[It's the end of the month, and it's still far from the promise to be fulfilled, and I'm really speechless. In the past two days, I have fought hard, and I can pay back a little bit first. This is the first update. 】

At the end of the day's work, I returned home. Li Xin changed his clothes, went into the study, lit the oil lamp, and wrote down the day's record under the lamp.

The subject of artillery training, he is groping. However, as time went by, the more he learned about artillery, the more he felt that such a new weapon was completely out of the way all previous weapons were used.

Not only did it take the old habits to abandon in training, but the demand for gunpowder and shells made the artillery that seemed to be destroying the city very vulnerable. As soon as the road to the rear was cut off, the artillery was no longer of any use.

Dangerous and vulnerable, such a weapon is the easiest to accept by the imperial court that wants to control everything.

And the imperial court is indeed very tightly controlled. The part responsible for the trial production of gunpowder is one of the core departments of the Firearms Bureau. Even Li Xin, who was in charge of training artillery, couldn't get close there. In addition to this, outsiders are similarly unwelcome in the place where the artillery is cast. The focus of his experiments was on the material of the cannon, and the bronze used to cast the cannon must have used a special formula to make it possible to withstand the maximum explosion later.

The servant came in to bring tea and water, and Li Xin did not look up. It wasn't until he finished writing a diary of nearly 1,000 words that he found a cup of refreshments and hot soup on the round table behind him.

On the one hand, he was focused, and on the other hand, the movement of opening and closing the door could not disturb him.

Li Xin personally supervised the training of artillery in close proximity, and at the end of the day, it was indispensable to smoke and fire, and his body was full of the smell of gunpowder. To make matters worse, his ears were weakened by the prolonged hours of hearing the roar of artillery at close range. Now Li Xin wants to listen to people, and the other party must be very loud for him to hear. And when he spoke, he became habitually louder.

The last time Han Gang found out about this, he said that he had to get an earmuff for him to carry, as well as the artillery players below, otherwise his ears would be broken before the artillery was trained.

Hearing that Han Gang was going to make earmuffs, Li Xin guessed that it was probably similar to a mask, covering his ears. A few days later, Han Gang took out two balls of cotton and stuffed them in his ears.

According to Han Gang, the earmuffs were made by people, but the problem is that they can only be used by monks and bald people, not Taoist priests.

Regarding Han Gang's words, Li Xin didn't know why, so he didn't ask about it. Plugging the ears with cotton balls does have some effect. He held his own identity, it was inconvenient to cover his ears when firing the gun, and he was worried that he would become deaf after a long time, but now he has a psychological comfort.

After Wang Sunchen and Zhao Long entered Beijing, he could only chat with them with gestures. Although Li Xin has never talked much, he doesn't want to hear even his old friend's words clearly.

Wang Sunchen is fighting in the Western Regions, and his merits and gains have made many people envious, but he will not be able to return in a short time.

And Zhao Long will go to Beijing at the beginning of next year, and it will be just right to get together at that time. Perhaps, within a few years, it will be such an opportunity to get together with Zhao Long.

Li Xin knew very well that Zhao Long, who was supposed to enter Beijing at the end of next year, would be advanced to the beginning of the year.

At the beginning of the Southwest Yi rebellion, Wang Zhongzheng led the army south. Zhao Long is his cronies and generals. He had experience in using troops in the southwest, so Zhao Long entered Beijing in advance, and what the imperial court wanted to ask from him, those in the know could more or less guess.

And if it is only Zhao Long who entered Beijing early at the beginning of the year, which is not a big deal, then the Chengdu Mansion Road, which has the most say in the southwest direction, has the opportunity to make Kumamoto enter Beijing at the same time, which has to make people reminiscent.

Although this association is only passed on among a small number of people, and no one dares to say it clearly, there are indeed people speculating about the possibility of the imperial court using troops in the southwest.

However, Li Xin knew that this speculation was very close to the facts.

Some time ago, Han Gang once discussed in the palace that there were too many iron coins in Shu and not enough copper coins. Although it has been decided to transport a large amount of ten dollars into Shuzhong, and this freight can be compensated with money and interest, the imperial court still wants to have a plan that can replace Jiaozi. This is a problem that the Mint must solve as soon as possible, and it is also a problem that Han Gang is planning.

A few days ago, Li Xin also learned that his cousin had discussed with Zhang Dian the topic of how to maintain the combat effectiveness of the Western Army.

The final conclusion is to increase the connection with Dali. To buy more Yunnan horses. In the past, the tea and horse trade was still dominated by Guangxi. So far, there are still forty percent of the transit through Luodian and Ziqi, so that many profits remain in the hands of two small countries, if you can increase the direct contact with Dali, so that more shares can be transferred to the hands of Dali.

This is the number of ways for weasels to give New Year's greetings to chickens!

Li Xin was close to Han Gang, and he knew many things very well.

The imperial court recently argued with the Liao people about the issue of Goryeo. It was said that a supplementary clause would be added to the New Covenant, allowing both sides to build new forts on the border and rebuild the city defenses without notifying the other party. As a condition, the exchange court no longer directly supported the restoration of the Goryeo state.

Regardless of whether the Liao State agrees or not, the imperial court will break ground in Hebei next year to supplement the city defenses that have been in disrepair all year round. This is the use of some of the tens of millions of dollars and grain saved after the Northwest Strike. And the other part is to prepare for the next war.

The country's finances are being adjusted, and if there is no major disaster, within three years the money and grain in the state treasury will be replenished to the level of sustaining a war of national annihilation. Within three years, Li Xin's task was to train an artillery force that could be put to good use. Although he didn't know how the heavy artillery could pass through the mountains and mountains in the southwest, it was his duty to train the artillery, and to do things well, and Li Xin didn't plan to think about other things.

Li Xin, who was born in the Western Army, also understood that Han Gang did not want to attack Dali for personal gain, but that after losing his goal within the Western Army, there was a fear of the future, which made him have to run for it and try to solve it.

The Western Class Martial Arts, from the lowest from the ninth grade of the third class to the highest of the second grade, there are more than 60 levels. Small envoys, ambassadors, envoys, deputies, horizontal classes, and regular appointments, there are many small steps under which step.

If a military general wants to be promoted, if he simply relies on his seniority, he will get seven years for each promotion, and this requires one of the mistakes not to make. And relying on military merits, the first-class merit reward is seven qualifications and three transfers, and decades of grinding and surveying will cross the past once. Such a design is to let the generals desperately strive for military merit. If you talk about the results, there are indeed some, at least in the war-torn frontier, if you want to be promoted, most of the military cadets have to rely on desperate fighting to strive for meritorious service and reward.

The Western Army is also accustomed to this, at least there is still a rush, no need to rely on family background, no need to rely on flattery to the boss, only with their own efforts, there is also such a road to climb.

Now that the era of peace and prosperity has descended on the northwest, the opportunity to be rewarded for meritorious service no longer exists. After dividing up the battle exploits of pacifying and destroying Western Xia and regaining Lingwu, the northwest frontier, thousands of miles away in the north, was already the closest enemy. In the extreme west, Wang Sunchen is about to take over the Western Regions, can he still expect the imperial court to launch hundreds of thousands of troops, cross the mountains and mountains, and attack Dashi and Tianzhu?

Since Yuan Hao raised the army, the Song and Xia have been fighting for 40 years, and nearly half of the country's financial expenditure on military spending has fallen to Shaanxi. In other words, it is the treasury and taxes that keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses up and down the Western Army that are constantly flowing out of the treasury. At the same time, the borders of the two countries are also a place for military leaders at all levels to seek personal gains.

Once there is no war, not to mention those low-level officers will lose the convenient passage to rise to the top, even the Jiangmen family, and the largest income of the family. Just by drinking the blood of soldiers, the empty amount of a forbidden soldier is only a dozen yuan of money, a dozen stones of grain and a few silk silks a year. is as powerful as a breeder, do you dare to make up empty names in the military registration book? More than 1,000 people are already taking a big risk. And these incomes can only be a drop in the bucket for a huge family.

The family is quite good, they can rely on the work of destroying the country to protect the family for a long time, and maybe there will be a queen in the future. And the middle and low-level generals and military families cannot have such good luck. In addition to rebates and empty salaries, there is a source of income. Nowadays, many families are in crisis. Yao, Qu, Jing, Wang, etc., etc., all of the generals are having a headache for their future livelihoods, just want to farm and keep their families, and they can't find so many tenants for a while.

Another war is the common demand of the Western Army.

The imperial court also did not want to see a strong army that had been trained with great difficulty, repeating the mistakes of the Beijing camp and the Hebei army. At least until the Liao people are eliminated, the Western Army cannot be allowed to degenerate to the point where the soldiers are not trained and the horses are not used to saddles.

Although Dali is far away from the border, it is a place where the Western Army can return to battle.

Dali has always been not deferential to China, since the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, more than 100 years have not sent envoys to ask questions. And Emperor Taizu used the jade axe to draw the Dadu River as the boundary, which also allowed Dali to sit back and relax. It wasn't until Xining destroyed Jiaozhi in the tenth year that he began to send tribute envoys into China - this was frightened, not only Dali, but also small countries in the southwest, such as Luodian and Ziqi, all changed their attitudes after Jiaozhi destroyed the country. Those who had always paid tribute became more submissive, and countries that had never submitted in the past also began to pay tribute and ask the imperial court for canonization.

For such a small foreign country, the imperial court does not attach much importance to it. Honglu Temple is just a name. When it comes to the New Year's Festival, when the Son of Heaven celebrates the palace, he pulls out a group of envoys to support the scene, which looks lively. And that's all it does.

The court doesn't shelter them much. Just like the two countries of Zhancheng and Zhenla, who were suffering from the slave hunting team in Jiaozhou, their envoys came to Beijing to cry and complain many times, but the imperial court did not let it go, and it did not care about the vicious barbarians in Jiaozhou at all.

And once there is a demand, the Zaifu who are now in charge of the government do not mind which of these countries to be attacked.