Chapter 80. Black Death (3)
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Lee Ja-song immediately carried out everything Dong Bong-su had said.
He handed over all more than a hundred whirlwind cannons to Dong Bong-su, pulled the camp back to a place along the Yellow River, and had all the corpses that had died of the plague moved en masse to the area in front of Guisui Fortress where the whirlwind gunners were stationed while Dong Bong-su was out.
He exterminated the rats hiding in supply depots and boldly executed the soldiers who clearly showed signs of having fallen ill. Also, he ordered all surviving soldiers to bathe immediately.
The disgusting stench of rotting corpses overflowed throughout the camp, but as promised, Lee Ja-song helped with everything Dong Bong-su had said. He even assigned the five thousand gunners who operated the whirlwind cannons under Dong Bong-su's command.
Now Dong Bong-su had become a general leading one thousand mercenaries and five thousand artillerymen.
He kept the status window open without closing it. It was to respond immediately if even the slightest change occurred in the status window. At the same time, he immediately put into action the work he had been planning over the past few days on the way here.
"Immediately dismantle all whirlwind cannons."
If Lee Ja-song had been here and heard this order from Dong Bong-su, he would have been horrified. Dong Bong-su, who everyone thought would attack the fortress walls using the whirlwind cannons, was dismantling them? As a commander, it was an action that was hard to understand.
However, Lee Ja-song was currently overseeing the retreat of the camp, and here there were only Dong Bong-su, the seven hundred mercenaries accompanying him—about three hundred had become combat ineffective due to the plague on the way here—and the whirlwind gunners who had to operate the cannons.
Even though the whirlwind gunners could not understand it at first glance, they did not disobey Dong Bong-su's orders. After all, soldiers had no choice. Aren't they merely pieces on a board who do what they're told, and if they're told not to, must not do it even if they die?
Boom. Clatter. Boom. Clatter.....
For a while, the inside of the camp was noisy with the sound of joints coming loose and each part being dismantled.
The whirlwind cannons themselves had been assembled here, and since the whirlwind gunners who specialized in them did it themselves, it did not take long before all dismantling work was finished.
A hundred Sky-Piercing Pillars and arms, and all kinds of parts and ropes connecting the two, were laid out.
Dong Bong-su again ordered that all of them be moved to a place far, far away from Guisui Fortress. They could not know the reason why he was making them do that, but the gunners and mercenaries faithfully carried out his orders.
The work was soon finished, and Dong Bong-su immediately started the next task.
"From now on, watch carefully what I do and reassemble these things in a new way."
After saying that, Dong Bong-su did not even wait for the soldiers' reply and immediately moved into action. For him, time right now was like the fuse attached to a bomb. The biggest problem was that he did not know the power of the bomb or the length of the fuse.
Since he did not know when it would explode, there was not a single moment to waste.
Boom. Slide. Tighten...…..
By Dong Bong-su's fast and precise hands, the Sky-Piercing Pillars and arms were mechanically woven together. The object that had been assembled dozens or hundreds of times in his head over the past few days was rapidly taking shape.
Unlike the whirlwind cannon, it was something that looked quite complex. It was not simply a single Sky-Piercing Pillar driven into the ground and fixed. Several pillars were organically connected at slanted angles and fixed to the ground, and at the point where the ends of the pillars gathered, an arm was erected. Not just one arm, but two were overlapped and attached, making it far larger and sturdier than the arm of an existing whirlwind cannon.
Decisively, the difference between the whirlwind cannon and what Dong Bong-su was making was that instead of connecting forty to fifty ropes at the end, he hung a large basket. More than anything else, Dong Bong-su put special effort into making that basket.
As the device slowly took shape, only then could the whirlwind gunners roughly guess what Dong Bong-su was making. They had never seen such a thing directly, but its principle was easy to understand at a glance.
Unlike the whirlwind cannon, which had forty to fifty people pull ropes at once and use that force to launch stone shots, that thing would probably fill the basket with stones and, using the force of them dropping, rotate the arm and hurl the stones. They had seen many similar things in their hometowns. The waterwheels in each village moved by a similar principle.
Boom. Slide. Tighten...…..
If there were such a thing as a divine craftsman, wouldn't it look exactly like that?
The whirlwind gunners could only stare blankly with their mouths open as they watched Dong Bong-su make "some kind of machine." Leaving aside his amazing dexterity, the strength to tie and tighten a wooden pillar as long as six meters alone was something they could not even imagine.
Boom. Slide. Tighten!
Exactly an hour.
That was the time it took Dong Bong-su to assemble that thing, the "trebuchet," by himself. He pulled hard on the end of the rope to make the final knot, then looked around at the whirlwind gunners and said,
"Did you watch well?"
"....."
The whirlwind gunners were still just standing there with their mouths open and could not easily answer.
"I asked if you watched well."
Dong Bong-su's characteristically low voice spread through the camp once more.
Only then did the gunners come to their senses and give a proper answer.
"Yes, y-yes...!"
Dong Bong-su slowly, yet clearly, spoke while looking at each of the senior gunners surrounding him.
"From now on, I'll give you exactly half an hour. After that, if even a single piece of wood is left lying around here, all of you will die."
Gulp.
Someone among the senior gunners swallowed their dry saliva, and that became the signal.
Boom. Clatter. Thud...….
The assembly of the trebuchets began in earnest.
Trebuchet.
A catapult that was widely used in medieval Western lands of that other world. Until shells using gunpowder were developed, this was the siege weapon that displayed the greatest power.
Compared to the whirlwind cannon that hurled stones by human power, it boasted a range as much as three to four times greater, and the weight of the stones it could throw was also far heavier. Since it was mechanical, its accuracy was also very good.
Perhaps something similar existed even in the Central Plains. But he could not be sure. Judging from the fact that they were still using whirlwind cannons in this frontier battle, either it had not developed into such a refined device, or already within the Central Plains, early cannons using gunpowder were in use.
However, Dong Bong-su had no reason to consider such things. Those things were not here right now, and he had not seen them even once in the past year of hunting. Then it was the same as them not existing.
To carry out what he had planned, he needed a siege weapon with a range far longer than that of the whirlwind cannon. Therefore, he chose the most primitive form of trebuchet. As long as he could not make gunpowder weapons, this was the best choice he could make.
The trebuchet Dong Bong-su made looked very sophisticated at first glance, but in reality it was not that complicated. The original trebuchet had pulleys installed, but Dong Bong-su deliberately omitted that part. If pulleys were included, the shape of the device would become very messy. Of course, if you attach pulleys, pulling up the counterweight becomes much easier.
On the other hand, the device becomes complex and the assembly time becomes long. In his view, using the manpower here and the strength of the mercenaries, pulleys were not necessary. Unlike ordinary people, they were those who had learned martial arts, so even without pulleys, if they combined their strength, he thought there would be no problem pulling up a counterweight weighing several hundred kilograms or even several tons.
That did not mean he had made it carelessly. Every part except the pulley section was precisely calculated.
Over the past few days on the way here, Dong Bong-su had thoroughly planned the trebuchet, and he had clearly drawn its range and shape in his mind. Even if Lee Ja-song had not handed over command of the whirlwind gunners to him, he had planned to move the mercenary corps separately and make this thing even if he had to cut trees in the nearby Yinshan Mountain Range.
Boom! Boom!
The parts of the dismantled whirlwind cannons were rapidly transforming into trebuchets. Since they were extremely basic forms of trebuchets, it really did not take long to make them. Just as Dong Bong-su had declared, after about the time it takes to eat one meal, thirty-two trebuchets were completed. Whether because they did not want to die, if they found even a slightly insufficient part, the gunners used methods like fitting in pieces of wood, using every single small piece of wood without waste.
When all the work was finished, Dong Bong-su went around and examined each completed trebuchet.
There were no major problems. There were some slightly inaccurate parts, but there was no time to nitpick such details right now. He judged that as long as they worked properly, there would be no great problem in carrying out the plan.
After finishing checking their forms, Dong Bong-su checked whether the direction was properly aimed. However, since they had been assembled from the start aiming at Guisui Mountain Fortress, there was no great need to newly adjust the direction. Unlike the whirlwind cannon, it was not easy to adjust the direction of a trebuchet, so it had to be set up with the direction properly fixed at the time of initial assembly. There were parts that were slightly off, but when Dong Bong-su used the skill [Circulating Energy and Performing the Technique] and exerted his strength, he could adjust them without much difficulty so that they were aimed exactly at Guisui Fortress.
When that was done, Dong Bong-su immediately began moving the round stones he had brought to use as stone shots into the baskets hanging at the ends of the trebuchet arms. The weight of one stone shot seemed to be about two to three kilograms. Judging by the size of the basket, it seemed possible to put in several hundred. Then the total weight of the counterweight, including the weight of the basket, would easily reach several tons.
If the potential energy generated when such a weight soared high into the sky and then fell to the ground were completely converted into kinetic energy.
'Enough.'
After finishing setting up the trebuchets, Dong Bong-su turned his head to the side and looked at the black mound rising in the distance.
Whoosh—.
When the north wind blew, the smell emitted by the mound spread all the way here. Even though it was more than a hundred meters away, the stench was so disgusting that everyone except Dong Bong-su frowned.
The black mound.
Its true identity was a pile of corpses of soldiers who had died from the Black Death. The mound was still continuing to expand its area, and the reason was that soldiers were constantly carrying corpses there.
As the mercenaries and gunners all distorted their expressions while looking at it, Dong Bong-su indifferently tossed out a single remark.
"All preparations are complete."
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