The two of them also watched coldly from the nearby city tower, and some of the movements brought by this group of monks.

"These are just scabies, if that one has the heart, I'm afraid they won't even be able to get out of the Shaozhou boundary."

The newly appointed Confucian official of the inner court, Qiu Yan, said to his old friend Hu Cao to join the army.

"Not to mention arriving here safely all the way, so I'm afraid there are other arrangements for staying in the division, and now that you are in charge of Cao, don't worry about it."

"Don't feel unbearable, do you know that this lord's heart is very big and his plans are far away."

Speaking of this, Qiu Yan continued to correct the color

"He has already decided to give up most of the scholars from the families in the vast and vast land, and wants to start anew with the righteous army itself, and cultivate and support a set of governing councils and foundations on his own."

"The branches of the Great Seminar are preparing for this, and these poor people don't know it, and they want to negotiate and profit from it. This incident, there is no such thing as this generation contributing to it. ”

"My generation was lucky to be able to follow him, but he must not miss the grand future and opportunity to follow a great cause because of some gains and losses in front of him."

And when these monks began to gather believers outside the city to try to build momentum, Zhou Huai'an was rarely not in the city, but came to a deserted valley by the sea southeast of Guangfu. There was originally a mountain barbarian village here, which was burned down in the earlier turmoil, and now it has been rebuilt as a kind of testing ground.

After passing through several light and dark sentry posts, a sudden opening of the field and continuous buildings appeared in front of you.

"Subordinates see the leader."

But it was Chen Nian, the officer of the fire throwing team in the army, a middle-aged man with a face full of vicissitudes and scars at the corners of his eyes, who was leading a group of people to hurriedly come forward to salute and salute.

"Without further ado, let me wait and start right away."

Zhou Huai'an waved his hand.

"No."

He replied, and then blew the whistle of the hedgehog group.

A moment later, on a section of artificially set up earthen mounds, several sturdy soldiers from the fire-throwing team who were draped in their whole bodies made a concerted effort to make several specially customized clay jars with pig iron slag and broken iron pieces on the sound of the password, flicked the rope and threw it on the ground about ten paces away.

In the midst of several roars of instinctive retreat and commotion around Zhou Huai'an, the canisters thrown out exploded one after another, and a few pigs and sheep fixed on the side for targets and kill tests were all collapsed and overturned to the ground by the fragments, and the bloody screams and wails, but they did not die immediately for a while.

Then someone dragged it back and checked it, and the mouth and nose were all bled from the shock, and the fragments embedded in the flesh were still faintly visible; He jumped out of the fragments one by one in front of him to measure the wounds, and the deepest wounds were only inches long.

Zhou Huai'an made a slight judgment in his heart, it seemed that it was okay to deal with the unarmored target, and there was a high probability that he would lose his combat effectiveness or be unable to act on the spot if he was not killed by a close explosion; However, if you encounter a protected target, such as an armor-piercing soldier, unless you hit the vital point of the face and throat, the effect will be greatly reduced.

Moreover, the applicability in daily engineering operations and tackling and blasting is also obviously insufficient, and the place where the explosion has been blown is only a shallow circle of radial soil pits, and then friends use a ruler to insert the turned out soil, the deepest depth is less than two inches.

However, it is already good to be able to achieve this effect with the first black powder; At least when dealing with dense crowds or cavalry charges, there is still a surprise deterrent, deterrent and lethal effect; At least the feet of these pigs and sheep have been blown up and broken, and if they are feet that cannot be protected by humans, there is a considerable probability that they will lose the ability to walk and stand.

Then, the team officer Chen Nian blew the whistle again, and someone pushed a cart to clean up the site, and the new grass-filled humanoid target and the tied live pigs and sheep were re-established. Then it was the turn of the firearm projection experiment, and the two men carried out a metal tube with a thick bowl and a wide inside mouth, and fixed it to a modified trolley.

Of course, with the conditions and craftsmanship of the current rebel army, it is possible to make this kind of iron-clad copper-clad troll for the time being; It can also be regarded as a compromise design that increases strength and saves material costs.

After all, the lack of copper and money shortages have run through the entire history of ancient China; And Zhou Huai'an also looted the temples and folk bronze utensils and copper utensils in Lingnan, and with the sea trade to obtain the source, he could use them to make firearms a little more luxuriously.

After filling the medicine plug and tightening the partition and the cartridge bag, and inserting the ignited incense stick for a few breaths, only a muffled sound of gray smoke was heard spewing out, and a dense arc of smoke erupted, covering most of the preset armor targets and the whole bound pigs and sheep. In an instant, the movement and wailing of the struggle disappeared completely.

When the smoke clears, you can see the human-shaped target of the straw being blown away and torn into countless falling grass balls; And the live pigs and goats in iron-clad armor were also covered in blood and sores and completely cut off; In some of the details of the wound, it can be seen that the metal nail pieces are embedded in the hollows. As for the group cards and baffles used to cover them, they were scattered all over the place.

At this time, many soldiers present couldn't help but cry out in an uproar, obviously shocked by the power of this kind of gunpowder out of nothing.

"Congratulations to the leader, after having this sharp thing. Why are you even more fearless of those dog-day officers and soldiers?"

Chen Nian on the side was even more surprised.

"Discipline him to fold as many miles as he dares to come."

"It's not that exaggerated."

Zhou Huai'an is an understatement.

"The interval between the shots of this thing is still too long, and it needs to be skillfully manipulated to match the battle formation of the army."

Then, Zhou Huai'an turned to the other middle-aged craftsman in cloth who was full of wrinkles on his face and a little rickety,

"I don't know what the cost of this thing is, what the construction period and output are."

His name is Wu Dong, whose name is Mingyuan, and he is one of the copper craftsmen in the hardware group of the first baggage team; Because generations have lived by casting bronze bells and some bronze objects, but he only makes some small brackets in private, so he can be called ingenious in fine craftsmanship; It can be said that he is one of the famous craftsmen in Guangfu.

It's just that the world is chaotic, and he can't escape the trouble, and he was framed in bankruptcy and imprisoned because of his ancestral business, and finally became a repairer in the hardware group of the baggage team in the hands of the righteous army; In the end, by virtue of the uniqueness of his craftsmanship, he was entrusted with an important task in the casting of firearms, and became the head of the craftsman group for the construction of secret firearms.

"If you go back to the army, this thing weighs eighty-seven pounds, four taels and six points. With red mountain copper two, black tin, gray lead each half into one, and the South China Sea precision cast iron seventy percent. ”

As soon as he talked about the field he was familiar with, it seemed that he had changed as a person, and his waist was no longer bent and his eyes were bright.

"There are a total of 22 people in four groups of large and small workers, and it took 15 days to complete one. Therefore, the cost of materials and labor must be about 75,600 yuan. ”

"That's nearly eighty dollars."

Zhou Huaian sighed secretly, it was still a little expensive, but this was the price that must be paid for the long-term development direction and prospects in the future.

"Then I'll do my best to supply the materials and manpower, and see how much you can produce. I'm afraid it will be useful in the near future.。。 ”

"Please rest assured that the leader will be one."

Hearing this, Wu Dong swept away his old state and decay and said angrily.

"The little ones have already roughly grasped the essence of the preparation, and they only need to have enough labor and materials to supply."

"As soon as I get more and more familiar with twisting, I can shorten the construction period and consume it."

"Then don't rush to the moment and leave flaws and omissions,",

Zhou Huai'an also woke up.

"Let's get a sufficient amount of skilled labor out first. I will have the corresponding rewards and punishments. ”

"But the Honorable Leader Teachings."

Wu Dong nodded in response without a temper.

Then, under Zhou Huai'an's instructions, they carried out several rounds of extreme tests of increasing charge and range, until obvious cracks and deformations appeared on the body barrel of the big troll.

In the end, it was determined that with the quality of gunpowder that can be made so far, the optimal killing distance is about 10 to 20 steps; If you want to add medicine, you have to further increase the thickness and strength, and the cost performance of weight and power will outweigh the losses.

With a unified system and specifications, the pre-loading troll is the basic front, which is mainly used to train and exercise the observation technology and proficiency of firearms and arms; In the next step, Zhou Huai'an can consider the design of the rear-mounted stacked sub-mother cannon;

As for the problem of sealing and ignition, it can be completely solved with oil-soaked linen gaskets and carbonized cotton ropes. Then there is the step-by-step follow-up technology tree, the rapid reloading means of paper-wrapped monolithic ammunition, and a series of production and preparation of a large number of lead pellets and iron bullet particles.

As a traverser, the technology tree does not explode firearms, and the face is said to be a traverser, even if the technical conditions are poor, it is necessary to take advantage of the buffer period when all parties have not reacted in time, and find a way to make the simplest composition of one nitrate, two sulfur and three charcoal, even if it is just as a cannonball, it can only be thrown and heard, and the black powder that is scary can be sorted out first.

This also helped the newly expanded rebel army to quickly get through this period of weakness and dissipation. The next step and regulation is to slowly adjust the various composition ratios through weighing instruments to maximize the power of black powder;

At least compared to this kind of big troll who has to toss for a long time to shoot, Zhou Huai'an prefers the previous patch gunpowder canister, at least it can replace the original fire oil canister and poisonous fireball in the hands of the fire team, and continue to operate it seamlessly.

Although the current volume is still a bit bulky, which is not conducive to long-distance combat carrying, but after reaching a certain batch size, it also has a considerable degree of bonus for garrison strongholds and field defense.

Then, the existing initial formula is further reciprocated and refined and filtered to purify impurities and fine-grained, and then turned into gunpowder particles for various purposes by wet processing. For everyone else, it takes a certain amount of time and luck and there are not many shortcuts.

But Zhou Huai'an at least has an auxiliary computing power and appendages to assist, but the process is a little scary and has to be avoided by people. After finalizing the military superiority and technological development direction that he could master, Zhou Huai'an could finally be in the mood and return his attention to the farce outside the city.