Crisis is the best mobilization order! The news that the Wanjiapingshan bandits were coming to "levy taxes" spread far and wide, making the entire Liuliba boil. Early the next morning, Ouyang Xuan was woken up by a loud noise. He walked out of the door and found that near the gate of the cottage, there was a bustling flow of people, and everyone was busy in full swing. There are those who mold and pick up soil to prepare to build walls, there are those who carry wood and stones, and there are those who chisel and grind stones, and a new forging furnace that has just been built nearby by the industrial team is also operating, and in the distance is Cao Ergou leading people to train the militia, because now it takes a lot of labor to build, build walls, and open mines, so the teaching team only summoned 100 people to carry out military training.

Ouyang Xuan walked to the gate of the cottage first to inspect the construction of the wall. According to the introduction of Lu Dezhi, who commanded the construction of the wall, there were more than 200 people who participated in the construction of the wall, and a soldier from Cao Ergou's fire was in charge of the technology, and this soldier had participated in the construction of the damaged city wall of Chongqing Mansion. The newly built wall is only about 300 feet long, and it is planned to be built into 6 feet wide and one zhang high, and the internal rammed loess is covered with stone, and the technical requirements are not high, and the raw materials such as soil, wood, and stone in the mountain are not lacking, and it is estimated that it can be built within five days.

While talking, Huang Dagen walked back to the gate of the village from the outside with more than ten people, and he took people to inspect the ambush site. In order to prevent the raid of the bandits of Wanjiaping, Huang Dagen also placed secret sentries along the way, and warned in advance once it attacked. Ouyang Xuan knew that as an ambush, although he could catch the mountain bandits off guard, once the mountain bandits reacted, they would fight back violently. And in hand-to-hand combat with mountain bandits, the situation of Huang Dagen and others, who are small in number, will be extremely dangerous, and the effect should be better if they use grenades to sneak attack behind. Thinking of this, Ouyang Xuan couldn't help but feel anxious, so he thought about making the grenade as soon as possible to minimize the casualties of his own personnel.

He first inquired about the production of gunpowder, and got the news that charcoal powder and sulfur powder were ready, but the purity of the gunpowder was not up to the requirements, and it was necessary to continue purifying. He went to Blacksmith Hu's house again and saw that Li San'er was the only one busy, and the mold for casting the grenade shell requested three days ago had been completed, and it could be made in batches within three days. It's just that because of the huge demand for iron recently, the remaining iron has been used by the blacksmith and his son to make spearheads, and if you want to increase the production of grenades, you can only wait for the mine to produce more pig iron.

In the next two days, Ouyang Xuan took the time to inspect the construction of the wall and the mining of iron ore every day, in addition to focusing on the raw materials of gunpowder. After continuous trial and error, the mining team has preliminarily mastered the purification technology of nitrate, and the first batch of qualified products have been used to prepare black powder, and it is no longer a problem to carry out large-scale production in the future. More than 10 catties of black powder trial-produced are now being granulated, and they will be ready for use in two days. However, the increase in iron ore production has encountered a bottleneck, mainly because the working surface of the mine is too narrow, and the mining is all by manpower, even if the implementation of personnel in shifts, the increase in production is still limited. It seems that in order to achieve a large-scale increase in ore production, blasting technology will have to be used, but this will have to wait until the mass production of black powder is produced. As for the wall, it was built very smoothly, and according to Rude's estimate, it could be completed on schedule. However, Lu Dezhi also told Ouyang Xuan a bad news: Liuliba sent people to contact the rest of the villages to fight against the mountain bandits, which was known to the Wanjiaping mountain bandits. Although none of the villages agreed to form an alliance with Liuliba to advance and retreat together, Liuliba's behavior had angered Xiong Ben, the leader of the mountain bandits, and he vowed to severely punish Liuliba's "rebellion".

The day the wall was built was also the day of the successful trial production of grenades, which was a double happiness for Ouyang Xuan. In addition to Chen Hu, Hu Blacksmith, and Li San'er, Ouyang Xuan also asked Huang Dagen to select a few guards with strong arms to come with them. In the first test, Ouyang Xuan tried it himself, after all, he knew the characteristics of grenades best. After telling everyone to retreat to a safe distance, he took a small grenade, lit the fuse, and threw it forward, quickly lying on the ground before the grenade landed. Two or three seconds later, a huge explosion sounded, and the wild grass within a few meters around was blown in all directions, and the sprinkled soil fell more than ten meters away. The thunderous noise frightened Huang Dagen and the others who were watching from a distance to stand still, their expressions all shocked. Ouyang Xuan beckoned everyone to take a closer look, and a shallow pit appeared on the mud floor of the explosion point, and the air was filled with the choking smell of fire and gunpowder.

The explosion of this improved black powder was really amazing. The remaining three tests were carried out, after Ouyang Xuan explained the key points in detail, let the guards throw them one by one, among which threw a medium-sized grenade, its power is even more amazing, there is a small tree near the explosion point, the huge explosion will blow up a small tree with a thick bowl mouth, and the other small trees are also blown up, and the explosion killing range is more than ten meters. There were 27 grenades made in the first batch, and 23 were left after the four used for testing. Among them, there were nineteen small grenades weighing two catties, each containing half a catty of black powder and half a catty of broken iron; three four-pound grenades, each containing one pound of black powder and one pound of broken iron; The largest grenade weighed eight pounds, and one and a half pounds of black powder and broken iron were used, and this weight should be called a bomb instead of a grenade.

Due to the recent shortage of iron, the broken iron that fills the inside of the grenade is all scrap from the blacksmith's shop, the largest of which is like the index finger and the smaller is like soybeans. Combined with the situation of the test, Ouyang Xuan explained that Blacksmith Hu and Li San'er would focus on improving the small grenade in the next step, so that its power was enough and light and easy to carry, as for the medium and large grenades, the weight was too large to carry, and it was suitable for condescending throwing, and it was a sharp weapon for defending the city. Through this field test, not only the quality of the fuze, gunpowder and cartridge casings was verified, which was convenient for the next step to improve the manufacturing process, but also trained the grenadiers, and more importantly, let everyone see Ouyang Xuan's new skills, confirming that what he said about making powerful weapons was true, laying a good foundation for the next step of cooperation with Liuliba.

All the preparations for the battle went smoothly, especially the ramming of the new wall, which made the cottage feel a lot more at ease, and the only thing that made Ouyang Xuan anxious was Yu Zhu's condition. In the past few days, Ouyang Xuan asked people to stew the pheasants, rabbits and other meat he caught to feed Yu Zhu, but his condition only improved slightly, although he no longer fell asleep frequently, and his spirit was slightly better, but he was still getting thinner and thinner. The turning point in Yu Zhu's condition appeared in the return of Dong Hu and others. Not only did they explore the road outside the mountain, but they also brought back the yellow artemisia that cured Yu Zhu's disease.