However, the more than 5,000 (Li Hui recruited some more people on the grounds that he needed to eliminate the difference to force the soldiers to train hard) The soldiers of the mine protection team and the road protection team were carefully selected according to Li Hui's requirements, although Li Hui looked down on the old-fashioned rifles provided by Li Hongzhang, but it was no problem to test the shooting talent of the workers.

Almost all of the 5,000 workers have the potential to be trained as special shooters, and Li Hui plans to train all of them into machine gunners or snipers in the future, as the backbone of the future expansion of the army.

However, Li Hui did not ask for the relatively reliable Green Gun (hand-cranked machine gun), but chose the unqualified Makqin produced by the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, so that they could first familiarize themselves with the structure and operation method of this weapon.

Although these knockoffs still use black powder as the firing charge, and the workmanship is also very rough, so it is very easy to jam when shooting, but the basic structure and operation method are similar to the mature Makqin heavy machine gun produced by Li Hui using the system, although the latter cannot be used to equip the troops for the time being, but let the soldiers get familiar with it first, and after changing the equipment, it can save a little training time.

In order for the system to produce the Makqin heavy machine gun and allow it to give full play to its combat effectiveness, Li Hui has a large number of system technologies that must be researched, and even if Li Hui spends ten times the silver taels for a first-level acceleration, it still takes a lot of time.

However, thinking that he could get a large number of heavy machine guns at the price of cabbage after that, Li Hui couldn't help but be full of joy, you must know that the Makqin heavy machine gun was an epoch-making weapon that changed the way of war at that time!

However, in order to be compatible with the bullets of the Jiawu rifle, and to improve the performance of the Maxim heavy machine gun, "optimization" is still essential

Due to the inherent deficiency that water-cooled heavy machine guns must ensure water supply in order to continue working, Li Hui initially wanted to use air-cooled heavy machine guns, but found that the only Haqikes machine gun that the system could produce was extremely bulky, even much heavier than water-cooled heavy machine guns, and because it could not do without those heavy and bloated fins, the system could not optimize it (dismantling it to become a light machine gun, which was a change of type and beyond the limits of system optimization). In the end, Li Hui could only copy the design ideas of the British Vickers water-cooled heavy machine gun, and reduce the weight of the Makqin heavy machine gun as much as possible to make it easier to carry, as for the problem of water supply in the battlefield, it could only rely on the officers and soldiers to find a way by themselves

Although one more system sub-technology that is not used has been studied, considering that the "air-cooled heavy machine gun" is one of the prerequisite technologies necessary for the development of "light machine gun" technology in the future, it is not a waste of silver spent on it.

However, the 23 days delayed because of this made Li Hui regret his extra move, because now his desire to enhance his strength is even more urgent. By this time, the Sino-Japanese War had already begun, and it looked even worse off than it had ever been

In June and July, the Japanese government found all kinds of excuses to continue to increase troops in Korea, and Li Hongzhang first underestimated the ambitions of the Japanese, and later pinned his hopes on the mediation of the foreign powers, and did not choose to increase the number of troops in Korea to seize the lead, nor did he let the Qing army withdraw from Korea in order to defeat the Japanese population (this move may not be able to prevent Japan from going to war, but if the Qing army retreats to the country to fight a war of self-defense, whether it is logistics or morale, it will be much more advantageous than the decisive battle with the devils in Korea in history). And the domestic war preparations were also extremely procrastinated, which made the Japanese government firm in its determination to go to war.

On July 23, the Japanese army, which had just forcibly entered Seoul not long ago, raided the Joseon royal palace under the leadership of the pro-Japanese Korean Enlightenment Party, and then imprisoned the Korean king Yi Hee and the powerful Concubine Min, and established a new Korean government headed by Yi Yuying, the king of the Heungxuan Daewon, and Japan gained complete political initiative, and China and Japan also entered a de facto state of war, but neither side immediately declared war at this time.

On 25 July, the Japanese Navy's No. 1 Guerrilla Force encountered the Beiyang Naval Division Jiyuan Squadron, which was on its way back to China after completing its escort mission, in the waters near Toshima

Due to the extremely disparity in strength between the two sides, there is no suspense about the outcome of this naval battle, but to Li Hui's surprise, the Jiyuan actually made a completely different choice from history in this time and space.

In history, the escape of the Jiyuan at the beginning was actually understandable, because it was a situation of inevitable defeat at that time, and any one of the four ships in the Jiyuan team would definitely be defeated, not to mention three ships at the same time; Fang Boqian's real crime deserved death was that after the two Qing transport ships strayed into the battlefield, he not only did not order the Jiyuan to turn to meet the enemy and drag the enemy to gain time for the friendly troops to evacuate, but also did not even warn the friendly troops, but also hoisted the Japanese naval flag to mislead the two transport ships so that they could not detect the danger in time (even if they wanted to surrender, they only needed to hang out the white flag, Fang Boqian hung the Japanese naval flag when the two transport ships strayed into the battlefield [The mast of the warship is higher and the field of view is much larger than that of the transport ship, so when the Jiyuan saw the two transport ships, The latter has not yet seen the Jiyuan. The intentions are clear. The intention was to sacrifice these two transports to hold back the enemy so that he could escape.

In the end, Fang Boqian's poisonous plan succeeded, the two transport ships sank and fell, thousands of patriotic officers and soldiers were buried at the bottom of the sea, and a large amount of ordnance and silver were captured by the Japanese army, and the Jiyuan not only successfully escaped, but also won Li Hongzhang's commendation with the false achievements fabricated by Fang Boqian

However, the Battle of Toshima in this time and space is very different from history, after discovering that the friendly forces entered the battlefield by mistake, the Jiyuan immediately alerted them, and did not hang the Japanese naval flag to mislead the other party, so that the Gao Sheng and Caojiang both hid in the shallow water area where the Japanese ships could not drive in, and finally escaped.

However, the Jiyuan was thus besieged by three Japanese ships, and it did not take long for it to capsize and sink because of too many bullets, because the captain of the Japanese ship "Naniwa", Togo Heihachiro, ordered the machine guns to shoot wildly at the remaining officers and men of the Jiyuan on the sea, and in the end, only seven of the nearly 200 officers and men on the Jiyuan survived by relying on their extraordinary water nature and cleverness, and all the officers below the self-management team Fang Boqian and the first mate Shen Shouchang were all killed

The Beiyang Navy Division was all sad and indignant when they learned of this bad news, but Li Hui's first reaction was extremely shocked, "What? Fang Boqian was actually martyred? How is this possible? ”