gan Ning. He only set up defenses in several towns that the Gan Ning army had not had time to burn, occupied the building and pulled up the defense line. While trying to get time for the people to retreat, he also tried to reduce losses.

After Gan Ning burned three or four towns, he encountered a stronghold with defenders. With his troops, he could destroy these people, of course, but Gan Ning didn't want to consume more casualties, nor did he want to waste more time being surrounded by reinforcements from the enemy Jiangxia, so he chose a quick and straightforward solution:

"All the soldiers who came ashore approached 200 steps away from the town, lined up and set up crossbows. Don't attack the town, just surround the northwest sides. Just forget about the enemy guarding the town. If you dare to rush out to meet our army, then shoot it directly into a sieve! Soldiers using the new God-arm crossbow to the second row and fire the Flying Fire Crow under the cover of comrades-in-arms to set fire to a long-range fire!"

The fleet had only 3,000 people in total, half of which remained on the ship, and only 1,500 elite soldiers went ashore to grab things and set fire. They were all old thieves who had been with Gan Ning for many years. These people were naturally the most well-trained and immediately deployed according to the instructions.

Where did the guards in E County on the opposite side dare to leave the town's building to cover and take the initiative to retaliate? Of course, they were like facing a great enemy to retreat to defend. So, the Ganning tribe got enough time to prepare and leisurely launched the "Flying Fire God Crow" with a small number of gunpowder cartridges and sesame oil cotton wool.

You read that right, the new long-range individual crossbow equipped by Ganning troops was the divine arm crossbow (divine arm bow) that appeared in later Northern Song Dynasty, with a range of nearly 300 steps.

This is also the new thing that Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying have created in recent years after the Zhuge Liang, which pursues the rate of fire, has been imitated and popularized by various princes.

Of course, Li Su also played a certain role, at least he proposed the requirements, he established the project, and gave him a little initial direction and ideas for efforts. Of course, the actual R&D work in the future was the blame for Zhuge and his wife.

Since you have no advantage in close combat, and both sides are equal, you can use some popular individual weapons with range advantage!

As for the "Flying Fire God Crow" used by Gan Ning, it is also a product of the improvement of Zhuge and his wife. The effect is similar to the same name model in the Southern Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty in later generations. However, the Flying Fire God Crow in this life is from the technical path of the "Flying the Sky Monkey" gunpowder arrow that Li Su used to scare elephants during the Battle of Nanzhong four years ago. The details can definitely see the strong design ideas of the Flying the Sky Monkey.

This time, Li Su asked Gan Ning to maintain a long-distance battle with the enemy and used his speed advantage to fly kites and guerrillas. Both of these powerful weapons provided Gan Ning with great confidence.

The snow-filled emergency documents were sent to the west through the express messenger. The final destination was delivered to Zhou Yu in the Jiangjinkou Shui Village, south of Jiangling City.

——
Chapter completed!