Chapter 1 Jiang Yan Begins to Understand

Jiang Yan began to understand why the Ye Family Workshop wasn't afraid of others seeing their work. This wasn't something that could be learned simply by trying to steal their secrets. The Ye Family Workshop was doing things that weren't a question of whether others could do them, but whether others dared to even imagine them. Jiang Yan also suddenly discovered that his body actually had an advantage over others. The guards who went up in the balloon with him couldn't stay up there for long at all, quickly becoming dizzy and vomiting, while he seemed to be completely fine. Listening to the wind rushing past his ears, his mind seemed clearer than usual. And the scenery within sight, so different from what he had seen before, was so fascinating to him.

The tethered balloon's flight altitude was affected by many factors, especially the self-weight of the tethering rope was a big problem. During the days of waiting for Ye Tao, as long as the weather was good, the wind wasn't too strong, and it was suitable for balloon flight, Jiang Yan always went for a flight. He even ignored the guards' obstruction and participated in a hot air balloon flight without ropes, flying freely with the wind. Compared to the balloon basket swaying in the wind and being tightly held by the ropes, struggling and trembling, the feeling of flying with the wind was much better. Jiang Yan couldn't understand what the various operations of the two technicians in the basket meant, but this didn't prevent him from enjoying the pleasure of flying. During one morning flight, the hot air balloon flew about thirty *li*, landing on a nearby veterans' farm. Along the way, the crisscrossing fields on the ground, the dust raised by the carriages rushing on the roads, all became so microscopic, much more real and shocking than the panoramic views imagined by those painters. When the balloon was undergoing climbing tests, they reached heights that even some birds could only look up to. Although it was so cold, Jiang Yan found it so interesting. When the balloon finally landed on the ground, the farmers at the veterans' farm, having received the news, watched from afar, waiting until the balloon was packed up before daring to approach cautiously, revealing a clear awe of these people who had descended from the sky. Jiang Yan couldn't have been happier.

Accompanying Ye Tao to the Ye Family Workshop to inspect this experiment were many important figures from Yunzhou. The people from the Manufacturing Bureau were naturally there, but Jiang Yan was a little surprised that all the top military officers of the Yunzhou army were present. People like Tan Weiran and Chi Lei were not easy to see. This made Jiang Yan feel that the trip to Yunzhou was worthwhile.

The factory building next to the test site, which had never been opened since Jiang Yan's arrival, was opened wide, and three small airships were pushed out on flatbed carts, and a hot air generation device was lit on the open space on one side. Unlike hot air balloons, the airships' bladders were not entirely flexible. The lower half of the bladder was made of a very light and very strong bamboo frame. After the hot air in the bladder inflated, you could see that the shape of the bladder was also very different from that of a balloon. It was not a natural sphere, but rather appeared relatively flat. Ye Tao's original device for heating air already had some of the style of a modern hot air balloon, and on the airship, there were two of these heating devices, connected to a larger and safer fuel tank. The two heaters could heat the larger bladder faster, allowing it to take off, and greatly increase the airship's load capacity and safety factor. The airship's gondola below was open. Although Ye Tao was very confident in the airship, he didn't want to create something like a zeppelin all at once. In addition to the heaters, fuel tank, and related equipment for operation, the airship's gondola also had devices for adjusting the direction of flight. In this regard, Master Qi was specially asked to send some retired old sailors to help design it. The huge tail rudder and the guide sails in front of the gondola, combined with the carefully designed delta wings on both sides of the gondola, could allow the airship to fly freely to a certain extent. Even for short-term headwinds or for sprint acceleration, the airship also had a special design: two conical jet pipes that could burn some fuel to achieve a rocket-like injection effect.

The current airship was no longer in the prototype testing stage, but a model that could basically be put into use directly. Different equipment was installed on each of the three airships.

One had a pair of bracketed binoculars installed at the front and on both sides of the gondola. They were all high-end goods with aspherical ground lenses using natural fluorite lenses. The observation effect was extremely good, and the magnification and field of view were also ideal, making them very suitable for aerial observation.

One had a telescope installed at the front, reducing weight and lengthening the gondola into a transport type that could transport twelve people or an equivalent weight of cargo at a time.

One was a bomber type. The telescope in front of the gondola was not installed on the upper edge of the gondola, but an observation port was opened on the gondola, allowing the telescope to look down. Guide rails were installed on both sides of the gondola for dropping small kerosene bombs and the like. In order to improve accuracy, there was even a small bombing sight. Naturally, the accuracy of this primary sight was very unreliable, relying on an airspeed tube and an adjustment knob to control the influence of wind speed on the drop, and then throwing it down. Due to the urgency of time, the sight had not even been thoroughly tested, but in any case, having a sight was better than throwing it randomly. In more modern terms, this thing could be considered to have a downward-looking and downward-firing capability. However, since larger airships were still under development, the current bomber type, with its rather limited bomb load, would probably have more of a deterrent effect than practical significance if it were to actually go on a mission.

The current airships didn't need to consider air combat, but they couldn't fly too low in actual combat, at least not within the range of the enemy's archers. At the beginning of the airship's development, the Ye Family Workshop had preemptively developed anti-aircraft weapons: a light *shenbi* bow (divine arm crossbow), installed in a three-unit configuration on the kind of frame used for three-person artillery crews, changing the *shenbi* bow's original elevation angle of no more than thirty degrees to an elevation angle of up to about sixty-five degrees. They also installed this thing on horse-drawn carriages, becoming the veritable self-propelled triple anti-aircraft gun of this time and space...

With two heaters running together, the airship filled the bladder and began to take off and fly in just a few minutes. The Yunzhou dignitaries gathered together, watching the airship perform various projects in today's experiment through binoculars. Obviously, Ye Tao had given everyone adequate psychological preparation. Although everyone was extremely surprised that it could actually fly, since what they saw was already a fact presented before them, everyone was calculating something else: what did being able to fly mean?

"Zhou Rui, what do you think?" Ye Tao asked.

Zhou Rui, who was next to him, smiled strangely and said, "My lord, where do you want us to go?"

Ye Tao didn't speak. From Zhou Rui's reaction, Ye Tao knew that Zhou Rui understood his meaning. In Yunzhou's territory, with the Special Operations Battalion's strong individual combat capabilities, excellent equipment, and specialized team training, tasks like raiding and sabotaging didn't require flying at all. Especially since the airships' speed wasn't necessarily faster than horses right now. However, if they were to carry out operations behind enemy lines, such as going to Northern Liao or Western Ling, needing to break through layers of blockades in a short period of time, then the airships could play a different role. The Special Operations Battalion had a relatively small number of people. Although there had been another assessment and expansion, there were just over six hundred people now, still far from Ye Tao's ideal establishment of fifteen hundred people. But the Special Operations Battalion, whether it was Alpha Team or Beta Team, could be mobilized as an entire team by airship. After Zhou Rui and Zhang Wei led Alpha Team on a very glorious mission with Ye Tao to and from Chunnan, Beta Team had quietly infiltrated Western Ling to carry out another of Ye Tao's wildly imaginative missions, and the work of the currently resting Alpha Team was to quickly familiarize themselves with the airships and be able to use them for combat as soon as possible.

"My lord, I want twenty airships." After a while, Chi Lei rushed up and said bluntly. Although the Frost Wolf and Silver Wing armies combined only had ten thousand soldiers, and under Chi Lei's control, they were not easily exposed to others, always maintaining a state of one army staying behind and one army going out for training, everyone knew that these two armies led by Chi Lei were no longer the scout cavalry camps they used to be, but light cavalry units with considerable combat power. Chi Lei's emphasis on reconnaissance and intelligence analysis had not decreased due to the need to improve combat power, but had instead been raised to an unprecedented level. Seeing the reconnaissance airship, Chi Lei immediately realized its value. It didn't matter that the airship was slow now. The key was that in reasonably good weather, the airship was completely free from the constraints of terrain, and no one could stop it from conducting reconnaissance and sending intelligence back. Ground blockades and search-and-kill operations became completely meaningless. And the aerial perspective could expand reconnaissance work to encampments, towns, cities, and to mountains, forests, and vast plains, leaving the enemy with nowhere to hide.

"Twenty ships?" Ye Tao curled his lip and said, "I can't conjure them up now. Besides, even if I gave them to you, you wouldn't have enough time to train enough people."

Chi Lei pursed his lips and said, "A few months, there's enough time." Everyone understood that he was talking about the battle against Western Ling.

"Dare you sign a military pledge?" Ye Tao said with a smile.

"I dare." Chi Lei also smiled. "But in our Yunzhou, military pledges are not in accordance with military orders, right? This is a system that you, my lord, personally deleted."

Ye Tao was not angry. He thought for a moment and said, "I really can't allocate twenty airships right now. I'll give you ten airships and twenty airship technicians in two months."

Chi Lei's eyes lit up and he said, "That's very good."

Ye Tao then said, "Listen to me finish. You have to share these things with Zhou Rui. If I need to use them and it delays my affairs, hehe, you can deal with the consequences yourselves."

"Yes!" Chi Lei and Zhou Rui responded in unison. Although there were many restrictions, they really couldn't ask for more. Flight, what a luxurious dream.