Pressing Hard

At the lakeside wharf in Kaiyuan Commandery, several large ships from Weishan Commandery were docking. The people aboard were using the cranes mounted on the masts to unload the artillery they had transported, while others on the neighboring ships kept carrying down cast-iron shells and crates of gunpowder. There were also plenty of fixed gun carriages and mobile field artillery carts, along with more than a hundred artillery instructors—two for each cannon—to train the local garrison soldiers and form an Artillery Battalion.

The road from the wharf to the Military Camp's Training Ground had been placed under complete martial law. Apart from the soldiers left behind to guard the main camp and the city defenses, everyone else had been lined up along both sides of the road. Quite a few residents and craftsmen from the inner city, as well as the herdsmen who had joined last year from the outer city, had all run over to watch from the roadside. This was the first time they had seen a security detail for such a massive army deployment, so they could not help wondering what had been brought in.

The Qianniu Guard Commander Chai Duoduo, the Huben Guard Commander Blood Butcher, the Golden Crow Guard Commander You Zhi, who oversaw intelligence, and Ying Rui, the Prefect of Kaiyuan Commandery—all four big shots of Kaiyuan Commandery—were standing on the wharf, inventorying the military supplies that had arrived.

"Good heavens, what a huge iron contraption. Just looking at it, it resembles an iron barrel. Is this thing really a powerful weapon? I think it would be better suited for smashing people from atop the city walls. But something this heavy—wouldn't several people have trouble moving it?"

This was Blood Butcher's first time seeing a cannon. He had heard before that it was a