"The wooden cannon is very simple to make, let me tell you the principle, you can find a few carpenters."

After understanding the reason why his uncle came to him, Xu Shiyang said very frankly:

"But the key to wooden cannons is gunpowder, and I only have a craftsman who can make gunpowder now, and I can't give it to anyone, so I can only sell some finished gunpowder."

"It's just that this gunpowder is a treasure of my nephew's housekeeping, what are the two uncles going to exchange it for?"

The Wang brothers glanced at each other, and they could understand this result - the Wang family is indeed Xu Shiyang's mother's family, and the Xu and Wang families do have a good relationship, but after all, they are two surnames, how could Xu Shiyang hand over his housekeeping skills to others for free.

Don't say that the people of the Wang family can't do it, I'm afraid it's the Xu family's own internal affairs, and they have to guard against it, right?

"Shi Yang, how much gunpowder can you give us?" Wang Ping asked.

Talk about the quantity of supply first, then the price.

"The nephew wants to ask first, who are the two uncles here on?" Xu Shiyang smiled: "Yourself? The Wang family? Or did the owner of another castle entrust my uncle to come to me? ”

The two began to make eye contact again.

After a while, Wang Ping replied:

"There are many other dock castle owners who have approached us, not all, but most of them."

Xu Shiyang's external image is too domineering, and others don't dare to find him directly, but it is much easier to pass on the word through his uncle.

"In this way, I give my two uncles 20 wooden cannons a month for gunpowder, and I don't care how the two uncles distribute it to others after they take it back."

Xu Shiyang didn't mind adding a distributor to his gunpowder business, he didn't have that much time, energy, and connections to negotiate with people who were interested in gunpowder.

In this case, it has become a natural choice to let your own uncle be the distributor - at least you can win over these relatives and sell personal favors or something.

"Shiyang, what do you want?" Wang Ping then asked, "What are you lacking now?" ”

"Uncle said it was funny, what are we lacking now?" Xu Shiyang said with a smile: "Population, grain, iron, gold, silver, wealth, and livestock, as long as they are useful, I am lacking." ”

"Well, let's do it, for the amount of gunpowder used in a wooden cannon, I will pay 5 copper coins, or the equivalent of 5 yuan of materials."

"What if you exchange it for population?" Wang An, who hadn't spoken much, couldn't wait to ask: "How many people can be exchanged for one gunpowder?" ”

After two months of fighting against bandits, each Dock Fort has received a lot of people and labor, which is probably the most important thing they can get their hands on now - gold and silver treasures are for the Dock Fort owners to enjoy, not for the Dock Fort to strengthen their defenses.

"The population is ......."

Xu Shiyang is also short of population, but he doesn't know how to make a price to people.

These people were all Han Chinese, and unlike the Tartars or the Wakos, Xu Shiyang could buy and sell them as slaves and livestock with peace of mind.

Once human dignity is trampled on, it will be difficult to pick it up again, which is something that Xu Shiyang, who is always thinking about reorganizing the national atmosphere, needs to be avoided with all his might.

"If it's a population, then it can't be bought and sold."

Xu Shiyang said seriously:

"I asked my uncle to tell them when he went back that a month later, I would hold a 'job fair', and everyone who planned to go to my castle would come to apply, and I would not refuse to come. After that, I will give each family the gunpowder they deserve. ”

……

Xu Shiyang lacks a qualified officer corps in his hands, but at present, the proportion of non-commissioned officers is already a bit extravagant.

The growth rate of the soldiers of the new army is very gratifying, the original pro-soldier team can already be regarded as qualified non-commissioned officers, and the pikemen and musketeers who participated in the Battle of Fulai Mountain have also grown, even if they are other recruits in the new army, they have now participated in the war against bandits, and it is estimated that it can barely be enough to serve as a grassroots non-commissioned officer in Jiangnan, which has been in peace for a long time.

Under these circumstances, Xu Shiyang naturally started the second round of new army expansion operations.

In fact, according to his assumption, after each expansion of the new army, it should conduct intensive training for three to four months, and then find a suitable target and conduct a real combat to let the soldiers feel the battlefield.

Then expand again, continue training, and look for opportunities to fight again.

It is best to fight two battles a year, and after the number of people exceeds 1,000, the number of troops should be at least doubled each year.

Of course, these are just good wishes at present, and in order to achieve the goal, we need to move forward step by step.

At this stage, Xu Shiyang plans to expand the 200-strong New Army to 500 troops.

Among them, the proportion of melee soldiers, pikemen, and musketeers has been more than doubled, and separate artillery units and cavalry units have been formed to specially train a group of professional signal soldiers.

In terms of manpower, it is relatively easy to solve, although Xu Shiyang is still only a 15-ton fort master, but he actually has three full-manned dock forts in his hands, and the number of men has reached 2,300, and he can also get the support of other castle owners in the second room department - for example, Xu Shiyang's father allowed him to recruit soldiers in Ertun.

On the other hand, Xu Shiyang's job fair ended successfully, perhaps to show him goodwill, the quality of the population sent to Xu Shiyang by the lord of the dock fort in the alliance is not bad, and some of them can even be said to be quite brave, and they can be directly drawn out to enrich the melee soldiers.

But it becomes a little more difficult to replenish other specialized units and weapons.

Xu Shiyang now has a lot of craftsmen in his hands, and there are more apprentices to craftsmen, so there is no problem in building spears, but the speed of producing muskets has never been improved.

Therefore, Xu Shiyang sacrificed the methods used by countless traversers to break down the production of muskets into semi-assembly line operations - all the apprentices were assaulted to train how to make gun barrels, and then they only did this kind of work, practice makes perfect, and it is estimated that they will soon be able to become apprentices.

As for the crafting of other weapons, bayonets, waist knives, spear heads, and farm tools can be handed over to a few craftsmen.

Of course, there is no need to build a waist knife and spearhead for the time being, and Xu Shiyang's previous seizure is almost enough - now his own saber has been replaced by a Fuso knife captured from the hands of the Japanese Kou.

There are now more than 20 blacksmith apprentices in Wuxiantun, all of whom are used to make gun barrels, and Xu Shiyang can expect to get the first batch of finished products in three months, and then 20 new guns every month.

In view of this, he planned to use the musket as a training tool and increase the number of live-fire training for soldiers, so that the new army would only need some adaptation training and could directly replace it with arquebuses.

The live-fire training required a large amount of gunpowder support, and at the same time, Xu Shiyang also had to provide gunpowder to his own family and other dock castle owners within the alliance, but fortunately, with Xu Muhe's material support, and Gongsun Sheng has always been very concerned about recruiting apprentices, so the output of gunpowder has increased steadily, and it is still enough.

Xu Shiyang is preparing to send people to look for saltpeter mines under the jurisdiction of the two counties, if in a few years, the size of the new army will increase several times, and the current practice of scraping toilets to boil nitrate will not be enough.