These days, the protagonist is extremely excited.

In the age of gunpowder, firearms, and firearms, there are too many reasons for him to be happy.

Although the Divine Envoy King's legion currently has iron weapons, iron armor, and ranged weapons, it has an advantage over most of the armies of the ant forces that still use flesh as weapons.

However, once faced with the siege of an extremely large number of enemy troops, the Divine Envoy King Legion who took the route of elite soldiers would still have a crisis.

When the number of enemies is as many as ten times or even dozens of times, the generation gap of only one generation of weapons can even be smoothed out, but the generation gap of more than two generations cannot be easily filled by numbers alone!

The firearms that the Divine Envoy King's legion can master in a short period of time must not be able to almost ignore the number gap like machine guns, and although crude primitive firearms may not be able to completely solve the shortcomings of every elite army, they can also greatly fill the shortcomings.

The R&D and manufacturing of firearms has become the most important thing in the coming winter of [Xinyangcheng].

Just three days after the performance of the gunpowder charcoal was confirmed, the blast furnace had begun casting the first iron cannon of the Divine Envoy King's army.

After adding silicon and other fluxes, the molten iron from the blast furnace of [Xinyangcheng] has very good fluidity, and can even be used to cast thin jaw knives and cannons.

When the volume of a substance is smaller, it tends to be stronger, just like a chopstick is easy to break, but when there is only a small piece of chopsticks left, it is difficult to break again.

Ants cast cannons, unlike human cannons, when the material is not up to par, they can only cast the walls of the cannons to be extremely thick.

The first cannon barrel was a relatively large cannon, the caliber was the size of a dried soybean, the wall was about 2mm thick, and the tail of the cannon was closed, but there was a reserved hole for ignition. This is a typical breech gun.

The size and weight of this cannon determined that it was difficult for the Divine King warriors to carry it on the march, and it was more suitable as a city defense cannon.

But large cannons have their own advantages, the most important of which is that they are easy to cast.

When mankind first entered the age of firearms, because of the defects in casting technology, cannons could be cast, while individual firearms, such as arquebuses and early flintlock pistols, could only be made by rolling iron sheets. Later, a more advanced technique of drilling holes with iron rods was invented to make gun barrels.

However, the Divine Envoy King Legion did not take this technical route, their casting technology is relatively more mature, and the iron-making tools and iron rod drilling are not technically reserved, and secondly, they lack the right power (even if the blacksmith has the power to strike iron by hand, it is difficult for the ants to do it), it is really too difficult for the ants!

Although the barrel of an ant's cannon is much smaller than that of a human, the Legion of the Divine Envoy still uses the casting process.

The biggest hidden danger of the cast iron cannon is that if there is a cavitation bubble in it, or a deep cavitation that is difficult to see with the naked eye, it will have a significant impact on the strength and life of the casting.

With the current casting level of the Divine King Legion, large and small cavitations are unavoidable, and if the cavities are on the surface, you can also evaluate whether they can be filled and continued to be used according to the size, or simply return to the furnace to rebuild. If the cavity is in the invisible inside, then whether it is risky to use it depends on God's will.

This first cast soybean-caliber breech gun had invisible cavities inside, but no one knew it at the time.

The test was held in a makeshift underground nest, also far from the main city. The test chamber was long and narrow, only 3 centimeters wide and about 20 centimeters long.

The cannon is placed at one end of the test room, and the protagonist and some of the males who come to watch the cannon hide outside the nest to watch.

The trained artillery team has 18 soldier ants, they are divided into several groups, the cleaning team is responsible for cleaning the gun chamber with tools, because it is the first time to test the gun, in fact, there is no debris in the gun chamber, but the process is still meticulously done; Then the loading group first loaded a certain amount of gunpowder charcoal into the chamber, and did not add ammunition, but directly compacted it.

All the ants then move away from the gun, and the protagonist hides in a safe house outside. Two of the firing ants stuffed a flying knight's fire bomb into the hole in the tail of the cannon and pierced the oil film with their jaws.

The fire bomb slings contain small particles of charcoal soaked in gunpowder liquid, which are kept out of the air by the oil film on weekdays, and can be stored for a long time.

At this point, the oil film was punctured, and a few seconds later, the slings of the fire bomb began to oxidize and spontaneously combustion, and the powder charcoal was ignited.

I only heard a loud noise, which was particularly violent in the narrow underground environment, and the male ants, divine soldier ants, and divine workers behind the protagonist, even if they knew in advance that there would be movement, were scared and scurried one by one.

Finally appeased, the protagonist hurriedly took them to check it out.

In the test room, the artillery crew was so frightened that they ran away just now, and the protagonist asked the Praetorian Guards to chase them back.

And the protagonist looked at the iron cannon, intact, and there was a pungent smell of gunsmoke wafting in the test room, it seems that an exhaust outlet needs to be added here, otherwise it really can't stay.

This is the end of today's test gun, and when the smoke is almost gone, the paving ants will come here to make an exhaust outlet that goes straight to the ground.

And the high-level members of the Divine Envoy King Legion, although they did not directly observe the test cannon at close range for the sake of safety, also knew from the deafening sound that a new era was coming.

————

Eight days later, it's the new year.

The Divine Messenger King celebrates a New Year's with a large meal and a new calendar drawn by the protagonist.

The ventilation of the test chamber has been completed, and the protagonist decides to conduct a second test gun.

This time, he didn't bring high-level onlookers, but only brought 4 young male ants, which were prepared to be trained as artillery experts.

The original gun crew continued to control the cannons, cleaning and loading. This time, a pebble was added as ammunition.

Subsequently, the test was successful, and the stone directly smashed a deep pit in the soil layer opposite the test room.

The protagonist comes from the safe room with the young male ant, and after checking it out, he is very satisfied, and orders to try a few more shots.

After trying three more shots, the cannon ants found that the iron cannon was already scorching and difficult to get close.

The protagonist then remembered that there would be an overheating problem after the firearm was contacted, so it was okay, in addition to slowly waiting for its natural cooling, there was also water cooling technology.

So he ordered the artillery crew to find a ball of silk soaked in water and wipe the iron cannon to cool down.

As a result, just as he began to wipe and cool down, a crisp sound like ice breaking came, and the protagonist was stunned and ready to look back at the iron cannon.

The sound of a huge cannon is heard, and before the protagonist can turn his head, he feels like something has been hit his back.

It's blown up!!

The protagonist only feels that it is dark in front of him, and he doesn't know anything!

————

The end of the whole play!? Fake, of course!

(*・ω・)✄╰ひ╯