The artisan camp in Fuyuan is no longer what it used to be, rows of neatly built houses stretch out, and there is almost no end in sight, since the arrival of more than 10,000 craftsmen from the capital, it has suddenly flourished, and after repeated expansions, it has finally formed the current scale. A market town of tens of thousands of people appeared in the wilderness.

The whole workshop is divided into two areas, the living area and the work area, which are separated by a wall, and the living area is not allowed to go back and forth, but it is not so easy to enter the work area. Every craftsman or apprentice in the work area has a special waist tag, a unique number, and only those who have these waist tags can enter and leave the factory. Some key departments in the factory area are heavily guarded, and ordinary people can't approach them at all.

The Statistical Survey Department has a special public department here, and there are even more spies secretly arranged, and more periphery, between the craftsman camp and the Yiling iron mine, a wing of nearly 2,000 people under Wang Qinian's Tianlei battalion stationed in Fuyuan is stationed here to ensure the safety of the two places. The craftsman camp is a department that Li Qing attaches great importance to, and he must not be allowed to go wrong, and since the expansion of the craftsman camp, the Statistical Survey Department has cracked a number of secret agents who tried to infiltrate the factory, which has made this place heavily guarded.

Today's craftsman camp is even more unusual than usual, Dingzhou Marshal Li Qing is about to inspect here, early on, martial law has begun here, the streets are covered with soldiers with guns and knives, and the spies of the Statistics and Investigation Department have already been scattered in the crowd, vigilantly looking for suspicious people.

Dressed in the new six-grade military attache robes, he commanded his subordinates in the yamen of the craftsman to see if there were any possible omissions, and now he no longer needs to make the equipment himself, as long as he organizes the different factories under his hands, produces the required equipment and materials on time, supervises the research and development of new products, and coordinates the deployment of manpower. Keeping everything running smoothly is considered a successful mission.

For Ren Ruyun, it was very painful for him to complete such a role change, from the beginning of the hairy hands, compared with the mistakes everywhere, now he is at ease, which reminds him of what the marshal said to him at the beginning, being a qualified craftsman battalion leader, it is much more difficult than being an excellent technician, and the contribution to Dingzhou is much greater. It is because of this sentence that he has been studying and understanding day and night, and finally succeeded in transforming from an excellent craftsman to an excellent leader, and now he has many craftsmen from the capital, and his skills are much stronger than he was at his peak, which also makes him very glad that if there is no successful transformation, then today's Ren Ruyun will definitely not be the first person in the craftsman camp.

It's just that as a once excellent craftsman, it is still his dream to make exquisite instruments, but now this dream has retreated to amateurism, in his home, he has a small workshop, in his spare time, he will ponder some of the things that the marshal once mentioned, and sometimes he will also invite some superb craftsmen to study together, only at this time, he will suddenly remember those hard years.

As a six-grade official, now he already has a house and land, and he is even more proud that he has a status, which is not to think about in Yizhou, through some channels, I heard through some channels that the master of the Li family who used to kick to Dingzhou is now drilling the camp, wanting to come to Dingzhou, shaking his head, people's encounters, where to start!

While sighing, a subordinate rushed over, "Lord Ren, the handsome car has arrived outside the craftsman camp!" ”

Ren Ruyun stood up: "Go, follow me to meet the handsome!" ”

Li Qing is very satisfied with the current situation of the craftsman battalion, everything is so well organized, busy and orderly, in the past few months, the production efficiency of the craftsman battalion has been greatly improved, the ordnance produced has exceeded Li Qing's expectations, and the quality has also been greatly improved, Xu Xiaodao's fine iron production technology has become mature, the quality of the refined iron produced has been greatly improved, Li Qing's personal guard battalion and special brigade are now equipped with ordnance made of fine iron, and the combat effectiveness has been greatly improved, and it is expected that next year, the large-scale refitting of the troops will begin.

As a military state and the commander of a border state, the first stop of Li Qingjiang's camp was, of course, the armory workshop.

Ren Ruyun accompanied Li Qing's side, watching with Li Qing and explaining for Li Qing.

"My lord, this is the workshop of the Eight Ox Crossbow and the Strong Crossbow, the Eight Ox Crossbow is huge, the operation remains the same, we have been exploring whether we can reduce his size and operation steps without reducing the power, after a period of repeated trials, now the Eight Ox Crossbow we make has been greatly improved compared to before, and now the personnel of the operation have been reduced to two-thirds of the previous one. The size has also decreased a lot. Ren Ruyun pointed to an installed eight-bull crossbow beside him and said proudly.

"Good!" Looking at the eight-bull crossbow that has shrunk a lot, Li Qing is very satisfied, the eight-bull crossbow is a sharp weapon for defending the city, but there are too many people who need to do it, and if you can reduce the number of people who are doing it, you can free up more people to defend the city, which is a big improvement.

"The main problem with the crossbow is that it is slow to wind, and it hurts the soldier's fingers a lot, so our current crossbow is mainly aimed at improving on this." Ren Ruyun took a strong crossbow handed over by his entourage, and Li Qing was curious to see that the appearance of this strong crossbow had changed greatly.

Ren Ruyun smiled and stretched out his hand to beckon an apprentice, the apprentice took the improved version of the strong crossbow, hung the string on a device on his waist, stretched out his feet, the strong crossbow was already open, reached out and took a crossbow arrow, put it in the hook groove, buckled the buckle, and then flattened it in his hand, respectfully handed it to Li Qing, Li Qing picked up the crossbow, aimed at the opposite wall, lightly hooked the trigger, a soft sound, the crossbow arrow shot out, inserted into the wall, the remaining momentum was not weakened, and the tail of the arrow buzzed.

"Good!" Li Qing blurted out praise, seeing that the apprentice just took a very short time to wind, Li Qing naturally knew that if he wanted to achieve the winding time of the apprentice just now, if it was a strong crossbow in the past, he was afraid that only a very small number of soldiers with extremely outstanding arm strength in the army could do it, and this apprentice obviously did not belong to this list, this improvement is excellent for covering shooting during combat, the shooting distance of the crossbow is not as long as the strong bow, and it is mainly used for close-range covering shooting. This will be a great blow to the enemy.

Seeing the two militaristic weapons, Li Qing couldn't help but be interested, looked at Ren Ruyun, and said with a smile: "Don't hide it, if there are any other good things, take them out together!" ”

Ren Ruyun scratched his head embarrassedly, "Dashuai, there are still a few good things, all of which have just been developed, and they are only samples, and they are waiting for Dashuai to evaluate them to see if they can be mass-produced?" ”

"Let's go, let's see!" Li Qing took the lead in great strides, and said to Shang Haibo as he walked: "Mr. Shang, it seems that our craftsman Dalin has really made us a lot of good things!" ”

Shang Haibo said with a smile: "Yes, the handsome, Ren Ruyun is indeed very attentive, he can have such an achievement, he is a capable official, and the efficiency of the craftsman camp has been greatly improved in recent months, I am preparing to ask the handsome to reward him!" ”

Li Qing laughed, "Be rewarded, rewarded, but let's go see his new gadgets first!" ”

Everyone followed Ren Ruyun into a side door, although the door was in a huge factory, but there were still four guards with knives standing in front of the door, seeing Li Qing coming, the four guards bowed and saluted, sideways to the side, everyone walked into the door, but unexpectedly found that there was no window in the room, black hole, although the door was open at this time, but still the light was insufficient.

Ren Ruyun commanded people to light the torches, and everyone saw that this room was not small, and there was an iron cabinet placed near their end, and they couldn't help but be surprised, "Lord Ren, what kind of good thing are you, you actually put it in an iron cabinet in such a heavily guarded place." Yang Yidao asked strangely.

Tang Hu stretched out his fist and slammed it on the iron cabinet, making a muffled sound, Tang Hu took a breath, "Such a thick iron plate, Lao Ren, what kind of good thing is it?" ”

Ren Ruyun said with a smile: "Two adults, the good thing is this iron cabinet!" ”

Iron cabinets? Everyone was puzzled, Li Qing walked around the iron cabinet, looked at the neat rows of black holes on the front of the iron cabinet, and suddenly realized: "Ren Rugo, this is a repeater?" ”

Ren Ruyun nodded and said: "My lord, you used to tell your subordinates that you could fire a weapon continuously, and your subordinates thought about it after they came back, and some of the keys were never able to come up, but then Xu Xiaodao made a fine iron, and then used this fine iron to pull out the wire, and these problems were easily solved. ”

Stretching out his hand to open the iron cabinet from behind, everyone saw rows of neatly wound steel springs in the cabinet, there were already apprentices holding iron boxes of crossbow arrows one by one, Ren Ruyun placed them one by one in the iron cabinet, closed the cabinet door, and two apprentices held a Z-shaped iron rod, stretched into the iron cabinet from one side, the two worked together, turned the iron rod hard, except for Li Qing, everyone looked at Ren Ruyun and others curiously.

Seeing the two apprentices draw out the iron rods, Ren Ruyun walked to the iron cabinet with a proud face, and pulled it out of nowhere, and in the horrified eyes of everyone, crossbow arrows were continuously shot from the front of the iron cabinet, and they were inserted into the wall in front of them one by one, shaking the dust on the roof.

After a while, everyone woke up from their numbness, "Good thing!" Tang Hu shouted, and immediately attracted a large number of white eyes, Li Qing nodded and walked to the iron cabinet, "It is indeed a good thing, Ren Ruyun, how many arrows can this thing fire at a time?" ”

"A hundred!" Ren Ruyun said proudly.

"It's a good thing, but it's a pity that it's too bulky, and it can only be used for sticking to it!" Li Qing said regretfully, "And this is a money-burning thing, Ren Ruyun, the arrows fired by this thing must be made of iron all over the body, right?" ”

Ren Ruyun said: "Yes, Dashuai, wooden or bamboo arrow shafts are not good, and they will all be broken when they are shaken." ”

"One shot is a hundred arrows, and if there are ten hundred such things, and a single shot is thousands of arrows, how much iron does it cost? How much does it cost? We can't afford to play him in Dingzhou now! Li Qing shook his head.

Hearing Li Qing say this, everyone couldn't help but calm down, Dashuai said well, how many arrows can be used to make these irons? Using him is too expensive, and it can only be used when defending the city, which is not very cost-effective.

Seeing Li Qing's appearance, Ren Ruyun couldn't help but be quite frustrated, Li Qing smiled and said: "Lord Ren don't be discouraged, this thing is very good, you can make a small amount of it, but don't take it out for the time being, you continue to think about it, how to make him lighter, how to make him more economical, let us afford it, well, let me give you an idea, you can try to connect him with the chariot of the foot soldier, you can also apply this principle to the hand crossbow of the cavalry, in short, with this method should be able to derive a lot of weapons." ”

"Don't worry, I'll figure it out soon. Dashuai, do you still want to see the first-grade bow we made next? ”

"Look, why don't you look? Tell me what's so special about this bow? ”

"Dashuai, we have mainly improved two aspects of the Yipin bow, one is to change the traditional leather string to a steel wire string, Dashuai knows, the traditional leather string is extremely difficult to maintain, once there is a rainy and snowy day, the leather string is very easy to be soft and broken, and the steel wire string does not exist This problem, this is mainly the credit of Xu Xiaodao, in addition, the pulley is placed for the Yipin bow, which does not require a lot of arm strength to pull the bowstring, and the range has increased by about fifty steps when shooting." Ren Ruyun presented a first-grade bow as he spoke, Li Qing tried to open a few bows, and said with satisfaction: "This bow is good and practical, well, it can be mass-produced and equipped with troops." ”

The original half-day trip in the craftsman camp was carried out for a full day, and what surprised Li Qing even more was not Ren Ruyun's continuous improvement of weapons and equipment, but the cooperative weapon making method he pioneered in the craftsman camp, Li Qing of course knew very well that this was the assembly line operation of later generations, the wisdom of the ancients should not be underestimated, Ren Ruyun, a craftsman who had not read many books, actually found such a way to improve production efficiency in practice, all the apprentices no longer learn the whole set of processes, but only learn to make one of the links, Then assembled in the final assembly workshop, in order to make this method effective, Ren Ruyun actually made a unified measurement in the craftsman camp, and measured the size with these rulers and gauges he created uniformly, which really made Li Qing speechless, smart! Li Qing shouted in his heart. With these parts of the same size, it will be easier to repair the equipment when it is damaged on the battlefield, and even if the damaged equipment is no longer repairable, the usable parts can be taken down and a new one can be assembled.

When he walked out of the craftsman camp, Li Qing said to Ren Ruyun: "Lord Ren, from today on, you will be the master of the five products!" ”

"Thank you, Dashuai!" Ren Ruyun was overjoyed.

"Well, also, I came back from Jingshi this time, and I brought a lot of southern brocade, a knife, and I went back to send two horses to Lord Ren's wife!" Yang Yidao agreed loudly.

Ren Ruyun on the side was already grateful, his eyes were red, if he didn't have to take care of his appearance, he would almost be picked up, the scholar died for the one who knew the scholar, he was not a scholar, just a craftsman, but he could also die for the handsome. He said to himself.

(To be continued)