The great hero of the Silk Road, starting from a farm farmer

Chapter 59
In the northwest frontier, spring snow covered the mountains.Song Yingkui carried a matchlock gun and marched on the mountain behind his home on the soft spring snow.

It's another spring of the year, and it's the third spring that the soul has come to this time and space.

Traveling back and forth for nearly three years, compared to the protagonists of many time-traveling novels, it is not considered a success.To this day, he is still a farmer who stays in the mountain village at the end of the period.It is not famous all over the world, and I have never even been to Wazhou City, the only big city nearby.There is no wealthy party, and the family still lives in an adobe house.

But at this time, he is already very content. After nearly three years of hard work, the poor family who can't afford a penny now doesn't have to worry about a little money.From the perspective of ordinary people, he has worked hard to achieve a small class leap, so the Song family has transformed from a poor peasant to a rich middle peasant, or even a rich peasant, right?
What's next?The next step, of course, is to move firmly towards the composition of the small and middle landlord class.

In a feudal society, buying and selling was nothing. Only with enough land could the foundation of a family be stable.Especially in the northwest frontier, if the family has irrigated land, then they can be regarded as serious wealthy households.The Song family does not have an acre of water land so far, so it cannot be regarded as having achieved wealth.

Water and land are too valuable, no matter how good an acre of mountain land is, it is worth three or four taels of silver.One mu of water and land along Chuanzi is worth at least 20 taels of silver.If you don't meet a family that suddenly broke down, there is no place to sell food nearby.

Did you say that the annual output of the water land is high?That's it, the nearby good paddy fields can harvest about two stones of wheat a year, and the tax in paddy fields is two or three times higher than that in mountainous areas.However, the value of paddy fields is not calculated in this way. The existence of paddy fields in the northwestern frontier, which has suffered two droughts for three years, represents an additional layer of protection against natural disasters.

Especially along Chuanzi, because of the mountains and rivers flowing from the snow-capped Mahe Mountain, the water flow along the upper reaches of the Chuanhe River in summer will not be too small, so that this small river valley will always have water available. Drought will only affect its downstream.

The treasure land that can resist drought, if it is not really impossible, no one will sell it.That is the foundation of a family's long-term survival.

Grandpa Song Tianshun said when the whole family had a New Year's Eve dinner together that the next big thing for the family would be to build a courtyard of brick houses and find ways to buy dozens of acres of paddy fields.As long as these two things are done, he can go to see his ancestors with peace of mind.

The old man's idea is also suitable in Song Yingkui's view.Of course, he now has the confidence to realize this wish. On the one hand, the better the various businesses at home are, on the other hand, he has made a gun.With a gun, the money you earn will not be robbed by bandits. If you save money for a few years, you will always have the opportunity to buy paddy fields.

Since last winter, Song Yingkui has been making guns.At the beginning, he set the direction of the flintlock gun. After more than a month of tossing and finishing, he realized that the flintlock gun he made was not easy to use.

Structurally speaking, flintlock guns are more complicated than matchlock guns in that they need a pulled spring trigger, which can fire the primer in the fire door on the side and rear of the musket with the flint above the fire door.In principle, it is actually connected with firing the matchlock into the fire door.

But after actually making it, I found that it was simple.The core reason why the flintlock is not easy to use is that the flint used is not reliable. No matter how it is improved, the firing rate cannot be guaranteed unless the quality of the flint used can be improved qualitatively.For the time being, it seems difficult to find natural flint with a high rate of fire.

When doing it, he only thought about the difficulty of mechanical realization, but ended up getting stuck on the material, which made Song Yingkui feel a little discouraged for a while.A gun is made for self-defense, and if it cannot be fired at a critical moment, the effect of this thing will be reduced by more than half.In the end, Song Yingkui had to make another matchlock gun. Although the matchlock gun is more troublesome to use than the flintlock gun, and its adaptability to the environment is not as good as the flintlock gun, there is one thing, as long as the environmental impact is ignored, the gun can be fired [-]% when using it!For life-saving things, reliability must be given priority.

After making another matchlock gun, Song Yingkui took it to the mountains, hid in a place where no one was around, and got acquainted with the performance of the gun. At the same time, he also checked to see which areas needed further improvement.For the matchlock gun, Song Yingkui's request was very simple and straightforward, that is, to ensure that at a critical moment, a close-range enemy could be knocked down with one shot.The bandits looked fierce, so as long as they preemptively deal with a key one, the rest will be easy to deal with.To surprise the enemy with one move is the meaning of making guns.

The gun barrel is loaded with its own specially purified and reformulated granulated black powder wrapped in paper.Then put an iron ball wrapped in cloth into the barrel of the gun, and use the lance to compact the gunpowder and the bullet.

Open the rear sight, pour the gunpowder into the fire door with a small gourd containing gunpowder, and then close the rear sight.Blow out the leaked gunpowder with your mouth, pull the trigger, pick up the fire rope placed next to it and clamp it to the hammer, and open the rear sight again.

Aiming at a small mound in front of him, he pulled the trigger, and the gun went off with a bang!

This set of shooting movements is too cumbersome, and Song Yingkui feels that he is still not very proficient.The gun seems to be used at a critical moment, and it cannot be counted on as the only weapon.

In the blacksmith's shop, I am quite capable no matter what, and it takes about a month to make a gun.In terms of manufacturing time, the current gun will not be a practical weapon.That is to say, I use it as a means of saving my life. On a serious battlefield, this thing should not be easy to use.No wonder the Ming army, which was already equipped with matchlock guns in real history, did not have any absolute advantage in equipment when fighting the Qing army whose main weapon was bows and arrows.

After testing the gun for a long time on the mountain, Song Yingkui went down the mountain and pulled out his blue mule.Carrying a gun and riding a mule, he trotted to the shop along the mouth of the Sichuan Gorge.

Running on the country road in early spring, the cold wind blows people's cheeks hurt.At this time, I really look like an ancient knight with a spear and a horse.It should be a good thing that I am getting more and more adapted to life in the current time and space, and more and more confident to live better in this time and space.

At the beginning of the new year, the newly enthroned emperor of Dazheng started a new year name, this year is called the first year of Jingli.A new era may mean a new era, and I hope that I and my whole family can live better and better in this new era.

Song Yingkui felt that he was a worthless person, and other travelers all wanted to dominate the world or become a man of the times.But why do I think more and more about living my current life well?Doesn't this mean that there is no sense of responsibility for a traveler?

(End of this chapter)