Han Hai Tang Ergui

Chapter 317
In Liangzhou, beside the Macheng River, two huge and towering masonry pagodas stood up.

These two tall towers look like a chimney with a thin mouth and a big belly. There are several small openings at the bottom of the two sides of the tower, and there is also a feeding port for dumping items above. It is obvious that there are furnace throats and hearths. kind of design.

Therefore, this is not a temple or pagoda, but a blast furnace built by Zhang Zhao according to the records.

It was not easy to come up with this. When Shule City was first captured, Zhang Zhao gave Cao Shishi his ideas and rough drawings.

In four years, Cao Shishizhuan spent more than 200,000 guns on Zhang Zhao in order to conquer the construction of this blast furnace, which was enough to buy several hundred sets of iron armor.

But Zhang Zhao was willing to throw it in, because he knew that the indigenous method of steelmaking, which was said to be a waste in later generations, is a big killer in this era.

In order to obtain the refractory bricks needed to build the blast furnace, Zhang Zhao even ordered the red brick technology tree in advance, and in order to produce qualified red bricks, more than [-] bricks were thrown into it.

However, the red bricks produced can only be used to build blast furnaces and low houses. If they are to build fortresses, their hardness is still too bad.

"Mr. Erlang, look at this blast furnace. From top to bottom, it consists of the throat, furnace body, furnace waist, furnace belly, and furnace hearth. All parts are built with red bricks, compound clay, and glutinous rice juice. No matter how high the temperature is, it can Guarantee the safety of the blast furnace."

Cao Shisi, with his hips akimbo, looked like a chief engineer, and introduced him while standing beside Zhang Zhao.

"Are you familiar with the steps? If it works, I, Hexi, will have an extra weapon!"

Zhang Zhao was also a little apprehensive, he didn't know much about it, if it didn't work, hundreds of thousands of pens would be in vain.

Cao Shisi nodded confidently, and the smelting began. First, the iron ore was crushed, mixed with lime and slag, and then water was added to sinter it. In addition, the prepared coke was also prepared.

Then feed from the feeding port on the top of the blast furnace, add a layer of iron ore, add a layer of coke, continue in this way, continue to heat and fire, and you can get the original molten iron.

But this is the first step. The next step is to quickly transport the uncooled molten iron to the converter built next to it for refining.

The only function of the converter is to continuously stir the molten iron and blow air into the molten iron, so that the oxygen in the air can enter the molten iron, and the carbon and oxygen in the molten iron can be combined to form carbon dioxide, thereby reducing the carbon content of the molten iron. Purpose.

In this era, the biggest reason for the poor quality of iron is the problem of carbon content. Zhang Zhao's blast furnace can produce high-carbon steel and low-carbon steel relatively stably, and each has its own use.

Zhang Zhao sat with Cao Shishi from the early morning until the evening, and finally even obtained steel close to the material of the horizontal knife in his hand from a furnace of steel.

The blue-gray raw steel looks like a metal. Dhondup took the most common iron knife of this era and slashed it, and the iron knife snapped.

Suddenly, thunderous cheers!

Man Xiong, Yan Jin and others beside him were all overjoyed, and Fan Zhi, who followed to watch the fun, even congratulated Zhang Zhao excitedly.

"Sikong has smelted this kind of divine iron, and he can forge it into the armor of a divine weapon. In the future, he will be invincible in all battles!"

Zhang Zhaozhao accepted all the compliments from Fan Zhi and his subordinates, and told Guo Tiance to present the forged low-carbon steel to various officials, big and small, to let them know that I, Zhang Sikong, and Got an artifact.

But after the crowd dispersed, Zhang Zhao and Cao Shishi sat together on a hillock not far from the blast furnace, watching the mess all over the ground in silence.

After taking a few sips of wine, Cao Shishi turned to look at Zhang Zhao.

"Mr. Erlang, the hydraulic blower you asked me to make has been worn out, and three workers who stirred the molten iron fell ill on the spot.

The red bricks in the No. [-] Furnace were burnt to high temperature, and the blast furnace was already damaged. Less than [-]% of the coke that had been accumulated for more than a year was left, [-] jin of iron ore, and less than [-] jin of steel was smelted. "

As he said that, Cao Shishi burst into tears, "Erlang Jun, I'm sorry, for 300,000 silver coins, only a few hundred catties of steel have been smelted."

Zhang Zhao patted Cao Shishi on the shoulder, and then simply put his arms around his shoulder.

"Everything is difficult at the beginning, at least we didn't fail, I believe you can find a better way.

Even if you can't find it, it doesn't matter, even if a certain Zhang Erlang spends money, he will throw out tens of thousands of catties of steel! "

While comforting Cao Yanming, Zhang Zhao heaved a long sigh in his heart, this golden finger is really fucking hard to open.

It seems to be a very simple thing, but there is often a whole system behind it.

Zhang Zhao, if he wants to make steel by local methods, he must at least point out the ability to produce coke on a large scale, hydraulic or even steam mixers, blowers, better quality refractory bricks, and better carbon blowing methods.

Otherwise, it will be like what he is now, and he can only get the desired result by using stupid methods in all links, using the most primitive methods, relying on a lot of money and manpower to open the way, and paying a huge price.

However, this is destined to be impossible to continue. One catty of steel costs more money than twenty catties of pig iron.Open your mother's golden finger!

But losing your temper belongs to losing your temper, but Zhang Zhao still decided to continue. Since he has already lost 300,000 guan, he still has to listen to it.

At least [-] to [-] super elites who use steel knives to pierce steel armor must be produced. The model of returning to the rebel army in the future is to use a small number of elite forbidden troops and a large number of conscripts to fight.

"Okay! Big man, why don't you wipe away your tears, cheer up, we still have to go to celebrate! Tomorrow, I will go to the shooting range with someone. Liu Di is said to have made the whirlwind cannon. Let's go and see together!"

Zhang Zhao grinned, and coaxed Cao Shishi like a child. Speaking of it, it seems that his big boss, Sikong, lost more than three hundred thousand yuan, right?

But in the end, he was asked to coax people everywhere, and then slapped his own face to pretend to be fat everywhere.

On the way back to Liangzhou with Cao Shishi, Zhang Zhao had a growing feeling that in the future, he could not just spend money to promote this aspect.

He may consider following the model of later generations of universities to build a college with a hundred schools of thought contending, and use the development of science and technology to promote the development of productivity, instead of relying solely on him to forcefully drive it as it is now.

. . . .

In the north of Liangzhou City, there is a special army training ground, which is also the place where the village shooting ceremony is held.

Zhang Zhao took everyone to visit the blast furnace yesterday, brought several hundred kilograms of steel back to the city, which is of good quality in this era, and specially held a banquet to boast about it, and today he came to the training ground non-stop. The camel whirlwind gun with mature technology.

The whirlwind cannon made by Liu Di, Zhang Zhao took a closer look, it was bigger than he imagined, but a Bactrian camel could still move.

This whirlwind gun is composed of more than [-] large and small parts, and can be assembled in about two quarters of an hour.

Every two camels are equipped with a whirlwind cannon and several spare parts, under the command of one banner captain.

There are two main gunners and team lieutenants who are regarded as officers, six auxiliary gunners, three loaders, two observers and aimers, five assemblers, one camel breeder, and three mules and horses.

This is the basic unit of a whirlwind gun, called the flag team, with a total of three officers, 17 soldiers, three mules and horses, and two camels.

Every five flags formed an action unit, with a general in command. Liu Di made a total of 20 camel whirlwind guns for Zhang Zhao, with a total of [-] people and [-] camels.

However, this is still strength on paper, because Zhang Zhao simply cannot afford to support a dedicated camel artillery of about 600 people.

His current Guiyi Army has 5000 people in Hanhai Town and Yucheng Town. After conquering Liangzhou and the Six Divisions, he recruited nearly 2000 people.

With a population of more than [-], he now maintains an army of [-]. These are basically full-time soldiers. It is true that Tianzi No. [-] is aggressive.

So right now, everyone in Liangzhou is a little restless, as if they are holding their breath.

This is inevitable. If the [-] standing army is in Liangzhou, if they don't go out to occupy other territories, or find a force to fight with, it's simply not normal.

In other words, the Wang family of Jincheng in Lanzhou saw Zhang Zhao's situation correctly, so Wang Zongheng didn't want to join him.

His analysis is actually correct, Zhang Zhao is not short of troops now, what is lacking is how to arrange the territory and goods of his thousands of troops.

Today, Zhang Zhao has [-] camel whirlwind guns of the flag team to conduct exercises, and the first thing to do is the motorized exercise.

With 45 camels and [-] or [-] mules and horses, the speed of transfer on the battlefield is still very fast. Compared with the catapult, the camel whirlwind cannon is quite a bit like a self-propelled cannon of later generations.

The main body of the one or two hundred catties whirlwind cannon is mounted on a majestic camel, and the parts are carried by another camel.

There are two modes of the whirlwind cannon, one of which is to put the cannon body on the camel, which is less powerful, but very flexible, and can even retreat while fighting.

When it is placed close to complex terrain such as hills, it can restrain the impact of cavalry to a certain extent.

Panquan ordered repeatedly, and the red flags were waving in the wind under the waving of the semaphore soldiers.

Twenty whirlwind cannons aimed at the front, and the fist-sized stones smashed like a gust of wind and rain towards the wooden figures tied with wooden sticks and wearing armor, representing the enemy soldiers.

Even though the wooden men had armor, they were immediately smashed to pieces, and after this wave of stones were thrown, less than ten seconds later, the next round of stones hit them again, and now the wooden men were completely smashed to pieces. Bits and pieces.

When the whirlwind cannon hit the enemy, the soldiers belonging to the whirlwind cannon banner team formed two rows of archers and a row of pear blossom spearmen under the command of the officer.

The pear blossom spearmen ignited the gunpowder at the lower mouth of the gun, and the fiery fire dragon sprayed out. At the same time, the archers drew their bows and fired, only to hear the sound of swishing, and the ground was full of arrows.

Bai Congxin beside Zhang Zhao wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and said to Zhang Zhao.

"Sikong, this whirlwind cannon is really sharp. If it is true that eighty of them have been assembled, and they are fighting and retreating, arrows and rocks are roaring all over the sky, and there are spearmen surrounding the screen to protect them. I am afraid that thousands of cavalry will not be able to please them if they come to charge the battle."

Zhang Zhao laughed out loud.Yesterday's [-] guns produced only a few hundred catties of steel, and it was swept away.

This camel whirlwind gun is a good thing. In history, the Xixia people relied on this to make the heavy infantry of the Song Dynasty suffer enough.

And now, he is facing the same.The warriors in the Central Plains were tough and brave. Compared with them, the Hexi Army still has a certain gap except for the elite part.

If it can be blessed with a camel whirlwind cannon, it can blow up the army formation at a long distance.It can greatly reduce the gap between the two armies.

While the two were talking, Fan Shun began to practice another method of fighting the camel cannon.

That is, the camel cannon was disassembled from the camel's back and assembled on the spot, and the stones projected changed from being bigger than a fist to being about the size of a baby's head.

With a single command, the camel cannon assembled on the ground sacrificed mobility, but increased power.

Amidst the whistling sound, huge stones slammed into an earthen city wall more than three meters high and one meter wide.

Twenty whirlwind cannons focused on one of the areas according to the adjusted trajectory. After less than five rounds, the city wall was smashed and collapsed.

Now it's the turn of Yin Yaozi, who is good at defending the city, to break out in a cold sweat.

"I don't want this whirlwind cannon to be so sharp. I'm afraid that in the future, except for big cities like Liangzhou and Lanzhou, and ordinary small counties, if there are dozens of whirlwind cannons, they can blast a gap for an hour or two."

Zhang Zhao also thought so, this kind of whirlwind cannon, which is one size smaller, will definitely not be able to attack tall cities.

But it is still very useful to fight some small cities, some small forts, and military strongholds.

However, before he could announce the rewards to Liu Di and other craftsmen, an urgent envoy with three red flags on his back rushed over from a distance.

Zhang Zhao took a closer look and found that it was Fanshun who acted as the envoy to deliver the urgent military mission.

What happened to make it so urgent?
Everyone was puzzled, there shouldn't be any major events happening in Liangzhou recently!

Fan Shun probably rushed all the way from Shenniao County. His face was pale. When he saw Zhang Zhao, he fell off his horse and yelled loudly as he was still on the ground.

"Sikong! Pei Sheren sent news from Kaifeng Mansion in the Eastern Capital that the imperial court has agreed to Sikong's request from the Hexi Jiedu Envoy. There is also a mutiny in Weizhou. Pei Sheren asked Sikong to prepare for sending troops."

　Today, the company arranged a business trip to a place where there is no expressway. It took six hours for the bus on the road. I have just arrived at the hotel. It is estimated that the update time will be delayed tomorrow. Thank you for your patience!

　　Woohoo, I really miss the days when I could touch fish casually!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)