On the twenty-fifth day of the first month of the sixth year of Chongzhen, a good news was sent from Zhangjiakou Fort in Xuanfu and sent to Beijing by horse.

Its general content is: about 200 Dongyu pretended to be Ming merchants, and wanted to infiltrate Zhangjiakou Fort to plot misdeeds, which coincided with the Xuanzhen Supervisor Wang Kun patrolling Zhangjiakou Fort, and saw through the tricks of Donglu with his fiery eyes, and used the Zhangjiakou Fort garrison to break the enemy army, and beheaded 154 in battle.

Along with the good news, there were also one hundred and fifty-four Jiannu heads, and they were sent to the capital quickly.

With the dispatch of those heads and good news, the officialdom of Xuan, Da, and Jin gradually calmed down and returned to the previous calm.

But these officials had one more joke after dinner, that is: all the thousands of households in Ninghua who did not know the thickness of the high ground threatened to kill in the three towns of Xuanda and Jin.

Whenever this matter was discussed, the officials of the three towns all laughed.

How about a few great things? What about being revisited by the emperor? What about hanging the seal of General Wude?

But one thousand households, can he still turn it over?

Including the Shanxi officials who heard the phrase "big killing" that day, they just thought it was a joke.

The one surnamed Qin, thinking that he had won a few battles and tied up a few big families and could still get away with it, could he be helpless and do whatever he wanted?

It's just that he didn't bother to take care of him, and let him stumble around in the poor countryside of Lou Fu.

He doesn't have many good days left.

In the entire Shanxi officialdom, only a few people such as Xu Dingchen and Du Yingtang realized the seriousness of the situation.

However, in line with the principle that more things are better than less, those heads and prisoners did not care about them after they were sent to Xuanfu, and when Zhangjiakou Fort transferred the heads to the Beijing Division, they did not ask for any benefits.

Anyway, it's just a cold sideline, and a wise person protects himself.

……

Qin Chuan was already able to walk freely, although his chest still ached from time to time, but as long as he didn't exercise vigorously for the time being, it would be fine.

Those who died on the spot, as well as the red-clothed attendants who were seriously injured and died, a total of seventy-eight people, Qin Chuan was able to walk freely, and personally buried these guards who were not turbulent until death.

Luo Daniu selected two hundred Guan Emperor troops in advance, Qin Chuan only selected a part of them, and formed a new hundred-man guard with the surviving guards, the number still uses the red-clothed attendants, and these hundred people still wear red armor and red cloaks.

In Luo'ao dialect, if you see it red once, it will be fine in the future.

After the catastrophe, Qin Chuan realized that Lou Fu's sentry system was too weak.

Fortunately, Huang Erdan's report this time made him and the red-clothed attendants mentally prepared, and also gave Chen Zhan and those villagers enough time to escape.

If there were no yellow eggs, a hundred red-clothed attendants would probably be caught off guard by those two hundred Jiannu if they were unprepared, and then the whole army would be annihilated, and he would definitely die.

So, we have to strengthen the guards.

No cats or dogs can be allowed to come in, threatening Lou Fu's life.

The first thing he did when he woke up was to have people travel twenty miles along Lou Fu and Jing, and build more than ten guard towers, each of which was guarded by three sentry spies, who changed shifts every three days, and prepared firewood mixed with cow dung and horse dung on the sentry towers, and set off smoke once the enemy situation was discovered.

Then, he organized more than 500 militia into the Guan Imperial Army, bringing the regular strength to 2,000.

The battalion leaders are still the same as the original, the first to the camp, the trap camp, the Wudang camp, the Shifang camp, the tiger and leopard camp, and his guards red-clothed attendants.

Among them, the Xiandeng Battalion, the Trap Camp, and the Ten Fang Battalion have each sent troops of one banner to the gun factory and the gun factory in turn to practice the use of artillery and flintlock guns.

In the meantime, the three battalion leaders will be equipped with firearms first.

During the period of Qin Chuan's recuperation, there were new breakthroughs in iron smelting and firearms manufacturing, and Yan Sanqi improved the crucible and blast system according to the ideas given by Qin Chuan.

The original open crucible was changed to a semi-closed type, leaving only three holes, one for putting limestone and stretching sticks into the churning, the other for blowing, and the last one is the hole for inputting molten iron, and after the molten iron is injected into the crucible, this hole will be sealed to reduce heat leakage.

This kind of crucible, similar to the reverberatory furnace that appeared in Europe in the eighteenth century, allows the heat to be constantly reflected in the closed crucible, so as to maintain or even increase the temperature in the crucible, so that the molten iron is always smelted in a high-temperature liquid state to eliminate impurities.

Qin Chuan estimated that the pig iron smelted by this method was very close to the low-carbon steel of later generations.

Therefore, he immediately asked the two mines of Black Mountain and Hongli Mountain to build secondary refining furnaces to smelt iron in this way.

With good iron, everything is easy to do.

Chen Zhan built two more six-pounder guns, one was made according to the previous iron mold preheating and central water cooling method, due to the insufficient furnace temperature, still could not get the gray iron cannon tube, but after annealing treatment, the performance was not bad, and when the gun was tested with two and three times the propellant respectively, there was no explosion and no cracks, so as to obtain a finished cannon next to it.

The second is according to Qin Chuan's method, after casting the white iron cannon tube, it is annealed in a closed heating furnace, the barrel is filled with toner powder, leaving a gap, and the copper pipe is used to inject air into the barrel, so that the toner powder inside can be fully carburized and annealed.

After completion, Qin Chuan was surprised to find that the performance of this cannon was better than the first one, it should be that after the barrel was annealed, the black-hearted malleable cast iron was successfully obtained, and the inner chamber was hollow carburized and nitrided, and the strength and impact resistance were greatly improved.

So, Qin Chuan asked the artillery factory to use this method to cast cannons, first build tiger squat cannons and Franc machine cannons, and try to get thirty guns out before the spring snow melts.

Because in the short term, the enemy he faces can be solved with these two types of artillery.

As for the six-pounder gun, there are already two, which is enough for the time being.

Qin Chuan officially named the six-pounder cannon the red-clothed six-pounder cannon, firstly to commemorate the red-clothed attendant who died in battle, and secondly, to confuse the public and make others think that his cannon was the Hongyi cannon.

Qin Chuan was also very pleased with the progress of the gun factory, Li Xuejing had assembled fifty boring machines, and made thirty qualified flintlock pistols, as well as twenty scrapped barrels.

In other words, the finished product rate of the gun factory can reach 60%, which is about twice as high as the bird gun made by the Ming Ting's Ordnance Bureau or other local armies.

Qin Chuan gave Li Xuejing a new task: to make a rifled boring machine.

It was unrealistic to mass-produce rifled guns, but he could start working on rifled guns at the same time as mass-producing smoothbore flintlock guns.

The focus is on how to broach rifling.

At the current state of technology, it is possible to manufacture several rifled guns, but in order to mass produce them, it is necessary to develop a set of rifled boring machines with extremely high accuracy.

This thing can't be touched in a few months, and if you want to manufacture a large number of rifled boring machines with uniform specifications and precision, you can't get it in a year.

Qin Chuan still has time, and now there are still a few years before Li Hongji and Zhang Bingzhong rise, and before Houjin has the strength to enter the Central Plains.

……

Qin Chuan's injury was not healed, and his reward was delivered, and it was still sent by the Luo Dushi, a piece of Qianhu waist card, a letter of edict, two sets of official uniforms, a set of regular clothes, a set of official uniforms, and a royal Yanling knife.

He was used to using a long knife, and this Yanling knife was thrown into the arsenal.

The two sets of official uniforms were worn, and they were still worn on their bodies and swaggered around Lou Fu.

The villagers I met along the way all respectfully called "Lord Qin".

Compared with the previous 100 households, he is now a weighty adult.

……

On the second day of the second month of the sixth year of Chongzhen, the dragon raised its head.

Early in the morning, Qin Chuan, who was badly injured, led a hundred red-clothed attendants, as well as Luo Daniu and two hundred firsts to the camp, holding high the flag of the "Qin" character general, and marching north.

He went to Ninghua to guard the palace of a thousand households and took office.

Ninghua Institute is located in the middle of Jingle County and Ningwu Pass, 80 miles away from the county seat, less than 90 miles away from Ningwu Pass, and its strategic location is very important.

As long as Qin Chuan controls this thousand households, he will be able to sandwich Jingle County in the middle, and it won't take long to control the entire Jingle.

Then he controlled Ningwuguan, and then controlled Lanxian, and when he did, the entire hinterland of Luliang Mountain was in his hands

Now, there are signs of warming up, and he will first go to Ninghua Qianhu to live in one or two, and then go to Fenzhou to propose marriage to his father-in-law.

At that time, it is time for the spring snow to melt, and it is time to clean up Ren Liang and Wang Gang Leopard Five.