The successful test of the ballista made Zhao Hongrun feel very good, and he issued a stipend to the officials and craftsmen involved in the project, instructing them to block the news, and then officially approved the further research and development of the ballista, making the ballista the second siege war weapon focused on the research and development of the Metallurgical Bureau after the "catapult (including the catapult)".

But then again, although Zhao Hongrun was very satisfied with the successful test of the ballista, what really made him happy was the "torsion spring assembly", Zhao Hongrun sent someone to ask, and the person who designed this "torsion spring assembly" was "Ding Jun", who has now become a famous craftsman in their smelting bureau.

For this person, Zhao Hongrun is naturally no stranger, I think when he was still tinkering with candle molds, Ding Jun gave him a lot of constructive suggestions, and now, Ding Jun has become an indispensable technical talent of the Smelting Bureau, it is this person and Song Mojuzi Xu weak, who defected to the Wei State, developed the ballista together.

But it's a pity that Zhao Hongrun didn't meet Song Moju's son Xu Wan and his Mo disciples this time, the reason is that these Mo disciples went to the countryside to help local civilians do farm work.

Yes, the disciples of the Mo family are so strange: they would rather go barefoot to the local county seat of Wei State, help those illiterate field civilians to install waterwheels and dig ditches for free, and even teach them to read and write, and teach them the know-how of plowing the fields, rather than being a respected technical craftsman in the Metallurgical Bureau.

What's even more incredible is that the savings of these Mohist disciples are also willing to donate to the local civilians free of charge, and their purpose is to preach and spread their Mohist ideas in the Wei State.

And what makes Zhao Hongrun sometimes cry and laugh is that these Mo disciples seem to regard the Smelting Bureau as a place to earn remuneration - many Mo disciples work hard in the Smelting Bureau on weekdays, and wait for them to work for a few months and earn a free monthly salary.

It's called experience.

The Smelting Bureau did not dare to issue too many monthly salaries to these people, lest the project that these people were responsible for at that time was not completed, and they would leave halfway.

For these proletarian devotees in the true sense, almost ascetic-like Mohist disciples, Zhao Hongrun both respected and felt a headache.

It is no exaggeration to say that if Song Mojuzi Xu Weak and his gang are willing to change the experience of going to the countryside from time to time to scatter wealth and selfless dedication, and are willing to stay in the Smelting Bureau for research and development, Zhao Hongrun believes that the technological level of the Smelting Bureau is definitely more than today's level.

But unfortunately, even if it was Zhao Hongrun, he couldn't force those Mo disciples, after all, this was the premise that these Mo disciples were willing to contribute to him.

Around mid-June, the first batch of officials and craftsmen from the Qin State who came to study in the Wei State finally arrived at the Bolangsha River Port by boat.

Qin Shaojun was very concerned about this matter, and he couldn't take care of his marriage preparations, so he dragged Zhao Hongrun to Bolangshahe Port in person to greet these craftsmen of the Qin State.

Of course, Zhao Hongrun would not be polite to these white technical talents, and summoned "Gu He", the chief of the Metallurgical Bureau who was responsible for coordinating personnel, and asked him to arrange positions for these craftsmen of the Qin State, and the blacksmiths were arranged to forge weapons and armor in the Ordnance Casting Bureau, and the carpenters and stonemasons were directly arranged to build houses in Bolangshahe Port.

I have to say that these craftsmen sent by the Qin State to learn have good craftsmanship themselves, which is much more convenient than the Smelting Bureau itself to train newcomers, the only pity is that after these Qin craftsmen learned the techniques of the Wei State, they will one day return to the Qin State, as short as one or two years, as long as five to eight years.

But in any case, the arrival of these Qin craftsmen made the technical strength of the Wei State Smelting Bureau even stronger.

Zhao Hongrun is not worried about what technology and craftsmanship he has learned from Qin - Wei is so much ahead of Qin, if Wei is finally caught up by Qin, then the top and bottom of the Metallurgical Bureau will really have no face.

Zhao Hongrun believes in a concept: any conspiracy is a sideshow, only if you become stronger and stronger, this is the truth!

Therefore, when Qin Shaojun asked Zhao Hongrun if he would intentionally hide the true skills of Wei from those Qin craftsmen, Zhao Hongrun replied with a disdainful expression and successfully angered this future lady.

Throughout June, in addition to inspecting the follow-up housing construction projects of Bolangshahe Port, Zhao Hongrun went to the "Metallurgical City" where the Metallurgical Bureau is located to inspect the overall development of the Metallurgical Bureau.

In fact, after the development of the Metallurgical Bureau to the current stage, there is not much difference between Zhao Hongrun and his absence.

For civilian equipment and tools, the Metallurgical Bureau has established a good cooperative relationship with the Yu Manufacturing Bureau of the Ministry of Industry, such as the improved "wheelbarrow", "plow", etc., the Metallurgical Bureau directly handed over the design drawings to the Yu Manufacturing Bureau, so that the latter is responsible for building and promoting it to the whole country.

In terms of military equipment, the Smelting Bureau was directly handed over to the Bureau of Warcasting, which is like a subordinate office of the foundry workshop, so that the craftsmen of the Bureau of Warcasting could scold their mothers and rush to work in the face of a large number of armament orders - these poor craftsmen of the Bureau of Warcasting have long forgotten the time when they wanted to compete with the Bureau of Smelting, because the daily work has made them breathless, and from time to time they fantasize about whether the Bureau can stop for a few days and let them take a breath.

As for the material procurement of the Smelting Bureau, in addition to the warehouse department under the household department, the smelting bureau is also cooperating with the "Su's Chamber of Commerce".

Therefore, in general, the smelting bureau, which has entered a virtuous cycle of development, no longer needs Zhao Hongrun to keep an eye on it.

Now what Zhao Hongrun should consider is not the development of the Smelting Bureau, but the confidentiality of the Smelting Bureau, after all, in addition to the spies of Han and Chu, there are also domestic people, such as Qingwang Hongxin.

Speaking of Qingwang Hongxin, Zhao Hongrun couldn't help but think of the "Military Creation Bureau" founded by the former - once this Qingwang Hongxin was full of confidence and tried to replace the Department of the Military Casting Bureau, but now it has become a joke in Daliang.

The reason is that in June, the Bureau of Arms and Construction created the first batch of sword equipment.

Not much, probably only about a hundred, mainly for testing.

At that time, King Qing Hongxin personally tested those swords, and slashed at the corners of a desk with a sword.

Unexpectedly, a sword went down, and with a bang, the corner of the case was safe and sound, but the sword in the hand of King Qing Hongxin broke.

On the same day, King Qing Hongxin was furious.

Afterwards, this matter somehow spread all over the Liang, the Liang government and the opposition laughed, the Smelting Bureau and the Military Casting Bureau were even more gloating, and everyone said: What a 'sharp' sword!

In this regard, Zhao Hongrun also shook his head secretly.

He knew what was going on: if the Arsenal continued to use the old forging process, even if the forged sword was not as good as the Arsenal Bureau's products, it would not be so fragile that even a few slashes would collapse.

The reason is that Qing Wanghong is too confident, imitating the process of the Smelting Bureau, and adopting the "carburizing steelmaking" process of the Smelting Bureau, but because of the lack of relevant experience and the lack of knowledge of using fire bricks to keep warm, the furnace is burned with some coarse pig iron, coupled with the follow-up training and quenching process is not proficient, which makes the forged sword at least half scrapped.

In fact, this is nothing, after all, Qingwang Hongxin made a "military bureau" from scratch, and he can also successfully create a batch of swords, which is understandable.

The bad thing is that there are such smelting bureaus and military casting bureaus that have already matured in front of the military construction bureau, which makes the Liang government and the opposition subconsciously ignore the technical strength of the military construction bureau, and secretly make fun of Qingwang Hongxin's ridiculous idea of trying to replace the military casting bureau with the military construction bureau.

Of course, this matter has nothing to do with Zhao Hongrun, and he just laughed it off as a joke.

However, at the end of the month, something related to Zhao Hongrun really happened, that is, his cousin of Wei Guo, Wei Gongzi Yu, because of his "stubbornness", still criticized the Wei court in front of and behind people, and was ordered by King Wei to personally go to Daliang to apologize - this is actually King Wei in disguise to let his son Wei Yu take the initiative to be a proton in Daliang, hoping to prevent Wei from being suspicious of him.

Knowing that Wei Gongziyu was already on his way to Daliang, Zhao Hongrun could only shake his head secretly.

For this cousin, he had already written a letter to persuade him, but the other party still went his own way and refused to listen to his persuasion, and finally suffered a disaster.

Of course, it is inevitable to say that it is a disaster, after all, the Wei court did not plan how to punish that Wei Gongziyu, at most, it was to summon him to Daliang and let the Ministry of Rites arrange to teach (xi) guide (nao), after all, Wei Wei and Wei have been friends for decades, and the court does not want the two sides to be too stiff.

Some people may think that if Wei and Wei are at a stalemate at this time, wouldn't Wei just annex Wei Guo?

But in fact, it's not a good idea.

The reason is that a while ago, Wei thwarted the attack of Han, Chu and other countries with "one enemy and five", and it has become too eye-catching in the eyes of the people of the world.

Such a perception is quite unfavorable to the future development of Wei.

Therefore, what Wei has to do now is to keep a low profile for the time being, not only not to take the opportunity to annex Weiguo, but also to support it, to create a harmless position that "although Wei has become very powerful, it still has good relations with small countries", so as to positively improve Wei's external image so as not to become the target of public criticism.

As for why Wei could not take the opportunity to annex Weiguo but Song County, it was because more than ten years ago, Song County was already part of Wei State's territory, but Song County was autonomous at that time - these years ago, the Central Plains countries had already imperceptibly accepted this matter.

Therefore, Wei's dispatch of troops to Chu County cannot be regarded as external expansion.

On the last day of June, Wei Gongziyu's carriage arrived slowly in Liang County.

After learning the news, Zhao Hongrun took Qi'er and Zongwei Changwei Weijiao and took a carriage to the Shili Pavilion on the official road in the east of the city to greet them.

Because of the relationship between his biological mother, Zhao Hongrun's impression of Mrs. Wei Wang and Wei Gongziyu's mother and son is still very good.

What's more, Wei Gongziyu, the cousin, once personally organized a righteous army to fight against the Han general Sima Shang for the sake of his people who defended the country.

In Zhao Hongrun's view, this is a respectable patriotic son.