Wang Renkan was obviously very worried about sending troops to Korea, and after calling Lu Hong to discuss, he was even more convinced that there would be follow-up actions, but for him, what he could do now was really limited, in addition to immediately writing a report to Yanjing's military aircraft Weng Tongyong, he remembered another important person.

On the morning of June 3, Li Hongzhang was meeting with his old friend, the Department of Customs and Excise, and his son-in-law and aide Zhang Peilun was accompanying him.

"Sir Hurd, you should be very aware of our country's attitude towards North Korea, maintaining the status quo of North Korea and the interests of other countries in North Korea is the consistent position of Zhongtang, and this time the imperial court sent troops to North Korea, and this time the decision was made at the joint request of North Korea and North Korea...... However, yesterday we received information from the Military Aircraft Department and Shanghai that the present side is secretly preparing to send troops to the DPRK, which will seriously damage the interests of China and your country in the DPRK! ”

Hurd read the telegram from Shanghai, although he did not know the origin of the telegram, but since he was able to get the approval of this shrewd and wise Governor Li, the news obviously had a good degree of credibility, in fact, he was obviously more inclined to have a close relationship with him for the dispute between China and China, after all, according to the agreement between the two sides, he could receive a special customs duty allowance of more than 400,000 taels every year......

And once the war breaks out, it will certainly directly affect the collection of customs and revenue under his jurisdiction, although he is sure that this will not have a direct impact on the British Empire, and even the empire may gain some benefits from it...... Every crisis in China is an opportunity for the empire...... But no one can live with their own money!

However, the source of the information this time was very sudden, and Sir Eugener, the British Empire's minister to China, had already communicated with the Japanese side a month earlier, and the Japanese side confirmed that it would not send troops to Korea, but only if the interests of the British Empire's expatriates in Korea were also protected...... This, so far, does not seem to have changed much, however, war is clearly imminent!

"Lord Zhang, has this news been confirmed by Minister Xiaocun?" Hurd immediately spoke out loud, "I think your country must be ready for war at once, after all, your country has a long coastline...... However, in my opinion, it seems completely impossible for this to challenge China, which is 10 times the size of the powerful Beiyang Fleet and its army, and it is not in the interests of the British Empire in the Far East. ”

In the afternoon of the same day, Li Hongzhang urgently met with the consuls of Japan, Germany, France, and Russia, and in addition to asking the ministers of Japan, Onoda Er, to immediately confirm the relevant rumors to China, he proposed to the ministers of Germany, France, and Russia the idea of using the political axe of the Qing Dynasty to ensure the interests of various countries in Korea, and in return, he hoped that all countries would exert pressure on them not to send troops to Korea!

In the early morning of June 4, Wang Renkan, who was far away in Shanghai, received a telegram from Zhang Peilun, informing him that the ministers of various countries had begun to mediate the affairs of North Korea, and that there might be an opportunity to suppress the situation and resolve the chaos in North Korea! As for Wang Renkan's suggestion that he was ready to assist the Beiyang Naval Division in carrying out new modifications of the stockpiled ammunition, Zhang Peilun conveyed Li Hongzhang's gratitude, but due to the shortage of military spending in the navy's yamen, only 20,000 taels of silver were allocated for the sake of Qincha's face.

Wang Renkan's mind was obviously no longer on the transformation of this shell, listening to Zhang Peilun swear to mention the mediation of ministers of various countries, he also had expectations, after all, once the war broke out, he was now supervising the military discipline of the sailor is obviously the first to bear the brunt, he immediately summoned Lu Hong, forwarded the telegram from Tianjin to him, and he had full authority to deal with it, while he himself began to draft an excerpt to Yanjing Weng Tonggong, on the Korean issue, the emperor and Weng Ge Lao showed a toughness that surprised him.

This time, the Beiyang Naval Division was obviously very interested in Lu Hong's artillery shell transformation plan, and this was a rationalization suggestion by Wang Renkan of the Qincha, so the Kangji ships that accompanied them to Shanghai had already transported the first batch of more than 100 shells of various types, among which the most were 305mm and 210mm heavy artillery shells on the main ships of the Beiyang Naval Division.

After receiving the order, the Kangji ship immediately approached the Dongjiadu wharf in the south of the British Concession, and the pipe belt Sa Zhenbing immediately led two teams of soldiers to prepare to transport the cannonballs...... This is definitely new!

As the pipe band of the Kangji ship of the Navy training ship, Sa Zhenbing is naturally no stranger to naval gunnery and shells, but he has never heard of the fact that old shells can be converted into new ones, so he also personally escorted the team and transported more than 30 boxes of shells into the Huayi Machinery Factory.

The factory, which is far away from the concession and hidden in the wilderness on the side of the Huangpu River, gives him a sense of novelty, first of all, the paramilitary sentry box has been built on the periphery of the factory, and there are even soldiers armed with new fast-sharp rifles...... It's not easy to do in Shanghai! You know, even the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau doesn't have such a strong defense!

However, this is obviously not a matter of concern to Sa Zhenbing, after the carriage of the brigade arrived, there was immediately a young officer wearing the robe of the chief officer in front of the 8-grade gate came to interrogate, and when he saw Sa Zhenbing's four-grade official uniform, he politely gave a military salute, and immediately sent someone to take over the carriage after reading Guan Wen, leading Sa Zhenbing into the factory.

Sa Zhenbing noticed that this young officer named Du Wenlan actually had a temperament completely different from that of the Huai Army, not only his demeanor was very neat, but even the orders that commanded those ordinary soldiers were completely different from the German laws of the Huai system. "And then without saying a word, immediately go to the order!

This kind of military style of ordering and prohibiting has long been a formality among the elite of the Huai system that I have seen, but I didn't expect to see it in such a remote factory area as Shanghai......

He curiously asked about the identity of Du Wenlan, but was told that this was a military discipline battalion belonging to Wang Renkan, but he remembered that when he was in Port Arthur earlier, he had heard that there was such a messenger, and when he inspected the Lushun bullet depot, he found out the corruption case of the Navy Yamen assistant Lishan, but he had never heard of such a special army!

In addition to the four large factories and several chimneys that spew black smoke high, many workers in blue clothes, and even people who look like engineers from the manufacturing bureau, are busy carrying all kinds of strange machines in several factory rooms.

This time, it was Sun Cairen, a gunpowder bureau engineer who Lu Hong excavated a while ago, who was in charge of contacting the transformation of the shells, and he was waiting here with a group of workers at this moment, and boxes of armor-piercing shells were carefully transported to a room far away from the workshop, and soon, a 305mm armor-piercing bullet and a 210mm armor-piercing bullet manufactured by the Jiangnan Bureau were loaded into a cart separately and sent to the rubber factory area now under his management.

Here, Cheng Daqi, the current general manager of the machine factory, has been waiting for a long time, and Lu Hong, who personally supervised the improvement of the artillery shells on the side, saw this sailor pipe band named Sa Zhenbing for the first time, and he had naturally heard of this name, but in today's Beiyang Naval Division, there are not a few senior officers who stay in the ocean.

Lu Hong naturally did not let go of this opportunity to win over this one, after a few polite words, he immediately showed Sa Zhenbing the artillery shell transformation plan at hand, for this artillery shell improvement, through the in-situ inspection in Lushun, Lu Hong after considering the work efficiency of the drilling machine in this era, chose to improve the practice of armor-piercing bullets, in fact, the more important reason is because of safety considerations.

The armor-piercing shells used by the Beiyang Naval Division, except for a small number of original shells purchased directly with the artillery, are all of the type of wrought iron shell stuffed with sand and gravel, and, according to the storage records, all of them are produced by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau Gun Factory.

In fact, because the weight of sand and gravel is difficult to standardize, the weight of these armor-piercing shells of the same type is actually different, and because the entire shell is cast in the ironworks using clay molds, this clay mold has problems such as short service life and easy damage, and the direct consequence is that the size of multiple batches of shells is deviated...... It's completely defective!

At that time, the Jiangnan Bureau Ironmaking Plant can be said to be a representative of high consumption and low energy, and it has practiced iron for more than ten years, but it has never been able to train qualified steel, and today's Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau Steelmaking Plant is still two years ago in order to make its own fast rifle barrel, and the equipment imported from Germany was put into production.

Sa Zhenbing is a complete amateur for this kind of pure machining, but the transformation plan explained to him by Lu Hong is clear, removing the sand and gravel filled with the inner bore of the shell, adding a pair of pressure-starting fuses in the middle of the projectile body, and the inner bore of the armor-piercing bullet can be loaded with 30 kg of explosives, and the maroon explosives produced by the Jiangnan Bureau are used as the loading.

In order to deal with this kind of giant cannonball with a diameter of up to 305mm, Lu Hong also improved the large chuck of today's machine factory to ensure that the drilling machine can accurately punch holes and boring on this huge cannonball.

With a violent roar, iron filings flew sideways, sparks of violent friction flew everywhere, the first 210mm armor-piercing projectile was firmly fixed by the three-jaw centering chuck, the circular rotor slowly drilled into the bomb body from the surface, 100mm deep drilling, a 100-horsepower steam unit driven by a drilling machine for 18 minutes...... Then, after the three-jaw chuck is flipped, the drilling on the other side starts again.

After the drilling and boring and the implantation of the new fuse, it seemed that it was not alarming, but very smooth, and finally completed the first phase of processing of the shell, was sent to the gunpowder filling point far away from the factory to complete the final loading and encapsulation, and when this re-polished unusually bright shell appeared in front of Sa Zhenbing again, he also had to sigh and the greatness of its power!

[New books are on the shelves, with the support of brothers with monthly passes~ Wow Ka Ka] (To be continued.) )