Horse on the World

Chapter 156 Sharp Weapon
The craftsman camp in Fuyuan is not what it used to be. Rows of neatly built houses stretch out, and there is almost no end in sight. Since the arrival of more than ten thousand craftsmen from the capital, the place has suddenly It prospered, and after repeated expansions, it finally formed the current scale.A market town with tens of thousands of people appeared on the original wilderness.

The entire craftsman camp is divided into two areas, the living area and the working area. The two areas are separated by a wall. The living area can't help but come and go, but it is not so easy to enter the working area.Every craftsman or apprentice in the work area has a special badge and a unique number. Only those who have these badges can enter and leave the factory.And some key departments in the factory area are even more strictly guarded, and ordinary people can't get close at all.

The Department of Statistics and Investigation has a special open department here, and there are even more spies secretly deployed. On the outside, between Jiangzuoying and Yiling Iron Mine, there is a wing under Wang Qinian's Tianlei camp stationed in Fuyuan. Nearly 2000 people were stationed here to ensure the safety of the two places.The Craftsmanship Camp is a department that Li Qing attaches great importance to, and he must not be allowed to make any mistakes. Moreover, since the Craftsmanship Camp expanded, the Statistics and Investigation Department has uncovered many spies who attempted to sneak into the factory area, which made the security here even tighter. .

Today's craftsman camp is even more extraordinary than usual. Dingzhou Marshal Li Qing is about to inspect the place. Martial law has begun here early on. The streets are full of soldiers with guns and sabers. The spies of the Statistics and Investigation Department have already cast down among the crowd. Be vigilant. looking for suspicious persons.

The chief supervisor of the craftsman camp, Ren Ruyun, was full of spring breeze. The smoky and disheveled pure technician was now a well-cultivated official. In the yamen, he ordered his subordinates to check if there were any possible omissions. Now he no longer needs to make equipment by himself. He only needs to organize the different factories under his command to produce the required equipment on time. Equipment and materials, supervising the research and development of new products, coordinating the deployment of manpower, and making everything run in an orderly manner is considered a successful completion of the task.

For Ren Ruyun, it has been painful for him to complete such a role change for a while. Compared with the rough hands and feet and troubles in the beginning, he is now more than capable. This reminds him of what the commander-in-chief said to him back then, Being a qualified craftsman camp leader is much more difficult than being an excellent technician, and the contribution to Dingzhou is also much greater.It is because of this sentence that he studied and understood day and night, and finally succeeded in transforming from an excellent craftsman to an excellent leader. Now he has many craftsmen from the capital under his command. Master, in terms of craftsmanship, he is much better than when he was at his peak, which makes him very fortunate. If there is no successful transformation, then today's Ren Ruyun will definitely not be No. 1 in the craftsman camp.

It’s just that as a former excellent craftsman, it is still his dream to make exquisite instruments, but now this dream has retired to amateur entertainment. In his home, he has a small workshop. In his spare time, he He would ponder over some of the things that the commander-in-chief once mentioned, and sometimes he would invite some superb craftsmen to study together. Only at this time, he would suddenly think of those difficult years.

As a sixth-rank official, he now has a house and land, and he is even more proud that he has a status. This is something that is unthinkable in Yizhou. The master of the Li family who went to Dingzhou is now going around to camp, and wants to come to Dingzhou, shaking his head, the fate of people, really where to start!
While he was feeling emotional, his subordinates rushed over, "Master Ren, the commander's car has arrived outside the craftsman's camp!"

Ren Ruyun stood up abruptly: "Go, follow me to meet the commander!"

Li Qing is very satisfied with the current situation of the crafting camp. Everything is so well-organized, busy and orderly. In the past few months, the production efficiency of the crafting camp has been greatly improved, and the daily production of ordnance has exceeded Li Qing's expectations. The quality has also been greatly improved. Xu Xiaodao's refined iron production technology has become increasingly mature, and the quality of the refined iron produced has greatly improved. Li Qing's personal guard battalion and special brigade are now equipped with ordnance made of refined iron. It has been greatly improved. It is expected that next year, the large-scale refitting of the troops can begin.

As a military state and the commander-in-chief of the border state, the first stop of Li Qing's craftsman camp was of course the Ordnance Workshop.

Ren Ruyun was by Li Qing's side, watching with Li Qing while explaining for Li Qing.

"My lord, this is the workshop for making the eight-ox crossbow and the strong crossbow. The eight-ox crossbow is huge in size and its operation remains unchanged. We have been exploring whether we can reduce its size and operation steps without reducing its power. After a period of Tried and tested over time, the eight-ox crossbow we made has been greatly improved compared to before, and the number of operators has been reduced to two-thirds of the previous ones, and the size has also been reduced a lot." Ren Ruyun pointed to a crossbow beside him that was already dead. The installed eight-ox crossbow is proud and authentic.

"Very good!" Looking at the eight-ox crossbow that has shrunk a lot in size, Li Qing is very satisfied. The eight-ox crossbow is a powerful weapon for defending the city, but there are too many people who need to operate it. If the number of operators can be reduced, more can be freed up. Many people come to defend the city, which is a big improvement.

"The main problem with the crossbow is that it is slow to wind and it does great damage to the soldiers' fingers, so our current crossbow is mainly aimed at improving this." Ren Ruyun took a crossbow from his entourage, and Li Qing looked at it curiously. The appearance of this crossbow has changed drastically.

Ren Ruyun smiled and stretched out his hand to recruit an apprentice. The apprentice took the improved version of the crossbow, hung the string on a device around his waist, and stretched out his feet. The crossbow was already opened, and he reached out to take a crossbow , put it in the hook slot, buckle the buckle, then hold the flat end in his hand, and hand it to Li Qing respectfully. Li Qing picked up the crossbow, aimed at the opposite wall, lightly hooked the trigger, and there was a soft sound, and the arrow shot away It came out and stuck on the wall, the momentum was still there, and the tail of the arrow was still buzzing.

"Okay!" Li Qing blurted out praise. Seeing that the apprentice took a very short time to wind the string just now, Li Qing naturally knew that if he wanted to reach the stringing time of the apprentice just now, if it was the previous strong crossbow, he might have only one person in the army. Very few soldiers with extremely outstanding arm strength can do it, and this apprentice obviously does not belong to this category. This improvement is excellent for covering shooting in combat. The shooting distance of crossbows is not as long as that of strong bows. It is mainly used for close-range covering shooting, so The winding speed of the weapon is not only to enable soldiers to shoot two or three more arrows, which will deal a great blow to the enemy.

Seeing the two military weapons, Li Qing couldn't help being very interested. Looking at Ren Ruyun, he said with a smile: "Don't hide it, there are other good things, let's take them out together!"

Ren Ruyun scratched his head embarrassingly, "Marshal, there are still a few good things that have just been developed, and there are only samples. We are waiting for Marshal's review to see if they can be mass-produced?"

"Let's go and have a look!" Li Qing took the lead and said to Shang Haibo as he walked, "Mr. Shang, it seems that our craftsman Dalin really bought us a lot of good things!"

Shang Haibo said with a smile: "That's right, Commander. Ren Ruyun is indeed very hardworking. To achieve such an achievement, he must be a capable official. Moreover, the efficiency of the craftsman camp has been greatly improved in recent months. I am about to invite the Commander to reward him." What about him!"

Li Qing laughed loudly, "It's a reward, it's a reward, but let's go and see his new stuff first!"

Everyone followed Ren Ruyun into a side door. Although the door was in a huge factory building, there were still four guards with knives standing in front of the door. When they saw Li Qing coming, the four guards bowed and bowed to one side. Walking into the door, I was surprised to find that there were no windows in the room, and it was dark. Although the door was open, there was still not enough light.

Ren Ruyun ordered the people to light the torches, and then everyone saw that the room was not small, and there was an iron cabinet at the end near them, and they couldn't help being surprised, "Master Ren, what kind of thing are you? Put it in an iron cabinet in such a strict place." Yang Yidao asked strangely.

Tang Hu punched the iron cabinet with his fists, and there was a muffled sound. Tang Hu took a breath, "Such a thick iron plate, Lao Ren, what good is it?"

Ren Ruyun smiled and said, "My lords, the good thing is this iron cabinet!"

Iron cabinet?Everyone was puzzled, Li Qing walked around the iron cabinet, looked at the neat rows of black holes on the front of the iron cabinet, and suddenly realized: "Ren Ruqu, is this Liannu?"

Ren Ruyun nodded and said: "My lord, you told your subordinates about a weapon that can be fired continuously. After the subordinates came back, they thought hard and couldn't figure out some key points. But then Xu Xiaodao made fine iron, and then used this After pulling out the steel wire with a kind of fine iron, these problems will be solved, and the adults will stand back and come down to perform for the adults."

Reaching out to open the iron cabinet from the back, everyone saw rows of neatly coiled steel springs inside the cabinet. Some apprentices had already held iron boxes the size of crossbow bolts one by one, and Ren Ruyun placed them one by one in the iron cabinet. , closed the cabinet door, and two apprentices held a zigzag iron rod and stretched it into the cabinet from one side. The two joined forces and turned the rod vigorously. Except for Li Qing, everyone looked at Ren Ruyun and the others curiously. people's actions.

Seeing the two apprentices pull out the iron rods, Ren Ruyun walked to the iron cabinet with a face full of pride, pulled it somewhere, and under the horrified eyes of everyone, shot crossbow arrows continuously from the front of the iron cabinet. The stick was inserted into the wall in front of it, shaking the dust from the roof.

After a long while, everyone woke up from their numbness, "Good stuff!" Tang Hu shouted loudly, immediately drawing a lot of blank eyes, Li Qing nodded and walked to the iron cabinet, "It's indeed a good thing, Ren Ruyun, this thing can be bought once. How many arrows were fired?"

"One hundred!" Ren Ruyun said proudly.

"It's a good thing, but it's a pity that it's too bulky, and it can only be used for holding on!" Li Qing said regretfully, "And it's a waste of money, Ren Ruyun, the arrows fired by this thing must be useful all over the body Is it made of iron?"

Ren Ruyun said: "Yes, Marshal, wooden or bamboo arrow shafts are not good, they will all break when you shake the oar."

"One shot is a hundred arrows. If there are ten or hundreds of such things, one shot will be tens of thousands of arrows. How much iron does it cost? How much does it cost? We can't afford him in Dingzhou now! "Li Qing shook his head.

Hearing what Li Qing said, everyone couldn't help calming down. The commander-in-chief was right, how many arrows can these irons be used to make?Using him is too expensive, and it can only be used when defending the city, so it's not very cost-effective.

Seeing Li Qing's appearance, Ren Ruyun couldn't help feeling rather depressed, Li Qing said with a smile: "Master Ren, don't be discouraged, this thing is very good, you can make a small amount of it, but don't take it out for now, you continue to think of ways, how to How to make him lighter, how to make him more economical, let us use it, um, let me give you an idea, you can try to combine him with the infantry chariot, or apply this principle to The cavalry's hand crossbows go up, in short, many weapons should be derived from this method."

"Don't worry, Marshal, I will research it soon. Marshal, will you still see the first-grade bow we made?"

"Look, why don't you look at it? Tell me what's so special about this bow?"

"Marshal, we have mainly improved two aspects of Yipin bow. One is to change the traditional leather strings into steel strings. Marshal knows that the traditional leather strings are extremely difficult to maintain. Once there is a rainy or snowy day, the leather strings will be extremely difficult. It is easy to be soft and broken, but the steel string does not have this problem. This is mainly due to the credit of Xu Xiaodao. In addition, a pulley is installed for the first-grade bow, so that the bowstring can be pulled apart without a lot of arm strength, and the shooting range is increased when shooting. About fifty paces." Ren Ruyun presented a first-grade bow while talking, Li Qing tried to shoot a few bows, and said with satisfaction: "This bow is good and practical, well, it can be mass-produced and equipped with troops."

The original half-day itinerary in the Craftsmanship Camp took a full day. What surprised Li Qing was not Ren Ruyun's continuous improvement of weapons and equipment, but the cooperative weapon making method he first used in the Craftsmanship Camp. Of course, Li Qing was very clear. This is the assembly line operation of later generations. The wisdom of the ancients should not be underestimated. Ren Ruyun, a craftsman who has not read many books, actually found out such a way to improve production efficiency in practice. All apprentices no longer learn The whole set of craftsmanship, but only need to learn to make one part of it, and then assemble it in the final assembly workshop. In order to make this method effective, Ren Ruyun actually made a unified measurement in the craftsman camp. To measure the size, this really makes Li Qing speechless, smart!Li Qing shouted in his heart.With these parts of the same size, it will be easier to repair the equipment after it is damaged on the battlefield. Even if the damaged equipment can no longer be repaired, the usable parts can be removed and a new one can be assembled after gathering enough.

When he walked out of the craftsman camp, Li Qing said to Ren Ruyun: "Master Ren, from today onwards, you will be a fifth-rank master craftsman!"

"Thank you, Commander!" Ren Ruyun was overjoyed.

"Well, what's more, I came back from the capital this time and brought a lot of brocades from the south. With one knife, I will send two pieces to Master Ren's wife later!" Yang Yidao agreed loudly.

Ren Ruyun on the side was already tearful with gratitude, his eyes were red, if he hadn't cared about his appearance, he would have almost been scoured, a scholar dies for a scholar, he is not a scholar, he is just a craftsman, but he can do it for everyone Handsome to die.He said to himself.

(End of this chapter)