At noon, Guo Shao drank some wine in Chen Jiali's house, and was helped to the wing room for a short nap.

I don't know how long it took, Guo Shao suddenly woke up. When he opened his eyes, he saw Chen Jiali looking at him with pity, Guo Shao took a long breath, his chest "dong dong" jumped, only to feel that he was sweating profusely and his mouth was dry; When I turned my head to look, the charcoal fire in front of the bed was burning too brightly.

"Am I talking in my sleep?" Guo Shao was stunned.

Chen Jiali said quietly: "I heard General Guo say, 'Don't kill me', 'Don't kill me', did you have a nightmare and was hunted down?" ”

"It was a nightmare." Guo Shao stretched out his hand to wipe his sweat, and said thoughtfully, "But it's not being chased and killed." ”

Chen Jiali was curious: "What kind of nightmare did it to scare you like this." ”

Guo Shao glanced at her and muttered, "I can't remember the front, probably when I was about to be executed at the end of the road, the opponent took a gun...... Crossbows and stuff like that, put it in my mouth, and I'll wait to die; Probably because it was useless to struggle, and I couldn't move my whole body. I was so scared that maybe the last moment would be painful...... I thought to myself, endure for a while, and it will be over soon. When it's over, I don't know the pain.

You can die at any time, but you don't know when it will come. But the man didn't shoot for a long time, and every flick of my fingers felt like a year had passed, and I felt like a very long time; At that time, I wanted the other party to hurry up. Finally I heard a sound...... With fear, it doesn't seem to be very painful, like being bitten by a mosquito, and then gradually losing consciousness......"

Guo Shao took another long breath: "Then I woke up and found that it was just a dream...... That's good. ”

Chen Jiali said faintly: "I didn't expect that a person like General Guo would have such a terrible dream. ”

Guo Shaodao: "Maybe it's the sequelae of what I did before...... I've seen too much bloodshed. But it's okay, it's just a dream, and no one can easily push me to the end of the road! ”

Chen Jiali comforted her softly, like coaxing a child. Guo Shao gradually calmed down and felt a lot better, and he suddenly thought of a person who had almost forgotten: "The little concubine of Mrs. Chen's family who survived the persecution, you should be kind to her." I suddenly felt how terrible it was to be brutally threatened with her life, and she must have been living in nightmares all the time. ”

"General Guo is really a person with a heart." Chen Jiali said softly, "You rest for a while, I will accompany you, don't be afraid." ”

Guo Shao turned over and got up: "I have to go to the workshop in the outer city to see how they are doing...... By the way, I haven't thanked Mrs. Chen for going out to fund someone to help me tinker with that thing. ”

"It's a trivial matter, don't worry about it." Chen Jiali said generously.

Guo Shao designed the plan a month ago, but the yard at home could not meet the venue, and it didn't seem to be very good to make a tinkling in the inner city. So he asked Chen Jiali for help, she happened to have a yard as a warehouse in a relatively remote place in the southwest of the outer city, and Guo Shao asked her to come to make a workshop for experiments.

So he hurriedly got up, dressed and set off, and Chen Jiali also followed him to the outer city.

…… It's a very ordinary yard, and you can hear the tinkling sound at the door. When Guo Shao and the others entered, they saw that the yellow blacksmith was personally hammering things, and Luo Jiye, the head of the craftsman, and so on, and when he saw Guo Shao, he came up to pay a visit. Guo Shao said: "Don't be polite, you are busy with your own business." ”

Several of them saluted the woman with the hood next to them, most of whom they didn't know who it was. Although the place belongs to Chen Jiali, the current personnel are not her people, including Luo Jiye, the head of the craftsman, who is one of the "five supervisors" of the imperial court, and the craftsman is also a person transferred by the government.

The houses in the courtyard had been smashed into disshapen, and in one hall, a huge "millstone" took up most of the room. Guo Shao took Chen Jiali to watch from the side, and saw that some people were holding files and whetstones to polish the edges of the "grinding plate". The noise of "rustling ......" and "......" is endless.

The middle of the grinding disc is made of thick solid wood, and the bearings are cast in cast iron, which is polished smoothly. The edges are also set in cast iron, and rivets are nailed to the wood; Iron teeth on the edges...... Looks like a big gear. There is also a similarly shaped "millstone" in the corner, but much smaller than the main one in the middle.

The transmission belt between the two grinding discs is made of wood and iron, like connecting large and small waterwheels, but the transmission belt here is made stronger by the iron sheet in order to bear the weight.

Guo Shao pointed to the two grinding discs, turned back to Chen Jiali and said: "The same thing as the waterwheel, the cellar under the big wheel is pulled by mules and horses, which rotates slowly and saves effort; The little wheels over there spin faster and carry more weight. ”

Chen Jiali said softly: "Then General Guo can also use a water wheel, and he also saves mules and horses." ”

Guo Shao said: "Let's test whether this thing can be used first, and then use water to improve the power." ”

The edge of the small millstone has a bent cast iron rod with a chain locked to it. But when the millstone turns, the chain is pulled...... The position of the iron rod was shifted to the side of the wall, and the chain was cut out; Turn in the opposite direction and the chain will be pulled over. The chain leads through a hole punched in the wall to the house next door.

Guo Shao took Chen Jiali to the next door, pointed to the hole in the wall and said, "That chain is what was tied to the wheel just now." ”

This thing was designed by Guo Shao himself, and he didn't need to look at the picture to be familiar with the operation, but Chen Jiali was very curious to look at it.

…… After the chain leads to this side of the house, it is attached to a fixed pulley and changes the direction to move up and down. When the wheel turns, the next end of the chain will move up and down repeatedly.

There is a cast iron structure hanging on the head of the chain, and Guo Shao took the name "chain head". The chain head is clamped into an upright cast iron groove to prevent swaying from side to side, and the structure looks like a gate.

The head of the chain hangs on the "forging hammer" weighing more than 1,000 pounds below (a heavy cast iron lump). The principle up to this point is very simple: the chain moves up and down, and the hammer is pulled up and down to achieve the purpose of forging. But that's not enough...... The chain can be pulled up more slowly; When you put it down, it is also connected to the chain because the structure is connected to the chain and synchronizes with the rotation speed of the wheel, so it is impossible to forge things when you put it down slowly.

…… Guo Shao also had a headache with this problem at the beginning, but now at least the design has solved the problem. When the forging hammer rises to the highest point, it needs to break away from the transmission structure and fall rapidly by gravity; Then when it rises, it is connected to the chain drive structure, so that it can be pulled up with the help of power.

(He started out with a manual design.) After the hammer falls, it is connected by a person; After rising, let go of the employing person and put the forging hammer to smash it down...... Later, I imagined that this would make the forging hammer very slow, and after a few hammer blows, the red-hot iron would be cold and would have to be burned again, which would be inefficient and of no practical value.

So he redesigned a reopening and closing mechanism, which he called "semi-automatic". The connecting part between the chain head and the forging hammer is an "L" shaped forged iron piece. When L is in its original state, it can hook the forging hammer; When it is pulled sideways, the hook on the hammer slides down from the inclined plane of the L, so as to release the hammer and let the hammer fall freely.

The thing that controls the opening and closing device also rotates with the wheel of the next door and pulls the L connection part. When the hammer is near the apex, the L part will be pulled and deflected by the chain, and the hammer will be lowered...... At this time, the human hand next to it will shake the other pulley and reopen the L part; After the chain is lowered, it is reconnected to the hammer. ）

……

The whole mechanical device is very rudimentary, but all the subordinates are built by hand, and it has not been completed for a month, and it is now almost complete. The charcoal fire in the house was blazing, the bellows were "whirring", and the blacksmiths were clanging.

During Guo Shao's standing, it was as if he was in a relatively backward factory in modern times, and as if he was in a large blacksmith shop.