I did it all for the Han Dynasty!

Chapter 180 Never Fight a Battle Unprepared (Bonus Chapter)

Liu Ye, now the center of attention, trembled: "What does my lord mean by this?"

Come to my place tonight! Just the two of us, let's talk things over!

Liu Ye was momentarily dazed, while the surrounding officials gave him strange looks, seemingly lost in thought...

midnight.

Liu Ye entered Liu Miao's house with fear and trepidation.

Especially when Liu Ye saw that Liu Miao was followed by two burly men, Zhou Tai and Chen Wu, he panicked to the extreme!

"Lord..."

"Ziyang, come here!"

Liu Miao lay by the pond in the courtyard and waved to Liu Ye.

Liu Ye looked around and felt that nothing should happen, so he moved closer to Liu Miao.

"Ziyang, how did you manage to tinker with the trebuchet at home before?"

Liu Ye breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that Liu Miao had asked a serious question.

"I have enjoyed tinkering with these things since I was young."

"When I was ten years old, I could disassemble a spinning machine and put it back together. When I was twelve, I made a crossbow that was just as powerful as the official Han crossbow. When I was sixteen, I was already able to make things like cloud ladders and catapults!"

When Liu Ye said these things, his eyes seemed to be shining!

Seeing Liu Ye like this, Liu Miao knew that Liu Ye probably really liked these things.

"Won't your father be unhappy with you doing all this?"

Liu Ye was suddenly asked a sore spot, but he still dared not hide it—

“My father often thought that I did not study the classics and that I would probably not amount to much in the future.”

"Then why do you still like tinkering with these things?"

Liu Ye's eyes were even more gloomy.

Now, Liu Miao's questioning seemed to overlap with his father's cold look, taking him back to the past, to the time when he happily took his work to find his father, only to be scolded for not studying hard enough...

At the time, Liu Ye not only complained, but also remembered that his father had slapped him hard across the face, the sound crisp and loud.

"Snapped!"

There was a muffled sound.

Liu Ye instinctively tried to dodge, only to realize that it wasn't a crisp slap, but rather Liu Miao's large hand slapping heavily on his shoulder.

"I'll tell you why!"

"Because the things you've come up with are useful! Very useful!"

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have been able to break through Shouchun so easily. I might still be surrounding Shouchun every day, waiting on the banks of the Huai River!"

"Moreover, it was springtime at the time. If I were to besiege Shouchun with a large army, it would inevitably affect the spring plowing of the people in Huainan, and I would have no time to manage the lower reaches of the Huai River that had been flooded by Yuan Shu."

"So, the things you came up with didn't just help us capture Shouchun; they also indirectly helped tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people in Yangzhou."

Liu Miao patted Liu Ye's chest again: "If anyone asks you that again, just say this! Understand?"

Liu Ye stared at Liu Miao, staring at Liu Miao's face, and suddenly Liu Miao's eyes welled up with tears!

This is the first time.

For the first time, someone acknowledged Liu Ye's hobby and said he wasn't a good-for-nothing!
Before this, apart from Liu Ye's deceased mother, no one else had shown him such tolerance and acceptance!

Everyone only knew that Liu Ye should study hard, learn the classics, revitalize the family, and get promoted and make a fortune...

But today, Liu Miao told him that the things he had been tinkering with were useful! Very useful!

It might even be more useful than his study of the scriptures!

Liu Ye kept sobbing, which startled Liu Miao, who immediately flung his hand away and said to Zhou Tai and Chen Wu behind him, "Youping! Zilie! You two are my witnesses! I didn't bully him!"

Liu Ye was a member of the Han imperial family and wasn't bad-looking. If he were to leave Liu Miao's house in the middle of the night crying like that, Liu Miao would have no way to explain himself!

If any literature about his own genitals were to emerge years from now, Liu Miao would definitely want to find a block of tofu and smash his head against it to death!

"My lord, I am weeping with joy!"

Liu Ye quickly wiped away his tears: "Thank you, my lord! Thank you, my lord!"

"No need to thank me, you've given me the Thunder Chariot, I should be the one thanking you!"

Seeing that Liu Ye had calmed down, Liu Miao then let Liu Ye go to look at the pool.

"I called you here at night because the fewer people who know about this, the better. Go and see for yourself." Liu Ye suppressed his excitement and joy and gathered at the pool. Only then did he see that there was a small wooden boat, no bigger than a palm, floating in the pool.

Only after Liu Ye took the wooden boat in his hands did he realize something was wrong.

Why is this boat pointed at the bottom?

Nowadays, all the warships of the Han Dynasty are flat-bottomed, which maximizes the stability of the warships.

With a pointed-bottom boat, Liu Ye couldn't think of any scene that could be effective.

However, Liu Ye is indeed a genius who can design a trebuchet!

After placing the small, pointed wooden boat into the pond, he ignored its continued swaying and instead forcefully pressed it into the water with his fingertips!
A miraculous scene unfolded!
The pointed-bottom boat swallowed a full finger's width of water, yet it did not sink; instead, it became even more stable!
If a flat-bottomed boat were to draw this much water, it would have already been submerged and sunk!
Liu Ye immediately realized: "Does our lord intend to build warships with such pointed bottoms for battle?"

"Exactly."

Liu Ye then picked up the wooden boat and examined it carefully: "This kind of warship is prone to running aground!"

"Moreover, on rivers, these pointed-bottom boats are not actually much faster than flat-bottom boats!"

Liu Miao added from the side, "On a calm river, a pointed-bottom boat has an advantage over a flat-bottom boat."

Liu Ye had some guesses in his mind, and looked at Liu Miao in surprise: "Does our lord really intend to take such a risky move?"

It was no secret that Liu Miao and Cao Cao had agreed to jointly attack Jingzhou from a high platform in Huaibei.

The resistance from powerful families is not a problem that can be solved in a short time, and more importantly, it is not the most important problem at all.

The most crucial issue is still to defeat the enemy militarily! To defeat that powerful Jingzhou navy!

However, the Jingzhou navy had the advantage of terrain and an upstream advantage over Jiangdong... Under the same conditions, it was highly likely that the Jiangdong navy would have difficulty suppressing the Jingzhou navy.

and so……

"Ziyang is right."

"Sharp-bottomed boats are no more advantageous than flat-bottomed boats in river warfare."

Liu Miao squatted down and stirred the pool water with both hands, causing ripples to spread and gradually form large waves!

"But in a storm, a pointed-bottom boat can draw deeper into the water than a flat-bottom boat! And it can sail more steadily!"

"Ziyang... Imagine if, in a storm, the Jingzhou navy dared not engage in battle, while my Jiangdong navy could come and go as swiftly as the wind. What do you think the outcome of this battle would be?"

What else?

The battle between Jingzhou and Yangzhou was a naval war!

If what Liu Miao said is true, the Jiangdong navy has unimpeded access to Jingzhou and can quickly occupy the ferry crossings along the Jingzhou coast, dividing and encircling the various prefectures and counties of Jingzhou!
In that case, what's the point of fighting in Jingzhou?

At this moment, Liu Ye admired Liu Miao's audacity, but was also somewhat uneasy.

"My lord, do you want me to design this pointed-bottom ship?"

"Besides Ziyang, I can't think of anyone else who could complete this warship!"

Liu Miao even helped Liu Ye choose a venue.

“Sangbo… I originally wanted to rename it Xuanwu Lake, so that it would make a perfect pair with the Zhuque Bridge to the south, but Master Zhang insisted that it couldn’t be changed unless it was an auspicious day, so it’s still called Sangbo.”

"Ziyang can go to Sangbo and, under the pretext of building a courtyard for me, study ships and train a navy there so that we can conquer Jingzhou in the future."

Liu Ye had also heard of Sangbo.

He just didn't expect that Liu Miao would grant him the entire Sangbo Lake, allowing him to use it as a shipyard for building ships!

Liu Ye quickly declined, saying, "Where would we need the land of Sangbo? Any dock along the Yangtze River will suffice."

"This matter is top secret, and I don't want anyone else to know."

With the pacification of Huainan and Guangling, it is foreseeable that the section of the Yangtze River near Jinling will become the busiest waterway in the entire Han Dynasty.

Are you trying to build these ships right under everyone's noses because you're afraid that Jingzhou won't get the news?
Liu Miao once again instructed Liu Ye: "Whether we can capture Jingzhou depends entirely on Ziyang!"

Liu Ye nodded emphatically!

Don't say that it's not difficult to pierce a pointed bottom.

Based on what Liu Miao had just said to him, let alone a ship, even if Liu Miao asked him to make something that could fly, Liu Ye would do anything, even die for it!
"it is good!"

"Remember! Top secret!"

"Here!"

Liu Ye nodded emphatically: "I will never tell anyone about this matter!"

　Seeing some readers in the comments section requesting an extra chapter, I'll add a small one. The midnight chapter might be a little later, since the author writes slowly.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)