"January! Take Shouzhou City in January! Guo Shaotie said to the generals.

Thick smoke filled the wind, and the miasma of black smoke seemed to fill the sky with haze. The generals were stunned, and there was silence nearby. Perhaps the crowd thought it was because he was angry when he watched countless siege engines being burned on his own turf.

But Guo Shao didn't seem to be talking angrily, and then said solemnly: "Issue a military order, please break the city within a month of time." If you can't do it, please tie yourself to the soup wok! ”

"The lord ......" Li Chuyun immediately wanted to persuade.

Guo Shao waved his hand and said: "I have made up my mind, if I don't succeed, I will become benevolent!" ”

With a "snap", a piece of burning wood burned off the catapult stand and fell, startling the crowd who were completely oblivious to the surrounding scene. Guo Shao turned his head to look in the direction of Huaishui in the northwest, Li Chongjin and Li Jixun definitely had to shirk the responsibility on their heads. A word of neglect of precautions is enough.

More than half a month ago, Guo Shao really didn't want to come to attack Shouzhou; But now, he must not give up Shouzhou. What does it mean to be removed from here with the shadow of failure? He has to die here, whether it is a hard bone or a stone, to chew it before he can swallow the bitter fruit; There is no way back.

Only a writ of determination was the most effective way to keep the emperor from being disappointed and to remove the besieging general.

But there are conditions attached to this military order. There are too few elite soldiers, and the right wing of the Hujie Army is claimed to be 20,000 elites outside Shouzhou City, but they can't be moved; Guo Shao had already seen the combat effectiveness of the miscellaneous armies such as the town soldiers and the township soldiers, and the enemy army panicked as soon as he rushed and could not organize a group. and Li Chongjin's house, always interfering makes people very upset and at a loss.

It's as if when you draw your bow and shoot an arrow, you are looking for the most appropriate time and direction, and someone next to you shouts: shoot, why don't you shoot, shoot from here, where are you facing, shoot quickly...... I on your face!

Now in this Shouzhou City, there are food, soldiers and walls, and Liu Renzhan is a powerful veteran. Guo Shaozhen doesn't think there is any opportunity, and it is not in line with his style to attack rashly if there is no opportunity.

There are no fighters, but fighters can be created.

……

Not long after, Li Gu sent someone to say that the first batch of materials prepared for Guo Shao had been transported to the Xia Cai warehouse. Saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal.

Guo Shao left the devastated battlefield in front of him, turned back to Li Chuyun and said: "I'll go to Xia Cai, you watch here, if there is something important, send a fast horse to Xia Cai to find me." In addition to cleaning up the battlefield, everything else is as usual, and the tunnels must continue to be dug, and the tunnels on all sides will continue; But don't go beyond the city walls...... They also dug ditches in front of the city walls and built walls, and lifted the walls to build earth. ”

Liu Renzhan used oil and defended the city and destroyed the weapons very effectively. Guo Shao didn't know where his oil came from, and he couldn't find a place to dig oil, but many people could find saltpeter and sulfur mines.

The Tang Dynasty had **, but it couldn't be used to blow up the city. The conventional role of digging tunnels is only to quietly send troops to sneak attack, and there is no other use. It is impossible to dig down the walls from the ground with tunnels; From ancient times to the present, there is no precedent, the ancients attacked the city to the extreme, if you can dig a tunnel to dig the city wall down, there is already a precedent, the Zhou army will definitely use it to besiege Shouzhou for two months. Liu Renzhan also couldn't think that the tunnels were of any use other than transporting troops to attack.

Blowing up a section of the city wall may not necessarily be able to break through, but no one can expect this kind of thing now, this is the warplane......

He also wanted to use the soil to besiege the city to confuse Liu Renzhan, of course Guo Shao knew that Liu Renzhan would deploy heavy fortifications at the location of the soil and be prepared. This method can't work, but he Liu Renzhan must be on guard, otherwise the feint attack will become the main attack.

Now the only question is whether the city wall can be blown down?

Guo Shao's siege strategy is clear at a glance: digging tunnels and laying ground. Liu Renzhan is probably laughing at himself, and even his own people don't believe that Guo Shao's siege of the city can be effective. But he felt that it didn't matter, the more the other party felt that everything was under control, the easier it was to catch the key point by surprise and give Liu Renzhan a hard blow!

Of course, if ** didn't blow up the city, I heard a sound. That's tragic...... The world is really full of dangers, Guo Shao endured it before, but now he doesn't feel that he has a way out.

One nitrate, two sulfonate, three charcoal. Guo Shao silently recited it several times on the road, he didn't know whether this ratio was good or not, and he couldn't remember the exact proportion...... It's useless to remember, minerals have a lot of impurities, and who knows exactly what ratio they are mixed in?

In a grain yard in Xia Cai Town, Guo Shao met Li Gu.

"What does General Guo want these things for?" Li Gu said, "Is it used to burn the city gate?" Shouzhou has an urn city ......"

This sentence reminded Guo Shao, ** is an explosion, not an explosion; The power of the explosion depends on the speed of burning. He saw that there were only a few sacks of things in the warehouse, and when he cut the hole with his knife, he saw that they were gray lumps, like the color of konjac. Guo Shao thought for a moment and asked, "Is this saltpeter?" ”

Li Gu nodded: "Sulfur and charcoal are not a problem, a large number of them have been transported from all over the country, and the day will be coming." However, there are not many saltpeters that can be collected from the nearby states, and only from Guanzhong can be urgently transferred, and the cumulative amount reported by the local officials is not less than 2,000 catties, and it may take ten days to transport it. ”

Guo Shao hurriedly bowed and said: "Li Gong can help so effectively, I am grateful." ”

"It's all trivial." Li Gu smiled, "I used to be a prime minister, and I had official correspondence with many magistrates, and I was often ordered by the officials to prepare military quarters. ”

Guo Shao took out a piece of saltpeter from the sack and took it to take a closer look. In his previous life, he was a person who had finished high school and gone to college, and he knew that potassium nitrate, a compound that should be similar to salt, and that the stone-like thing in his hand was gray, and he didn't know how much effective substance there was.

He thought about it for a while, but didn't want to leak the military plane, so he sent someone to Shouzhou to transfer the three hundred soldiers of Luo Mengzi's subordinates to Xia Cai, and ordered the warehouse to be blocked, and the idlers were driven away.

Then, under Guo Shao's instructions, everyone set up a cauldron in the courtyard and went to find some needed things. Potassium is the active element at the top of the periodic table, and the compounds of potassium must be easily soluble in water.

After the half-sack of saltpeter is hammered, it is stirred with water in a wooden barrel and then filtered out with gauze that strains the tofu. The filtered water is poured into a large pot and boiled and dried. Finally fried a bunch of white-gray crystals, this is potassium nitrate? Guo Shao grabbed a pinch and pondered it in the palm of his hand, and found that the crystals inside were not regular, some small particles like salt, and some crystals were elongated. This is not a substance, otherwise it would have been the same shape after crystallization.

Guo Shao asked people to take a bamboo sieve to sieve and classify. Then mix the two crystals with an approximate amount of charcoal and sulfidation, and ignite them to test. It was found that only long crystals could burn sharply.

Then a few other pots were also set up, and in that way, a few sacks of saltpeter were processed into three barrels of nitrate in half a day.

Zuo You helped, weighed with a piece of money that weighed valuables, and mixed into forty-nine different proportions. It is more troublesome to mix, and the three dry items will spontaneously combust if they are stirred heavy, and they are afraid that they will not mix well if they are not evenly stirred. However, Zuo You and the others easily thought of a way, directly mixed with water and wet, like dough, and then took it to the stone to process grain and grass. After one day of drying, carefully grind it into powder the next day.

But at this time, Guo Shao asked them not to bother grinding into powder, they could directly crush it into granules and sift it through a fine sieve.

After three days of hard work, forty-nine packs of black gadgets were offered. Guo Shao stayed with Zuo Youluo Mengzi and more than a dozen cronies and soldiers to test them in the house.

The method is simple, try to figure out which one burns the fastest.

Forty-nine kinds** are further subdivided into seven groups, and each group selects the fastest burning one; Then the winners will go back together for the final trial. It's like the rules of the game. Seven kinds of ** fold with paper, make a long strip, and then count one, two, three and light it together to see which one burns first to the end.

The room soon filled with smoke, and everyone coughed, so they had to open the doors and windows to breathe.

The whole process is actually very simple, Guo Shao waited for less than an hour to complete the experiment. I found out the ratio of the bag**: seven taels of nickel, one tael of sulfur, and one tael of charcoal.

Guo Shao vaguely knew that ** particles burned faster than powder, and thought about the reason, it is estimated that there is a gap in the middle that is easier to burn? However, he felt that the experiment was a way to prove all conjectures, and it was simple, so he took the same ** particles and powder alone, and sure enough, the gap was obvious...... For the same length of **, the granules** burned out, and the powder did not even burn a third.

Guo Shao ordered Zuo You to stay in the warehouse, and Luo Mengzi restrained his own soldiers, telling them not to leak the military aircraft, otherwise the death penalty would be inevitable. In addition, he sent his own soldiers to scout to set up light and dark sentry posts near the river to beware of meticulous work.

Guo Shao returned to Shouzhou City. The next day, the minister sent by the emperor went to Shouzhou again. The person who came back this time is no longer Wang Pu, who is easy to talk to, but also someone Guo Shao knows: Dou Yi, and an entourage Zhao Pu.

Guo Shao gradually remembered that Zhao Pu seemed to be the one who took refuge in Zhao Kuangyin, but it is unknown how he is with Dou Yi now.

Dou Yi didn't say anything, just walked around the city, inspecting the deployment outside the city. Guo Shao explained his deployment intentions and how to prevent counterattacks in the city one by one, and did not shy away from saying that Li Jixun did not move, and his lack of elite troops led to a sneak attack, which led to the defeat a few days ago.

Two days later, Dou Yi went to the right wing camp of the Hujie Army. Then he went to Chuzhou in the southeast.

Within two days, the fast horse rushed to Shouzhou, and ordered Li Chongjin to move the town of Haozhou, and Li Jixun's department moved to the northeast in the direction of Tushan; The main forces of the 3rd to 6th armies of the left wing of the Hujie Army, which were deployed in the direction of Luzhou in the south, were transferred to Shouzhou and returned to Guo Shao, the capital of the Xiang.

Dou Yi, who passed the decree, said to Guo Shao: "The official said that although you did not slack off, you let the defenders' counterattack succeed, and you can't escape the blame!" Now that the military order has been established, there is something to say in front of the generals, and the official family is not a person who is not unsympathetic. The deadline is one month, and when the time comes, if there is no progress, Guo Duzhi will bind himself to the king and ask for guilt! ”