At the end of December, good news came from the research team.

The Shengong ants of the scientific research group responsible for the experiment of fluorescent bacteria extract have finally developed a way to purify the liquid. The physical and chemical properties of the liquid purified by this process are no different from those of the liquid in the mystery ball, and it can be confirmed that it is the same substance.

The protagonist is overjoyed, which once again proves that his guess is correct.

The result of this research means that the gods have given the King's Legion the ability to produce a mysterious liquid that can be used as gunpowder.

Gunpowder is a substance that can burn rapidly and regularly under the action of appropriate external energy, and at the same time generate a large amount of high-temperature gas. It is mainly used in the military field, such as the energy source of guns and shells, artillery projectiles and rockets, missile propellants and other driving devices, and has strong lethality. Gunpowder is also one of the important inventions of an ancient country in the human world that changed the world.

After the protagonist came to this world, he didn't think about inventing gunpowder and letting the Divine King Legion enter the era of hot weapons.

However, although the black powder was simple, only charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur were needed, the Divine Envoy King's army only had charcoal to produce itself, lacking the key saltpeter and sulfur.

Saltpeter and sulfur are widely distributed in the world, but the range of ants is limited, and the huge ant country that the protagonist has seen is only a few villages and a township. With such a small range of activities, there are really no resources of saltpeter and sulfur.

For the production of gunpowder, the most irreplaceable resource is saltpeter, although saltpeter can also be prepared by soil method, for example, the ancients scraped soil nitrate next to the latrine, but the protagonist did not know this method.

Until the discovery of a mysterious liquid that would explode, the protagonist even gave up on the idea of making gunpowder.

Although the mysterious liquid has similar properties to gunpowder, it is easy to spontaneously ignite and self-detonate, which is more unstable than the early nitroglycerin, and the protagonist does not dare to use this thing as a substitute for gunpowder.

Later, although the anti-spontaneous combustion method of grease to isolate the air was invented, the mysterious liquid was still difficult to store for a long time, so it could only be left in the mysterious ball for use.

In addition, the Mystic Orbs must be obtained from the corpses of the Destroyers, and the supply is now limited and the supply has now been cut off. The protagonist is only willing to use a few mystery balls when it is very necessary.

At present, the more than 2,000 mysterious balls in the inventory of the Divine Envoy King Legion really want to be used openly, and it really won't take long.

But now, after the invention of the technology of fluorescent bacteria extraction and purification of the mysterious liquid, the gods enabled the Wang Legion to produce this substance by themselves, and the technology of mixed adsorption was invented before this, and the stable long-term storage of the mysterious liquid was realized.

The last obstacle to the Gunpowder Age has been overcome!!

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[Xinyangcheng] soon built a workshop for the production of gunpowder.

Gunpowder liquid is the new name that the protagonist gives to the mysterious liquid.

This workshop is a high-risk unit, although there is already a technology to prevent spontaneous combustion and self-explosion of gunpowder, but in the actual preparation, there must be a variety of hidden dangers.

In previous scientific research, gunpowder liquid has repeatedly spontaneously exploded and spontaneously combusted to cause accidents, and more than a dozen ants died in the accident, and some of them were experienced Shengong ant researchers.

Gunpowder liquid must be produced, and the protagonist intends to establish a gunpowder center in a secondary nest in the northwest of [Xinyangcheng], on the road from [February Lancheng], after the beginning of spring next year.

There are not many ant populations there, there are no other particularly important industries, and even a major accident will not have an impact on other key industries such as nests and metallurgy. Moreover, this nest is also located on the edge of the planned canal, which is very close to [Xinyang City] and has convenient transportation.

But now, the protagonist plans to build an experimental workshop in the corner of [Xinyang City] first, and while producing gunpowder liquid in small quantities, he will study and improve the production process and safety process.

The workshop is far from the main city of [Xinyangcheng], deep underground, and to the north there is a lonely passage that stretches more than three meters away to find the nest rooms where the workshop is located.

During the construction of the workshop and combustion chamber and the manufacture of the required equipment, the research group continued to study charcoal for adsorbing a mixture of gunpowder, grease and lime.

This substance is named "Gunpowder Greed" by the protagonist and is an excellent substitute for solid gunpowder.

First of all, gunpowder charcoal is stable in a conventional environment and will not spontaneously ignite and explode. The earliest test samples of gunpowder charcoal have been preserved for more than two months, and there has been no significant change in appearance and properties, and it seems that it is not easy to oxidize in the air.

Secondly, like black powder, gunpowder charcoal burns quickly when ignited and explodes in a confined space. In the past, there were two accidents in the research team, when the gunpowder charcoal fell into the evaporation pyre and caused an explosion.

This property allows gunpowder charcoal to become a propellant, which is necessary for thermal weapons such as guns.

In order to prevent explosions in the production process of gunpowder charcoal, the gunpowder liquid distillation and extraction workshop in [Xinyangcheng] must use fire, and the gunpowder charcoal configuration workshop, which must not have fire, must be separated and separated from each other at a certain distance. This arrangement will also be used in other workshops or factories.

However, gunpowder charcoal cannot be detonated by collisions, unlike cotton wool or nitroglycerin. This means that if the Legion of the Divine Kings only has gunpowder coals, their firearms can only be activated by open flames such as arquebuses and flintlock pistols, and cannot jump directly to the firing pin era.

But the pros far outweigh the disadvantages, and as a fan of military history, the protagonist knows that even arquebuses and flintlock pistols are too far ahead of cold weapons.

The Divine Envoy King Legion has just achieved ironization, but he didn't expect to run into the firearms age soon.

Of course, it will take some time to expand the production capacity of gunpowder liquid and gunpowder charcoal, and the related firearms will have to be studied from scratch.

But the protagonist feels that this speed can be gradually increased, and maybe starting next year, some of the Divine Envoy King Legions will be able to gradually change their firearms.

At present, the firearms conceived in the protagonist's mind for the army are mainly large firearms.

For example, the ballista on the "tank" is replaced by a cannon with a caliber about the thickness of mung beans, and the current city defense ballista is replaced by a city defense gun with a larger caliber (red bean caliber), etc.

As for the distribution of muskets to individual soldiers to the army, it seems that it is not yet mature.

On the one hand, the six arthropods of ordinary ants are not as flexible as human hands, whether it is a flintlock pistol or an arquebus, the firing steps are very complicated, and cannot be completed by a single ant.

On the other hand, the technology of making muskets is actually more complex than making cannons, and the requirements for metallurgy and finishing are also high.

Before the process progressed, the Divine Envoy King's legion could only advance to the stage of sharing hot and cold weapons, using artillery as long-range firepower and jawknives as melee weapons!