When he went back to sleep at night, Li Jing was still thinking about what weapons he could integrate with the existing resources, and he fell asleep in a daze when he thought about it.

The next day, as soon as it was dawn, Xiaomei ran in and woke Li Jing up, "Young master, young master, the big ship at home has arrived, and a lot of boxes of cloth and silk have been transported. ”

Li Jing was startled, hurriedly got up, got dressed under the clothes of the four maids, and was in a hurry, ashamed to say that Li Jing couldn't wear ancient clothes until now, and found a tailor to make a few modern sailor suits another day to try. Li Jing thought secretly.

Hurriedly drank a bowl of porridge, rushed to the dock, and saw that the second uncle was already directing the unloading. Hundreds of wooden boxes were transported to the second uncle's yard, placed, and returned after eating.

Li Jing and the second uncle and others sent away the modified Boss Zhang and others who were back to the shipyard for refit, and asked the second uncle to send someone to transport the gunpowder that had been configured in the Chaozhou Mansion and at home, and brought some cooked cowhides.

The capital city of Chaozhou is more than ten miles away from Nanao Island, and the hour of smooth water and wind has arrived. In the remaining days, the news kept coming, and the vegetable oil was finally hoarded to 1230,000 catties, and there were many merchants in the capital of Chaozhou to ask whether to sell it, Li Jing left 100,000 catties to be transported to Nanao Island and other goods to the north, and the remaining less than 30,000 catties of vegetable oil were wholesaled to several merchant groups in Guangdong, with a profit of five cents of silver per catty. About 1,500 taels of silver. The old housekeeper who sent his family to the capital of Chaozhou was so happy that he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Before Li Jing intervened in the family's business, the Li family's workshop had a net profit of two or three hundred taels a year, which was already a good operation, and caravans, horse gangs, fleets, field rentals, and workshops were the main industries of the Li family. The old lady has been operating diligently for a year, and it is already a good year to have an income of five or six thousand taels a year. In addition to the grain harvested, the family's working capital is only about 10,000 yuan, and the local area is already a second-rate rich family.

It can be seen that the production efficiency was so low at this time, there were hundreds of domestic slaves in the family, thousands of hired farmers and more than 200 guards, and the annual output of grain was not enough to eat, and a lot of money had to be purchased. The population of this sect is also thousands of people, these people are talented and the older ones hold management positions such as stewards in the Li family's business, and the young people are just ordinary employees. So the old lady still bears the burden of the entire clan.

Of course, there is a lot of responsibility, there is also a lot of power, and the power of the patriarch is also very scary, this Meihuawu Town is basically the old lady covering the sky with one hand, and the big and small things are judged in a word, and he has absolute authority. The clans in the south are very united and united, even xenophobic, and you are not their relatives or township parties, so you don't want to gain their trust.

Li Jing specially instructed the old housekeeper Li Yue to find a few more Cantonese merchants, and it was best to establish contact with the 26 banks that monopolized foreign trade.

For the rest of the time, Li Jing and the second uncle secretly hid the silver and treasures in the wooden boxes of silk and cloth, waiting for the Feilai Mountain to be refitted, Li Jing took into account that the caliber of these Francorang cannons is not large, the round shells of the cannonballs are more than 3 catties, and the cylindrical shells can reach 5 catties, if the opponent's ship is large, it is still difficult to sink, which requires a strong weapon.

In the current situation, it is difficult to arrange large artillery for gunboats without dedicated bulwark openings, Li Jing has a headache, and he most thought of watching movies when he was a child, and the explosives bags that blew up the bunkers in the movie, these yellow/colored explosives wrapped tightly with the first layer of cowhide can easily blow up the fortifications of cement and steel bars, and if twenty catties of black particle gunpowder, even if the enemy ship cannot be sunk, it can also make it lose its combat effectiveness.

In sea warfare, the current ships and sails are made of flammable materials, and it is far easier to sink a ship and set it on fire than to make a hole with an iron ball. In Li Jing's memory, the Eastern Roman Empire, with Greek fire, crisscrossed the Mediterranean Sea for a thousand years, and burned the enemy's fleet to the ground many times, but there was no oil here, and the oil that automatically flowed out of the surface in this era did exist, but it was generally in northern Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang and other places, which was too far away and was really beyond the reach of the whip.

But there are a lot of phosphate mines in Meizhou, and white phosphorus can be made into incendiary bombs, and this follow-up can be tried when there is time. When Li Jing was teaching at the University of Technology, he had come into contact with the domestic Type 74 flamethrower, which was different from the West's use of high-pressure gas to propel, and the use of gunpowder to push the oil, which could reach a range of 100 meters.

It's easy to make explosives bags, but it's very unrealistic to rely on people to throw things that weigh dozens of pounds. How can you throw it at the enemy ship? Li Jing thought of a lot of methods, and finally decided on two research directions, one is the flying thunder cannon of our rabbit army, that is, it is modified with gasoline barrels, the bottom of the barrel is made of hardwood, and the gunpowder is loaded to launch explosives packs, 20 kg of explosives packs, the range can reach up to 300 meters. The current technology casts iron tongs definitely stronger than gasoline barrels. A caliber of 300 mm is enough, it does not need to be too thick, and the weight is not too heavy.

The second is the ballista of the Roman Empire, this Li Jing was also a military enthusiast back then, carefully studied, and now the technology is not difficult to implement, materials can be found, mainly wood and animal tendons, if Wang Laosan gives force, you can even use heavy springs to do. Ancient Roman ballistas were powerful, and a well-performing ballista was capable of throwing 1 Talrant (an ancient Greek unit of weight, about 26 kilograms) of stone projectiles weighing 300 yards (more than 270 meters). This distance was enough for naval battles in this period.

That night, Li Jing drew the design drawing. The next day, Li Jing greeted the second uncle, took the four maids to the shipyard in Chaozhou Fucheng to supervise the modification of weapons, and left the sword and Bai Yu to guard the goods with the second uncle, and there were guards from the second uncle on the periphery, so there was no need to worry about safety.

After arriving in the capital city of Chaozhou, Li Jing found the best blacksmiths and carpenters, and easily made the flying thunder cannon. I tried two first. The caliber is 300 mm, because the gunpowder ejection does not require much pressure, the walls of the iron barrel are very thin, so the weight is very light, and the hard Vietnamese ironwood is very strong on the bottom. Ironwood is generally used to make cutting boards, and it is very resistant to knife cutting, and ironwood with a diameter of 30 cm abounds.

Roman ballistae, a little troublesome, mainly the gun carriage and some metal parts need to be cast, Li Jing chose sandalwood for the wood, this deformation is small and durable, the metal parts are all made of copper, this is more expensive. However, copper can resist seawater corrosion, has a long service life, and has high reliability. Ballistas also have the advantage of firing both spears and stone projectiles. It's more flexible. Direct fire can shoot accurately, and projectile can throw explosive packs.

Animal tendons can be bought in the city and dried and processed, and smuggling is rampant in this era, and there are many horns and tendons used to make bows and crossbows, and the government is powerless to control them. The materials are sufficient, the ballista was quickly made of three, Li Jing added a steering shaft to the original design, made of copper, copper has self-lubrication, after adding animal fat, it can be rotated very flexibly, the whole ballista is actually a cross-shaped large crossbow/bow, loaded on a column. Three large bows are placed on the crossarm, and a slide is arranged vertically in the middle. Use the crossbow and trigger to fire.

Regarding the cannonball, Li Jing found a cobbler, divided the cooked cowhide into several layers, wrapped 20 catties of gunpowder with the first layer of cowhide, tied it tightly with hemp rope, wrapped 20 catties of crushed iron slag on the outside, and then wrapped it tightly with two layers of cowhide, made the whole cylindrical, and the front part was made into a hemispherical shape to reduce flight resistance. The firing gunpowder is wrapped in silk to make a customized firing powder pack. This allows for a quick reload of the Flying Thunder Cannon.

If you use a ballista to fire, you don't need to fire a gunpowder pack, you just need to throw the cannonball. Li Jing arranged dozens of domestic slave craftsmen in the city to purchase and configure production on a large scale.

Ten days later, it was finally ready. Li Jing ordered a thunder cannon to be installed on the bow and stern of the Feilai Mountain. Three ballistae were mounted in a row in the middle of the middle deck, with three 120-degree angled pieces of hardwood attached to the deck underneath, and a thick column on the three hardwoods, on which were mounted copper shafts and ballista bodies. This allows for flexible rotation to launch to both sides. Sixteen Franc gun emplacements and ten Tiger squat gun emplacements have been installed on the bulwarks on both sides. In normal times, eight Franc cannons and five Tiger squat cannons are arranged on one side. If necessary, the guns on one side could be removed and concentrated on the other side to form maximum firepower.

Large quantities of swords and hair, hook and sickle also arrived at the shipyard and loaded onto the ship. Finally, the installation of barbed wire, Wang Laosan lived up to expectations to make a strong and resilient wire, Li Jing tested not much worse than the barbed wire of later generations, during the installation of the bulwark root obliquely 45 degrees angle outward stretched out of the three-meter-long wooden stake, nailed the barbed wire on the stake. After installing the barbed wire, don't talk about jumping, it's very difficult to get on board with the Flying Mountain. The disembarkation and disembarkation positions on both sides are arranged with sliding doors made of iron bars. The entire Flying Mountain is armed to the teeth.

Finally, considering the problem of falling into the water, after studying with Zhang Laoda, he purchased a batch of cork transported from Yunnan, which is called balsa wood, which was used to make thermos flask stoppers in later generations, made of oilcloth into vests, and loaded with this balsa wood in the middle to make the Ming Dynasty version of life jackets. Wearing is also very simple, a hole in the middle, a set of heads, respectively, each other's chest and back, and the two ribs are tied with hemp rope. It is also very easy to take off.

Everything was ready, and Li Jing familiarized all the crew members again, checking all the supplies and fresh water, gunpowder and ammunition. Weapons and firearms. On the morning of the eleventh day of the twelfth lunar month, he officially set sail, drove out of the shipyard and went straight to Nanao Island to load the goods and set off for Nanjing.