Chapter 329: Within the Range of the Cannon Lies Truth

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In fact, Zhao Yu and his ministers had long known that the Jin were attacking Goryeo.

Hmm… but it wasn’t exactly long ago.

At first, Wanyan Aguda had concealed his movements well, deceiving Zhao Yu and his ministers.

Yet Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang were key Jin generals; their sudden disappearance with forty to fifty thousand troops could not go unnoticed by Song spies embedded in Jin. What if Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang planned a surprise attack on the Song?

During that time, Liu Fa was extra cautious, fearing Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang might launch a sudden strike against the Song army.

At the same time, Liu Fa wrote to Xiao Puxiannu, urging her to order the Liao army to intensify its offensive against the Jin, even coordinating with Liao forces to attack them, hoping to force Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang to reveal themselves.

But no matter how dire the Jin’s situation became, Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang, along with their forty to fifty thousand troops, never appeared.

More than a month later, Song spies finally learned that Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang had launched a surprise attack on Goryeo.

The Song spies swiftly relayed this intelligence up the chain until it reached Zhao Yu.

To be honest, Zhao Yu never expected that, amid such dire circumstances, Wanyan Aguda would dare fight on two fronts.

This clearly showed that Wanyan Aguda was truly one of the greatest heroes of his age.

After consulting with his ministers and strategists, Zhao Yu issued an imperial edict to Liu Fa, ordering him to join forces with the Liao army and launch a fierce assault on Liaodong, ideally capturing the entire region.

Zhao Yu also issued an edict to Xiao Puxiannu, instructing her to use the pretext that the Song would help Liao reclaim the Eastern Capital, and order Yelu Chun to mobilize the Liao army to cooperate with the Song in attacking Liaodong.

Zhao Yu even dispatched Hu Yanqing to lead the Song navy in seizing Jin’s Jinzhou and Fuzhou regions—the Liaodong Peninsula.

Liaodong broadly refers to the region east of the Liao River, forming the northeastern frontier of the Central Plains dynasties. The State of Yan first established the Liaodong Commandery; the Yan, Qin, Han, Wei built fortifications for defense; the Sui and Tang set up the An Dong Protectorate; during the Liao and Jin periods, it became a multi-ethnic fusion zone. Later, the Later Jin moved its capital to Shenyang; the Ming established a military command; the Qing renamed it the Shengjing Generalship. Its scope, in the broadest sense, encompassed most of modern Liaoning and parts of Jilin and Heilongjiang, extending eastward to the Sea of Japan.

Since ancient times, Liaodong has been the hub of exchange between the Central Plains and Northeast Asia, a must-contested territory for any Central Plains dynasty seeking dominance in Northeast Asia.

Originally, Zhao Yu had not planned to seize Liaodong so quickly, for greed leads to indigestion.

But now that Jin had dragged Goryeo into the conflict, if the Song failed to take Liaodong, it would be placed at a disadvantage in the Northeast Asian power struggle.

Of course, Zhao Yu did not forget to send envoys to Goryeo, attempting to persuade them not to yield to Jin’s threats or collude with them; he also instructed his envoys to tell Wang Yu and his ministers that the Song was already attacking Liaodong, and that if Goryeo held firm, the Jin army would surely retreat.

This was also one of the reasons Zhao Yu and his ministers decided to seize Liaodong.

Yet Zhao Yu and his ministers had not anticipated that Goryeo, like Northern Song in history, would be overrun by Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang with only several tens of thousands of troops and large numbers of defectors, reaching the capital; moreover, due to Goryeo’s tiny territory, Wang Yu and his ministers had nowhere to flee and were trapped like fish in a barrel, extorted mercilessly and forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty under the city walls.

By the time Zhao Yu’s envoys arrived in Goryeo, everything had already been settled.

Under the watchful eyes of Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Zongwang, Wang Yu was forced to issue an order to behead Zhao Yu’s envoys and display their heads on the city walls, demonstrating Goryeo’s resolve to ally with Jin and sever all ties with the Song.

Throughout this process, Wang Yu did not allow the Song envoys to speak a single word; Goryeo’s ministers, from Li Ziqian downward, remained silent, tacitly acknowledging Jin as their ally and the Song as their enemy.

Due to the underdeveloped transportation and communication of the era, Zhao Yu and his ministers did not learn of Goryeo’s execution of the Song envoys until months later.

That is a tale for another time.

Upon receiving Zhao Yu’s orders, Hu Yanqing assembled the Divine Mechanism Left Army and the Eastern Auxiliary Army, leading naval units under Li Jun the Mixing Dragon, Ruan Xiao’er the Short-Lived Second Son, Ruan Xiaowu the Standing Earth Tyrant, Ruan Xiaoqi the Living Hell King, Zhang Heng the Boat Fire, and Zhang Shun the Wave-White Leaper, and set sail for the Liaodong Peninsula.

Arriving at Lion’s Mouth, the Song naval fleet lined up in a row and unleashed a barrage of cannon fire upon the Jin army’s encampment.

Notably, the Li Lin cannons mounted on Song naval vessels were not the same as those used on land; they were called the Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon.

Designed with a longer barrel, thicker walls, and a larger caliber, the Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon gradually thickened from muzzle to breech, conforming to the principle of decreasing internal pressure as gunpowder burned. On both sides of the cannon’s center of gravity were cylindrical trunnions, allowing the cannon to adjust its elevation angle around this axis, enabling range control through varying gunpowder charges; it featured a front sight and rear sight, calculating trajectories via parabolic principles with high accuracy.

The Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon came in three variants: the Light Cannon “Divine Might General” Li Lin Cannon, the Medium Cannon “Divine Skill General” Li Lin Cannon, and the Heavy Cannon “Martial Achievement Eternal Stability Great General” Li Lin Cannon.

Even the “Divine Might General” variant had an effective range exceeding two li; the “Divine Skill General” variant exceeded six li; the “Martial Achievement Eternal Stability Great General” variant surpassed ten li.

The Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon was a long, spindle-shaped, muzzle-loading smoothbore cannon. With the Song’s industrial revolution, weapon manufacturing employed powered machine tools for precision boring of cannon bores; standardized, precise production of components and projectiles; significant improvements in black powder processing techniques already mastered by the Song; and new developments in cannon firing theory and tactics under Li Lin’s guidance—all of which multiplied the cannon’s power, range, and rate of fire.

One could even say the Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon had fully surpassed the Red Barbarian Cannons of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Of course, the Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannon had a major flaw: they were extremely heavy, rendering them suitable only for coastal and naval defense, or fortifications—impossible to equip to the land army, at least for the foreseeable future.

Hu Yanqing’s flagship vessels—“Eastern Capital,” “Southern Capital,” “Western Capital,” “Northern Capital”—were the Song’s most advanced “Divine Ships,” their scale rivaling the Ming treasure ships of history—forty zhang in length, over ten zhang in width, masts towering to the heavens, decks stacked layer upon layer like floating cities.

More astonishingly, they were equipped with steam engines and the era’s most advanced propellers—though the steam engines and propellers were still immature, severely limiting endurance, they still provided superior speed over sails and oars in critical moments.

Most crucially, the decks and hulls of these warships were densely packed with Divine Might Invincible Great General Li Lin Cannons.

At this moment, their black muzzles, like the jaws of beasts, pointed directly at the Jin army’s encampment on shore.

As the fleet reached beyond Lion’s Mouth, the sea wind carried the briny scent, and the giant ships cut through the waves, anchoring steadily one arrow’s range from the harbor.

Hu Yanqing stood atop the highest watchtower of the “Eastern Capital,” raised his command flag, and the flag officer immediately relayed the orders to each ship.

“Boom—!”

“Boom—!”

“Boom—!”

“…”

The first to fire were the “Martial Achievement Eternal Stability Great General” Li Lin Cannons on the “Eastern Capital,” “Southern Capital,” “Western Capital,” and “Northern Capital.”

The cannon bodies shuddered; flames erupted from the muzzles; thirty-jin solid shot tore through the sky, shrieking as they slammed into the Jin army’s encampment.