The poor wild pepper tree was originally growing happily in the mountains and forests, lush with branches and leaves, and was already covered with crimson fruits. It was about to mature and fall seeds and reproduce. However, when several Han soldiers in simple military uniforms came to it, the pepper tree was immediately hit by a catastrophe.

"It's great to have a pepper tree. Not only can the pepper seeds be eaten, but the leaves can also be eaten. Pick them quickly, pick them together!"

As he was excited, several Han soldiers quickly picked the poor pepper tree, including leaves and fruits, and even the branches were pulled off, becoming bare, swaying in the green forest, looking very miserable.

"There are apricot trees, and the leaves of the apricot trees can also be eaten."

Amid the shouts, a poor apricot tree quickly became the prey of the greedy Han army soldiers like the pepper tree before, and the dense leaves were almost torn to pieces.

At the same time, there is no peach, elm, hawthorn tree that can eat around the leaves. There is no even a single tree that can escape the claws of the Han soldiers. All the slightly tender leaves have been picked up, leaving only some leaves growing on the top of the trees and some old leaves that have grown wood remain on the trees. They sway and shake with the mountain wind, telling the ruthless harm of human beings to them.

At the same time, more Han soldiers were busy in the grass, digging the wild vegetables such as sauerks, bitter vegetables, plantains and dandelions that could be found, and put them into bamboo baskets to carry them down the mountain. In short, as long as the wild vegetables that could be eaten were all the picking targets of the Han soldiers.

When seeing such a scene, if someone who is ignorant of the inside story, he will definitely think that these Han soldiers are crazy about to lose food, so he stretched out their claws to these wild vegetables in the mountains that only hungry and disaster victims like to serve as military rations.

However, the truth is completely opposite. Not only none of these Han soldiers were hungry, but they ate more saturated than before. In addition to seven liters of staple rice, every day, there are six instant noodles containing oil, salt and some meat stars to supplement nutrition and obtain more calorie supply than normal human body needs. None of them are stronger and stronger than before.

Why did the Han army attack these wild vegetables and leaves with pitiful low calories like the victims and hungry people? The reason has to start with the two battles of Wulian defense.

During the two Battles of Wu Lian, because the first battle to defend the city lasted very short, the Han army persisted with the vegetables stored in the city alone, always ensuring the necessary vitamin replenishment. However, during the Second Battle of Wu Lian, due to the long duration, Zhang Zhi and Wu Lian’s decision-making team ignored the problem of vegetable reserves, and the number of Han soldiers increased significantly, less than two days after the war, the Han army soldiers cut off the source of vegetables, and could only rely entirely on rice, beans and instant noodles to satisfy their hunger, and the vitamins obtained were severely reduced.

In response to this, the Han army soldiers who were tired of eating coarse grains and vegetable porridge had no complaints and generally wanted to eat instant noodles as meals every day. However, Zhang Zhi understood that this would definitely not work. Long-term lack of vitamins and trace minerals would definitely affect the health of the Han army soldiers sooner or later, and then affect the combat effectiveness of the Han army soldiers. At that time, he also considered how to store vegetables in the future.

The subsequent development of the situation forced Zhang Zhi to pay attention to this issue. After two battles to defend the city, the vegetables in the fields around Wulian County had long been eaten up by the rebels and county soldiers. The vegetable fields in the north were also severely damaged. The southern part was the main grain-producing area of ​​Wulian. There were not many vegetables grown. Even if purchased at a high price, it would be difficult to reserve enough vegetables. Welcoming the third Wulian defense battle, which was definitely even larger.

Therefore, in order to prepare for the future, Zhang Zhicai waved his hand and mobilized the Han army soldiers to carry out a non-supported production and self-rescue campaign, allowing the Han army soldiers to take turns to go deep into the mountains and forests to pick edible wild vegetables and leaves, take them back to the city to dry and preserve the wild vegetables, soak the leaves and ferment them, and make them into yellow vegetables used by poor people to satisfy their hunger. This not only ensures vitamin replenishment during the war, but also allows the Han army soldiers to get temporary rest opportunities in addition to high-intensity military training.

The Han army soldiers also raised their hands to support Zhang Zhi's decision. The reason is that the training intensity of the Han army is too high. Even if you can eat six packs of instant noodles with oil and salt every day outside the staple food, the excessive training still makes the Han army soldiers exhausted and can take advantage of the opportunity to pick wild vegetables and leaves to relax and rest for a while. Of course, the Han army soldiers are desperate for it. Therefore, even if they don't like eating these wild vegetables and yellow vegetables, the Han army soldiers happily take turns to go up the mountain to execute Zhang Zhi's vegetable reserve order.

By the way, even though the military rations are sufficient, the Han army is also considered to be the only one among the Three Kingdoms army.

In addition to storing a large amount of vegetables, Zhang Zhi of course also led the Han army soldiers to work hard to carry out other preparations, such as repairing and strengthening the city walls, dredging and deepening the moat, stocking up a large amount of firewood, timber and sheep-head stones, repairing deer antlers and resisting horses, learning from the lessons of insufficient long-range weapons, establishing a trench in the city, and once planned to dig a trench under the city and burying sharp bamboo in the trench to increase the depth of defense.

For the delicious instant noodles, after fighting for a period of time in his heart, Xue Rang, the governor of the county magistrate of the Han army, stood up and stopped Zhang Zhi's plan to dig trenches and pointed out to Zhang Zhi: "Ming Court, you must not dig trenches under the city. Doing so will do more harm than good. Even if it can have a certain defensive effect, it will cause us greater hidden dangers."

"Why? Please give me advice from Junmaster Xue." Zhang Zhi humbly asked for advice.

"It's very simple. The city wall is made of earth, and it's most afraid of excavation." Xue Rang pointed out: "If the Ming court digs a trench near the city to seek temporary benefits, then as long as our enemies are smart enough, they will definitely take the opportunity to adopt the city digging tactics, use long shields and thick boards to trenches to prevent stones and arrows, and let the soldiers hide under the wooden boards and long shields to dig the foundation of the city wall. If we can't stop it, the city wall will be in danger of being dug down directly."

Considering this danger, Zhang Zhi, who was still working hard to learn military affairs, nodded immediately and admitted that digging trenches under the city would, on the contrary, cause greater danger to the city wall. Zhang Ju next to him suggested: "Then let's dig the trenches as wide as possible so that the Wei army cannot find a wooden board with a long enough arrow to block the stone?"

"More dangerous." Xue Rang said immediately: "It's rainy in the south, and Jing Ke is famous for not only sunny every day. Digging the trenches too wide to store a large amount of rainwater. The foundation of our city walls will be soaked directly by water."

Thinking of the danger of soaking soft earth in a large amount of rain, Zhang Zhi couldn't help but shuddered a cold war and said hurriedly: "What Prince Xue said is that trenches cannot be dug. If trenches are dug under the city, the threat to us will be greater."

After hesitating for a while, Xue Rang said: "Ming Court, although the trench cannot be dug, it is a good idea to bury sharp bamboo thorns under the city. "Mozi" records a city defense weapon called Rui Tiebing. It is to bury sharp iron piles at both ends under the city to interfere with the attacking queue of the siege troops. At the same time, it can stab the enemies falling from the stairs to death, increase the casualties of the siege troops and attack their morale."

"Although bamboo thorns made of bamboo are far less strong than sharp iron thorns made of iron, they have the advantage of low cost and easy arrangement. As long as the Ming court is willing, it can completely surround our Wulian County with bamboo thorns in a few days. When the Wei army is at the city, if they want to launch an attack, they will have to spend a lot of manpower and time to destroy our bamboo thorns, giving us more time and opportunity to use peripheral fortifications to kill the enemy."

"A clever plan!" Zhang Zhi said immediately without blinking his eyes: "Just do it this way. Our number of crossbows is too small, and we cannot play much role in killing enemies in the battle to defend the city. Using bamboo thorns to force the Wei army to spend a lot of time and manpower to destroy our peripheral fortifications, which can just create an opportunity for us to use a small number of crossbows to kill enemies in large quantities!"

In this way, after adopting Xue Rang's suggestion, Zhang Zhi just gave the order, relying on the high-quality bamboo produced by Wulian, within a few days, the four gates of Wulian were buried with dense sharp bamboo piles. Facing the city of Wulian, which is most susceptible to attack on the plain, there are three layers inside and three layers outside, and sharp bamboo thorns all over the land, which is daunting and makes up for the weakness of the Wulian Han army's far-short crossbow weapons.

Of course, Zhang Zhi could not be satisfied with this. When the army's strength was still far from enough, Zhang Zhi had to try his best to provide no combat effectiveness for the Han army in order to welcome the attack of the soldiers of the Kōko County and even the elite troops in the South Central. Although in his reply to Zhang Zhi, Chen Can only mentioned that he would personally lead the army south to suppress the rebellion, with Zhang Zhi's cautious and suspiciousness, of course, he had to guard against Chen Can's intentional numbness and suddenly invited elite troops in the South Central to participate in the war.

It is precisely because of this that Zhang Zhi had already reserved a certain amount of saltpeter, and relying on his own chemical foundation, he quickly led several Wu Lian craftsmen to create the first batch of gunpowder of this era, and granular gunpowder with a very reasonable formula. However, Zhang Zhi was in trouble with how to use gunpowder.

Putting gunpowder in a ceramic bottle to make an original grenade is a way to use it. However, this original grenade is not only extremely powerful, but also throwing distance is too close, so its application effect is destined to be not very good. It is better to scare the enemy than to kill and hurt the enemy on the battlefield.

Of course it is impossible to use muskets or bronze cannons. Not to mention that it is difficult to create metal pipes with current technology. Time is too late. The reality of not restraining serious iron and copper deficiency also destined that Zhang Zhi would not be able to fire metal guns and cannons.

The thunder of the Song Dynasty was also an option, but it also required a large amount of pig iron to create a production technology that would not be too backward to create iron cans for gunpowder.

The fire dragons going to sea and swarming in the Ming Dynasty required a lot of technical accumulation. Whether corrugated paper containing instant noodles is suitable for making gunpowder spray drums is also a question that must be confirmed after repeated trials.

Fortunately, while racking his brains, Zhang Zhi suddenly thought of the pine cannon of a guerrilla warfare of a famous army. He immediately asked the craftsmen to find a pine tree of the right size, peeled it, saw it out of the middle, dig out the ballistics, drilled out the fire outlet, then closed it and fixed it with an iron hoop, then installed gunpowder and sharp stones to use corrugated paper with fine cut and coated with nitro powder as a lead. A pine cannon used to fight Japanese in later generations was born in this era more than 1,700 years ahead of schedule.

The experiment was carried out under extremely confidentiality. After transporting the pine cannons to the uninhabited forest in Wulian, some grass men from different distances were set up as targets. Zhang Zhi, who was timid and afraid of death, hid far away to avoid the explosion of the chamber and injured himself, and then asked the personal soldiers hiding behind the long shield to ignite the fire and fired at the straw men in the distance.

Without the explosion, the two half-logs of gunboats were destined to not explode. Of course, the price was that the airtightness was very poor, but even so, after a loud bang, under the propelling of the reasonable formula of gunpowder, the sharp stones filled with gunboats still erupted, smashing the straw man within thirty steps into a mess and tilting, and the farthest range of the stones reached more than 100 meters.

Not to mention the power was barely OK, the loud noise made by the cannon bombardment scared everyone present. In addition to Zhang Zhi, who was mentally prepared, all the generals like Zhao Quan and Wu Ma were frightened and their faces turned pale, and they all screamed, "What's this thing? It's like thunder!"

"This thing is called the pine tree cannon, it is our secret weapon." Zhang Zhi answered quietly and asked again: "How is it? If we use this weapon to suddenly fire the enemy on the battlefield, what effect do you think it will be?"

"If you are a little more courageous, you will definitely be scared to death." Wu Ma said with lingering fear: "It's so scary. After fighting for so many years, I have never encountered such a scary weapon."

Zhang Zhi smiled and said nothing, but led everyone forward to check the shelling effect of the pine cannon. After seeing the stone shooting all the grass man within thirty or fifty steps, Wu Ma, Zhao Quan and others were surprised and said: "It's so amazing. You can still shoot through the grass man from such a distance. If you hit someone at close range, you can't stand it even in armor."

Zhang Zhi nodded with satisfaction and then murmured: "There is no other way. The overall strength is too weak. You can only rely on climbing the technology tree to provide combat power. But I have to be more at ease. Things like stirrups and Xiangyang cannons are absolutely not available now. Otherwise, once the enemy learns it, I will be the one who will be unlucky."

On that day, Zhang Zhi and others conducted three more artillery experiments. What made Zhang Zhi secretly happy was that even after four guns were fired, the body of the first pine cannon was still intact, but the iron hoop was a little loose, proving that the pine cannon could be used repeatedly many times. Zhang Zhi was relieved and quickly ordered his personal soldiers to return to the city with the pine cannon, preparing to let Wu Lian craftsmen build a few more such pine cannons in order to surprise the enemy in the upcoming third Wu Lian defense battle.

It was also coincidental that he led his personal army team, Zhao Quan, Wu Ma and others to return to the city. Fu Gong, who was staying in the city, immediately came up and said to Zhang Zhi as soon as he met: "Ming Court, the detailed investigation report just received, Chen Can, the prefect of Ke, has completed the army assembly and announced that he would send troops south to attack us on July 14th, but he didn't know that he planned to arrange the army to stay in Qilan, so we don't know the number of troops he sent for the time being."

"Announced to send troops on July 14th?" Zhang Zhi raised his eyebrows and said with a smile: "Our Prefect Chen is very good at picking up time. Wu Lian's rice was harvested in early August. He sent troops from Qilan on July 14th. It was obvious that he did not want to cut rice and harvest food for us, so that we would not have food to defend the city for a long time."

"Mingting, what should I do?" Fu Gong asked worriedly: "If we can't harvest new rice, how long can our food last?"

"Don't worry, I dare not say that there are too many. Even if we raise all the people in the city, it will be absolutely fine to support it for one or two years."
Chapter completed!