PS: Chapter 2, ask for recommendation votes!

"Just place the brackets here, and then each one must measure the distance and angle between it and the Qi army base!"

Under the scorching sun, the leader of the Zhao clan's craftsmen, the Gong Losing Class, was dressed in a short shirt without any image, standing on a raised high ground on the river bank. The fifteen-year-old boy was no longer the thin and frail he had been a few years ago, his solid arms could swing a heavy hammer, and his resolute gaze could withstand the dazzling gold liquid in the copper furnace. Ignoring the sweat on his head, he stomped hard under his feet, shook his head at the sandy river that he could not stand on, and turned his gaze to the thick mud.

The wooden thorns are deeply pierced, and they can't move no matter how they shake after reaching a certain depth, here, it's okay!

As he instructed, a series of machines were unloaded from the horse-drawn wagons and erected onto the banks of the river, the wooden machines with sturdy brackets, on which the main beams were placed on the brackets, which were more than a foot long and stood diagonally to the height of a man.

After the soldiers unloaded the machinery, the craftsmen began to reassemble and debug some of the parts, and the whole process was very careful, and they and the public transport team knew very well how hard-won these equipment called "ballistas" were!

Stroking the "spring" made of horsehair, leather rope and animal tendons, the public transport team couldn't help but recall the bits and pieces of building this sharp weapon......

……

It was more than half a year ago, after conquering Handan and returning to the school, Zhao Wuxian finally had time to continue to discuss the issue of making new weapons with the public loss class.

"The art of testing is the basis for promoting victory in the war!" After Zhao Wuxian issued such a call to encourage the research and development and innovation of war technology, Zhao gathered a group of officials and craftsmen in Qufu Chaoge, divided them into professional groups, and each group adopted a division of labor and cooperation to develop or improve weapons and equipment.

As a result of these efforts, many very novel ideas were proposed, such as the modification of the crossbow to allow it to shoot farther, or the number of arrows fired in bursts; How to improve the efficiency of iron smelting, research on the manufacture of full-body copper armor, and even how to use the new material "paper" to make armor. Of course, these developments are still on paper and are too early to be put into practice.

There are also some things that have made rapid progress with the participation of the young man who the genius craftsman Gong Lose Class, which the Jin people call "Lu Ban". For example, a new type of grain truck with only one wheel, but can walk on flat ground on mountain paths.

"It's not a figment of the imagination, it's someone who has seen it with their own eyes......"

There are more and more beautiful words around, but the public loss class knows that they can't do without Zhao Wuxian's theoretical guidance.

General Zhao's idea is too novel, but it has great feasibility! The construction of the ballista cannon is one of them.

It was early one morning, and after someone came to the public loss class, Zhao Wuxian began to show him a "trick". He carried a horned bow, and took an extra string and a feather arrow, and then he attached the extra string to the bow, so that one bow was filled with two strings.

"Son, you have to look carefully."

Zhao Wuxian picked up a stone the size of a pigeon's egg, put it between the two bowstrings, and began to turn them repeatedly until the two bowstrings twisted into a twisted shape and could no longer turn, and suddenly aimed at the wall and let go!

But listen to "Stretch! With a soft sound, the stone popped out quickly under the action of the two bowstrings that were tightly twisted and released, and finally hit the wall a few feet away, knocking off a piece of the broken earth on the wall!

"This is!?" The public loss class last night Ao went to the third watch to study how to make the trebuchet can send stones without too much manpower, and there was a little absent-mindedness, but the whole person was sober, this way of sending stones, it is indeed unprecedented!

Zhao Wuxian handed the bow to the public loss class, let him toss the two bowstrings according to the gourd painting, and said with a smile: "Ziban, can you see what the doorway is?" ”

"The reason why the stone flew out was not the elastic force of pulling the bowstring like an ordinary bow and arrow, but the force of the bowstring twisting together and suddenly letting go...... Like, like the force that reaches your hand when the cloth you tighten during laundry suddenly loosens. ”

"Yes, it's a new kind of power, I call it 'torsion'!"

Zhao Wuxian had already talked about "force" to the public loss class, and taught him the junior high school mechanics knowledge he remembered.

It's not enough to have theory, you have to have practice, and letting Zhao Wuxian personally participate in these technical tasks is blind, but he can tell Lu Ban what he saw and heard in his previous life, these things have taken root in Lu Ban's mind, and the effect is unimaginable for Wu Xian.

"It's very simple, but with this torque, I want you to try to make a new weapon, something like this."

Holding a charcoal pen, Zhao Wuxian drew a rough sketch on bamboo paper, which he had seen in a book of illustrated ancient weapons in his previous life. The lines are piled together, and ordinary people can't understand what it is, but in the eyes of the genius Lu Ban, this is a treasure.

"What is this?" The public loser's eyes were blazing, and they were completely absorbed in this newfound power, and they couldn't wait to turn their hypothetical ideas into living weapons.

Zhao Wuxian smiled: "This is a ballista, it doesn't need to pull the rope by manpower, but it is a ballista that relies on the power of the twisting of the strings!" ”

……

Everything is easy to think about, but difficult to do, Zhao's material level is enough, and the manpower is also sufficient, so it is not difficult to make an inferior imitation of a ballista, the difficult thing is how to tame the torque, make the proportion of each part of the construction reasonable, correctly calculate the range, so that this thing can be used in actual combat.

It was a very delicate task, and the planners and craftsmen had to try to make different types of ballistas according to the size of the torsion springs, which in turn depended on the diameter of the torsion springs. During this period, the engineering team once encountered a huge mathematical problem: it was not the problem of opening ballistas that plagued the Greeks and Romans in history, because even Zhao Wuxian did not realize that the Chinese mathematicians in the Spring and Autumn Period had summarized the opening square and opening square techniques to the fullest in the chapter "Shaoguang" in the nine basic algorithms!

The problem encountered by the craftsmen is trigonometric functions......

Fortunately, this is a junior high school math problem that Zhao Wuxian vaguely remembers, as early as the Lu country, Ji Qiao brought a bunch of students with Zhao Wuxian's previous life elementary school and junior high school mathematics level out, and the public loss class is also the best among them, with these mathematics students, this problem was quickly solved.

After the theoretical problems were overcome, the progress of manufacturing was accelerated, and finally, in the spring flowers, the first ballista was successfully made!

It has the appearance of a crossbow machine and a trebuchet: it uses the torque generated by two thick tense rubber bands as a power to drive the crossbow arm to drive the bowstring to throw stone pellets or spears. The ballista designed by the public transport squad has a sturdy bracket on which the main beam rests on the bracket and two torsion spring sets are mounted on either side of the front end, each of which drives a crossbow arm with a bowstring attached to the end of the bowstring, and in the center of the bowstring is a woven net bag containing the projectile.

After a short cheer, it was a tense and long process of experimentation, and the ballista was indeed as powerful as Zhao Wuxian and the public loss squad expected. The first ballista has a short range, but it has surpassed the individual ballista machine, and in the continuous improvement, the final combat version finalized in the late spring and early summer has been able to shoot twenty pounds of stone pellets to within two hundred steps!

Outside the city of Diqiu, the public loss squad was ordered to take dozens of ballistas to shoot several times in front of Zhao Wuxian's interview, and all of them achieved satisfactory results, within a hundred steps, the thin earth wall could be directly crushed, just because the guards were too careless, and did not give him a chance to appear.

And, unlike the bulky trebuchet, the new weapon ballista is small enough to be transported away on a baggage cart after removing the springs and some parts!

"So, this thing can be used in the field!?" When he learned that the sixty ballistae in his hand were going to move with the army, the public squad was a little excited.

Infantry field battles are naturally to be formed, and thousands or more soldiers are huddled together, and the range of bows and arrows to protect them is only within a hundred paces, if the enemy is suddenly attacked by ballista before they think they have entered the range...... If nearly 100 stone projectiles of dozens of catties are fired at a time and smashed into a pile of people or temporary fortifications...... What devastating effects this will have, the bus loser class can foresee!

"What a weapon!"

Despite his young age, he became a bit of a war enthusiast, and he was especially fond of sieges, eager to see impregnable cities collapse under his arrangement. As for field warfare, he was equally interested – provided that machinery could play a key role in warfare.

At this moment, on the bank of the Wenshui River, after being questioned by Zhao Wuxian's herald, the public loss squad asked him to go back and convey affirmatively, everything is ready, and the cannon can be fired at any time!

"It's all up to you in a while......" The public loser patted the ballista that Qi had just worked for a long time, affectionately, the young man's expression, like sending his children to the battlefield, hoping that they would perform well and make meritorious contributions......

The command flag of the Chinese army moved, and the herald came back again to pass the word, until this time, with the shouting of the public transport class, as the planners and experienced craftsmen corrected the distance, bearing, and target position, and took into account the direction of the wind, an ordinary pebble by the river was put on the ballista and aimed at the enemy!

Under the vigorous push of the soldiers, the gears rolled, and the two leather bands were completely entangled, like the two armies of Qi and Zhao who were fighting hard.

"Launch!" With a loud shout, the stone bullet roared towards the Qi army's chariot base two hundred paces away! (To be continued.) )