On the seventh day of April in the fourth year of Longqing, Gao Pragmatic and Qi Jiguang met in the West Gate Tower of Kaiping.

When people heard it, Qi Jiguang, who was bent on getting closer to the Confucian generals, visited the upstart in the capital who came to Kaiping and traveled to Kaiping, and the high-level pragmatic and high-level attendant who was nicknamed "Little Hanlin", except for a smile, there was nothing else to say. Only after Zhang Juzheng learned the news, he frowned and pondered for a moment, but he never regarded it as a major event.

However, later generations paid considerable attention to this meeting, and many scholars published various works, making many speculations and inferences about this meeting. At that time, the mainstream view in the historiography circles was that Gao Qimi must have talked about many issues, including a number of fundamental reforms of the Ming army and the development and updating of military equipment of the Ming army.

In fact, this guess is roughly correct, this historic meeting between Gao Pragmatic and Qi Jiguang, although the two parties did not explain or explain it afterwards, but they did reach some tacit agreements, which can barely be regarded as a secret agreement.

However, compared with the reform of the military system that only really played a role many years later, Gao Qi's secret society still has some exchanges that are quite useful for the present or the near future, especially for the development of some firearms, and Gao Pragmatic has given Qi Jiguang some thinking guidance. Qi Jiguang, on the other hand, recognized most of these ideas with the sensitivity of a genius military strategist, but he showed some skepticism about Gao Pragmatic's statement that he would build a factory to provide some of these weapons in the future - because the military manufacturing of the Ming Dynasty, especially the manufacture of firearms, was theoretically monopolized by the imperial court and was not allowed to be privately involved.

But for this problem, Gao pragmatic said that he would find his own way, at most in the future, Qi Jiguang will need to lead the way, and it is enough to express solidarity for this, and there is no need for Qi Jiguang to worry about the specific operation. At this point, Qi Jiguang didn't say much, so he could only agree.

The weapons and equipment that Gao pragmatic and Qi Jiguang talked about were basically focused on firearms, and there was almost no mention of cold weapons or even armor. As for the exchange of firearms, it is concentrated in three major areas.

The first thing the two talked about was not a gun, nor a cannon, but a bomb weapon. They also talked about three types of bomb weapons, namely landmines, mines, and grenades.

In fact, at this time, the Ming Dynasty can be said to far surpass Western countries in the level of research and development and application of bomb weapons.

For example, mines in the true sense of the word, which use mechanical automatic ignition devices, were invented by the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty. If you want to trace back to the roots, the earliest primitive mines can even be traced back to the Song Dynasty, and until the current Longqing period, the types and development of Ming mines are much ahead of the West.

Gao Shishi had read some books on this issue in his spare time, and he remembered that Wang Zhaochun's "History of Firearms in China" once introduced that landmines were invented by Zeng Miao, who was the governor of the three sides during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. Of course, there are also some places, for example, Joseph Needham's history of Chinese science and technology says that in the early Ming Dynasty, Jiao Yu's "Fire Dragon Sutra" in 1413 had mines with mechanical ignition devices, but in fact, the "Fire Dragon Sutra" should be a forgery of the Ming people after Jiajing, pretending to be made in the early Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the honor of the inventor of the mine should still be returned to Zeng Miao.

"Landmines are firearms that are buried in the ground and explode, created in the Jiajing period. According to the record of "The Usurpation of the Soldiers": "He once milled on the side, and made mines. The cave is clear, and the medicine is in the middle. It is covered with stones, and it is covered with sand, so that it is flat on the ground, and it is lying on the ground, and it can pass through the moon. If it starts on the ground, if it passes, the fire will fall and the medicine will be released, and the stone will fall and kill people.'"

After the mine was invented, it was quickly improved by others, extending many new varieties.

According to the "Chart of the Sea. According to the record of "Jing Luo III", Shao Shoude of Danyang used pig iron to cast a kind of mine, which was filled with more than a bucket of gunpowder, and used a sandalwood anvil to the bottom of the thunder, the anvil was hollow, and a fire line was opened to the outside of the shell. After the mines are made, they choose the main road that the enemy must pass, dig the ground into pits, dozens of them, bury the mines in the pits, and use small bamboo tubes to draw out the line of fire, and cover the soil as before. 'There is a firing device in the thunder, and when the enemy passes by, it will be trampled and exploded, and the thunder will rise to the ground, the artillery will soar into the sky, and the fragments of the thunder shell will fly out like locusts, and the men and horses will be killed one after another."

In the Wanli period, the development of mines in the Ming Dynasty reached a climax, "more than 10 kinds of "Wubei Zhi" volume 130 were recorded", including stepping mines, pulling mines, some hair mines, and tripping mines. The use of landmines in the West should be quite late, and the real self-fired mines may be about 200 years later than the Ming Dynasty, and there was no record of the use of landmines by the Russian army until the Russo-Japanese War.

Gao Pragmatic actually didn't dare to come up with something too advanced in the album for Qi Jiguang, and this secret meeting only briefly talked about some ignition devices, whether it was stepping on the hair, pulling the hair, dotting the hair or stumbling the hair, Gao Pragmatic gave a simple manufacturing method - in fact, there is no difficulty in this thing, as long as the idea is right, it is not difficult to do, and Qi Jiguang himself is an expert in firearms, so Gao Pragmatic did not talk about it in detail, after all, they are both very nervous, and it is impossible to delay too long in Kaiping.

However, in the original history, the Ming Dynasty made some mines by itself, such as the "explosive cannon" on behalf of the stepping mine, the "lying ground thunder" on behalf of the pull-hair mine, the "invincible mine artillery" on behalf of the point-fired mine, and the "10,000-bomb mine cannon" on behalf of the trip-fired mine.

The first mine in history was also invented by the Ming people, but it was in the eighteenth year of Wanli, and the name was "Underwater Dragon King Cannon". Needless to say, Gao Shi read and copied books tirelessly, and provided Qi Jiguang with the manufacturing ideas of this primary mine product, but Qi Jiguang said that this thing may not be very useful in the north, and suggested that Gao Shishi hand it over to Liu Xian - Qi Jiguang is a person who is quite sensitive in officialdom, and obviously he already knows that Liu Xian has actually joined the Gao Gong faction.

However, Gao Pragmatic found that after Qi Jiguang mentioned Liu Xian, he obviously wanted to speak and stopped, and couldn't help laughing: "This is a military weapon, although the kid is not talented, he will not hide his secrets, I know that Qi Dudu must want me to give the manufacturing method of this underwater dragon king cannon to one more person - Yu Xujiang, the chief soldier of Guangdong, right?" ”

Xujiang is Yu Dayou's nickname.

Qi Jiguang saw that Gao Pragmatic's face was as usual, and he was not the slightest dissatisfied, and couldn't help but sigh that although this son was young, but in terms of atmosphere, he was not inferior to the former sages, so he was not too polite, and nodded and admitted: "Although Liu Zongrong is also a southern army, but at this moment, after all, he has been transferred to Guizhou, and it is not decisive when he will return to Wolf Mountain, and Yu Zongrong is the general soldier of Guangdong, who has been fighting against the Japanese Kou, and there is a naval army under his hand that can fight well...... In this way, I will be blessed with great wisdom. ”

Gao pragmatic nodded with a smile and said, "It's easy to do, Qi Dudu can send a safe person to Guangzhou to personally send the mine manufacturing method in my album." ”