At this time, it was pitch black on the beach outside the west gate of Pingliu County, and the mortar team working on the outer shore of Wuli was still not visible under the moonlight.

"What do you think, I haven't seen your artillery or troops until now, and there is not even a shadow of a ship on the river."

"If you see it, you're hell." After finishing speaking, Bai Liyan looked back at Wei Qi and said, "Go get a few Mazha and make three cups of Luoluo." ”

"No."

After Wei Qi left, Mooney put down his binoculars and looked at them carefully by the light of the fire, and he said:

"How much is a two-barreled telescope worth?"

"What, you want to buy it?"

"Aren't you able to sell everything, aren't you selling this?"

"Of course not." Bai Liyan decisively refused, and then said: "We don't have many binoculars ourselves, what are we selling to you." Don't always think about buying it and thinking about it yourself, you can't make it. If I'm not mistaken, you'll want to build your own telescopes when you get them, right? ”

Mooney did not deny it, and said truthfully:

"Yes, the glass you are talking about is actually the same as crystal, and crystals can be polished to make lenses, but I know that you have obtained crystals by other methods, and you can obtain them in large quantities, so you can have so many different telescopes."

"It seems that you are not stupid, but I advise you not to waste your efforts. Now the binoculars are made of better and more elaborate glass than before, and you can't make them. ”

There is no difficulty in the principle of binoculars, it is rare that the focusing and refractive mirror surface inside require a certain production and processing accuracy, and at the same time, the early glass belongs to the traditional calcium and sodium glass, the light transmittance is not high, and it is not suitable for use as an optical lens, which can be used for emergency and problem solving, but can not improve the quality of the field of vision. When the magnification is higher, the imaging quality of traditional calcium and sodium glass is worse, and its limitations are exposed.

To this end, Yongxing City has successively developed a number of optical glass and high-strength industrial glass to meet the growing demand for scientific and technological products.

When he was young, Wei Qi brought three times the tea of Shuluo, a few Maza, Bailiyan and Moonie chatted while drinking.

Around three o'clock, the general Gao Pei entered the city from the east gate and arrived at the west gate:

"Gao Pei see the deputy marshal."

"Excuse me, General Gao, please take a seat."

"Vice Marshal Xie."

Gao Pei put away the number of gifts, looked at Mooney and the others on the side, and said busily:

"Lieutenant Marshal, this ......"

"General Gao, rest assured, several of them are guests, and they are invited by the commander to come to watch the battle, and there is no big problem."

"Oh......"

Gao Pei had never participated in the Southern Expedition, and had been guarding outside before, and had very little contact with the Jinxuedi people. I had a meeting in the capital of Yang before, and I saw it twice, but I didn't know the relationship between Mooney and Bailiyan.

After Gao Pei sat down, Bai Liyan motioned for Wei Qi to make another cup of sakura luo, and then continued to say to Gao Pei:

"The mortar shelling will start at six o'clock, and your artillery and the artillery of the armed battalion must complete the deployment of the position within four quarters of an hour, and the artillery bombardment will begin at two o'clock to three o'clock, can General Gao understand?"

"Ben will understand."

"Well, now there are still three minutes before the shelling, the battalion has prepared a hot meal, and immediately organized people to eat and repair, and five minutes after the mortar sounded, the artillery was quickly deployed."

"No!"

Gao Pei is second only to the general Mo Yunfeng in the nine major towns of the Xian Army, and is above Ye Xin, but because he served as the envoy of the Liang army in his early years, and the Liang army passively avoided the war, delaying the opportunity to make meritorious contributions, so his qualifications are far inferior to Ye Xin, Gu Zhong, Xu Jin, Xiao Qu and others. Although there are Bailiyan and Zhao Xun Baoju as generals, they have not been taken seriously, and after the development of the Lingshan silver mine, they were transferred to Jiangdong together with the Fifth Town Army of Guzhong.

This time, Gao Pei was transferred to the First Group Army to stay in the rear, and it was also an arrangement made after weighing the distant and close relatives of each army. At the same time, Lu Tingxun's Ninth Town Army had many recruits and weak combat effectiveness, and the powerful soldiers and horses under Dong Guochang were all old fritters and were overwhelmed, Zhao Xun needed a capable general, so he had to leave Gao Pei in the rear, so he missed the opportunity to make meritorious contributions to the Western Expedition again.

Now that he is nearly sixty years old, it is extremely difficult to make military exploits in the future, and Bai Liyan can't help but feel sorry for him.

After Gao Pei left, Mooney hurriedly asked:

"What did you just say 'mortar'?"

"Wait another quarter of an hour, and you'll see. Now I'm just telling you, and you don't understand. ”

Mooney frowned, touched the thick white whiskers on his chin, looked at Bai Liyan suspiciously, and said:

"You're not going to come up with some new weapon, are you?"

Bai Liyan did not deny it, and frankly admitted:

"Yes, that's why I asked you to watch the fight. I hope that after reading it, Your Excellency will return to China and advise your country to still want to fight the powerful people in our Central Plains, and in the future, you will not gain an inch, otherwise the guards will be your tomorrow today. ”

Hearing this, Mooney smoked in seven ways, and decisively lowered his face and said:

"You threaten me!"

Bai Liyan disagreed, with a relaxed look:

"Don't be nervous, as long as you keep to yourself, the two countries are harmonious, isn't it over, why bother with knives and guns and rivers of blood, hehe......"

Bailiyan smiled calmly, but it made Mooney very uncomfortable, after so many years, he knew very well that Bailiyan was cunning, and his seemingly ordinary "advice" was often a vicious trap, and he thought in a blink of an eye that the plan to build two more provinces outside the Guanxi might lead to large-scale revenge from the Central Plains.

Three moments passed in a flash, and Jiang Jie quietly reported:

"Deputy Marshal Qiqi, the ugly hour has arrived."

Bai Liyan looked down at the pocket watch, and the time minute hand roughly stayed at the position of three quarters:

"Command the commander to fire three red flares."

"No, three red flares!"

Jiang Jie repeated, and then ordered the three people around him to use grenade launchers to reload each with a red flare.

"Ready, put!"

Jiang Jie gave an order, and the three of them pulled the trigger at the same time, three dull sounds broke the silence, and three red signal flares streaked across the night sky, leaving an arc-shaped tail flame and flying towards the distance.

Mooney was shocked when he saw this, and he hurriedly asked Baili Yandao:

"What was the red light that flew out of that explosion just now?"

"The grenade launcher, a new type of small cannon, can fire this red cannonball, but also can fire small cannonballs that can explode, and cannonballs that are as bright as a flying whistle for lighting, and similarly, can also be used to set fires, which is very convenient.

The grenade launchers equipped by the Xian army are loaded with one round at a time, and due to the backwardness of the propellant, the maximum range of the blasting warhead with the heaviest launch mass is only 200 paces, or about 300 meters. The maximum range of incendiary bombs is 270 steps, and the warheads of flares and signal flares are light, and they can hit 300 to 320 steps.

The overall parameter performance is inferior to more than half of similar products in the previous life. Of course, it is a luxury to be able to use it, and for all firearms today, mortars and grenade launchers are undoubtedly god-like beings.

At this time, the three red flares climbed to the highest point and slowly began to fall, and the riverside mortar team received the signal and immediately opened fire.

"One-shot loading, put!"

At the sound of an order, 30 shells dragged the red tail fire and climbed rapidly, and after 200 meters, the tail fire was extinguished, and the shells crossed an arc and climbed to the highest point of the ballistic trajectory and began to fall, and finally rushed to the west bank guard position, setting off dozens of violent explosions.

Like a thunderbolt falling in the darkness, the camp of the guards was plunged into a sea of fire, and explosions and shouts came and went. At the same time, there was a burst of cheers in Pingliu County, and the soldiers shouted and shouted:

"The Xian army is mighty, the Xian army is mighty......"

Then there was another explosion, and when Old Mooney saw everything, he was shocked and shocked, and at the same time, he could not help but hesitate and wonder in his heart.

He didn't know what Bailiyan had done, so he let the gunpowder of the patriotic army on the other side explode by itself, and he even thought that it was a spy sent by Bailiyan or a spy who bought the enemy and set fire to the explosion.

"What did you do, why did the West Bank Guard camp explode on its own."

"The projectile fired by your country is solid."

Bai Liyan said lightly, and Mooney immediately understood the clue, he said:

"Why, aren't your shells solid enough to hold black powder!"

"Pretty much, but I'm guessing you've tried to make your own hollow pellets, and they've either failed or haven't worked very well, have they?"

Mooney was shocked when he heard the news:

"How do you know!"

Bai Liyan smiled lightly and wrote lightly:

"Because everybody does it, but very few know how to do it. You think that as long as you are smart, the people of the Central Plains are all fools. ”

As long as there is war, there must be a motivation to tirelessly pursue weapons with the highest killing efficiency, and any weapon will evolve, depending on the technological reserves of an era and the organizational capacity of the country.

The shortcomings of the breech gun solid projectile are obvious, so the development of a hollow charge projectile under technical constraints is a technical path that everyone can think of, and there is no national and racial difference, who is stupider and who is stupider.

Not only did the Jin Xuedi people deliberately develop hollow charge projectiles, but the princes of the Central Plains were secretly researching and developing, and the main technical sources were traced back to the use of homemade earthen grenades during Bailiyan's southern expedition.

At that time, a considerable number of Central Plains prisoners of war who returned to the Central Plains with the army mastered casting and modeling techniques, and various versions of throwing and blasting weapons first appeared, and then there were thunderbolts and fire cloud bombs fired by trebuchets.

The breech gun hollow charge projectile looks easy, the inside is hollow, and the outside is a spherical iron shell, which seems to have no technical content, but this is not to make dumplings and make buns, just stuff the stuffing into it and knead it softly.

With the current technical conditions, there is no welding, no hot extrusion, and the spherical hollow projectile can only be solved by sand casting, and it has to be pig iron. Lead is too soft, toxic, with a large coefficient of expansion and a low melting point, while the hollow bullet is a thin-walled piece, too soft and deformed, the gun chamber is too hot, easy to melt and become soft, and even expand the sticky chamber, while the hardness of pig iron is moderate and not toxic, adding a little lead can improve the performance.