While Xu Erlu was busy casting cannons, Zhu Linmiao got the first rifled flintlock from Lu Ning.

Four graceful spirals spiral from the mouth of the gun to the bottom of the barrel, the grooves are so smooth and flat that Zhu Linmiao can't believe that they were carved by hand by the craftsmen.

He immediately had a bag of freshly made Mini bullets fetched and led them to the barren beach outside the iron yard to test the guns.

It was still fixed on the wooden frame and test-fired more than ten times, and the rifled gun behaved very reliably.

Zhu Linmiao personally picked up the new gun again, loaded the ammunition, put the butt of the gun on his shoulder, closed his left eye and aimed at the wooden target in the distance.

When the red heart on the wooden target appeared between the crosshair and the door, he decisively pulled the trigger. With a loud bang, the one-foot-wide wooden target more than a hundred steps away was instantly punched out of a hole the size of a bowl.

He fired several more shots in quick succession. It is completely different from the previous situation of smoothbore guns flying around, and the rifled guns are simply pointing where to shoot, and there is a vague feeling of a later rifle.

Lu Ning also tried to put a few guns, obviously extremely surprised, "Although this gun looks no different from an ordinary flintlock gun, it has a very high head and shoots extremely far, it is simply reborn!" ”

Zhu Linmiao nodded, "This gun is completely different from the flintlock gun, so you should change the name to show the difference." He thought for a moment, "Let's call it the Type 2 Hunter." ”

In the second year of Longwu, it was named "Type II", which is convenient and easy to remember, and also has some commemorative significance.

"This pipe is very well processed," he patted Lu Ning on the shoulder, "according to this standard, draw the rifling at full speed!" ”

"The villain obeys."

It was not until more than 20 days later that the clay fan of the 24-pounder gun, the largest in volume, finally finished drying and firing.

Subsequently, Xu Erlu led people to cast a total of ten sections of iron fan with two layers of clay fan.

The six-foot-tall iron fan weighed more than 4,000 catties, and more than 100 craftsmen worked together to spend half a day fixing these heavy molds.

The casting process was relatively smooth, and the craftsmen had recently cast a large number of iron cannons, and their hands were quite skilled. Soon, the inner layer of a twenty-four-pounder cannon was cast.

After the casting is cooled, it is sent to calcination according to the established process. On the other side, Tie Fan has already begun to prepare for the next casting.

The next day, after the calcination of the inner layer of the gun was completed, Zhu Linmiao asked the craftsman to sawn a layer of skin at the muzzle of the gun. Sure enough, up to the center of the casting, it was burned to ash iron.

This is followed by the outer casting. In fact, this is equivalent to using the inner cannon body as part of the iron fan, and putting an outer fan on the outside. Finally, the molten iron is poured between the inner cannon body and the outer fan, which is exactly the same as the ordinary iron fan casting process.

On the side, Song Yingxing was a little worried: "Your Highness, will this cast iron juice melt the inner cannon body?" ”

Zhu Linmiao shook his head and said, "The inner cannon body has been calcined, and the carbon contained in it has been oxidized a lot, and the carbon content has become very low. Mr. Song, remember I told you that the lower the carbon content, the higher the melting point of iron. ”

Song Yingxing, who has memorized the knowledge of carbon steel, immediately reacted after Zhu Linmiao said this, "The newly poured pig iron, that is, high-carbon iron, is indeed unable to melt the inner layer of low-carbon iron." ”

On the other side, one hundred and thirty or forty craftsmen are working together to pour molten iron into the outer layer of iron. As Tie Fan was gradually filled, this giant cannon weighing nearly 5,000 catties had faintly revealed its majestic figure.

The outer cannon body gradually cooled and contracted, tightly clamping on the inner layer, and the huge contraction force squeezed the inner layer extremely densely, and even some very small scars were compacted.

Nanchang City.

Li Lang looked up at the night sky without a trace of starlight, and the outside of the city was as black as an ink tank, which was the opportunity he had been waiting for for a long time.

He waved his hand behind him, and immediately more than sixty black-clad men with masked bodies and backpacks followed. Then the Qing soldiers defending the city used bamboo baskets and ropes to release these people under the city.

These people did not dare to use torches, each took out a palm-sized lantern, which only illuminated two feet of ground under their feet, and went towards the Gan River in the dark.

The Ming army had a large fleet parked there, and Nanchang City, which could still get a little supply from the north along the waterway, has now been cut off by it. Tens of thousands of Ming troops outside the city were heavily surrounded, and the people in the city were terrified.

At present, the Ganjiang River is in a dry period, and the water level is very low. Li Lang recalled in his heart the process of rehearsing hundreds of times from the beginning - approaching the Ming fleet along the dry riverbed while it was dark, scuttling a few ships downwind to block the channel, and then using fierce fire oil to ignite the ships upwind, so that those hundreds of warships would be burned!

If this operation goes well, it will not only restore the water supply lines of the Qing army, but also restore the morale of the troops in the city. Jin Zongbing said that the imperial court has sent the general of Nanda to pacify Jiangnan, as long as it can hold on for a few more months, the siege of Nanchang will be solved!

During the day today, the Ming army had already told Li Lang the location of the fleet, and with the compass in his hand and the faint light, before the ugly time passed, he had already seen a large beating point of light on the river from a distance - the light on the Ming army's boat!

Li Lang turned around and ordered his subordinates to extinguish the lantern, and walked slowly with that piece of light as the goal in the night when he couldn't see his fingers.

The light was getting more and more visible, and he could even see the silhouettes of several huge ships as tall as buildings. According to the plan planned in advance, 25 people went upwind to set fire, and the remaining 30 people went downwind to scuttle the boat.

Everything went extremely smoothly, and on a night without moonlight, the river was dark, and the people on the giant ship parked by the river could not see the figure of two or three feet below at all.

Li Lang's men quickly dispersed, and they all took out a crank drill and drilled it near the waterline. As long as the bottom of the ship is drilled through, and then the hole is enlarged with a crowbar, and gunpowder is placed to detonate it, these ships will quickly sit on the bottom, blocking the retreat of the other ships.

At that time, his men in the upwind will start setting fires.

But as soon as he drilled the first hole in the side of the ship, he heard the sound of horses' hooves not far away, and turned his head to see more than a dozen Ming soldiers armed with torches coming along the river.

He was in a hurry, he didn't expect the Ming army to be so vigilant, and there were still patrols late at night.

Soon, the patrolman saw a figure swaying on the side of the ship by means of a torch, and immediately took out his horn and blew it vigorously.

In an instant, the vicinity of the Ming fleet became brightly lit, and hundreds of people seemed to suddenly come out of the ground, holding torches in one hand and swords in the other, and began to pull the net to investigate.

Li Lang and the others suddenly stood in place under the firelight like fleas on bald heads, not knowing what to do.

The sound of the horn just now obviously alarmed the sailors on the ship, and soon a person with a torch pointed at Li Lang and shouted: "There are thieves who destroy the ship!" ”

Immediately after that, dozens of sailors with bird-wielding guns appeared on the deck, and the crackle was a shot.

The sampan of the Ming army was also quickly put down, and Li Lang and the others were tightly surrounded in a moment.

Could it be that there was a detailed work that leaked the news to the Ming army? Li Lang couldn't figure out how his such a secret action was like being ambushed by the Ming army.