In fact, this so-called flowering bomb is actually a copycat version of an earth-made grenade.

As early as a year ago, Chi Fei had thought of making a weapon for defending the city to deal with the Hu people's siege of the city.

Especially after hearing about the Hu people's continuous arrows, he felt that this kind of city defense weapon was even more necessary.

Although the cannons mounted on the city are powerful, using cannons to fight the Hu people is tantamount to using rifles to fight mosquitoes, and it has little effect.

Therefore, cannons can usually only be used to hit the enemy's siege vehicles, catapults and other large siege equipment.

However, due to the lack of craftsmen and materials that could make large siege equipment, the Hu people rarely traveled thousands of miles to transport siege vehicles, catapults and other large equipment, and generally attacked by means of continuous fire cover and hand-to-hand combat at the head of the city.

This also made the role of artillery less and less useful in the siege of the city with the Hu people.

Although the catapult can throw stones to smash the enemy, it is too poor to hit the target effectively, and once the enemy rushes under the city wall, it will be useless, so the effect is also quite effective.

Chi Fei thought about it for a long time, and finally thought that a grenade that could cause great damage in a small area might be a good choice.

Because when the enemy is attacking a city, the city is often full of people, and if a large number of grenades are thrown down, it is simply an indiscriminate massacre.

Moreover, the grenade was thrown in a parabolic way, so that the pitcher could greatly ensure his own safety by hiding behind the wall or behind the shield, which was far safer than the archers or musketeers who had to lean out to shoot arrows or guns.

After thinking it through, Chi Fei decided to make a grenade to use to defend the city.

Since his flintlock pistol is a knock-off product, he has no intention of making a modern finished product for this grenade, but continues to copy it to the end.

Although people of this era have long known how to make gunpowder to fire cannons and make firecrackers, it is not really clear how to use gunpowder to produce explosive effects.

Chi Fei knew that in order for gunpowder to have an explosive effect, the most important thing was to have a sealed environment. In this way, once the gunpowder is ignited, it will release high heat and produce a large amount of gas during the reaction process and expand instantaneously, so as to achieve the effect of explosion.

For this reason, Chi Fei specially asked a mason to make some special clay pots with a large round hole and a small round hole at the bottom, and then inserted a wooden stick with a thick front and a thin back into the round hole at the bottom of the clay pot, so that the thin end of the stick protruded as a handle that could be held by hand. Another small round hole is used to load the leads.

Next, after the gunpowder is filled into the clay pot, the entire clay pot is sealed, and such a simple earthen grenade is ready.

After almost a month of several experiments, this copycat version of the grenade was finally successfully made.

Although it has been done well and can be successfully detonated, Chi Fei found that there are still many problems.

The clay pot itself is extremely easy to break, and it can break with a slight touch, which is obviously not conducive to long-distance transportation.

You must know that black powder is very unstable, and as long as it is hit or rubbed hard, it may cause an explosion.

If there was a gunpowder leak during transportation due to a broken clay pot, a single spark could be enough to detonate the entire convoy. So this is a problem that must be addressed.

In addition, the power of the explosion is somewhat unsatisfactory. Although it can be detonated, the explosion caused by it is far less powerful than the grenade in Chi Fei's impression.

However, he also knew that this was already the limit of what black powder could reach, after all, modern grenades use yellow explosives, which are much more powerful, and there is no comparison between the two in terms of explosive power.

Nitroglycerin was needed to make yellow explosives, which was impossible to do with his knowledge structure, so he didn't even think about making yellow explosives.

Regarding the problem that the sealed clay pot is easy to break, Chi Fei does not plan to use iron or wooden pots instead of clay pots, because there are time and cost issues involved.

This home-made grenade is a consumable to put it bluntly, and it will be lost as soon as it is lit, and if you use an iron or wooden can to make a sealed can, not only will it take a long time to make, but the cost will also rise sharply.

This was not conducive to mass production in the future, so he insisted on using the lowest cost clay pots.

The reason why the clay pot is easy to break is because it is too thin in itself, and this problem can be solved by increasing its thickness.

If that's not enough, you can add a layer of mud to the surface of the pot to increase its thickness.

As for the problem of insufficient explosive power, you can make the clay pot larger, double or even triple or quadruple the amount of gunpowder, and try to increase the power of its explosion.

When thickening the mud on the surface of the clay pot, Chi Fei suddenly had a flash of inspiration, thinking if he could stick some sharp weapons such as iron nails or thistles on the mud to increase the lethality.

After a series of improvements, such as making the clay pot bigger and thicker, pasting mud on the surface, and adding thistle terrestris to the surface, the whole earthen grenade turned from the original size of a grapefruit to a behemoth almost as big as a bucket, and each weighed seven or eight pounds.

Where is this still called a grenade, it is clearly a big brick that can directly kill people.

This thing is so heavy, can it really be used on the battlefield?

Looking at the stupid big man who was finally formed, Chi Fei couldn't help but be a little speechless, feeling that he had changed a little too ruthlessly.

However, Ning Yabai, who rushed to hear the news, was so excited that he trembled like a swing after seeing the power of the explosion of this homemade grenade, and even became stuttering when he spoke.

He could see at a glance the great value of this homemade grenade, this thing was definitely an unprecedented artifact for defending the city!

As long as you throw it into the crowded place under the city, you can definitely kill and injure hundreds of enemies in an instant.

What, you say this thing is too heavy to throw?

It's okay, I immediately selected some soldiers from the army who were strong enough to come out and let them practice throwing this thing. Seven or eight pounds is nothing, and a few more pounds is not a problem.

Ning Zhiyuan, who was far away in the northwest, was as ecstatic as his eldest son Ning Yabai after receiving the sample of the flowering bomb and trying it himself, and immediately wrote to his little son-in-law excitedly and asked him to quickly make this flowering bomb in large quantities, and make it hard, as many as he wanted, the power of this thing is simply against the sky.

In this way, a carefully selected flowering bomb throwing team composed of several hundred people was secretly formed in the northwest, and the main training program of the team members every day was to practice how to throw this flowering bomb that was so heavy that it could kill people.

In terms of mass production, it is not difficult to assemble the flowering bomb because of its simple design, which is mainly composed of gunpowder, clay pots, wooden sticks, thistles, and mud.

Coupled with the mature division of labor and cooperative production process, each flowering bomb not only has a short production time, but also a very low cost.

In just one year, the workshop managed by Chi Fei has made more than 20,000 flowering bombs, almost filling up several dedicated warehouses.

Originally, this secret weapon was intended to be kept to deal with the Xie family and others who were deep in the northwest, but because Hu Ren led a large army to knock on the pass, he had to appear in advance.

If the Hu people knew this secret that had been hidden by the Ning family for more than a year, they would definitely not use this tactic, which is equivalent to filling the moat with human lives, to try to consume the flowering bullets in Ning Yabai's hands, it was not something that their tens of thousands of horses could fill.

A few days later, when the news that the Hu army had suffered nearly 100,000 casualties in the battle at the border pass, and that the defenders of Fuyuan City had suffered less than 1,000 casualties reached the northwest camp, the whole battalion was in an uproar.

Although the Northwest Army and the Hu people have won and lost in battles for many years, they have never had such an exaggerated victory.

The army of more than 200,000 Hu people faced the border defenders who only had 40,000, not only did not capture Fuyuan City, but also discounted nearly 100,000 people? And the defenders of Fuyuan City only suffered less than a thousand casualties, how is this possible?!

When many Northwest generals heard the news, they couldn't believe it was true.

Only Ning Zhiyuan, the general of the Northwest, immediately laughed loudly when he received the good news, laughing extremely presumptuously.

After seeing the power of the flowering bullet with his own eyes, he was full of confidence in the powerful weapon invented by his little son-in-law to defend the city.

Therefore, after learning that the Hu people led a large army to knock on the pass, he did not send a large army to reinforce it, but only sent his eldest son Ning Yabai to support the border pass with these secret weapons.

He believed that as long as there was this big killing weapon, the Hu people would definitely not be able to step into the pass. Now this good news just proves that his original judgment was correct.

After enduring it for so long, it was finally their turn to fight back.

Thank you, thief, you wait!