A few days later, Widow's Cliff. Huang Dagen stood silently on the top of the mountain. A huge amount of gunpowder had been buried on the embankment of the barrier lake below. Several soldiers of the Perak Army were checking the gunpowder fuses for the last time. This morning, he received a letter from Fei Ge from the Perak Army headquarters, saying that flood control preparations had been made in the plain area below Guankou Village. A few days ago, when he returned to Maozhou City from Chongqing Mansion, the people and livestock properties of Wei and Mao Prefectures had already moved to higher ground. The people of these two states have been living in the mountain valleys where earthquakes and mudslides occur frequently since ancient times. It is not uncommon for rivers to be blocked to form barrier lakes and then burst their embankments. Therefore, most of the villages are built on the middle of the mountain, not in the river valleys. many. After they heard that the Perak Army was going to blow up the barrier lake, they couldn't help but think of the horrific legends passed down from generation to generation, so they moved their families to a safe area early.
Hearing the three agreed-upon loud horn blasts from below, Huang Dagen knew that all preparations for the blast were ready, so he waved the pennant in his hand downwards, and the messenger next to him suddenly blew the brass horn in his mouth. , the tune is just like Yue Fei's "Man Jiang Hong", which tells the soldiers of the Perak Army in the valley below to detonate immediately. A few minutes later, a deafening explosion sounded, followed by a huge cloud of smoke and dust that rose up and gradually expanded in all directions. Huang Dagen on the top of the mountain felt that the ground he was standing on was shaking slightly, and the roar of thousands of horses galloping came from the valley below. It was the sound of floods violently crashing against the river banks on both sides.
The huge flood caused by the breach of the embankment rushed downstream rapidly, and the sound was extremely terrifying. Due to the narrow river channels in Wei-Mao and Weizhou, the flood peaks formed were tens of meters high, and trees on the low banks were swept away wherever they went. Fortunately, the houses built in the river valleys in the two states were all made of stone, and not many were washed away. After the flood peak passed Guankou Village and reached the plain area, its momentum was greatly weakened. On the one hand, the river channels in the plain were wide and the flow rate was gentle. On the other hand, the Dujiangyan Water Conservancy Project was diverted into various rivers on the western Sichuan plain. Everyone knows that Dujiangyan's role is to create the fertile Western Sichuan Plain. They think its role is irrigation, but they have forgotten its other flood control function. It is precisely because it locked the Minjiang River, which has unpredictable water flow, that the plains of western Sichuan became "floods and droughts follow people, but they don't know famine". Therefore, Li Bing and his son were built in temples by the people of western Sichuan to worship.
It's just that the Widow's Cliff Barrier Lake has a huge amount of water, and the flood caused by the breach has only been weakened, and its peak is still far higher than the flood in normal years. The torrential floods flowed down the Jinma River, not only submerging both sides of the river, but even flooding through the dense cobweb-like river channels on the plain, turning most of western Sichuan into a swamp. Some low-lying areas were filled with deep water, and in some places the water was even deep. It reached several meters, and even small trees were submerged over their tops. Although the plains in western Sichuan are flat, there are many high mesas, and even low mountains and hills such as Wugen Mountain and Changqiu Mountain. The property and personnel of the Perak Army have long been moved to these places, and sufficient preparations have been made, so the floods caused The damage was not serious. On the contrary, due to low rainfall some time ago, the soil moisture was poor. The flood just solved this problem and brought a large amount of nutrient-rich silt, which is extremely beneficial to the transplanting and growth of rice in the next step.
The floods caused great damage to the areas occupied by the Mongolian army. First of all, about one-fifth of the Mongolian summer grain has not been harvested. The Mongols regarded the Han people as slaves, and they were extremely discriminatory even to the new vassals who were willing to be their lackeys. They are forced to work without enough food and clothing, and are beaten and scolded. Harvesting food has nothing to do with them. How can this labor efficiency be high? What's even worse is that although there are highlands and hills in the areas occupied by the Mongolian army, the floods come very quickly and there is no time to move. When the flood peak passed, not only the houses and properties on both sides of the river were swept away, and the countryside turned into a swamp, but even Chengdu and nearby cities such as Wenjiang County and Pixian County were soaked in water. The losses of people and property were extremely heavy. Even dozens of cavalry horses stationed in Chengdu were washed away.
Due to its low terrain, Pengshan City is located at the intersection of Jinjiang River and Jinma River. When the flood peak passed, the dock outside the city was washed away by the flood. Half of the navy barracks were also washed away. Many warships also drifted downstream with the current. Most of the houses in the city were submerged in the water. When the flood came, most of the Mongolians in the city rushed to the low mountains outside the city on horseback. The Mongols who had not had time to escape had to crowd together with the new vassals on the city walls that had not yet been submerged. Although they were lucky enough to escape, they were left without food or water. It was possible to survive without food, but it was very unbearable without water. Under the intense sun, many people had no choice but to drink river water to quench their thirst. After drinking the unclean water, the effect was seen the next day - some people started to have diarrhea, so that the city wall, which was already crowded with people, was filled with a foul smell.
The momentum of the flood peak becomes weaker and weaker as it goes downstream, causing less damage. Only half of Meizhou City was flooded, and the material losses were even smaller. The biggest losses were navy ships. This major flood came so fast that the Mongolian ships had no way to escape. In addition, most of them were small boats, and half of them capsized under the waves. In Jiading Prefecture further downstream, there was basically no damage. On the one hand, Yu Xing had already made preparations after receiving the warning from the Perak Army. On the other hand, the flood peak had been greatly weakened when it reached Jiading, but it was just larger than the common flood. A lot of land on both sides of the bank was flooded, but it did not affect the food harvest. This is because Jiading Prefecture is located in the south of the Western Sichuan Plain. The summer grain harvest season is about ten days earlier, and the harvest has already been completed by the time the flood peak arrives.
The benefits brought by the surging floods to the Perak Army were not only weakening the Mongols, but more importantly, making the rivers smoother. Previously, the Mongolian army set up a large number of water barriers in the river outside Pengshan City, making it impossible for the Pili Army's heavy gunboats to pass, limiting the use of the Pili Army's greatest advantage weapon, and actually blocking the Pili Army and Jiading and even Syria. The water channel of Chongqing Prefecture and Chongqing Prefecture. Le Quan'an had previously reported to Ouyang Xuan that just cleaning up the river in Pengshan City would require thousands of laborers and take more than three months.
It should be said that the power of nature is too powerful. Now that the flood peak has passed, not only the water barriers set up by the Mongolian army with great effort have been swept away, but also many silted sandbars have been washed away, making the width and depth of the river increased a lot. The Perak Army dredged the river on a large scale in the winter, spending a lot of manpower and material resources, and even used gunpowder blasting to finally clear the waterway that could barely accommodate warships in the winter. Wherever this huge wave reaches, its cleaning effect on the river is more than a hundred times better than manual cleaning.
This artificial flood comes and goes away just as quickly. Two days later, the floods had almost receded, and people began to return to their homes from high altitudes. When the military and political meeting decided to blast the barrier lake, Ouyang Xuan asked the industrial company to accumulate a large amount of quicklime for disinfection after the flood. "After a major disaster, there must be a major epidemic." Although this flood was short-lived, it was during the season of high incidence of heat and infectious diseases, so health and epidemic prevention must be strengthened. Before the people returned home, Li Shuang had ordered people to distribute quicklime, and compiled jingles about hygiene and epidemic prevention for people to recite and sing. Most of them were about boiling drinking water, using the toilet for defecation, and killing flies, rats, cockroaches, etc. .
