"Exactly!" Zhang Luxiang stroked his palms and said, "Your Majesty is really a Grandmaster, you can know it at a glance!" ”

Zhu Linmiao smiled: "This wooden tray can also narrow the gap between the cannonball and the barrel, reduce the leakage of gunpowder during firing, and thus increase the firing range." ”

Zhang Luxiang nodded vigorously, "As Your Majesty said, Xia Guan also chiseled two shallow grooves on the edge of the wooden support, and coated the grooves with lard, which increased the airtightness and reduced the resistance of the cannon to eject the chamber."

"It's just that because the shape of this cannonball is not smooth enough, and it is a short cannon, it is slightly less than ordinary cannonballs."

Zhu Linmiao encouraged: "Don't rush, just improve slowly." Flowering shells can be fired in warps, and range is not a big problem. By the way, is this shell safe and reliable? ”

Zhang Luxiang looked very proud, "Back to Your Majesty, the minister has tried hundreds of times, and there is no problem." This new cannonball...... Ah, if you want to ensure the stability of the flowering bullet, first, the shell body should be finely drilled, which is quite simple in terms of the existing casting and boring methods of the Ordnance Bureau. But the most important thing is the ignition tube. ”

He said as he took out a metal pipe the thickness of his little finger from his body, "Your Majesty, please see, inside this tube is a zigzag folded line, and there is an exhaust hole next to it, and it is filled with freshly made slow-burning gunpowder. By the way, this gunpowder was prepared by Lord Langzhong Yao of the Ministry of Industry to help his subordinates, and it seems to be a kind of resin grinding powder, and the combustion rate is extremely stable. ”

"Yao Langzhong? Yao Qisheng? Zhu Linmiao smiled and shook his head, "He's a chemical talent." However, I asked him to try to make fertilizer, but he deserted to make gunpowder. ”

Zhang Luxiang was taken aback, he wanted to help Lord Yao invite merit, but he didn't expect to hurt him, so he hurriedly bowed down and defended: "Your Majesty, this is a repeated plea from the lower officials, and Lord Yao can't refuse, so it's ......."

"It's okay, I don't blame him." Zhu Linmiao took the cannonball fuse and looked at it carefully, only to find that the outermost hollow feather was only for the convenience of ignition, and the real ignition powder was in this lead pipe. This design ensures the speed of combustion without extinguishing the shells due to high-speed flight.

The inside of the lead pipe is very finely processed, with tenons, exhaust holes, and sealing rings, plus slow gunpowder, it is already a very perfect fuse.

He was so confident in Zhang Luxiang's flowering bomb that he threw the lead pipe back to the latter, waved to the open space in the distance, and said, "Let's go, let me see if I have two shots." ”

"Yes!"

After the cannon was dragged two miles southwest of the camp, Zhang Luxiang looked at the barren mountains in the distance, estimated the distance, cut off the fuse with a dagger, and then screwed it into the shell, and then inserted a feather tube and handed it to the gunner.

The latter skillfully erected the gun carriage and reported the firing of the yuan. The loader ignites the lead on the shell and quickly stuffs it into the chamber. The igniter on the other side also cooperated tacitly, igniting the propellant almost at the same time.

With a roar, black smoke erupted from the muzzle of the cannon, and the trees on the barren mountain in the distance were immediately smashed by the cannonballs. Less than two seconds later, there was another thunderous explosion in the barren mountain—the flowering bomb exploded.

Zhu Linmiao immediately drove his horse to the barren mountain a mile and a half away to check, only to see a charred black circle in the bushes, and four or five small trees with thick arms in the circle were blown off by the waist, flying more than a foot away, and the stubble was exposed at the fracture, and the branches and leaves were scattered all over the place.

The thicker trees, though not broken, have had their bark scraped off large patches, or black shrapnel embedded in their trunks, reaching an inch deep.

The area covered by this cannon was two and a half feet, and shrapnel was found on the trees four feet away. It is conceivable that if such a shell falls in the enemy's formation, it will set off such a bloody storm!

Zhu Linmiao immediately looked back at Zhang Luxiang, and said, "This cannon only sent three guns, which is really a little less." ”

……

South of Jinzhou City, Qing Army Camp.

Haoge frowned and stared at the bowl in front of him, a plate of pickled beans, a plate of pickles, half a salted fish and two flatbreads, couldn't help but slap the chopsticks on the table, and said angrily: "I am a big Qing prisoner, and I only eat half of a salted fish?" Where did the other half go?! ”

His escort officer hurriedly entered the tent and said carefully: "Back to the master, the dining room said that half of the dinner should be left, otherwise there will be no meat at night......"

Haoge's eyes widened, and after a long time, he finally suppressed his breath and waved his hand: "Go down." ”

Since the Ming army came to Songshan, the price of grain in Liaodong has begun to soar, and now it has increased more than ten times compared with the beginning of the year! There are still fish on his dinner table, and the Qing soldiers only have a pound of coarse wheat mixed with wild vegetables every day for food.

Not long ago, it was revealed that the official warehouses of Yizhou and Xingjing were strangely short, and more than 60,000 stone of grain were lost at once. Other grain plots have also been more or less unable to reconcile their accounts.

After that, the imperial court reluctantly decided to forcibly requisition grain and grass from the local government, but found that the grain in each village had already been bought at a high price. The grain collector searched several times in various parts of Liaodong, and finally only collected more than 10,000 stone of grain.

That is to say, according to the rations of the current corporaries, in three months at most, his army will have to drink the northwest wind.

Unbeknownst to him, the grain of the entire Liaodong was destined for the southeast coast, where it was exchanged for silver and then loaded onto ships and shipped to Phi Dao.

Ruan Jin recently received an order from Songshan, and began to buy bacon, salted fish, kimchi, and the like at a high price, almost as long as it was edible, he did not refuse to come.

In fact, more than one million taels of silver were spent before and after the Ming Dynasty, which caused the price of grain in Liaodong to skyrocket, and it was difficult to find rice. Seeing that grain prices are rising, many profiteers have begun to hoard again, further aggravating the food shortage.

Zhu Linmiao was not worried about the silver flowing into Hauge's hands. Now that Daming has blocked Jianyu from three sides, even if Haoge has more money in his pocket, it will be for nothing if he can't spend it. As for the north, after the Heilongjiang River, there is only a snowstorm that can buy ghosts.

Haoge was pondering how much it was appropriate to reduce the rations of the soldiers, when a guard of the guards entered the account and said: "Master, Lord Jitai Sonomu of Darhan Banner asks to see him, and he has arrived twenty miles west of Jinzhou City. ”

Sonomu is Wu Keshan's younger brother. Hauge couldn't help frowning, and said in his heart, a few days ago, there was news that Horqin was attacked by barbarians, and he came at this time, and most of the time there was no good thing.

He immediately commanded, "Prepare the horses, I will go to meet Sonomu." Only let Wakda lead three hundred escorts to accompany him, so as not to alarm others. ”

"Huh!"

At the time of Shen, Haoge's guard of honor met Sonomu and his party more than ten miles west of Jinzhou. The latter was surprised, hurriedly dismounted and saluted, "The minister pays a visit to the prison country." How dare the Labor Supervision National Congress come out to greet him, and he is terrified. ”

Hauge warmly pulled him along, and asked casually, "What is the important thing that Jitai is hurrying here?" ”

"Ah, Lord Huijian." Sonomu hurriedly said, "Thousands of troops in the Southern Ming Dynasty have ravaged Horqin, and several have been slaughtered. My brother Wang only had less than a thousand men in his hands, and he was afraid that he would not be able to resist it, so he ordered me to transfer the Horqin cavalry to rescue him. ”

(End of chapter)