Armor that is truly suitable for large-scale equipment on the battlefield has a lower cost, a simpler production process, and a simpler structure. I can't look at it at all, and I can't talk about the slightest beauty.

The helmet is a round-bottomed basin with a belt-braided shock-absorbing structure. Usually wear it on the head to prevent rain, sun, chopping, and arrows, and can be used as a basin or even a lunch box when resting.

If you don't say that a chicken thief is a chicken thief, the nature of the country is easy to change, and the design point must be used to the fullest, and the slightest waste cannot be tolerated.

The upper body armor only has the front piece but not the back piece, and there is no drape, and only the lower arm is equipped with cowhide arm guards. Private parts...... There is no steel armor at all, it is all made up of leather armor.

It's simple enough to be ugly enough, and even the soldiers of the Water Tiger Wings don't want to wear it. But not to mention, each soldier had more equipment than the original forbidden army, and that thing was on his back, an oblong piece of steel with a wooden handle...... Spade!

This is the essence of Hongtao's tactics, which can be carried on the back as armor in peacetime, and honestly dug holes in his hands in wartime.

If you don't want to die, dig deeper, at least make sure that you can't show your head when you squat down and then shrink your neck. What kind of soldier the enemy loves, you can't kill people if you can't see them. The arrows thrown have anti-angle constraints and do not have a high hit rate, plus there is a steel basin on the head, and after the hit, it will be shocked and bounced off.

But how can they kill the enemy by squatting in the pit? It's easy, isn't there a nest of bees and a hornet's nest? If you are far away, you will shoot with a hornet's nest, if you are close, you will use a swarm of bees to greet you, and if you are closer, you will have a single crossbow.

What should we do if the enemy is at close range? Hong Tao believed that this situation should be avoided as much as possible, and if the enemy could still rush to close hand-to-hand combat under the three-layer firepower network, it could only mean that he had made a mistake in command, either he did not grasp the number of troops of the other side, or he was surrounded. This can all be avoided through meticulous intelligence work, and it can be just a matter of not letting it happen.

If you encounter a tough battle, you can't dig a hole to attack the city step by step. Hong Tao also said that there were no strong cities in the border areas of Western Xia, and the largest defense facilities were wooden military villages.

If he is dealing with a wooden fortress, he has another big killing weapon, but it has not yet been mass-produced. The effect, there is no need to do experiments, that kind of weapon has been tested countless times in the Golden River Empire, and it must be easy to use.

Besides, the enemy mainly uses cavalry field battles and infantry long-distance roundabout raids as the main combat methods, attacking a hairy strong. Even if you really catch up with this situation, isn't there still a forbidden army and box soldiers stationed in Huangzhou, and let them go up to attack the fortifications. The troops they train will only fight defensive battles, at most they will defend and counterattack and lure the enemy into depth, and to put it bluntly, defense will be the mainstay.

No matter what others think, Hong Tao has decided that at this stage, he can only use defensive tactics to slowly consume the opponent's vital strength, and whoever likes to attack will go before the formation of a large-scale heavy armored cavalry is formed!

Thinking that the emperor would not be in a hurry like this, he counted on his two knives to sweep away Western Xia. If that's the case, I can only leave my wife and children behind and run away.

In addition, Hong Tao also received a gift from Yan'an Mansion, and the giver claimed to be a student, Shen Kuo.

The gift was presented in two large urns, which were also sealed with clay. Everyone thought it was wine, but when the seal was opened, they covered their noses and hid. The smell is very unpleasant, the appearance is not good, and the black-brown sticky porridge also exudes a pungent smell.

Petroleum! There was also a handwritten letter from Shen Kuo that came with the big urn, which was full of polite nonsense of greetings at the beginning, and it was only when the page was turned that there was something to say. First of all, he affirmed the suggestion of the horse to establish a Wujin Bank near Yanzhou, and then said a lot of difficulties, and the central idea is one sentence: the heart is more than enough but the strength is insufficient, there is no money!

Shen Kuo's Yan Lu Jing Luo appeasement envoy and Hong Tao's Huangzhou Jing Lu pacification envoy are really incomparable, and all large amounts of financial revenue and expenditure must go through the imperial court's nod.

In fact, even if the imperial court did not restrict it, he would not be able to spend so much money to build an industrial base. In Hong Tao's eyes, the money and things that are not worth mentioning are a very, very huge expense in the eyes of most people, and it is not a question of whether they dare to spend it, but where it comes from.

At the end of the letter is Hong Tao's main concern, oil.

When this word popped out of Shen Kuo's mouth, Hong Tao was really startled, and after careful inquiry, he learned that the first person in the world to name oil was probably this Shen Quancai.

When he first arrived in Yanzhou to take office, he often went to various places to inspect the people's situation, and found that the residents of Yanchuan County for a generation often used a black-brown grease to cook on fires and light lamps for warmth. Locals call this liquid excavated from the ground as stone lacquer and stone grease.

Shen Kuo is also a curious baby, and he has to try things he doesn't understand when he sees them. In fact, this is the most basic quality of a scientist: first to be curious, and then to have a strong hands-on ability.

After personal testing, Shen Kuo found that this liquid is indeed easy to burn, and the heat is quite large, the only drawback is that the smoke is too large, and it is not suitable for ignition in the city. The local population is poor and has no choice but to take care of the smoke.

Perhaps due to the common problem of literati, Shen Kuo felt that the name given by the locals was too vulgar, so he renamed it and called it oil. But no matter how much Hong Tao pondered, he didn't feel that oil was better than stone resin, and it sounded quite vulgar.

So what is the use of oil? Shen Kuo is worthy of being a genius in scientific research, but he is not satisfied after just watching and trying, and he began to think about how to use oil for the benefit of mankind. I don't know how long I tested it, but I really found a very practical use, oil smoke!

When the oil burns, the smoke billows out, and everything that has been burned by it is all black, with a layer of black ash on it. Shen Kuo is a literati, much purer than Hong Tao, a fake literati, and the first thing he thinks of is ink, one of the three treasures of literati.

Originally, the ink was used to scrape pine smoke after burning pine branches, but since the oil smoke is so big and there is so much black ash, can it replace pine branches to make ink?

It turned out to be a must, and it was very good. At the end of this letter, Shen Kuo made a small request more vaguely. He wanted to borrow some money from the horses, and then set up a workshop in Yanzhou, specializing in the production of ink with petroleum fumes as the basic raw material, and then gave it another name, graphite!

"the mines! Your ability to name seems to be much more ruthless than that of my uncle, and opening and closing your mouth is full of well-known names! ”

Seeing the name of graphite, Hong Tao was trembling in his heart, if he hadn't known Shen Kuo and talked to him deeply, he had to suspect that this guy was also a traverser, otherwise how could he pour out the words of the later generations.

But Hong Tao didn't agree to borrow money, and people like him who were chicken thieves didn't take advantage of it, and they were uncomfortable all over. He planned to tell Shen Kuo, why borrow money or not, you will pay for it, I will pay for it, and our brothers will have a joint venture, so that they will be affectionate.

Moreover, the joint venture workshop cannot only produce graphite as a product, but must expand its business scope. For example, the oil was sold to Wujin Store in Weiqiao Town as fuel, and the oil smoke was sold to Baohuitang as a raw material for making ink.

See, Hong Tao has a strong capitalist face, as long as the word interests are involved, even if he is a friend, he will be pitted.

Does Ugin need oil as fuel? Definitely not, that thing is too complex to participate in the smelting process before fractionation. He bought it to be fractionated with coal tar, so he was afraid that Shen Kuo would increase the price after knowing the specific use of oil.

"Your uncle, how can there be so many resources available when people are appeased, in addition to mountains and rivers, my side is only rich in bandits who rob the road!"

At the end of the letter, Shen Kuo also mentions other known resources he has found in the area, such as the salt lake in Jiezhou and the bitter spring in Leadshan County, Xinzhou. The original intention was to let the strange man of the horse help figure out how to make full use of it, but it turned out to make Hong Tao scold the sky for being unfair.

In addition to salt, there is also natural soda ash in the salt lake, which is a basic raw material that Hongtao needs very much and cannot do without. Kuquan is just a folk name, and the official name is Zeng Qing or bile alum. That's right, it's a mixture of copper sulfate solutions that can be used to refine bile copper.

Moreover, Yanzhou also produces iron and coal...... In this way, the basic raw materials for the development of modern smelting and chemical industries are almost complete.