Obviously, Hwang Tae-gil will not give up on North Korea easily. North Korea was deliberately planned and planned for a long time before it was finally controlled by himself. He will definitely fight with Zhang Zhun repeatedly in North Korea. Even if the entire Korean Peninsula was to be reduced to ruins, the Tatar cavalry would not take the initiative to retreat. Therefore, it was very difficult for Zhang Zhun to completely expel the military forces of the Tartars from Korea. Fighting in Korea, which is completely baseless and rear-free, is even more infeasible without a huge fleet.

Therefore, Zhang Zhun's army can develop steadily, but the navy must develop ahead of time. The development of the Navy, at present, mainly relies on throwing money. First smash 100,000 taels of silver down and see what effect there is. If the effect is good, I will desperately throw money into it in the future. A few million taels of silver will be smashed, and maybe a thousand ships will come out.

The second batch of silver, also 100,000 taels, was mainly allocated to the military production system, including ironworks, craftsmen's workshops, artillery factories and other weapons and equipment production units.

In order to cope with the counterattack of the imperial army, the expansion of armaments is indispensable. The navy is important, but so is the army. Walking on two legs is the safest. The taste of a cripple is not pleasant! Before launching a battle against Liaodong and Korea, Zhang Zhun first had to deal with the Ming forces in Laizhou and Dengzhou.

Zhang Zhun is not short of people now, but he lacks weapons. The production capacity of the tiger must be strengthened, and the output must be increased. The original production of only 30 tiger guns per day has now been increased to 50 per day. To achieve this goal, the entire supporting military industrial system must be expanded. This includes increasing the output of ironworks and producing more high-quality steel. The artisan workshop should arrange more craftsmen, or even build a new larger and more advanced artisan workshop.

At the same time, the artillery factory under the supervision of Sun Qinkai should also continue to study more and more powerful types of artillery while stepping up the production of flying dragon guns. The main research, of course, is the Hongyi cannon. Compared with the Franco artillery, the Hongyi cannon is Zhang Zhun's god of war! A Hongyi cannon with a caliber of 120 mm has a maximum firing range of more than ten miles. Even if grapeshotlen is fired, it can hit three miles away. This was very advantageous for the cavalry that eliminated the Tartars. Three miles away, there was a bunch of grapes that flew past, and how many of the Tartar cavalry were enough to die?

Relying on the Tiger Gun alone may not be able to provide enough firepower to block the formidable onslaught of the Tartar cavalry, but with the Hongyi cannon in charge, it can definitely meet this requirement. Hongyi cannons, Franc machine artillery, and tiger guns are interwoven into a three-layer firepower network in the far, middle and near, which can completely crush the Tartar cavalry that rushes up.

The naval battles that have just ended have shown that artillery will soon become the main, if not the only, weapon of naval warfare. In the face of strong artillery fire, there will be fewer and fewer gang jumps and side battles. Even if it is necessary to carry out gang-jumping operations and engage in broadside battles, it is also very beneficial to use heavy artillery fire to greatly weaken the enemy's vital forces before the two sides come into contact. Grapeballs and chain shells, in particular, were too powerful in naval battles.

The grape shells fired by the Hongyi cannon have a range of more than three miles, which is equivalent to the solid shells of the Franc machine artillery. When the two fleets are fighting, the side with the Hongyi cannon will undoubtedly have a great advantage. Of course, the weight of the Hongyi cannon, as well as the recoil, should also be improved. On the premise of ensuring range and power, it is very necessary to reduce weight and recoil as much as possible.

The third batch of silver is 30,000 taels, which is mainly used to increase the output of some special materials.

These materials are mainly cement, glass, and coarse salt.

Cement has proven to be an excellent building material. The concrete building is as strong as a stone house. In particular, underwater buildings are inseparable from cement. Whether it is used to build a shipyard, a dock, or a water conservancy facility, cement is an excellent material. The site under Zhang Zhun requires a lot of cement. On the Lingshanwei side, six cement kilns have been built, but they still can't meet the needs.

The production of cement requires a large amount of silver. At present, cement production has not yet been marketed, and all of it is planned to be used. This is an industry that only has inputs and no outputs for the time being. Therefore, Zhang Zhun asked Liu Hang to specialize in research to see when cement production can be marketized, so that powerful large businesses can intervene.

As an important economic source for Zhang Zhun, glass should also be appropriately increased. In addition to being used to sell for money, glass is mainly used to improve its own equipment. For example, glass is used in some places on the battleship for better observation. At the same time, the craftsmen brought by Shen Lingfei from Jiangnan are constantly making clairvoyant mirrors day and night. According to Zhang Zhun's meaning, in the future, as long as the officers of the Tiger Ben Army are above the deputy of the team, each of them will have a clairtelescope to facilitate the observation of the entire battlefield. As for the officers of the Navy, they are equipped with even more clairvoyants.

At the same time, research on sights is also underway. Since it is possible to make a clairvoyant, the technical difficulty of the scope naturally does not exist. Under the current technical conditions, a scope with too high a magnification may not be possible, and a quadruple scope is still barely possible. After being equipped with a quadruple scope, the sniper can be more than 80% sure that he can hit a target of about 200 meters, which is considered to meet the requirements. Of course, if the quality of the scope is higher, it will be better.

Seawater salting is low cost and high efficiency, which can completely replace the manual way of boiling salt. The newly built salt farm of thousands of households in Xiahezhai can provide tens of thousands of catties of refined salt every month. However, seawater salt drying requires the construction of a large number of salt drying plants, which require a large number of cement, ceramic tiles, red bricks and other materials. All of these require a very high upfront investment. Therefore, it is not possible to smash it into it without money. High input, high output.

The fourth batch of silver, also 30,000 taels, was mainly used to build the navy's docks, batteries, training bases, as well as civilian docks, gantry, roads, warehouses and other equipment and facilities.

Navy Pier in Partridge Bay, it is necessary to plan ahead. Xue Zhidie's shipyard, after putting down 100,000 taels of silver, all kinds of warships, including the saber tooth ship, may be launched like dumplings in the coming year. There are not enough berths, it is simply impossible to dock so many warships.

How many berths are planned for Phase 1?

Fifty of them!

Is fifty berths a lot?

Not much, really.

Not much at all.

Xue Zhidie's shipyard originally had nine docks, which could start building nine ships at the same time. After a large amount of silver was smashed, the number of docks may exceed thirty. In other words, there could be thirty ships working at the same time. The production of materials, once on a large scale, is absolutely amazing. It's the same with shipbuilding. During World War II, the Essex-class aircraft carriers of the United States came out like dumplings, and in just a few years, dozens of them came out. Not to mention battleships in general.

In fact, with the direct support of 100,000 taels of silver, Xue Zhidie really got into twenty-one docks. As a result, the shipyard of the shipyard really increased to thirty. It was possible to start construction of thirty warships at the same time. Moreover, these docks are all designed in advance, and all of them can build ships with a displacement of up to 600 tons. In other words, these dockyards will be able to meet the needs for a long time to come.

The craftsmen brought from Jiangnan were also distributed. As mentioned earlier, Duan Changfa and Yin Dafu have both become foremen. As for the fools, they can do a little bit of heavy lifting. In the case of being well fed and with someone, their work efficiency is not bad. Because, they only know how to blindly bury their heads in work, unlike other craftsmen, who think about being lazy from time to time and need the overseer to watch.

The most important thing is that when Zhang Zhun held a military competition, he attracted the attention of many well-intentioned people. After two military parades, Zhang Zhun fully demonstrated his military strength and gave the people a strong sense of security. Many people in Ao Shanwei and Lingshanwei have relatives in other places, and now these relatives are trying to move over. The most significant is the nearby Da Songwei, at least a thousand people came. Many families in Laizhou Mansion are also willing to go to Zhang Zhun's territory to beg for a living. Many of them went to work in the shipyard and could earn at least one tael of silver a month.

After Zhang Zhun occupied Xiongya, he had a huge advantage, that is, he could obtain a large amount of timber from the nearby Wulong River. There are two counties of Laiyang and Qixia on the Wulong River, and the surrounding areas are mountainous and have a large number of forests. In other words, there's a lot of wood here. At the beginning, Wulong Bay, where the Wulong River exited, was an important timber distribution center, and a large number of timber merchants collected timber here.

Later, because of the war, no one bought the timber, and the locals stopped cutting down the trees, so that the woods in the surrounding area really grew for decades, and many big trees grew. These big trees are now just what Zhang Zhun needs. The locals cut down the timber and floated it through the Wulong River to Wulong Bay, where they were tied into huge wooden rafts that went out to sea from Wulong Bay and slowly floated along the coastline to Ma Wan, where they became materials for shipbuilding.

According to the most conservative estimates, the timber reserves in Laiyang and Qixia counties alone will be able to build hundreds of large ships. Of course, the keel needed to build a large ship is still in short supply. However, what Zhang Zhun needs at present is only the Cangshan ship with a displacement of about 70 tons and the saber tooth ship with a displacement of about 250 tons, and the requirements for the keel are not so high for the time being.

If you want money, you want food, you want people, you want materials, you need technology, and all the conditions you need for shipbuilding are all in place. The production of ships is, naturally, running at full capacity. The launch of the battleship was only a matter of time.

The fifth batch of silver was about 40,000 taels.

The use of this batch of silver is a bit special. Zhang Zhun specified that this amount of silver was mainly used for technological inventions. No matter what field you are in, as long as you come up with useful technology, you can get rewards. Even if the technology is not developed for the time being, if Zhang Zhun feels that this technology is promising, he can also give some of the silver in advance as research funds. In order to speed up the development of science and technology, Zhang Zhun ordered the original Agricultural Science and Technology Development Department to be changed to the Science and Technology Development Department, referred to as the Science and Technology Department, which specially gathered all kinds of whimsical craftsmen to conduct technical research.

Of course, the general direction of the research, as well as the relevant knowledge, are all provided by Zhang Zhun. When he has free time, Zhang Zhun regularly expounds some basic scientific knowledge through the little secretary Xue Ningying to open up everyone's thinking. It can be regarded as guiding the direction of scientific research. Xue Ningying has a hobby of compiling books, so he simply compiled these scattered common senses into two books. One is "Common Knowledge of Physics" and the other is "Common Knowledge of Chemistry".

In these two books, Zhang Zhun expounded the knowledge of physics and chemistry that he knew in a scattered manner. As for how much others can accept, it depends on the talent of the other party. For the wisdom of the ancients, Zhang Zhun did not dare to look down at all. Even the ancients who could play with the eight-strand essay would not be difficult at all if they devoted themselves to the study of this aspect. The key is whether they have that in mind or not. Isn't Song Yingxing an example? Not to mention Xu Guangqi, an old man.

Zhang Zhun hopes that someone will get things like steam engines and thunder mercury. Of course, this is only hope. In fact, Zhang Zhun also felt unlikely. Especially thundermercury, even he himself doesn't know much about the principle. The chemical basis of the Ming Dynasty was very poor, and there were no such conditions. However, the steam engine can be tossed around. When Watt improved the steam engine, it was forty years later. If the Ming Dynasty had one or two skilled craftsmen who could also work hard in this regard, maybe the Ming Dynasty could enter the steam engine era in advance. The arrival of the steam engine era means that the industrial age is not far away.

"Don't be afraid to spend money."

"We spend a tael of silver now, and we can earn more back later."

This is the basic concept of Zhang Zhun.

Soon, all the silver went down like flowing water. All the relevant systems are running at high speed. Chongzhen's eight-year-old Aoshanwei and Lingshanwei all seemed to be winding up, running non-stop. Of course, these are all aftermaths, and it is still the last day of Chongzhen's seven years, Chinese New Year's Eve.

When it was almost noon, Zhang Zhun came to the camp of the Sixth Association in Aoshan City.

If you have money, people, and weapons, you will naturally expand your army. After returning from Jiangnan, Zhang Zhun ordered Yang Zhiyuan to be responsible for the formation of the Sixth Association, and Hao Linyong to be responsible for the formation of the Seventh Association. Each association was five squads, not counting officers, for a total of 250 soldiers. Counting officers at all levels, there are about 300 people. The residence of the Sixth Association is in Aoshan City. The station of the Seventh Association is in front of Xiahe Village.

The commander of the Sixth Association is Yang Qianqiang, who was a member of the original eight-person Thornfish Squad, and the team included Song Qinglin, Yang Weiguo and others. The commander of the Seventh Association is Yin Fengyi, who is also a member of the original eight-person Thornfish Squad, and the team includes Zhong Wuying, Chen Xingguo and others. Both Yang Weiguo and Zhong Wuying were transferred to the new unit as deputy commanders, and at the same time served as team leaders.

(To be continued)