Wang Yuan said: "Of course, it's a play, just for me to see, teaching me that there is no reason to make a fuss about grain and grass." www.biquge.infoSecretly, Wei Jiansu will definitely allocate grain and grass to Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi, there is no doubt about it. In this case, why don't I push the boat along the river, take the initiative to undertake all the supply of grain and grass, and take over all the grain and grass delivered to the southern state capital from Wei Jiansu's hands. Isn't it a good thing that all the grain and grass that comes in must pass through my hands, so that I can control all the grain and grass in and out? ”

Li Mi stroked his beard and frowned: "A good thing is a good thing, but in this way, Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi have to recruit troops on a large scale, anyway, you promised to supply all the grain and grass." Before that, they may have had to recruit troops on a small scale because of the lack of food and grass. Now that the matter is public, aren't they unscrupulous? In that case, the grain and grass delivered by the southern state capital will not be enough to spend, and I am afraid that the private grain stored by the marshal will have to be used. It is equivalent to the marshal using his own stored private grain to supply Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi to expand the troops and horses. Rather than this, why don't I expand the army, what are they doing? The two generals of the defeated army came to Chengdu and said a lot of things about the marshal, but the marshal wanted to help them? ”

Wang Yuan smiled and said: "You old general don't have to be indignant, if you look at things from another angle, you won't be so unhappy." I wish they had expanded their recruitment, because next spring they will need a large number of troops to counter-offensive. If the two of them can recruit a large number of soldiers and horses, it will save me the trouble. I might as well tell you that the soldiers and horses recruited by Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi will be the vanguard army to attack Chang'an next spring. I want him to recruit 180,000 of them, so that my Divine Army will not suffer the losses of the siege. ”

"But...... How could the two agree to attack Chang'an as the vanguard? They are not under the authority of the Great Commander. Zhao Qing asked what Li Mi and Tan Ping wanted to ask.

Wang Yuan laughed and said, "If they don't agree, they have to agree, because who do they rely on to eat?" To whom will supply their bread and grass? Do you think I'm just spending money to feed them and be a big boss? But if they do not listen to me, I will cut off their bread and give them no bread. If the evil dog is disobedient, he will not give bones, and he will be half dead when he is hungry, and see if he is still hungry? ”

As soon as these words came out, Li Mi, Tan Ping, and Zhao Qing were all stunned, and it was only at this time that they understood why Wang Yuan was willing to provide food for Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi. It turned out that Wang Yuan wanted to use this move to control the supply of grain and grass to Guo Li's army, and control all the grain in and out of the imperial court in his own hands. If Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi knew that Wang Yuan promised to supply a sufficient amount of grain and grass, they would definitely recruit soldiers and horses on a large scale. But the huge army eventually had to be controlled by Wang Yuan. If they don't listen to the dispatch, Wang Yuan will cut them off food, and no matter how many soldiers and horses they recruit, they will be wiped out after the food is gone. So they have only one way, and that is to wait for Wang Yuan's dispatch.

Moreover, Wang Yuan has already said that he wants them to take the lead in attacking Chang'an. In other words, the soldiers and horses they recruited would inevitably suffer heavy losses after the Battle of Chang'an, while the Shence army might not be harmed. Wang Yuan used the hands of the rebels to weaken their forces, so as to achieve the role of firmly grasping the initiative.

Several people figured this out, and the eyes that looked at Wang Yuan could only be described as fear. Dashuai's hand is really vicious, so vicious that it is outrageous. It's hard to imagine that such a big conspiracy is hidden behind the act of being made fun of, and it makes people shudder to think about it.

Wang Yuan looked at the strange gazes of the three of them and smiled: "What? Why are you looking at me like that? Do you want my Shence army to attack Chang'an and be killed and wounded? Some people want my Divine Army to die, so that they can control the situation. Let's pick up food for them to eat under their snorts, will you? I call it the way of others to rule the body of others. Besides, there are some people who will take revenge and make trouble behind their backs, how can I not teach them a lesson. Otherwise, everyone in the world will think that I, Wang Yuan, am a person who can be bullied. ”

……

In the northwest corner of Chengdu City, this is a forbidden place. A few years ago, Wang Yuan requisitioned land here to build a house and built a large wall. Since then, the walls have been filled with blast furnaces and smoke. To the attention of the surrounding people, almost every day, 100 carts full of goods come in and out, transporting all kinds of unknown goods in and out of this walled courtyard.

Explosions can be heard almost every day inside the walls, sometimes so loud that the ground trembles. Residents of old Chengdu remember a night a few years ago when a violent explosion struck the northwest of the city. The red light of the explosion that night shone in the sky, shaking the whole city. Afterwards, it is said that many people died in the explosion, and even Wang Yuan, who was the envoy of Jiannan Festival at the time, went to check it in person. After that, it wasn't long before the Jiannan Army had their signature weapon, the Thunderbolt.

In recent years, most of the houses around the wall have been relocated, and the wall has been expanded several times to a height of several feet. The defenses inside and outside the wall were also tighter, and the number of soldiers and horses guarding the wall increased from more than 100 to 5 or 600, and there were many arrow towers around. Within a few hundred steps of the fence became a forbidden area for everyone to stop. Every day, I only saw countless cars and horses coming and going, only seeing the thickening smoke and dust inside the walls and the increasingly dense explosions, but no one knew what kind of place it was.

In the eyes of the people of Chengdu, this place in the northwest corner of the city has become the most mysterious and well-guarded place in Chengdu. The more mysterious it is, the more curious it is, and in the past two years, many people have always wanted to find out, which has led to many murders. In the past two years, dozens of people have been shot and killed because of intentional or unintentional trespasses into the restricted area, which has caused a lot of disputes.

Wang Yuan and his entourage arrived at the arsenal in the northwest corner of Chengdu in the early afternoon. The arsenal is the most important place for Wang Yuan in Chengdu, for this arsenal, Wang Yuan no longer knows how much money, materials and personnel have been invested, and a lot of manpower and material resources have been consumed. Of course, it was worth it, the development of the thunderbolt bomb made Wang Yuan invincible in several major battles, this is an epoch-making weapon, and it is definitely worth paying the price. However, with the development of the war in the past two years, the limitations of thunderbolts have gradually been exposed.

The power of the explosion, while powerful, was not so strong that it was indestructible. Moreover, without the support of smelting technology, Wang Yuan could not make a decent launcher, so he had to still rely on projection to launch shells, which was really a bit like a BMW pulling a broken car. Even if it has been improved with all his brains, the range of the Shenwei cannon projection and the adjustment of distance and proximity are all hard wounds, and he cannot flexibly deal with it according to the battlefield situation, which makes Wang Yuan very unhappy.

For example, in the current battle of attacking Chang'an, in the face of Chang'an's comprehensively strengthened city defense, thunderbolts are not enough to destroy the city defense and create favorable prerequisites for siege warfare. If the ammunition is strong enough, it can collapse the city defenses and open gaps, making siege warfare easier. Moreover, the Shenwei cannon, which can only reach more than 1,000 steps at a maximum range, cannot destroy and bomb a large city like Chang'an City with a radius of more than ten miles. Back then, when facing the narrow terrain of Yangjiba City, the power of the indiscriminate bombardment of the whole city by the Shenwei Cannon was vividly visible, but in the face of a large city like Chang'an City, the Shenwei Cannon had no way at all. The longest-range Shenwei cannon fired from a safe distance could only cover six or seven hundred steps within the city wall, which was tantamount to tickling for a large city like Chang'an City.

Moreover, because of the manufacturing process and other reasons, the cost of thunderbolts is too high, and every thunderbolt projected is a waste of dozens of dollars. In the face of a big city like Chang'an City, smashing thousands of cannonballs is a drop in the bucket, but this kind of consumption is a little unbearable for Wang Yuan.

In view of the above reasons, Wang Yuan was determined to carry out greater improvements in firearms. There is no reason to hold such an anti-heaven thing as the Fuhuo Fang, but he can only let it play such a small effect, which Wang Yuan can't bear.

In the past two years, Wang Yuan has expanded the scale of the ordnance engineer on a large scale, expanding its area by more than five times. The original furnace near the corner of the city wall and the workshop for making thunderbolts have actually only occupied a corner of the arsenal. Various workshops have also been set up in other places, and skilled craftsmen from all over the world have been invited to come here to develop some ideas put forward by Wang Yuan with generous treatment.

Therefore, strictly speaking, this arsenal can no longer be regarded as a pure arsenal, but a large-scale comprehensive firearms research and development organization integrating R&D, experiment, and manufacturing. The scale is really not small.

As for the improvement of firearms, Wang Yuan has two general considerations. The first is the development of large-scale firearms, and how to make thunderbolt projectiles have a longer range, move more flexibly, and operate more flexibly in wartime, which is the focus of the development of large-scale firearms. Wang Yuan knew that if he wanted to solve all the problems, he would fundamentally have to change the way the thunderbolt was delivered. Firing shells in the form of a Shenwei cannon projectile is the biggest shortcoming that restricts the effectiveness of firearms. The existing Shenwei cannon has reached the limit in terms of structure and strength, just like a person's weight has reached the limit, pressing a straw may make him fall, so there is no room for digging the range, strength and flexibility. Therefore, Wang Yuan felt that he needed to have the determination of a strong man to break his wrist, abandon the way of throwing shells from the Shenwei cannon, and instead develop a real cannon.

Of course, the difficulty is obvious. The smelting technology of these years did not reach the point where it could cast high-strength steel that could withstand the enormous pressure of a gunpowder explosion without damaging it. Later generations Wang Yuan's knowledge in this area was not enough, but Wang Yuan understood that the metal used to cast the barrel should not only have good ductility, but also have a certain strength. In these times, it is not easy to do this. Datang also has the process of iron smelting furnace, but the smelting technology of iron and steel is still in its infancy. The furnace does not reach a certain high temperature, so there is a lot of residue in the pig iron, and the cast iron is either too brittle or too soft, in short, it cannot be used to cast the high-strength metal that can be used to cast the barrel.

However, there is one material that can meet the requirements of casting cannons, and that is bronze. However, at the cost of bronze casting cannons, Wang Yuan simply couldn't afford it. This is the era of the copper standard, copper is money, and a cannon needs at least hundreds or even thousands of catties of copper to cast. In the shape of Kaiyuan Tongbao, the official weight of 1,000 copper coins is six catties and four taels. The casting of the barrel of a cannon alone requires five or six hundred pounds of bronze, which is obviously a huge burden.

With Wang Yuan's financial resources, it is not advisable to cast cannons in bronze, and in the case of financial constraints, it is impossible to achieve the effect of mass molding. Moreover, these copper cannons also have a service life, and they cannot be guaranteed once and for all, and they continue to invest huge amounts of money in casting materials, and Wang Yuan does not have the financial resources at all.

However, Wang Yuan still gritted his teeth and spent the price to cast ten bronze cannons. This was not for the sake of war, but for craftsmen who knew nothing about metal cannons to use as experimental supplies to find out how to make cannons.

It's one thing to be able to build a barrel, but it's another thing to be able to fire it. Wang Yuan only knew some simple principles, and his memory of specific details was vague, so the words he gave to those craftsmen who studied were also vague and ambiguous, so they could only study and explore in Wang Yuan's incomplete words, hoping to find the method that Wang Dashuai asked for to shoot the cannonball out of this copper barrel.

The slowness of this process can be imagined. Wang Yuan actually didn't provide much help, he could only vaguely tell those people how to use gunpowder to burn the shell out of the barrel, as for the specific structure and method, Wang Yuan himself was also blind. But Wang Yuan knew that these structural and technical things had to be all figured out before he could proceed to the next step of finding alternative casting materials and carrying out a large-scale casting process. That would be another very difficult question. Wang Yuan didn't expect to achieve his goal anytime soon, but he hoped that the sooner the better.

For the development of firearms, in addition to large-scale firearms, another direction of research required by Wang Yuan is small-scale firearms that can be used by individual soldiers. Wang Yuan did not expect to be able to build a musket, because it was impossible with the current level of technology. I didn't have that knowledge of mechanical principles, I didn't have the ability to process precision parts these years, and there were many other restrictions on materials, gunpowder, etc., and it was impossible to make a musket without spending decades of research.

What Wang Yuan hopes for is to be able to create improvised firearms with lethal power that can be used in individual combat, or some combination based on the current level of weapons. For example, Wang Yuan asked Zhang Zhengyi to create a grenade-like melee firearm that could be detonated by hand, and an explosive that could be used by archers to attach to an arrow and shoot explosives. That was already the limit of the individual firearms that Wang Yuan could think of in these years.

Similar to hands. Pomegranate. Wang Yuan felt that such a thing should be able to be made, and Wang Yuan had seen the poisonous phosphorus bombs thrown by the Ten Tigers of Xiangfu with his own eyes, and the effect was quite amazing. It was precisely because of the inspiration of the poisonous phosphorus bomb that Wang Yuan made up his mind to develop a firearm to make firearms. However, due to the misproportion of the poisonous phosphorus bomb, the ratio of gunpowder and poisonous phosphorus bomb that Zhang Zhengyi later configured was obviously different, and it needed to be detonated by a violent impact, which made the ambush party only stick to the use of thunderbolt bombs. The explosion was triggered by a heavy blow that landed high and was clearly not strong enough for the human throw. This is the difference in sensitivity caused by different gunpowder ratios.

Later generations of gunpowder had gone to the extreme of finesse, and some gunpowder was so sluggish that it required harsh conditions to detonate. And some can make it explode even with the slightest friction, and that's a huge difference. What Wang Yuan needed was the kind of gunpowder that could be thrown and exploded, just like the common cannon in later generations. This should be an extremely simple gunpowder ratio in later generations, but it is difficult in this year.

Ignition throwing is also a way, but there is no thunder these days. Pipe guide. Something like a fire cable, Wang Yuan didn't know the principle, and he didn't know how to make it. Every soldier carries a fire on his body, and it is unrealistic to blow fire and light it and throw it in wartime. Whoever carries the fire with him on the battlefield will blow the fire and light it at a critical moment. When it rains heavily, everything is over. Wang Yuan didn't want to be equipped with these things, but he was stuck in some small factors and couldn't be practical, so wouldn't it be a joke with his life on the battlefield.

Similarly, the arrow carrying gunpowder and shooting arrows to cause a lethal effect is also a direction that Wang Yuan hopes for. Wang Yuan called it a blasting arrow. If this idea can be realized, it will greatly increase the power of the arrow. In the past, if the arrow hit the enemy, it was difficult to shoot and kill. Many times, you can see that the men and horses on the battlefield are full of arrows, but they can still swing their knives and slash and run freely. That's because the arrow didn't hit the point, or because it couldn't penetrate the body after being blocked by the armor. If the idea of a blasting arrow succeeds, a single arrow will hit the body of a centaur and the explosion of gunpowder will completely destroy the opponent. Even if you don't die, you lose the ability to move. One arrow can be ten arrows lower, and the effect will be unimaginable.

Wang Yuan knew that what he did was an act beyond this era, and it might bring unimaginable consequences. However, Wang Yuan believes that if we do not suppress it by absolute force in these years, there will be absolutely no real peace. When a soldier has the invincible ability to destroy an opponent with devastating blows, those potential opponents have no way out but to submit. Because they know that they are definitely not opponents, confrontation is self-defeating, and perhaps real peace will be ushered in. When all of Wang Yuan's ideas become reality, the soldiers and horses he leads will be an invincible army, and there will be no obstacles wherever he goes. Of course, true peace does not lie in the coercion of force, but before the rule of law, the suppression of force was the premise.

In fact, all these ideas were put forward by Wang Yuan two years ago and actively implemented. In the comfortable time of Jiannan, Wang Yuan was a frequent visitor to the arsenal. He often mingled with the craftsmen and alchemists in the arsenal, helping to come up with ideas or something. But when An Lushan rebelled, Wang Yuan hadn't come to check the progress for nearly a year. Although Wang Yuan knew that there might not be much progress in this year, because if there was a big progress, it was impossible not to be informed. But after dinner yesterday, Liu Xun, who was in charge of the operation of the entire arsenal, asked Huang San to tell Wang Yuan that he must go to the arsenal today to inspect it, which made Wang Yuan a little excited. Maybe there has been progress in some aspects, otherwise Liu Xunzhi would not have taken the initiative to invite himself to go.

In front of the tall and strict courtyard of the arsenal, Wang Yuan, Li Mi, Zhao Qing and others arrived on horseback. Outside the gate of the courtyard, Liu Xunzhi, who was dressed in a black robe and had a clear appearance, had already waited at the door with a few people. Seeing that Wang Yuan and more than ten other horsemen arrived in front of the door, Liu Xun hurriedly stepped forward and bowed.

Wang Yuan turned over and dismounted, arched his hand and laughed: "Hello Mr. Liu, I've been waiting for a long time." ”

Liu Xunzhi smiled and said: "That's as it should be, Xiangguo is busy with affairs, so naturally state affairs come first." However, the old man knew that Xiangguo would definitely come. ”

Wang Yuan smiled and said: "That's nature, and things here are also very important." Mr. Liu, do you have any good news for me? ”

Liu Xunzhi smiled mysteriously and said: "Sell it first, and let the relevant people wait for themselves to report to Xiangguo." ”

Wang Yuan laughed and said, "Do you still sell Guanzi?" It's good. Let's walk. ”

Liu Xun stretched out his hand and bowed and said, "Xiangguo, generals, please." ”

The people walked towards the courtyard, and when they entered the wall, the heavy gate closed behind them. Wang Yuan looked around, but saw that there were many arrow towers in the courtyard wall, and the soldiers on it were holding bows and arrows and looking around. Everywhere within the wall, more than a dozen patrolling soldiers crossed each other, looking on strict alert.

"Very well, this place must be tightly guarded, and no one is allowed to touch it. The people and materials inside are priceless, and there is no room for error. Wang Yuan said.

Li Mi smiled and said, "In accordance with the order of the commander, I sent an additional 300 soldiers to guard it. The garrison in the arsenal has reached 1,000 people, and with the guards of high walls and towers, there is absolutely no mistake. In the past few months, there are many people who don't have long eyes who like to probe their brains, but they have all been shot outside the wall. ”

Wang Yuan nodded and said: "Now that Chengdu is mixed with fish and dragons, it is natural to be more careful." Some people are restless, always hoping to snoop into some secrets, and when they come, they don't let them out alive. ”

"Don't worry. The arsenal and granary are heavy, and the rash intruder is dead or alive, and the old man does not have the ability, do you dare to be an errand under the handsome? Li Mi said with a smile.

Wang Yuan smiled and nodded, and under the guidance of Liu Xunzhi, several people went straight to the gunpowder smelting furnace and the thunderbolt making workshop in the northwest corner. There, the sky was filled with smoke and dust, and the sound of ping-pong banging came from the workshop, which was quite industrialized.