When Xiao Xuan returned to Beihai to learn again, what made Xiao Xuan live up to his expectations was that just by referring to the general structure of some Western steel crossbows, someone finally figured out how to easily open the way to convert the two Song Shi strong crossbows. Use a wooden pole of more than two meters, two fixed-area tripods, and a lever inside bracket. While holding on for a while, the two children used the strength of their body weight to pull the lever down at the same time, and finally pulled the crossbow away. Although it is very laborious to operate and requires two children to open the crossbow effectively, there is no doubt that this method of opening the crossbow does not seem to be too laborious if it were to be operated by a real adult. Unless you go to operate a strong crossbow that is far more than two stones and three buckets.

There are also children who choose other methods, such as ratchet crossbows, similar to the crossbow method of three-bow bed crossbows. However, this method seems to be slightly inferior in terms of rewinding and rate of fire, and does not seem to be as simple and suitable for real adults as a lever opener.

Although Xiao Xuan himself had already conceived the idea, he couldn't help but appreciate it after reading the pinyin report records sent by the children of the two groups: "Your contribution is huge, because of your creation, maybe the outstanding soldiers of our army on the front line will die thousands or even tens of thousands of people on the battlefield in the future." So: don't be discouraged when you feel that your idea is feasible and feasible, especially if you are temporarily discouraged by practical obstacles. Maybe what you can't figure out, the craftsmen at the proving ground can do? Therefore, sometimes it is not only necessary to learn more by yourself, but also to consult the opinions of those craftsmen from time to time. In this way, we can also have a deeper understanding of the feasibility of many ideas ... Xiao Xuan said encouragingly.

In fact, one of Xiao Xuan's greatest worries is the cultural tradition of China's emphasis on scholars and despise craftsmen, which has led to the detachment of intellectuals from industrial practice. If in the era of the second industrial revolution or the era of the third industrial revolution, when everything from technical standards to management systems is relatively mature, this is a problem, but it is not a big problem, but it is very important in this era when manual labor is still very important.

From the beginning of the selection, Xiao Xuan attached great importance to the bold and outspoken spirit of these children. Not being afraid of all kinds of relationships and hierarchies, and being able to have independent opinions, is the most critical factor in breaking through the shackles of oriental cultural traditions on the scientific research community. Therefore, even at this time, some people had already begun to guess the extraordinary origin of Xiao Xuan, and finally someone boldly asked at this time: "When I first came to the capital a few months ago, I heard the sound of firearms rumbling from inside the city to outside the city. I heard that the warriors of the volunteer battalion also used firearms to thwart the enemy's tens of thousands of troops. Since firearms are of such importance on the battlefield now, and the use of firearms is so flexible and convenient, they can be used to hit lightly armed or heavily armed opponents with different ammunition and charges, so why should we redevelop strong crossbows? ”

A little girl named Cheng Fang asked a little unexpectedly. If this is the case in the mouth of an Internet military fan in later generations, it will be very normal. But the children from this era, or the mouths of girls, made Xiao Xuan feel very amazing. Because in this case, it is still the initiative to ask questions, and only those children who have a strong interest in military affairs will ask.

Xiao Xuan personally led many children, including Cheng Fangzai, to the test site, and under the arrangement of the school's workshop and service personnel, he dressed the pig with a piece of armor like a shield that did not fit, and organized the children to fire with three or two bullets that had been erected and had already been loaded with ammunition.

Pigs wrapped in traditional armor are often knocked down on the spot by a short distance hit by a violent projectile, and struggle for a long time to seem to overcome the pain, but still pass away as if they were broken bones. However, when it comes to hitting the pigs that are protected by a shield wrapped around their bodies, they have no previous effect.

"When our army deals with those heavily protected opponents on the battlefield, it is usually solved by blunt damage with heavy bullets like a sling, and it can threaten the opponent without breaking armor. However, if in the future, when our army's opponent is faced with Western-style overall plate armor protection, it will have to pay too much price to threaten such an opponent with the current means of our army. The limitations of the lack of penetration of lead bullet fire were exposed. The level of black powder and firearms of our army is not as high as the level of the West in terms of general mass production. In the case of a special charge, it is only about a few times the firing energy of the crossbow per kilogram of the crossbow. At a common engagement distance of about 100 paces, there is no obvious difference between a firearm of the same weight standard and the projectile fired by a strong crossbow. However, there is a clear difference in penetration. To deal with the Western steel armor and steel shield that may appear in the future, it is necessary to use new weapons... At this point, Xiao Xuan did not shy away from it.

Historically, firearms have weakened since they began to be widely used in the Ming Dynasty. It wasn't until the Battle of the Hunhe that the bow and crossbow came back to life. In the West since the Renaissance, when the development level of traditional cold weapons was relatively high, the bow and crossbow were still of great significance until the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the early 16th century, and firearms did not achieve a significant advantage over levers or pulley crossbows throughout the 15th century. Xiao Xuan also invested a lot of manpower and effort to study the problem of saltpeter purification, but it still seemed to be a Karakoram-like mountain, and it seemed that he couldn't buy it.

After the trial production of the children of Beihai New School and the school-affiliated workshop, after spending hundreds of dollars, the heavy and abnormal "Nine Stone Strong Crossbow" that can only be pulled apart by using a lever to open the crossbow has finally been trial-produced. Because the production technology of compound strong crossbows in this era was largely lost, in the end, it was only by using the method of small three-bow bed crossbows that the strong crossbows were made by stacking strong bows to make a strong crossbow formed by using giant bows, and finally with the cooperation of adults, a giant arrow that was more than 300 grams of Manchurian army that was like a small javelin seemed to have was launched at the speed of a short bow and a strong crossbow. During the attack, at least one of the armored and shielded heavy infantry simulated targets were damaged, along with the armored raw meat targets behind them, and when attacking targets that had little protection, the powerful crossbow with great momentum and power could even kill three or four lightly protected targets in a row when hitting the queue.