砲響: were there cannons in ancient China?
Brewitt-Taylor's English translation of San-guo yanyi calls it a "bomb." This was a kind of "signal bomb" 號砲 or 信砲. The earliest real historical record of these seems to have been the Yuan dyansty, as Song Yuanyao's comment notes. Joseph Needham's volume on "The Gunpowder Epic" has a brief mention of the use of these, for instance in the Mongol attack on Yangzhou in 1276. I think it is safe to say that Luo's description of battles where these are employed is simply anachronistic.