At the end of April in the 35th year of the Chinese calendar, the earth was full of fallen flowers after a spring rain. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In a cave along the river, a few people were making a fire, and a few horses outside the cave were gnawing on grass.

The people who baked the fire were obviously nobles of the city, because the waist was matched with beautiful jade.

But when I look at it, my face is dusty, my eyes are bulging, and I don't know if I haven't slept for a few days, and I am depressed.

A few people took off their boots, and the smell of foot odor diffused in the cave, and although the felt boots in the Yucheng workshop were warm, they also covered their feet very stinky.

A man lay there, took off his shirt and looked at his thighs that had been worn out from horseback riding, and rubbed some herbal ointment, which was very cool and expensive.

The man who rubbed the medicine was not very old, his name was Fenghao, and he was the leader of the cities to the east of the Great River. Two years ago, with the help of the two cities of Suxia, he seized the position of leader, and he really did something, and for a time everyone supported him, praising him for having his father's legacy.

The people of Sanwu Xia City are stationed in Windy City, although they are just some soldiers and messengers, but they know a little about farming, and in two years, the public land has produced a lot, and the civilians have many rewards, which is really the heart of all people.

Now so embarrassed, naturally it will not be someone who seeks the position of leader to flee, after the rebellion in Dongcheng two years ago, many powerful people have broken off the idea of seeking the position of leader, even if the secret agreement is not made public, but they all understand what is going on.

But just looking at the haggard and troubled face, it is the same as when he fled two years ago.

Feng Hao wiped the wound for a while, and the moisture oozing from the roasting wound on the fire was on fire, and said distressedly: "Two years ago, because of the death of my father, someone grabbed the position of leader, I came to Sucheng once, and at that time I could only run, but now I can ride a horse. Although the flesh is blurry, it saves time, but I don't know if the city can hold it. ”

The entourage was silent for a long time, and then said angrily: "No one would have thought that the old leaders of the Dongyi tribes would be able to unite the tribes after only two years of death. Dongyi is good at shooting, and now he doesn't know where he learned the skills, digging a tunnel to reach the city, although he blocked two places, but I'm afraid it won't last long. ”

"Chief, there is a road ahead tomorrow morning. One leads to Sucheng and the other leads directly to the wharf, where there are boats to Yucheng. Which way should I go tomorrow? ”

Feng Miao shook his head, staring at the light of the campfire for a long time, and everyone waited for his answer.

If it was two years ago, this was something that didn't need to be considered at all, and naturally it was to go to Sucheng, which was the place where the Great River clans would have joined forces, and it was also the elected leader to resist Yidi.

However, two years ago, the soldiers of Xia Cheng went east by boat, and the speed of breaking through the city in a few days left a deep impression on these people. In addition, all kinds of things happened last year, such as grain transportation assistance, Ji Xia's fierce remarks about relatives on weekdays, etc., made these people subconsciously feel that this kind of thing is better to find Ji Xia than to find Su Yue.

It's just that despite this subconscious, it's still difficult to make a choice. Since Su Yue is called the leader of the great rivers, it is not good to go to Sucheng but go straight to Yucheng, even extremely bad.

However, because of the prestige of last year's big victory, Su Yue once again attacked the several clan cities that withdrew from the Great Alliance a few years ago a few days ago, and was not in Su City, so he finally gave this matter a room for flexibility.

At that time, the urban settlements in the Huasu League were different from the barbarians. If you capture three, you may have five submissions, because the same kinship is less awkward, and it is natural to surrender. But if you use troops against Yidi and capture the three cities, although the slaves of the three cities themselves will lose a lot, not to mention that it is difficult for the Yidi tribes to surrender, and even if they surrender, it is impossible to work together, which is not worth it for the big leaders of the tribes.

The city of Fenghao needs to be guarded against because it is too close to Dongyi, and it is not the foundation of the Sucheng Small Alliance, so this expedition to Fengcheng did not send troops, but only symbolically provided some feathered arrows, wood branches, and warriors and the like.

The entourage who followed Feng Hao actually hoped that Feng Hao could go directly to Yucheng, the soldiers were very fast, and when they were in danger, they believed in the speed of those people in Yucheng.

Feng Hao hesitated for a long time, and finally made up his mind.

"Tomorrow I will go directly to Yucheng, and you will go to Sucheng to report this matter. Now that the Sucheng army is outside, even if it is the leader of Suyue, it will take some time, but I am afraid that we will not be able to support it. ”

The entourage breathed a sigh of relief, they still had their families in the city, and at this moment they subconsciously believed in the leader of Xia City even more. In addition to the fact that he usually shouts the loudest slogan about the unity of relatives, what is more important is that Yuxia has been in the limelight in the past two years, and it also gives them the capital to trust in terms of strength.

…………

Compared with Feng Hao and the others who were sad in the damp cave, the beginning of the thirty-fifth year of the Huali calendar in Yucheng was peaceful.

At the beginning of February, a new batch of children who completed the school entered Yucheng, and after selecting five people who studied with Chen Jian, they were still divided into six teams according to the previous method and assigned to various workshops for semi-full-time learning.

They were accompanied by a group of old countrymen from Xia Cheng and some powerful administrators in Xia City, who were going to study here for half a year.

Yu Qian'er left Xiacheng and came to Yucheng as she wished, because a part of the Planning and Statistics Department went to Xiacheng to take care of Xiacheng's affairs. Tanuki is in charge of Xia Cheng's affairs in the name of a fake Sikong, but in reality it is the young people of the low-ranking but powerful Planning and Statistics Department who make the decision.

In March, a few pigeons that had been raised in Xiacheng for three or four years flew back to their hometown pigeon house from Yucheng and brought a few pieces of cloth with only a few words written on them: Everything is fine.

Soon after, many pigeons were also transported to Yucheng by ship, and some of the freed female slaves in Yucheng began to raise pigeons and collect pigeon droppings.

In late March, two explosions occurred at an experimental workshop in Yucheng, injuring three people, but fortunately the injuries were not serious.

After the explosion, granular black powder replaced the original powdered gunpowder, due to the fact that the soldiers bought a shake prelude before using the powder keg. If the powdered gunpowder is left to be moved for a long time, it may cause some sulfur and the like to fall and stratify, and if you want to use it, you always have to shake it and stir it again, which is very inconvenient, this is the reason why Chen Jian asked for improvement, but he didn't say anything else.

Only one of the two explosions was related to black powder, and the other was related to the soap-making workshop, Chen Jian got a lot of emerald stones from the Copper Mountain in Xiacheng, and after heating it, he wasted some strange liquid, boiled it and mixed it with potassium and nitrate, and let people mix the sweet water left over from making soap with this strange thing, and made some ...... Very dangerous medicine that can soothe heartache, the yield is extremely low and extremely dangerous, because it is blown up once.

But the drug sold well, and when mixed with starch and sugar-coated stuff, it was very popular as an expensive luxury drug in the rest of the city, comparable to the elixir. After all, many old relatives and nobles die of heartache, but this thing can effectively alleviate the sudden death, especially when you are old and have heartache, plus you will always have a bad intestine when you are old, it is inevitable to use strong force when you are in the toilet, and then induce heartache There are often things, although you can't live forever, it's better than dying in the toilet.

These two explosions can't be concealed even if they want to, plus two things quickly appeared in everyone's field of vision, so everyone knows it.

But many people don't know that in fact, some strange things were made in March, but they were not made public because they didn't have much to do with the public and kept secrets.

As early as last year, the "Bud" department set up a small kiln at Chen Jian's request, and began to try to fire something strange by mixing it with white powder, quartz stone, and grass ash filtered from the grasslands.

This thing is very similar to the slag glass flowing out of the copper smelting furnace at the beginning, they thought that there would be another workshop in Yucheng, but Jian Chen directly vetoed it.

The reason is very simple, this thing is an expensive luxury that has no market at this time, Xia Cheng will not use limited manpower on it, and if it can't be sold, it will be worthless.

But ask them to keep trying, according to different proportions of experiments, and the city will give them the greatest support. The only requirement is that the ratio of various ore materials must be recorded for continuous improvement every time it is fired.

In the first few sticky and strange opaque test samples, Chen Jian used a blowpipe and a pottery rolling pin to make a few containers and small pieces of glass, telling them to just make this thing, when it can be smooth and not broken, it is qualified, and it is not required to be able to make a large piece that can be installed on the window.

The cylindrical short tube and the round piece of glass the size of a dumpling wrapper are fragile and can explode when poured with boiling water, but any vessel is shocking to the rest of the city.

But these shocking things did not cause the world to be shocked and admired, but were thrown in the Yucheng warehouse and hidden, and most of the unqualified ones were smashed by Chen Jian with a sledgehammer.

The only purpose of these shattered glass shards was to make the night a very interesting scene for everyone to see, and after a thick copper bar full of burrs rubbed violently in the broken glass powder, a spark like lightning burst into the dark room—of course, there was no bright flash of light by simple friction, but the spark after friction ignited the gunpowder on it.

There is no confidentiality requirement for this matter itself, and even many people are willing to watch it and can continue to demonstrate it to them, brainstorming for everyone to figure out what they can do. But how the glass behind this incident was fired is a secret.

These few things are not a big deal, at least at this time, it doesn't seem to be a big deal, so Yucheng ushered in the thirty-fifth year of Huali with a step-by-step calm, and spent the previous four months with this calm.

This calm was shattered on the last day of April, when a ship arrived at the docks of Yucheng carrying Feng Hao and bad news about his city, and then the whole of Yucheng learned that Windy City, hundreds of miles away, was under siege by the Dongyi people. (To be continued.) )