On the twenty-seventh day of the first lunar month, the final reply of the Ligong faction was sent to Shanling, and the Ligong faction unexpectedly agreed to all the conditions, but did not even pay the price, and at the same time sent an eighty-man delegation to Xianguo to arrive in Beihai County by sea.

Six of them are master craftsmen, and the rest are disciples and grandchildren of the six masters. In addition to Qi Mo and Qi Zhen, father and son, who were proficient in metallurgy and machine bracketing, the other six masters had their own strengths.

It is not uncommon for the workers to send a mission to the nation, and only when Jin Xuedi is in the north, or when the conditions of major concessions are negotiated with the other countries, the mission will be sent.

Of course, the scale of the 80-member mission is not large, and 60 years ago, the Ligong faction sent a delegation of 220 people to Zhiguo in one go. For a small country like Xianguo, which only has half of the country left, the Ligong sent an 80-member mission to Xianguo to help in the war, which was already a relief in the snow.

In this chaotic situation, the headquarters of the Ligong faction is located at the junction of the three kingdoms of Liang, Sun, and Changsun, and it is not too far from the Black Turban Army.

Bai Liyan (Wei Xian) didn't understand at first, but only after asking did he learn that the Black Turban Army was demagogic with evil magic, which made the Ligong faction dissatisfied.

The most typical incident is the Black Turban Army's "Heavenly Saint Enlightenment" incident.

It is rumored that the Black Turban Army has the magic of harnessing the crystal to move the god of the Golden Crow and borrowing divine power from the sky, and it is rumored that as long as the crystal is aimed at the fire-causing thing, it can ignite the fire out of thin air during the day, so the Black Turban Army has a huge natural crystal in his hand for sacrifice.

It is not a big problem to say that this matter is to deceive the people of the world, but it cannot deceive the Gonggong faction who are proficient in all kinds of arts.

Even Bai Liyan could think that the Black Turban Army must have used a huge crystal-polished convex lens to focus and ignite fire through the sun, what kind of magic skill is this, it is simply a despicable method that takes advantage of the ignorance of the people of the time.

The principle of convex lens focusing fire was discovered by the Ligong School as early as more than 100 years ago, when polishing the crystal sent by Liang Guo, and was recorded and studied. Now that the Black Turban Army has brought the Banmen to get axes and bewitch the world, if this continues, many records of natural phenomena circulating within the Ligong faction will become witchcraft.

In the long run, whether the Black Turban Army gains power or falls, and all countries begin to political liquidation, the Ligong faction will also suffer together, and no one can guarantee that the Ligong faction did not secretly fornicate with the Black Turban Army with no conscience.

At that time, it is not impossible for the nations to purge the Gangongists for plundering technology under the pretext of thieves in order to obtain technology, and the Gangongists have not been fuel-efficient lamps for the past few hundred years.

The Ligong faction used the technical resources at hand to blackmail the nations, and in the past ten years, they have not deceived people and made a lot of friends.

At this moment, the position of the workers is made clear, and at the same time, it is not only to make the position of the workers open, but also to give the countries the liquidation of the workers after the war. In addition to obtaining steelmaking, the Ganggong faction can also obtain a number of new technical paths such as refractory mud technology, thermal insulation technology, and coke technology.

On the day of the arrival of the mission, the King of Xian held a banquet and entertained him, and compared to getting the title of the king of the county, the workers sent the delegation to earn enough face for the King of Xian, but it was only face, which was exactly in line with the appetite of the King of Xian.

The next day, the workers sent a delegation to divide the troops into two routes, and the construction master Ankong led his disciples and grandchildren to the construction site of the new city to investigate the construction of the new city on the spot.

Qi Mo and his son and Liu Dan, Lu Gao, Zhu Ming, Shangguan Zhao, Xiong Tuo five masters led their disciples to Wang Dependents Village, and Yang Dun, father and son and others to understand the steelmaking technology of filling steel on the spot, and opened a furnace in the military village to try, in the ninth day of February to get a hundred catties of molten steel samples, through forging and quenching and other processes, to obtain the same steel texture as the barren village ordnance, so far the Ligong faction is basically convinced that the steelmaking technology is true.

At the same time, the new drawing method based on the pale yellow thick paper produced in the deserted village and the charcoal pen as ink has been recognized by Qi Mo, Liu Dan and other masters, which undoubtedly improves the drawing efficiency and shortens the time for operation demonstration.

In mid-February, the new style of construction was proposed by Yasuku, a master of the construction school of the Gonggong faction, to improve the new style of building the city, and to change the previous process of building the city first and then repairing the house, through the reintegration of the construction site, the method of concentrating manpower and building in stages, and the construction of workshops and warehouses and other facilities in the new city first, so as to shorten the preparation time required for the production of ordnance.

According to this method, the new city can be directly transferred to production after completion, without the need to spend half a year to build infrastructure.

At the same time, there are two projects of windmill and waterwheel, which are led by Liu Dan and Lv Gao, who are proficient in machine and mechanism skills of the Ligong faction, and the drawings are ready-made by the Ligong faction, Bailiyan has painted windmill drawings, combined with the ready-made waterwheel structure, and the master of the Ligong faction increases and decreases to improve the structure, and first builds the same proportion in the Guantang Canal to reduce the size of the lofting by four times.

After that, he and Qi Mo, Zhu Ming and others non-stop investigation of Changqu iron ore, Zhu Ming is one of the few miners who are good at exploration, Bai Liyan suggested that the Changqu iron ore mine directly establish a primary smelting workshop, which can not only improve efficiency, shorten the production period of the new city, but also save manpower and land in the new city.

Iron ore is smelted into pig iron on the spot and then transported to Xincheng, which is more cost-effective than directly transporting iron ore to Xincheng for smelting.

In late February, the movement of Zhucheng alarmed the Black Turban Army, and the 500,000 troops stationed in Tun Taoli went south again, but this time there was no confrontation along the river, and the Black Turban Army concentrated its forces on the west bank of the northern section of the Yongxing River such as Guantangqu, Changqu, Zhuankou, and Yangting.

He also launched a river-crossing attack on the north and south sides of the Guantang Canal, which was guarded in danger, and used a long-range trebuchet to throw stones and incendiary objects, attacked the construction site on the west side of the new city, and took advantage of the night to cross the river and harass, resulting in the death and injury of nearly 1,000 people.

The Baili Yan Army transferred 3,000 troops and guarded the southern, northern, and western lines with Yao Sheng and other generals to prevent the Black Turban Army's strategic attempt to land and destroy the new city.

After several months of repairs, the black turban army began to take shape in water warfare, and was able to mobilize thousands of small boats of all kinds, and even crossed the river with more than 10,000 people at a time, and launched a strong attack for five days in a row, causing great casualties to the troops.

The battle lasted until early March, the Black Turban Army successively rebuilt trebuchets and increased bombardment, and some sections of the western city wall had to stop construction.

The catapult was built outside the range of the Black Turban Army in the west of the city, which could prevent the attack of the stone slinger on the west bank, and at the same time, the distance difference of the catapult platform could be used to bombard the west bank in the city.

This kind of trebuchet is to erect the trebuchet on the fixed earth platform, change the traditional manpower, animal power pulling mode, change to use the counterweight lever to launch, greatly improve the range, compared with the pendulum trebuchet, man, animal power pull trebuchet, the biggest advantage is that the direction of rotation is flexible.

The biggest drawback is that the mechanical requirements are higher, and you must have certain engineering design ability and mathematical skills

The trebuchet base is fixed, and the trebuchet can rotate left and right at a certain angle through the large cake-shaped round shaft under the base, and the movable structure is fixed with a wooden ratchet, so that the trebuchet can be the center to launch hundreds or even hundreds of pounds of stones to the west bank, the heavier the stone, the closer the range, and vice versa.

Launching only 50 catties of stones, you can throw them as far as two miles away, and using 300 catties of stones, you can also throw two-thirds of the distance of the river surface of the Guantangqu section of the Yongxing River from the west of the city.

At the same time, craftsmen were recruited to work for 3,000 days and nights to create the required structural accessories, and the first catapult was assembled on March 16, and the test run was carried out on the 19th, and 50 catties, 100 catties, 150 catties, and 200 catties of stones were launched successively to test the effect.

In late March, 20 large earthen platforms were completed one after another, the trebuchets were installed in place, and the counterattacks were launched one after another in the roar of boulders, subject to the limitations of accuracy, density and sights, the results of the catapults were unsatisfactory, and they barely hit five targets in three days, which was insignificant for the black turban army on the west bank of the river with more than 50 trebuchets, and Bailiyan suggested using a combination of meteor method and fire method to attack the rebels on the west bank.

The so-called meteor method is to shoot a projectile, using the huge projectile ability of the trebuchet to launch 30 projectiles weighing more than 10 catties at a time, and the projectiles are packed in straw bags woven with straw to ensure that the projectiles have enough weight at the beginning of the launch.

When the projectile ejection reaches the highest point of the parabola, the rigidity of the straw woven bag becomes poor, the fibers gradually break, and finally disintegrate in the air, and then scatter and smash to the ground.

This ensures that the projectile can be thrown at the required range and achieve the purpose of dense soft anti-personnel personnel.

At the same time, a group of ten sets of pine oil, alcohol, and coal tar ceramic tanks weighing five catties were fired at the same time to ignite, and even if they could not hit the trebuchet, they could also create a fire net.

The Black Turbans were driven out of the West Bank by driving the local operators away, creating a network of fire, and then gradually spreading the fire and burning the trebuchet.

The Black Turban Army's tactics of bombarding the west of the city with trebuchets across the river delayed the completion of the construction of the new city again and again, and the south, north, and east city walls entered the final stage one after another, and the west of the city was still unfinished, so that Bailiyan saw that the Yongxing River defense line was not impregnable for the new city.

At least the walls to the west of the city were completely exposed to large trebuchets, and if the Black Turbans collapsed the walls with huge boulders and landed by boat, they would cause great damage to the new city.

In addition, the construction of waterwheels was inevitably affected by the construction of waterwheels along the river outside the city, not to mention the construction of docks and docks.

On this day, Bailiyan inspected the construction site in the west of the city, and after the Tutai trebuchet innovated the tactics, the arrogance of the Black Turban Army was somewhat restrained, even so, the Black Turban Army also started a guerrilla war, removing the catapult during the day, and pushing it out and smashing it at night, and repeatedly repeating it, but it was never able to be completely wiped out.

However, the Xian army was small, it was difficult to cross the river to fight, and the slightest carelessness might even be counterattacked ashore, which made Bailiyan feel annoyed.