In the welcome pavilion outside the south gate of Shenyang, Yue Tuo sat at the stone table and drank a little wine, completely forgetting the task of welcoming the Ming envoy today, as if he had come to go out.

In addition to Yue Tuo, there are two people in the pavilion, standing on the edge of the pavilion and looking at Dahai in the distance, but not as relaxed as Yue Tuo, he knows the situation of Houjin better than Yue Tuo, and he does not dare to treat this messenger of the Ming people lightly, lest it will bring greater problems to Huang Taiji. As for the other Fan Yongdou, he completely became a servant by Yue Tuo's side, pouring wine and flattering him.

Just when Dahai was a little irritable, he finally saw some movement on the road in the distance, and soon a relative who had gone to inquire ran back on horseback, and said outside the pavilion: "Hui Baylor, Lord Dahai, the convoy of the Ming envoy is already within 2 miles ahead..."

Dahai hurriedly tidied up his clothes and said to Yue Tuo behind him: "Yue Tuo Belle, you can also prepare, don't let Ming people underestimate my Houjin." ”

Yue Tuo slowly put down the wine glass and said nonchalantly: "Isn't it the father-in-law of the little emperor of the Ming Kingdom?" Last year, the little emperor was lucky and won the Great Khan once. If there is another war, I don't believe that he will dare to go to war again. Now that it's so grand, is it possible that the Great Khan is really afraid that the little emperor of the Ming Kingdom will not succeed? ”

Dahai gave Fan Yongdou a look and let him out of the pavilion, and then stepped forward and whispered to Yue Tuo: "Yue Tuobeile is drunk?" The Great Khan treated the Ming envoys with courtesy, how can it be said that he was afraid? No matter what the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom says, he is also a foreign king, Yue Tuobeile, you are so contemptuous of the king, and when it reaches the ears of the Great Khan, can the Great Khan still praise you? ”

Yue Tuo, who was originally a little drunk, suddenly sobered up, although he and Huang Taiji are uncles and nephews, but the two who grew up together since childhood are like brothers in love. Although he was loyal to Huang Taiji, he was not a stupid person, and naturally knew that what his uncle dreamed of was the throne of the Han emperor, not the Great Khan of the Later Jin.

Because of this, under the influence of those Han people, this uncle is becoming more and more particular about etiquette and rules, and no longer talks about himself as before. If he had made face as a Ming envoy here, he might have been taught a lesson by Huang Taiji.

Yue Tuo, who has always admired Huang Taiji very much, was also a little afraid after seeing how he dealt with Amin. And Amin's biggest crime is not when he can't distinguish between the monarch and the minister. If the Ming people who come are ordinary officials, he will lose face. But the other party is the father-in-law of the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom, and now that he is going to save face, won't he run into the trap of the Han people.

Yue Tuo's drunkenness suddenly disappeared, and after bowing to Dahai and thanking him, he finally straightened his clothes, walked out of the pavilion and waited on the side of the road.

After a long time, a long convoy finally appeared at the end of the road. When Tian Hongyu's car passed by the waiting crowd, Tian Hongyu did not get out of the car, but arrogantly lifted the curtains, and said a few polite words to Dahai and Yue Tuo, and then asked to go into the city to rest under the pretext that he was tired from the long journey, and he didn't even say a word to Fan Yongdou.

Tian Hongyu's attitude, not only Yue Tuo, but even Dahai, who has a very good temper, is a little unbearable. After Nurhachi rebelled against the Ming, the officials of the Ming State had not been so arrogant for a long time before the Jurchens.

After ordering Fan Yongdou to enter the city with the convoy and stay at the Sanguan Temple, Yue Tuo finally couldn't help but bow his hand to Dahai with resentment and said: "Great Khan, please report back for me, I still go back to the yamen to deal with affairs first." ”

Dahai could only nod in agreement, and then went to find Huang Taiji's life. Huang Taiji was not in Shenyang today, but went to Zhuangzi in the northwest outside the city. Inspect the Wuzhen Chaoha troops that are being trained by Tong Yang, as well as the cannons being cast.

Since the setback of the thousand-mile leap into Jizhou last year, Huang Taiji finally realized that the border armies in other parts of the Ming Kingdom had not yet corrupted to the point of collapse at the touch of a button. Without a thousand-mile leap forward strategy based on the rear, if you can't get supplies from the enemy country, it will be an adventurous operation with no way out.

In the future, a country of Jin's size, if it fails in two or three adventures, its strength will be greatly damaged, and it will become another border minority country with ups and downs. Therefore, if you want to really shake the foundation of the Ming Kingdom, you must still have the ability to break through the Ming army's fortress tactics from the front, so that the Ming Kingdom can be tired of coping with it, so as to expose its own flaws.

And if he wanted to break through the defense line of a fortress like Ningjin, after the battle of Jizhou and the understanding of the power of the Ming army's artillery, Huang Taiji naturally pinned his hopes on Houjin's artillery casting business. The cannon, a heavy weapon of the military state, was far more powerful than the Ming army in the hands of the Houjin.

Because artillery was used in field warfare, there were too many restrictions. But to use it for siege warfare is to make the most of it. A fixed wall is much easier to target than a moving person. The craftsmen and gunners of the Ming army who were captured by the Later Jin and the generals of the Ming army who fled from Liaoxi, in order to show their own use value, also constantly lobbied the Jurchens about the power of artillery.

For a country like Houjin, which established itself by force, any weapon that can be used in war will be taken seriously, after all, the Jurchens at this time have not yet hardened their brains, and what bow and horse riding and archery is the right way for the Jurchens to fight.

For Huang Taiji, advocating archery and horseback riding to establish the country is nothing more than a kind of political propaganda. This kind of propaganda is, firstly, to show that the customs of the Jurchens and Mongols are the same, so they should be in-laws and allies; The second is to deter the large number of Han Chinese, telling them that although the Jurchens are small in number, they can suppress the Han people by force.

However, advocating and advocating that as long as the advanced tactics and firearms of the Ming army were proved to have this power, the Jurchen relatives and nobles were willing to accept it, and Huang Taiji went further. He not only accepted the opinions put forward by these surrendered Han people and began to organize firearms troops, but also ordered Tong Yangxing and Shi Tingzhu to begin to supervise the casting of cannons and train the artillery units of the Sinicized Jurchens and Han people.

It's a pity that although there are craftsmen and gunners who surrendered from the Ming army, the firearms workshop managed by Tong Yangxing and Shi Tingzhu can only cast small cannons such as tiger squat cannons, but cannot make Hongyi cannons similar to those in Ningyuan City. This kind of small cannon has little effect on Houjin, so many girls are not optimistic about this firearms workshop, and only Huang Taiji still supports it.

Today, Huang Taiji came to the firearms factory, not because Tong Yang Xingjian cast a suitable siege cannon, but because those Ming generals who took refuge in Houjin finally made a Hongyi cannon for Houjin that claimed to have been scrapped.

Huang Taiji stroked this rough-looking iron cannon, and he couldn't put it down for a while, and he couldn't help but ask Tong Yang on the side: "Is this cannon really scrapped?" How did they get it out? ”

Tong Yangxing said with a smile: "That's not it, it's just that the Ming Kingdom is now promoting the replacement of new artillery, like the previous Tiger Squat Cannon, Franc Machine Cannon and these Hongyi cannons, all of which have begun to collect and return to the furnace, and the Ming Army's management of Hongyi cannons has relaxed a lot."

The people of the ancestral family in Jinzhou were summoned to the capital because of Zu Dashou, which was like house arrest. Their family's fields and their in-laws' fields were forcibly bought by the imperial court, so most of them were dissatisfied. Under the contact of the generals of the Ming army who surrendered to our country, some people from the ancestral family were finally moved to sell such a Hongyi cannon at a price of 8,000 taels of silver.

They took advantage of the replacement of artillery to move down from the Jinzhou wall and revise the record. Then we pulled it to the border close to our country, and we took over at the border, and it took a lot of effort to get it back to Shenyang. After pulling it back, we have tried to fire a few shots, within one mile to one and a half miles, which can be described as accurate and powerful. ”

Huang Taiji suddenly said with great joy: "Okay, okay, with such a militaristic weapon, I want to see what other walls in the Ming Kingdom can block the power of our cannons." With this Hongyi cannon as a sample, how long will it take you to forge a real cannon? ”

Tong Yangxing said without hesitation: "With this cannon as a sample, coupled with the experience of the craftsmen in the trial casting before, the slave dares to guarantee that before next spring, it will definitely be able to cast 3-5 usable cannons." It's just..."

Huang Taiji turned his head to look at him and asked, "Just what?" ”

Tong Yang said to Huang Taiji with some embarrassment: "It's just that the copper needed to cast the cannon is insufficient, and if the cannon is cast with iron, the iron smelted in the country has too many impurities and is unusable. Now that the trade route in Zhangjiakou has been cut off again, it is difficult to buy high-quality fine iron for casting cannons.

In addition, the * used in artillery used to be smuggled from Jinzhou, but now that the Ming army outside the Guanxi is fully reorganized, I am afraid that the operation of smuggling* will become more and more difficult. The minions thought that if they wanted to keep the supply, they had to make their own. But the recipe is: eight parts nitrate, one part sulfur, and one part willow charcoal. We can still make this nitrate and willow charcoal ourselves, but this sulfur can only be purchased from outside.

Nowadays, the Ming Kingdom is particularly concerned about the sales volume of *, saltpeter, and sulfur, and it may not be feasible to obtain a stable supply from the Ming Kingdom. On the Korean side, it is adjacent to Japan, and it is not difficult to obtain sulfur..."

After listening to Tong Yangxing's difficulties, Huang Taiji only pondered for a while, and then said: "The Korean trade route Ben Khan will try to expand and solve the source of sulfur. I heard that there was a lot of copper in Korea, and if the Korean merchants could provide me with copper, Ben Khan would also ask the border soldiers to protect their trade routes.

As for this refined iron material, we are prepared with both hands, and Ben Khan asked Fan Yongdou to find a way to see if he could restore the trade route of Zhangjiakou, or obtain refined iron from the Sihai Commercial Bank. You must also continue to study whether you can train your own iron material suitable for casting cannons..."

When Huang Taiji was discussing the matter of casting cannons with Tong Yangxing and others, Dahai finally found Zhuangzi, who cast cannons. After hearing about Tian Hongyu's arrogant behavior, Huang Taiji also had a headache.

Although Huang Taiji didn't want to make peace with the Ming Kingdom, he didn't plan to completely tear his face with the Ming Emperor. No matter how many Han people and officers and soldiers in the Northeast were killed by the Jurchens, as long as he did not directly target the Ming Emperor, he could still win a respite for Houjin on the grounds of peace when the situation was not good.

If he pointed the finger directly at the Emperor of the Ming Kingdom, and the enraged Emperor of the Ming Kingdom really mobilized the troops of the country to attack him, no matter whether the Guannai would be in chaos or not, Houjin would definitely perish. Huang Taiji naturally didn't do this kind of stupid thing, and Tian Hongyu was obviously the face of the emperor.

Huang Taiji thought about it for a long time, and then said helplessly: "Let's take a look, if he really doesn't want to see the Han people negotiate with him, then I will find a high-status Baylor to talk to him..."