In Shuangliu County, on the west bank of the Jinjiang River, there is such a magnificent building.

In just over a year, it has dramatically enlarged from a rent-collecting house to a city.

This city is the Chengdu factory of the Sichuan Firearms Bureau. Because of its large size, it is also known as the City of Firearms by the locals.

The third phase of the Chengdu factory of the Sichuan Firearms Bureau is a well-deserved super project of the Ming Dynasty, and its landmark building is the three towering ochre-red chimneys above the factory.

Large ochre-red chimneys grew savagely from the large gray cement buildings, spewing thick black smoke into the blue sky day and night.

Such a scene, placed in the beautiful pastoral scenery on both sides of the Jinjiang River, seems so discordant.

Small bridges and flowing water, single-courtyard deep houses, once the dream home of many Chinese; Self-sufficiency and self-happiness were once the ideal life of many Chinese.

And yet all of this was destroyed by such an ugly monster.

It is like a ghost coming out of the ground, devouring the delicate body of agricultural civilization with impunity. Constantly expanding, constantly multiplying, leaving the remaining little beauty in the memory and imagination of human beings forever.

The corrosive and destructive power of the industrial civilization armed with modern science and technology on the traditional agricultural civilization is not clear to others, but Zhu Pingjin is clear. He also knew that one day in the future, everywhere he could see would be a forest of reinforced concrete.

However, as a realist through and through, Zhu does not care too much about things outside of his own life. What he cares more about is what's under the chimney.

There are stoves attached to all three chimneys. One of them is a 30,000-jin steel-making furnace and the other is a copper alloy furnace. The other is a horizontal gas forging furnace, which can heat iron and bronze objects no more than two zhang long to a temperature that can be forged.

The 30,000-pound steelmaking furnace sounds very large, but in fact, the effective volume of the molten pool is less than two cubic meters. In Zhu Pingjin's previous life, a steelmaking furnace of this scale would definitely be pushed by the local environmental protection inspection team.

The 30,000-pound steelmaking furnace is made of refractory bricks, and the above-ground part is a cauldron with a lid, and the lower part is connected to the gas generator through the air duct through the regenerator.

The gas generator is a large tank made of bricks and cement in the open space outside the factory building (Note 1). The gas generator is filled with coal, and there is a fire pit underneath. After being heated in a closed manner, the coal combines with air and water vapor to produce a large amount of gas, which is highly toxic carbon monoxide. The gas combines with the air coming out of the blower into the regenerator, becomes hot and enters the molten pool for combustion, generating a high heat sufficient to melt the steel.

After the molten steel in the furnace is slag out, it is discharged into ladles of different sizes through the taphole to cool, turning into ingots with a black appearance and a hot heart.

After the steel ingot is taken out, it is reheated and softened by a gas forging furnace, and then sent to a forging machine to be hammered, which tamps the heart and strips off the oxidized cast skin. The embryo body is hammered, and then sent to the stamping machine or hot drawing machine to shape various required products.

This is what the third phase of the Chengdu plant of the Firearms Bureau will do.

It sounds simple, but it's much more complicated.

Heat and volume (weight) are the main obstacles.

For example, the most basic refractory bricks, the firearms bureau failed several times, and finally learned from the experience of using graphite crucibles, and mixed a large amount of natural graphite with clay before firing.

The same is true for regenerators.

The regenerator is essentially a heat exchanger, which uses the high-temperature flue gas discharged from the molten pool to heat the cold air and cold gas entering the molten pool in advance, so that the molten pool will not be heated on one side and the cold air will be blown by the air conditioner on the other. The regenerator can take both flue gas, air and gas, how to design its air duct to ensure the smooth completion of heat exchange, no one has experience, can only design and construction while testing. As a result, a regenerator was built three times and dismantled three times before it passed.

There are also those hot and shiny forgings, each weighing from more than 100 catties to thousands of catties. How to get them into the forging furnace obediently, and how to move them to the forging machine and obediently roll and be hammered, these are all difficult problems.

The Firearms Bureau dispatched elite soldiers and strong generals, and carried out technical research through the "three combinations" from top to bottom, and gradually trial-produced high-temperature materials, gas generators, furnaces and wrought iron furnaces, large-span traveling (sky) cars, ladle casting, 10,000-pound forging machines and other key equipment. The last level is how to make those forgings into cannons and firearms that are urgently needed to protect the **.

……

Cannons and guns, whether made of copper and iron, are essentially hollow metal tubes. There may be a bottom, or there may be no bottom.

In the Ming Dynasty and even the whole world known to the Ming Dynasty, the common method of making cannons can only be casting, that is, firing molten iron and pouring molten copper into the prepared mold. In addition to hard drilling, the production of gun pipes is iron plate welding, and it is made into a rough seamed steel pipe.

But Zhu Pingjin, a god descended from the sky, is different.

He has the accumulation of five hundred years of knowledge explosion in his brain, and the latest understanding of matter by human beings in the quantum age. Achieving "leapfrog development" under the existing conditions and "overtaking in corners" from time to time is not an unattainable goal for Zhu Pingjin and his wife, even if they cannot be done in minutes. Their weapon is science.

To be precise, science cloaked in mystery.

In line with the basic requirements of the great cause of preserving their lives, Zhu Pingjin and his family planned to make a few town house artifacts that swept thousands of troops at the beginning of the crossing, but unfortunately they had no conditions to do it at that time.

After Zhu Pingjin's father died, Zhu Pingjin, who was in power, immediately organized the craftsmen of the Shu Wangfu Gongzheng Office, Zuo Guard, and Wangdian to set up a firearms bureau, accepted a bunch of all kinds of apprentices, and taught machine tools and other basic tools used to make mass killing weapons.

In July last year, Zhu Pingjin and his wife went to Songlin Mountain, inspecting the Firearms Bureau on the way. Zhu Pingjin talked with his disciples and grandchildren all night, and before parting, he secretly taught a volume of "Iron Tools". This book is full of pictures and texts, and records in detail the properties of metals such as copper and iron and the methods of processing, so that those who are lucky enough to see it are rare to see it.

If you want to turn iron into steel, blacksmiths know how to "turn it into steel". Their master told them that steel is the essence of iron, and iron is the mother of steel. Through the form of "100 refining" and "hammering", you can "remove the coarse and save the fine" and get the best steel.

But Shizi's "Iron Spectrum" is completely different. Iron is a metallic "element," he says, a polycrystalline structure made up of tiny crystal-like crystals that are so small that they are invisible to the naked eye. Pure iron is soft and has a silvery-white cross-section, but it is rare because there are always other "active elements" incorporated into it to form "ferroalloys".

Especially that "carbon". A small amount of carbon is mixed into iron, about 1/10,000, which is commonly known as "wrought iron"; More than a few parts per thousand, it is steel; A little more, pig iron.

In general, the more carbon, the harder and brittler the ferroalloy becomes; The less carbon, the softer and tougher the ferroalloy.

The process of frying pig iron to mature iron is the process of volatilizing "carbon oxidation at extremely high temperatures" to reduce the carbon element in ferroalloys.

Forging can only make the distribution of carbon elements more uniform, so that the iron phase structure is more compact and tight, so it can improve the mechanical properties of iron, not what is "coarse and refined".

In addition to carbon elements, some so-called harmful elements, such as silicon, sulfur, and phosphorus, are mixed into iron, which will bring various adverse effects on the mechanical properties of ferroalloys; Other so-called beneficial elements, such as manganese, tungsten, nickel, chromium, molybdenum, etc., will cause magical changes in the mechanical properties of ferroalloys. For example, manganese steel has good wear resistance and toughness, tungsten steel is extremely hard, nickel and chromium steel are corrosion-resistant and rust-resistant, etc......

As for the processing methods of ironware, the "Iron Spectrum" is even more grandiose, listing casting, forging, welding, punching, drawing, cutting, carburizing, heat treatment, etc., and even powder metallurgy.

However, there is a disadvantage in this book, that is, some of the content is detailed and detailed, and some of the content is brushed aside, which makes people hold the book of heaven in their hands, but they call it difficult to understand.

Compared to how to say "element", the prince did not mention a word. Iron and carbon, craftsmen want to figure out, the "iron element" and "carbon element", is it iron and carbon? But no one knows. And those "manganese, tungsten, nickel, chromium, molybdenum". Not to mention that the craftsman has never seen the real thing, Wang Kunshan, a dignified person, doesn't even know the words. He could only give full play to the Sichuan people's tradition of "recognizing words and recognizing half of the side", and issued internal instructions with a flushed face, reading them all as "Meng, Wu, Zhen, each, and eye"!

In the face of all kinds of confusion and incomprehension, Zhu Pingjian's apprentices and grandchildren naturally inquired carefully with the master and his wife. Some of the sons of the world answered, but some of them were forgotten by the sons of the world for a long time.

However, in the process of solving, his apprentices and grandchildren soon discovered a big secret: Miss Luo is also familiar with the Book of Heaven!

Wang Kunshan once seized the precious opportunity to enter the palace to ask Miss Luo for advice in person, and asked Miss Luo what "elements" were with the attitude of "knowing is knowing, and not knowing is not knowing".

Miss Luo looked at the book of heaven written by the son of the world, looked up to the sky and laughed with a look of disdain, and said that she would also write a book of heaven in the future, which was even more powerful than the son of the world!

Wang Kunshan thought it was Miss Luo's excuse, and he couldn't help but feel depressed. Unexpectedly, not long after, Miss Luo ordered someone to send a secret letter. There was only one chart in the letter, with colorful squares drawn on it, which was marked as the "Periodic Table".

Miss Luo explained in the letter that the Chinese characters in the square are the names of the elements; The numbers in the square are the ranking of the elements in the elemental family.

Everything in the world is made up of the elements on the periodic table. Individually or in combination, they can form everything that ordinary people see, touch, and smell, even animals, plants, and humans themselves. The elements in Shizi's "Iron Spectrum" are all on this periodic table; Elements that are not in the Iron Spectrum are also on this periodic table.

Miss Luo also made a special statement in the letter: the top-ranked elements are generally lighter; The elements that are ranked lower are generally heavier. Iron is a very important element, and the element before iron can be called a light element; The elements after iron can be called heavy elements. Light elements can be turned into iron through nuclear fusion, and heavy elements can be turned into iron through nuclear fission. But whether it is nuclear fusion or nuclear fission, it can unleash the cosmic power that "destroys the world and destroys the world"!

The son of the world can see the iron crystals that cannot be seen by the naked eye, of course, he is a god and not a human, at least he is also a reincarnated immortal who knows mana. And Miss Luo is not only very familiar with the Creator Elemental Family, but also knows how to unleash the power of "destroying heaven and earth", and is almost certainly married to a famous god in the mortal world!

A person who is familiar with the delicate relationship between Shizi and Miss Luo is lucky enough to see the "Periodic Table" and is immediately shocked.

It is said that this person held this colorful children's picture with trembling hands, and a magnificent fantasy picture suddenly popped out of his mind:

The kind-eyed and good-looking Wealth Boy was transformed into a three-headed, six-armed, pig-like Marshal with two large fangs, and the dignified and beautiful Dragon Girl with a pearl was transformed into a human-faced snake...... Oh, no, it's the real body of a dragon girl with a human-faced dragon body and a phoenix crown!

The dragon girl first wrapped her dragon body around Marshal Tianpeng, trapped his six arms, and made him unable to move, and then ten sharp fingers like swords and spears, pulled out countless blue and cold lights that destroyed the world and stabbed at Marshal Tianpeng's three heads that could not be hidden!

Note 1: The gas generator is placed separately in an open area to prevent gas leakage and poisoning. The same is true for modern factories.