Inside the inn, the bowl rider was making a final admonition, and a servant-like man outside the door was holding a pottery pot upside down on the door panel, and the voice inside fell on his ears unmistakably. When he heard Canu half-shouting, 'Wake up, wake up, wake ......up', he quietly put down the pottery he had eavesdropped, and tiptoed to another room.

"His Excellency Aristotle IV, Supreme Prophet, the greatest philosopher of the known world, the most learned wise man of Greek civilization, descendant of the teacher of Alexander the Great,

This is your student's third letter. I beg your pardon for leaving Sogdia with only ten carrier pigeons. I can only send one letter at such a long interval, and I hope you will send more when you ask the Sogdianas to send carrier pigeons.

…… Instead of drinking the hemp juice of the Sogdiana, the king of Chuni expelled two of their monks from the country. Yes, it happened very quickly, they were expelled directly from the royal court, and they had only a short time to pack their bags after being escorted back to the hotel by the guards. The cunning merchant said that King Chuni was angry because one of the older monks declared at the royal court that everything about Chuni came from the West.

Yes, that's what he said. These words clearly angered King Chuni, who even vowed to conquer the whole world in his lifetime. I haven't met King Chuni, I've heard that he was young, young, and knew everything. He said that while he wanted to conquer the world, he also said that he wanted to conquer and conquer the Greeks and Macedonians.

This is a very surprising thing. How did the king of an eastern barbarian tribe know about Greece and Macedonia? I don't believe this at all. This is supposed to be the businessman lying, businessmen are always like this. Apparently, the old monk believed this - I find it difficult for me to understand why he believed this.

As you might expect, the Cuni did invent a new way of smelting Seris iron, and their armor made of Seris iron was sold domestically for fourteen silver drachmas. You read that right, exactly fourteen silver dramack, but even at this price, there are people who complain that they will not be able to afford it.

The price of selling abroad is eight times that price, but some Chuni, who are supposed to be some Chuni citizens, perhaps the king's associates, have their own city-states and armies. They objected to King Chuni's sale of Seris armor to other city-states, as this would be obtained by the Chenni. The Qini have been provoking wars against various kingdoms, and the Chuni are pessimistic that the Qini will destroy their own kingdom and other kingdoms, and the armor sold to other royal palaces will eventually fall into the hands of the Qinni.

The soldiers of the Chuni had iron armor, and as I told you in the previous letter, they also used spears like the Sarisha, but the spearheads were different, and behind the spearheads there were iron bars about two cubits long, which seemed to prevent the enemy from cutting off the spearheads. Their companion cavalry was very small, only a few hundred or so, only the king had such cavalry, and the rest of the gang did not have cavalry.

……

As you commanded, I intend to remain in Cuni until I understand how the Clani have made the better and cheaper iron of the Race Ries. For this reason, I had to inform the people of Chuni of my identity and remain in Chuni as the personal representative of the Governor of Sogdiana. Also, because of the yellow appearance of the Yellow Race of Ngago Vala, I will ask to stay with him and me in Chuni.

Oh. I forgot one very important thing. The Chuni have a type of paper that resembles Egyptian papyrus. It's thin, it's good to write well, and the most important thing is its price: it's very cheap.

I remember you mentioned that Ptolemy II of Egypt, in order to make a profit, raised the price of papyrus to two drachmas a piece, and it took ten drachmas to transport it to Sogdiana. However, a piece of chuni paper, which is nearly a cubit wide and just over a cubit long, requires only three or four chaks (1/48 drachma), and one dramac can buy fifteen chuni papers......"

Fluent Greek letters were written on Chu paper, and it was not necessary to write very small characters, and it took the reverse side to write the whole letter. When the ink had dried, he folded the letter and divided it into two parts and placed it in a small bamboo tube on the paws of the carrier pigeon. After dealing with all this, he called to Nggo Vala, who was obeying the orders of Canuhanu.

"Would you like to stay with me in Chuni?" He was a retinue of monks, but he was of the yellow race, so it was important to keep him.

There were no words, and he just nodded. He knew that he was sent by the governor of Sogdiana to spy on the merchants and monks, and that he was a half-blood, so he was able to reach the eastern world through the steppes.

"Good. When you return to Sogdiana, I will ask the governor for your reward. Wu Ji nodded in satisfaction, in fact, his hand was already pressed on the hilt of the sword. Vala had seen him release the pigeons, and if he didn't agree, he might have to kill him. "Now, I want to find General Chuni and tell him that I am an envoy of the king of Bactria, the personal representative of the governor of Sogdiana......"

*

Before the Zoroastrian envoy had left the Muling Pass, another envoy of the king of Bactria appeared. The state of Chu began to have more and more contact with the kingdom to the west. Xiong Jing didn't know about it, and even if he did, he didn't care. He is determined to conquer the world in this life, and at this time, he is testing his weapon to conquer the world: artillery.

The two twelve-pounder cannons lay on the turf of the martial arts field like two sleeping lions, and in addition to the dense targets erected one by one, the direction of the muzzles of the guns was not only the dense herd of sheep under the targets, but also the test guns always had to be a little bloody to be real. Behind the cannon is the ambitious Xiong Jing, who is being overwhelmed by the overwhelmed Nao cunning, Zhao Huang, Gong Yin Dao, Gong Yi Jian, Gong Yi Ji, Ou Chou, and the ten soldiers under the command of the artillery officer.

Artillery and cannon are said to be similar weapons by Xiong Jing, but the difference in words is not the same in reality. The cannon, to put it bluntly, is a piece of iron cylinder, a bell with a mutated shape. The Chu people love bells, but such a bell with a thick bell wall is called a cannon, which is really embarrassing, and it is even more embarrassing to say that it is a thunder god's weapon.

"The king ......" Gong Yin Dao said, "The auspicious time has come, is it ......?"

"Yes." Xiong Jing had just circled around the cannon. Because of the boring machine, the two twelve-pounder guns were first poured into mild steel rods, then drilled through the holes, and finally the bore was bored out with the boring machine. The key to this is heat treatment, as long as the hardening process is not carried out, the hardness of mild steel is not much higher, and the quenched high-carbon tools can be easily processed.

Xiong Jing nodded after seeing it, and he said to the empty man who was already sweating on his forehead: "Try it." ”

Sora was first in charge of the thorn crossbow, then the trebuchet, and now the weapon of Thor. Hearing Xiong Jing's order, he first brushed the barrel of the cannon according to the drill code, then pushed in more than four catties of gunpowder, and finally stuffed the round cannonballs. I don't know if the shells were too heavy or the soldiers were too nervous, but the lead bullets fell when the shells were loaded into the barrel. The gunner quickly picked it up, patted off the mud on it, and pushed the shell into the boring with a plug.

The tail of the cannon had been waiting for the soldier to poke the medicine bag from the fire door, and the gun commander asked a question that no one expected: "What is the target distance?" ”

"Aim at an open area, five degrees in elevation." Xiong Jing did not say the target distance. Before testing the gun, he had to test the gunpowder. According to his memory, during the Civil War, the 12-pounder gun had a range of nearly 1,500 meters at a five-degree elevation angle and a 2.5-pounder projectile. Now the chamber also had 2.5 pounds of propellant, and the weight of the shell was twelve pounds, and the diameter was 14.3, and he wondered how far the range was.

"Target: an open place, five degrees in elevation." The gun commander reversed the direction of the cannon, and after dropping the hoe, he gave the order according to the trebuchet's discipline.

"Putting ——!" He shouted. Xiong Jing hurriedly plugged his ears.

"Boom!!" After the ignition, there was a thunderous noise, and Xiong Jing saw that the gunner who ignited the fire was so frightened that he was carried to the ground. Everyone was frightened, and a cloud of white smoke from the roar of gunpowder blew up a cloud of white smoke and blew up five or four kilograms of shells. Such a weapon is eternal, and its roar slams into everyone's heart like an iron fist.

"Big, big, big king......" Gong Yin's crotch was loosened, and his clothes were wet because of this, and his face was pale, thinking that he had released a powerful ghost.

Xiong Jing was looking at the landing point of the shells, and as he guessed, the range could not reach 1,500 meters at all, and half of them could not reach it, probably only a little more than a mile. "Go! Go to the range geometry. ”

Xiong Jing shouted to a few frightened and paralyzed gunners, they did not dare to disobey the king's order, but they could not stand up, so they had to use their limbs to crawl on the grass for a dozen steps, and then they stood up in fear and ran into the distance.

"The King." Nao Cunning was also frightened by the sound, this was the loudest thunder he had ever heard, and there was no one.

"This is the Thunder God's Weapon." Xiong Jing stepped forward and stroked the still hot artillery, quite complacent. "What do you think?"

Xiong Jing was proud, the shot just now almost scared everyone's souls.

"This is not the world's own, but the artifact of Razor." The blind Zhao Xiao knelt down in front of the cannon and paused, and the others followed him. After he finished worshipping, he said, "Please ask the king to order Taibu not to sacrifice to the thunder god in the future." ”

"Please order Taibu not to sacrifice to the God of Thunder in the future." The courtiers bowed to Xiong Jing again. After Xiong Jing agreed, the two gunners who ran out just now ran back directly with the shells.

"What is the range?" Xiong Jing was dumbfounded. He asked for range, but the two men picked up the shells.

"King, this is more than a mile, almost equal to a stone-throwing vessel." The artillery general was the most sensitive to distance, and he could probably tell that the range of the artillery was equivalent to that of a trebuchet.

"No!" Xiong Jing also roughly judged the range. "The gunpowder is not pure, there are too many impurities. It is necessary to make the saltpeter pure. ”

The formula of gunpowder was correct, there was no problem with the toner, the sulfur was distilled according to the British method, only the purification of saltpeter was problematic. This is earth nitrate, which contains a lot of impurities and needs to be purified. Because of this, in the old days, there were people who specialized in eating this line of food, and not everyone could boil nitrate and boil nitrate.