Zhang Chu saw Li Yi in the room that was used as the team headquarters, and the two looked at each other. Li Yi originally thought that the leader who had gone from obscurity to gathering hundreds of people in two months would have to be a bandit, but he didn't expect that the person standing in front of him was a young man in his twenties, who looked quite gentle. I can't help but doubt my decision to go here.

Zhang Chu saw that Li Yi was in his thirties, burly, and naturally had the perseverance of having experienced a military career.

"We have a lot of rules here, if you want to join, you have to follow the rules, and if you join, you can't leave." Zhang Chu said straight to the point.

In the past two days, Li Yi did see that the people here seemed to have certain rules for moving, sitting and lying, which was indeed different from other bandits. Li Yi was used to working in the army, and he felt that it had no effect on him, so he said: "I can do it." ”

"Do you know what we do? Zhang Chu's next question made Li Yi stunned, what are you doing? Isn't it just when bandits rob things? But this cannot be said directly. So he could only look at Zhang Chu and didn't answer.

"We are not bandits, we are the security team of the Ming Dynasty, and what we want to do is to protect the territory and the people, so the next step is to suppress the bandits and clean up all the bandits around here." Zhang Chu continued.

"But the court may not appreciate it." Li Yi escaped from the border army, if Zhang Chu and the others finally want to defect to the government, Li Yi will not end well.

"I pulled up the team to protect everyone in the team, and then to protect the surrounding people. We called Daming Security to try not to attract the attention of the court, not to let the court use all its strength to attack us, and to give us time to develop. In the end, we will be the force with lofty ideals and a bright future to protect the territory and the people. It is a security guard with lofty ideals and a bright future. Zhang Chu is also gradually refining his theory.

The words of everyone in the protection team touched Li Yi, and he stood up and said solemnly: "I am willing to stay and live and die with my brothers, advance and retreat together, and protect each other." ”

Zhang Chu and Li Yi went outside to look at his horse, the horse should be a good war horse, a little emaciated due to malnutrition, but still very energetic. Zhang Chu said unceremoniously: "This horse should be regarded as the public property of the security team." ”

Li Yi was mentally prepared, so he bowed down and said, "I am willing to dedicate this horse to my lord." ”

"Don't call me an adult, just call me captain, this horse is not for me, all the property of the security team is everyone's public property, only the military salary and rewards issued by me are personal property, if you want to live a good life, you have to rely on the achievements on the battlefield. Now I appoint you captain of the cavalry brigade of the security forces, and this horse is at your disposal. With my consent to expand your team, you can recruit personnel. Now that there are few people, you can follow me to study how to lead everyone to battle in battle, and what kind of equipment our team should replenish. After a few days, Zhang Chu always followed this cavalry brigade with only one man and one horse wherever he went, but Zhang Chu benefited a lot, understood what formations the regular army had in battle, and how the various arms cooperated with each other, and hurriedly ordered Li Yi to pass on this knowledge to He Jin, Yang Biao and others, and then led the team to step up training and began to prepare for the next anti-bandit operation.

Deng Qingnian and others had settled down in the valley, and the workshop was re-established. Zhang Chu specially convened a meeting of all the craftsmen of the original hundred households, at which Zhang Chu determined the system of the workshop. All craftsmen receive the same salary as the general members of the security team, and receive additional rewards according to the quantity and quality of their work, and if they do a good job, they will earn more. The craftsmen were very happy, and they did not expect that the craftsmen who worked would be paid the same as the soldiers, and that there would be rewards for their work, which meant that they would live better than the soldiers. Looks like the right place to flee here. The craftsmen are full of energy when they do their work. Professional craftsmen are different, knives and guns and other weapons are quickly produced, and the quality is much better than before. But what Zhang Chu urgently needed most was a weapon that caught up with the world trend at that time, that is, muskets. When asked Deng Qingnian, Deng Qingnian said that they had made arquebuses for muskets, but it took a long time to make a gun, because the difficulty in making a gun lies in the barrel, which requires good iron materials, and it is difficult to process, and it takes more time to drill the barrel. The barrel was too thick and heavy, and if it was too thin, it would explode, which was very difficult to grasp, and the guns were often blown up, so the soldiers were reluctant to use muskets.

"Just have a short barrel, and make it a little thicker to prevent it from exploding." Zhang Chu said his thoughts.

"But if the barrel is short, it won't be able to shoot far, so it's useless." Deng Qingnian explained.

"You don't have to fight very far, you can hit twenty paces away, you can kill people ten steps away, you can make one out and try it first." Zhang Chu said his request, in ancient times, the two feet alternately counted as one step, that is, one step in ancient times is equivalent to two steps in later generations.

It's so close that it's not even as good as a bow and arrow, but Deng Qingnian decided to make one first, and then he will be able to make a long-barreled musket if he is proficient.

Zhang Chu also found a pen and paper to draw the shape of the grip, referring to the appearance of the pistol in later generations to facilitate one-handed operation, and roughly determined the size of the gun, Zhang Chu was to make a single-shot pistol for one-handed use.

If you have a gun, you have to use gunpowder, and the gunpowder prepared by Zhang Chu last time can't be used on the musket at all, so to improve the quality of gunpowder, the purification of raw materials The craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty have mastered it, but the work was not serious in the past, and the craftsmen quickly obtained raw materials of high purity in front of Zhang Chu's reward.

The next is the grinding process, for this Zhang Chu asked the craftsmen to cast a water wheel with iron according to the shape of the water wheel he painted, the water wheel was connected to an iron shaft and then installed in the trench built with stones under the valley waterfall, opened the gate and the water rushed down to drive the water wheel, the wooden gear on the iron shaft drove a wooden hammer, the wooden hammer was smashed day and night in the wooden trough, and the uniform and meticulous raw materials were formed, Zhang Chu used the proportion he kept in mind to prepare the raw materials together, fried and sieved, In the end, high-quality gunpowder was obtained. However, Zhang Chu watched the good rapeseed oil being used to purify sulfur, and as a member of the foodie country, his heart was still full of resentment.

The villagers of the village outside the valley suddenly became nervous, and the thieves who had robbed the village of Venta a few days ago drove out of the mountain in groups, stationed at the entrance of the village, and posted notices everywhere in the village, but then the thieves did not take any further action. The thieves did not pay attention to the bold villagers took back the thief's notice to find a literate person to interpret, the notice said that this group of thieves claimed to be the Ming security team, saying that it was to protect the territory and the people, to crack down on the bandits, each household is not allowed to hide knives and guns, and there are people who enter the village to report immediately. And he asked the horse thieves and bandits everywhere to immediately abandon the darkness and turn to the light. Although I know that the thief has no good intentions, it is much better than robbing it when I come up.

On weekdays, there are often some bandits who ride horses in groups to the villages to rob or extort property, they come on horseback and rob and then fly away, the villagers have no other way but to offer their property, and the villages are overwhelmed with suffering. The security team made the appearance of guarding against horse thieves stationed at the entrance of the village, and only trained on weekdays and did not disturb the people, looking at the bright knives and guns, neat teams, some rich families hurriedly handed over their weapons at home, and it was better to hand them over than to be searched at home, and it was definitely not only knives and guns that were searched at that time. While the security team was making a big splash in the villages around the valley, Zhang Chu sent a team of a dozen people to quietly go to the farther villages and towns.

The five horse thieves had just robbed a village and were about to return to their hiding place with their belongings, and when they came out of the village, they found that the road was blocked by a dozen men standing in a row, each of whom carried a spear more than a man high. Seeing this, these horse thieves thought that they had encountered rookies again, the other party's spears were too short, and they were lined up in a thin row, which was not a threat to the cavalry at all, as long as they rushed over and swung the spears with their weapons and then trampled on them with horses, it was enough to trample these villagers to death, and they didn't even have to take such a risk, as long as the five horses ran up and rushed to the front, there would be a timid leader who would turn around and run away, and then they could cut off people's heads in the back. The five horse thieves formed a line and rushed towards the front team, the speed of the horses became faster and faster, and thirty paces away from the team suddenly the horses seemed to be frightened, and kept jumping up, disrupting the team, and the forward rush was slow, but the group in front showed a strange posture, they put their spears on the ground, stepped on the bottom of the spear with their feet, and forward, holding the barrel with only one hand, and pointed a short club-like thing in the other hand at the horse thief, and then a loud noise and smoke rose together, It turned out that they were holding short muskets in their hands, and more than a dozen lead bullets flew by, some of the horse thieves were hit and fell off their horses, and some of the horses were shot and jumped in pain. At this time, Li Yi led three people to gallop down the hillside on horseback, but not a single living horse thief was caught. The three people who followed Li Yi were all good hands that Li Yi pulled from the army, and the horses were also good horses bought by Zhang Chu with gritted teeth and spent a lot of money, originally Li Yi thought that it would not be a problem to fight four or five horse thieves head-on with the four of them, but Zhang Chu said that they could not be injured, so he put on this strange formation. Just let them attack later, and if the infantry can't withstand them, they are responsible for the rescue. Li Yi saw that there were two horses still jumping in pain, so he hurriedly went over to pull the horses, and the captain treated the horses a little too harshly, it turned out that Zhang Chu ordered people to build many triangular nails, no matter how they were thrown, there was always a sharp point pointing upwards, although this kind of thing has long existed, but no one has a large piece of it on the road. Li Yi ordered people to control the horse, pulled out the triangular nails on the horse's shoes, bandaged the wounds of the injured horses, and left with the wounded horses and dead horses, the bodies of the horse thieves were abandoned on the side of the road, and three groups of horse thieves were killed in a dozen days, and the reputation of the security team was greatly enhanced, and some small villages did not exclude the entry of the security team personnel. However, the actions of the security team also affected the trading of other copycat bandits, and they did not understand the attitude of the security team towards the bandits who were in shares, and they did not dare to send people out of the mountain. According to the leader of a group of bandits in Yangshugou in the south of Guanzhuang Town, his name was Breakthrough Tian, and Breakthrough Heaven sent a letter to Zhang Chu, saying that he wanted to talk.

"Let's talk, I'm trying to talk to you right now." When he said this, Zhang Chu looked very happy.