In the pre-time modern world, there were often explosions in certain hot spots, such as: which armed forces used a certain domestic seamless steel pipe to assemble a cannon, which force changed a certain domestic gas pipe into a rocket...... Or liquefied gas canisters being used as grenades, or toy drones being turned into battlefield reconnaissance tools — news that sounds funny, but isn't a joke. But in addition to the amusement, behind the surface of these jokes is the embodiment of the advanced metallurgical and manufacturing level of the modern world: when both reach a certain level, the gap between military and civilian will indeed become bridgeable.

It's a pity that at this stage, the height of the basic technology tree in the Ice and Fire World is still far from the "do whatever you want" line.

The first batch of cannon barrels produced in the first casting workshop in Houguan Town had been poured and cooled two months ago, but they were ordered to be sealed without even a single real test firing.

The current technology of casting cannon barrels in the land grant is actually basically born out of ...... No, it should be said that it is exactly the existing clock-casting process in Westeros. The general process is as follows: in large cities such as King's Landing and Old Town, spend a lot of money to openly solicit experienced bell casters, and show them the schematic drawings drawn by Iger himself when they come to the land grant, and ask them to start construction according to their needs. What is produced after a busy work, you can say that it is a copper cannon, but it is essentially an elongated + slim version of the copper bell, and there is no suspense that it can be rung immediately when it is hung a little higher, but it is still a lot of steps away from becoming an artillery.

Given that the material is copper with better physical properties than iron, risks such as fractures and explosions can be pushed back on the priority list. However, the "bronze bell into a cannon" at least needs to go through the following steps: first, use a file and other grinding tools to polish the surface of the metal barrel, remove the burrs and holes that are easy to cause stress concentration, and then use a boring knife to boring the inside of the barrel to make it as straight as possible to ensure the firing speed and accuracy, and finally drill a fire door hole at the tail of the "copper bell", and a copper cannon that can be hit is roughly completed.

As long as you are willing to spend time and energy, the above operations can still be done with the technical level of this world. None of this was the biggest obstacle to Iger putting artillery into use before the Wraiths attacked, the real obstacle was the gunpowder...... To be precise, there is a serious shortage of nitrate.

......

Even if a real cannon is successfully cast and subsequently processed, no one in this world will use it - the same gunpowder weapon, anyone can throw explosive bombs, but to operate the cannon requires training of specialized artillery. The latter required a great deal of instruction, practice, and live firing to test out the proper charge and use of the Night's Watch industry's own gunpowder, and to make the soldiers thoroughly memorize the correct procedures for handling guns, master basic ballistics, and have an idea of sighting skills.

And, of course, the most important thing is to make sure that your own people are not frightened by the roar of artillery in wartime.

There is no theoretical difficulty in the above conditions, but it requires the consumption of gunpowder to carry out. In the case that the land grant has not yet established a stable supply chain of gunpowder, and only Iger has ventured out to bring less than two tons of saltpeter from the King's Landing Industrial Park, forcibly starting the artillery launch plan will inevitably face one of the following two outcomes:

Either they rushed to meet the battle without training qualified artillerymen, and as a result, they were in a hurry on the battlefield and could not bring out the true power of the firing thermal weapons, or they burned money...... No, burning gunpowder cultivated qualified artillerymen, but in the process, too many gunpowder resources were consumed, resulting in no gunpowder to use in the real battle, and it was difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice.

Not to mention, the efficiency and reliability of artillery in dealing with the tide of ghouls and strange ghosts are not necessarily as high as the simple and crude "explosive bomb + wildfire". Not to mention anything else, the Night King who hid three hundred meters away in the night in the defensive battle of Guanghou Guanzhen was the target that the Longjing artillery could not deal with - the shotgun could not reach, the solid bullet could not be hit, and as for the flowering bullet...... A small fuse alone cannot be made in a short period of time.

It doesn't take too much to explain, the dragon steel blast projectile was a meritorious service, and the entire land grant after the Battle of Changhu added up to less than 100 dragon crystal bomb margins - it turns out that Egger's decision to forcibly put in immature weapons was correct when he didn't rush to pull out the seedlings in the first place.

However, the right decision also has its timeliness. Explosive bombs are useful, but they can't be used to conquer the world, and with the discovery of saltpeter produced in the final Fireplace City Boiling Yard and the smooth progress of resource collection in other parts of the North, it is finally time for the mysterious project that has been suspended and cannot be named.

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It is not complicated to prepare for war, but if you want to do it secretly...... It can't be done by Egger remote control. Even though he understood that it was rude to leave the queen at the end of the Hearth, he still had to solemnly explain to his face and say goodbye for the time being—after leaving Warner Bookwell to lead more than a thousand reliable elites to protect Daenerys and the wounded dragon, Iger and the rest of the army dragged the first batch back to Houguan Town.

Life is endless, and strategic flickering cannot be stopped. The first thing Iger did after returning to Houguan Town was still acting: he didn't mention the fight for the Iron Throne for the queen, but went straight to organize the "Expedition Outside the Fortress".

After a simple and brief celebration, the first orders for full land grant after the bloody battle of Long Lake came to an end, carried by the crows and heralds, rushed to the various fortresses. The Commander-in-Chief of the Night's Watch solemnly announced that this war against the Aliens had officially shifted from a strategic defensive phase to a strategic counteroffensive...... The specific orders are as follows: 1. Carry out the transfer of personnel and troops, draw manpower from each fortress village to recover and refill the many fortresses between the Grand Canyon and the Long Night Fort that were previously abandoned or destroyed by the Stranger; 2. Resume pre-war patrols, strictly prohibit the soldiers of each fortress from leaving the garrison and the area of responsibility without authorization, re-carry out daily drills and even increase the intensity, and select strong and strong residents to expand the Ranger force; 3. Order the rebuilt Shadow Tower, The three fortresses of Black Castle and Donghaiwang dug the tunnels that had been flooded and blocked before the war as soon as possible to prepare for the expedition.

After arranging this series of jobs that could be used as smoke bombs and strengthen his control over the land grant, the weapons research and development department he had sent someone to convene in advance was almost all in the hall. Iger left his office and went to the meeting to be held, which was not lengthy but informative, and in this seminar, he arranged for all the technical and administrative staff of Houguan Town to be divided into groups and departments to carry out a number of tasks such as artillery live fire tests, recasting improvements, and gunpowder research, writing, and training......

With the change of identity and status, the advanced concepts and knowledge of modern people in his mind are no longer Egger's only hole cards and reliance, on the contrary, the time and cost of trial and error of his subordinates are all borne by him - therefore, he not only assigns tasks, but also takes out all the poor and popular science level related knowledge in his memory without reservation, pointing out the general direction for the group of "ancient" scientific researchers in front of him, hoping that they will take as few detours as possible.

The launching of artillery is a "hard" part of war preparations. But it is clear that when waging a war, the "soft" part actually covers a larger area. At the end of the workshop, Iger dismissed most of the participants, leaving only one outsider, an external metallurgist from King's Landing, Tob Mott.

When he personally invited him from the capital of the Seven Kingdoms to give him land to reforge the "Lightbringer", Egger offered a high price of one-fifth of the sword, but at the same time demanded that he be paid after the war was over. Tobe Mott was afraid of Egrei's account and chose to stay in Houguan and wait for his payment—idleness is idleness, and after thinking about it, he accepted the high salary offered by the former, and passed on his metallurgical knowledge and experience to the technicians of the Night's Watch during the waiting time...... Ben was just looking for something to do, but who knew that he was infected by the vigorous spirit of the entire land grant capital (of course, money is indispensable), but he really put some thought and energy into bringing the "apprentice", and after coming and going, he gradually mixed from an external expert to half an internal staff, and the relationship with the night watchman was as close as if he had known each other for many years.

......

"Master Mott. Egg stretched out his hand to sit down in front of him, and said with a smile on his face, "Thank you for giving up the good environment of King's Landing to support the Night's Watch in this cold haunted place, without your serious and fruitful work, the Night's Watch would have paid a greater price if they could still win this battle." This credit cannot be overstated, and now that the war is over...... It's basically over, we negotiated one-fifth of the pay, seventy-one, one-fifth is fourteen and one-fifth, I ......"

"Just ten sticks. Thinking that Egg wanted to talk about what to do with the extra fifth, Tob Mott replied with a smile on his face, "It is the greatest honor of my life to be able to stand side by side with the Night's Watch in such a great battle to protect the Seven Kingdoms and turn the tide. I can let my grandson blow to his grandson on the night Houguan Town was attacked by the dead—that extra four and a fifth of a dragon steel arrow is my respect and respect for the Night's Watch Legion!"

Fighting side by side is obviously a nice statement, and the truth is that Tob Mott huddled in his room in the inner fort on the night of the defense of Houguan Town, wrapped in a quilt and shivering, not even half a ghoul in sight, and still scolded Egger for bringing him to this hellish place, and regretted that he had not finished his work and hid back in King's Landing.

But as the sun rose again in the east, I walked out of the room where I had been hiding all night, looking at the outer city of Houguan Town, which was still smoking from the ruins, the piles of corpses outside the walls, and the stench of burning protein and fat in the air...... Then he witnessed the queen riding a dragon from the sky, and watched the Houguan Town troops who dared to organize and pursue the enemy for the rest of the catastrophe. All the horror and frustration turned into shock and pride - although it was true that he didn't kill half of the moving ghouls, he did experience this battle!

As long as Egken, in his official capacity as the Night's Watch, admitted that he forged the arrow that shot the Wraith-King, it didn't matter if he didn't want to be paid. In a top position in an industry, he doesn't care much about money or other things outside his body, fame and capital are what he values most!

"Oh, you're mistaken, I'm not dwelling on the odds. Egg was stunned for a moment, then smiled even more, "I'll give you one, fifteen! You can choose any fifteen Lightbringers to bring back to King's Landing, as long as you accept the official number and name of the Night's Watch, whether you want to collect or sell it." But I'd like to ask you for one more favor. ”

"Your Excellency, if I can do it, I will do it!" Tob Mott felt that no promise had ever been so sincere.

"The true 'Lightbringer' has only been forged seventy-one, and the other six are made by me from tile steel. In addition, after the strange spirits broke through the canyon and captured a series of fortresses along the Great Wall, we also temporarily took out twenty of them and cast them into pieces and filled them with explosive bombs, which means that there are only fifty-one true light bringers left in this world. Only a handful of insiders know about this, and I told you to keep it a secret, so you shouldn't have said it everywhere, did you?"

"That's nature, we're not children, can't we know what we can say and what we can't!"

"Thank you for your cooperation...... Unfortunately, the bad news is that even these fifty-one true Lightbringers were all used in the war, and although I ordered to recover as many as possible, in the end only less than half of them were recovered, less than thirty. As for whether the remaining twenty or so were really damaged or lost in the scuffle, or whether they were secretly hidden by the soldiers under them and intended to be sold for money, I will never know, and I will never be able to track them down with great fanfare. Iger sighed and acted helplessly: "It is conceivable that when the war is completely over, there will soon be a bunch of people who take the 'Lightbringer' who I don't know whether they were stolen, picked up or hidden, and who can't tell whether they are true or not, claiming to have picked them up on the battlefield, and then sell them everywhere, hoping to make a fortune from the heat of this legendary victory of the Night's Watch." Rather than allowing such chaos to arise and causing the value of the remaining 'True Light Messengers' in our hands to shrink in value, legend and authenticity, why don't we just take this dividend ourselves?"

Well?

Tob Mott is over half a hundred years old, how shrewd and sophisticated, after listening to it and thinking for a while, his eyes gradually widened: "Is it difficult...... I'll forge forty more forgeries, and make seventy-seven?"

"Where I came from, there is a saying that history is written by the victors. Iger smiled, neither nodding nor answering positively, "Isn't the truth of the Lightbringer the same as the so-called 'truth of history'? True or false, it doesn't matter at all, as long as the two of us admit that it is true, even if it is false, it is true, and on the contrary, even if it is true, as long as we don't admit it, then it is also false! True and false, false and false, the two of us, the founders and the first owner, only say it!"

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