With the sound of a gong, the first competition began. The content is to shoot three arrows each, and the target is a dummy wearing Mongolian clothing fifty meters in front. Ah Li took the lead in drawing his bow and setting an arrow. The bow he is holding is very sophisticated and he borrowed it from another leader of the Luo Ghost Kingdom tribe who is good at archery. I saw him looking forward, holding the bow in his left hand and slowly using his right hand to draw the entire bow to the full moon. His posture was impeccable. The three arrows he shot at the dummy all hit the target, one of which hit the head and two of which hit the chest and abdomen, which attracted a round of applause.
Ouyang Xuan took the musket from his shoulder and started loading bullets. Among the onlookers, except for a few Yang clan members and Bozhou soldiers who had been exposed to muskets before, no one else knew what he was doing. Ouyang Xuan didn't explain, he raised the gun, aimed, and fired, all in one go. Everyone heard an explosion ringing in their ears, and saw a burst of white smoke spurting out from the iron pipe. The clothes on the dummy in the distance were torn with big holes, and they were all shocked. One of the referee's Banshu soldiers quickly ran to the dummy and shouted: "The first musket shot hit the chest!"
While everyone was talking about it, Ouyang Xuan fired the second shot in a half-crouched position. Shortly after the smoke passed, the referee's voice came: "The second musket hit the chest." After Ouyang Xuan fired his first shot, the referee was afraid that the Bozhou soldiers would falsely report the situation, so he personally went to the dummy to check. As he got closer, he was even more surprised. The arrows shot by Ah Li were so powerful that all the arrowheads penetrated into the wooden dummy. But it pales in comparison to the musket. The musket bullet penetrated the wooden dummy directly. Now he checked that the condition of the second musket was no different from the first, and it also directly penetrated the wooden man.
The first shot was from a standing position, the second shot was from a kneeling position, and the third shot was shot by Ouyang Xuan lying on the ground in a prone position, and not surprisingly, he shot through the dummy's chest. The Pili Army's new musket uses machine tools to process rifling, which greatly increases the accuracy of the barrel rifling, thereby improving the gun's shooting accuracy. In particular, the musket used by Ouyang Xuan was used for sniping by the special company, and its shooting performance was even more outstanding. In addition, he often participates in military training. Although his shooting skills are not as good as those of military sharpshooters, it is still very easy to hit a dummy at a distance of fifty meters.
The first competition ended and the referee declared the two sides to be tied. In fact, in the eyes of Yang Wen and those among the Miao people with long-term combat experience, Ouyang Xuan actually won. He shoots in two postures, kneeling and prone, which may seem fancy, but actually have extremely important significance on the battlefield. The Mongolian army was skilled with bows and horses and their shooting was very accurate. If you can fight the Mongolian army in a kneeling or prone position on the battlefield, you will definitely greatly reduce the chance of being shot by the Mongolian army, thereby enhancing your combat capabilities and reducing casualties. In fact, due to the great strength required to draw a strong bow, even well-trained soldiers can only shoot arrows from a standing position. From this point of view alone, the battlefield adaptability of muskets is much stronger than that of bows and arrows.
The second competition is long-range shooting technology. That is to say, the whip mark distance has doubled to about one hundred meters. This is also the common effective killing distance of other bows and arrows except the British longbowmen. In fact, regardless of the individual crossbows used by the Song Army and the Mongolian Army, the actual killing distance was only seventy or eighty meters. Bozhou soldiers specialize in fighting in the mountains, and they pay more attention to the lightness and durability of their crossbows. Their crossbows are shorter and the arrows are thinner and shorter, so the effective range is only fifty or sixty meters. But because the arrows were quenched with poison, the name of the Banshu crossbowmen was extremely resounding.
Because Ah Li was taller than ordinary Miao warriors, he used a larger bow and a longer range. In addition, he borrowed a fine and strong bow, so it was easy to hit the dummy a hundred meters away. However, it was the cold autumn season, and the mountain wind on the top of Hailongtun was quite strong. Even though he blushed and drew the bow into a full moon, the arrow that flew out was also deflected by the wind. As the saying goes, "a slight miss can make a difference of a thousand miles." Only one of the three arrows shot hit the dummy, and the other two hit the mud in front of the dummy.
Since it was a precise shooting, Dong Hu brought a gun mount and a scope for Ouyang Xuan, which are standard equipment for snipers of a special company. This sight consists of two lenses mounted on both ends of a thin wooden tube, which can magnify the target four times. After the Pili Army's glass began to be mass-produced, in addition to being made into exquisite tableware and playthings and sold to dignitaries to earn high profits, it was also used to grind lenses and make telescopes, magnifying glasses and other items urgently needed in military and industrial production. Ouyang Xuan is even instructing craftsmen to trial-produce microscopes for use in medical schools.
On a normal day, it would be easy for Ouyang Xuan to hit a dummy a hundred meters away using a musket equipped with a crosshair and a scope. It's just that the current strong wind is much stronger than when Ah Li was shooting just now, and the difficulty is also much higher. After he estimated the wind speed, he slowly lay down on the ground, placed the musket firmly on the gun stand, and after his breathing became smooth, he decisively aimed and fired. After three gunshots, Ouyang Xuan stood up slowly and calmly patted the soil on his body. He had just seen from the scope that three bullets had hit the dummy, two in the torso and one in the leg. The subsequent referee's report also confirmed this result. Ouyang Xuan won the second competition without any dispute.
The third competition is more relevant to actual combat, with a half-arrow range - about thirty meters, shooting at armored enemies. Different from the traditional impression that the Mongolian army is mostly light cavalry, the Mongolian army also has heavy cavalry units. These heavy cavalry often appear at the most critical moments of the battle. A thunderous blow to the enemy is the key force that determines the situation of the battle. The sources of the Mongolian soldiers who attacked the Southern Song Dynasty were very complex. Except for a few cavalrymen of their own race, most of them were servants of the Han, Khitan, Jin, Huihui, Xixia, Goryeo, Bohai and other ethnic groups. These servants include cavalry and infantry, and have a variety of equipment. Some have no armor, while others wear leather armor, rattan armor, and even chainmail and armor from the Western Regions.
This competition not only tests the strength of the contestants, but also tests the quality of the weapons. Although A'liang has big arms and round waist, strong arm strength, and the strong bow he holds is also well-made, his arrows only penetrated the leather armor, but could not damage the rattan armor at all, let alone the chain mail and iron armor. On the other hand, the Perak Army's muskets now showed great power in crushing bows and arrows. Within half an arrow's distance, whether it was rattan armor or chain armor, Ouyang Xuan's musket shot through them.
However, the heavy armor was not penetrated, but the wrought iron where the bullet was hit was deeply dented, as if it were hit by a sledgehammer. The current bullets used in Thunderbolt muskets still use black powder as the base powder, which is slightly less powerful. In addition, the lead bullets used are softer, and the bullets have insufficient penetrating power. If you use an iron slug instead, it will easily penetrate the armor, but the iron slug will accelerate the wear of the rifling and shorten the service life of the barrel. The new gunpowder being developed is much more powerful than black powder. Even if it is equipped with a lead bullet, it will easily penetrate iron armor.
After two out of three games, the referee declared Ouyang Xuan the winner. Ah Li and a few tribal leaders were not convinced by this, thinking that Ouyang Xuan was just relying on the advantages of firearms. In response, Yang Wen said calmly to everyone: "This firearm was originally invented by my son-in-law..." As soon as these words came out, those who were originally dissatisfied completely shut their mouths.
