In the winter of Chongzhen's eighth year, in the summer, Nan's excitement of becoming a father and Lin Weiye's anxiety between the two women quietly approached.

After adding 50,000 new immigrants, the scope of the Qiong Navy's reclamation of Tunding expanded to Wanxian, Wenchang and other places, except for Yazhou (now Sanya) and other southernmost points, the entire western and eastern parts of Qiongzhou are basically under the direct control of the Qiong Navy, plus the direct control of taxes, sweeping away the island's already fragile gentry class, the southernmost island of the Ming Dynasty has become an independent kingdom, and the holy decree brought back from the capital in the summer has made up for the last shortcoming of the righteous name. The yamen of the prefect of Qiongzhou has become the ears of the deaf - furnishings, the decrees do not leave the city, and the rest of the county yamen have become the hands of the Qiong navy, and the people only know the Qiong navy and the general, but do not know the emperor.

The winter on the island is also warm, and one afternoon, under the warm sun, Lin Weiye has been tinkering with new gadgets for a while to bask in the sun.

Xia Nan, as the boss, came to accept, and he set up a chair gracefully, and someone next to him held an umbrella to shade the sun. The few new things to be tried today are all based on the experience of the Battle of Changyi, and whether they have practical value or not, it is necessary to see is believing.

Lin Weiye first took out a black cylindrical iron bump, much like a small cannonball, with a dented groove on it, and introduced: "This is a grenade." ”

Xia Nan almost slipped off the chair, looked at the iron bump in his hand speechlessly, and said, "Forgive me for my clump, I really don't see what this ugly thing has to do with grenades......"

"There's no way, the power of black powder is limited, and it has no lethality if it is less, and our material is iron, so it's normal to be big."

"But it looks heavy, can you lose it?" Xia Nan asked suspiciously, if he couldn't throw it far, it would be a big deal to blow up his own people.

"It's not okay to lose it, it will hurt your wrist, and you can only push it out like a shot put." Lin Weiye beckoned, and a burly soldier walked over. This soldier is wearing armor such as chest guards and shoulder pads, and a helmet on his head, which looks like a saint warrior in the comics.

Without waiting for Lin Weiye's introduction, Xia Nan looked the soldier up and down, and asked with interest: "This equipment looks good, what kind of material is it?" ”

"This is designed according to Huang Hansheng's advice after the war, protecting the chest, head and other vital parts, even if you are hit by an arrow, it is not easy to die. The material is steel, but only mild steel, which is close to the material of the barrel. Lin Weiye introduced, "The current conditions have actually been able to train medium carbon steel with higher hardness, but it is too difficult to process, or use relatively soft low carbon steel, which is commonly known as wrought iron." ”

Xia Nan carefully looked at the soldier's helmet, which was an ordinary round-brimmed hat shape, with a round hemispherical shape in the center, and a garden about an inch wide on all sides. He asked, "The helmet's hemispherical design is designed to make it easier for the arrow to bounce off, right?" As for the edges around this, do they cover the face and the back of the neck? ”

Lin Weiye praised: "Good eyesight, the original intention of the design is exactly this. ”

Xia Nan nodded: "But isn't it better to use full-body armor for armor protection?" The abdomen, arms, and legs can be protected. ”

"The full-body armor is a flashy design, and the protective effect is limited, but the weight is multiplied, which greatly affects the flexibility of the soldier and consumes more physical energy." Lin Weiye said, "This is still the front-line soldiers, select strong people, serve as battle infantry and grenadiers, and are more likely to be attacked by bows and arrows, so they wear wearable armor, as for the soldiers in the back rows, I think it is okay not to wear armor." ”

Lin Weiye motioned to the soldier to demonstrate the grenade, and the strong soldier lit the fuse, calmly waited for the burn for a few seconds, then bent his body naturally, exerted force again, and then pushed the iron lump out like a lead ball, about 20 meters away.

Five or six seconds later, with a "bang", the iron lump exploded, shattering into several pieces of iron, and then more than a dozen small pebbles-like things splashed around with the explosion wave, and the momentum was still quite amazing.

Xia Nan stood up and opened his mouth wide: "Although this thing is a little ugly, the power is still okay......"

"Don't underestimate this iron lump, it's not easy to make one." Lin Weiye introduced, "It is necessary to use the graphitization annealing process to smolder the shell as a whole to increase the strength, so as to stuff as much gunpowder as possible into the thinner shell, as well as a number of lead projectiles, and at the same time ensure that the groove line reserved outside the bullet body will not crack due to handling and extrusion...... The cost of time spent will not be much less than that of a Qionghai-style rifle. ”

Xia Nan fully affirmed: "As long as it can be useful, it is worth putting in a little effort." But why wait a few seconds before throwing it away? ”

"It's to prevent the burning time from being too long, and the enemy has a chance to pick it up and throw it back." Lin Weiye said, "Originally, this thing was used to deal with the Tartar cart, but if the weight is controlled within 4 kilograms, it is actually very useful in street fighting." For example, when we were in close contact with the Shenji Battalion in the capital, we threw a row of grenades directly, and the storage collapsed immediately, and we didn't need to fire a single shot. Although there is no impact fuse, it can only delay the explosion, and it is bulky, but it is simpler and more crude to deal with dense arrays than platoon guns, and the range of coverage is also wider. ”

After introducing the grenades and the equipment of the part-time grenadiers, Lin Weiye asked people to pull out a mountain cannon, load a shell similar to a shotgun canister, and prepare it for launch.

"Do you see a row of humanoid wooden targets five hundred meters ahead?" Lin Weiye said with a fluttering eyebrow, "Today, I will let you see the big killer weapon against the cavalry - the grenade bomb." ”

The gunner lit the fuse, and a few seconds later, with a "boom", the swarthy barrel drilled out of the muzzle, but instead of immediately exploding like a shotgun, it drew a parabola, flew for four or five hundred meters, exploded in the air, and then turned into a shower of metal and flew towards the humanoid wooden targets.

In the summer, Nan saw through the telescope: dense shotguns were sprayed in a cone, smashing the wooden target, and within a range of thirty or forty meters, not a single grass grows. He couldn't help but smack his tongue: "Tsk, with this thing, grenades and shotguns are weakly exploded......"

Lin Weiye sighed: "But the detonation rate is a problem that cannot be bypassed. It must be guaranteed to detonate in mid-air, otherwise it will be meaningless - early is to let the enemy watch fireworks, late is no different from an iron lump - but with the current technical conditions, such an accurate detonation rate can be maintained at four or five achievements is very good...... In the final analysis, the current shrapnel can only be a special weapon in special battlefield conditions. ”