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Xia Nan's luck was good, not long after the name card was handed in, he saw a personal entourage, holding his name card in his hand, and shouted: "Which one is Master Xia from Guangdong?" ”

Xia Nan stepped forward and replied, "It's down there." Pen Fun Pavilion www.biquge.info"

"Your Excellency."

"Yes. Please lead the way. ”

The others waited in place, and Summer Minami led the way all the way inward.

The scale of the governor's yamen is not small, and the atmosphere is strict along the way. When he arrived at the door of the Dehua Hall, he had already opened the curtain and motioned for him to enter.

When I entered the door, a sturdy middle-aged official in civilian clothes was sitting on a mahogany kang table in the middle of the flower hall. Xia Nan knew that this person was about the famous Sun Yuanhua.

He calmed down a little, picked up his shirt and asked for peace: "The villain is in the south of the summer, please see Futai." ”

"Oh, you're a parishioner from Guangdong?" Sun Yuanhua's eyes are quite majestic, although he is a civil official, after all, he has been in Liaodong for many years, and the majestic demeanor he has cultivated over the years has made Xia Nan feel a slight sense of oppression.

The person in front of him, you are the governor of Denglai, a real court member with heavy troops, and he can make people's heads fall to the ground with an order, in the face of such a person, he must deal with it well, and he can't go wrong, Xia Nan secretly organized the wording in his heart, preparing for the next answer.

Fortunately, Sun Yuanhua has a good impression of Xia Nan: tall, dignified, demeanor, modest manners, humble and confident. The most important thing is that this person is Catholic, just like himself.

"Since you are a parishioner, don't stick to your secular status, please take a seat."

It's good to listen to this, but you can't take it too seriously, Xia Nan thanked him, found a stool and sat down, still keeping his waist straight, and his eyes were towards Sun Yuanhua. The messenger on the side placed a bowl of gaiwan tea on the coffee table beside him.

"Listen to your accent, aren't you from Guangdong?"

began to answer, Xia Nan cheered up and replied carefully: "The villain's ancestral home is Liaodong, and his ancestors settled in Guangzhou because of his businessmanship. His fluent Mandarin is not like a Cantonese in any case, and he is closer to the official dialect of Liaodong, so he made up a reason.

"Oh? At present, there are a lot of Liaodong soldiers in Dengzhou City, and you are also fellow countrymen? ”

Summer South smiled as it should be.

"That is, doing business in Guangzhou, why did you come to Dengzhou?" Sun Yuanhua was quite puzzled, Dengzhou is an important military town, but it is not a commercially developed place like Guangzhou and Suzhou, what business opportunities are there?

Xia Nan had played a lot of drafts before to deal with officials at all levels that he might encounter, but he didn't expect to meet Sun Yuanhua so smoothly, and pretending to be a member of the church made Sun Yuanhua's attitude very good, so the previous draft had to be revised temporarily, and it was more about playing on the spot. He took out the skills he had cultivated in business negotiation in the old time and space, and made it up while thinking about it.

"The villain's ancestral home is Liaodong, although he is in Guangdong, he always cherishes his homeland. At present, Jiannu has repeatedly violated the territory of my Ming Dynasty, seized property and plundered people, but the imperial army has lost many victories, and the villain thinks that the firearms are not sharp enough. If you can make a good bird gun and cannon, you will definitely be able to turn the tide......"

Sun Yuanhua's eyes lit up when he heard this. I thought he was a businessman who had come to seek help from his power, but for the sake of fellow Catholics, it didn't hurt to help. Unexpectedly, hearing such words, the idea of this heavy "firearm" coincided with him.

Both he and his mentor Xu Guangqi were committed to introducing Western weapons and technology, not only inviting Yiren to cast cannons, but also hiring Yiren as instructors to train new troops. He seemed to have met a bosom friend, and couldn't help but interrupt Xia Nan: "You think the same way?" Do you have any research on cannon casting? ”

"Back to Futai, the villain believes that the Hongyi cannon used by the imperial army is certainly powerful, but there are two shortcomings: one is that it is too cumbersome, only suitable for defending the city and not suitable for field battles, and it is thousands of catties to move, and it is inconvenient to transport; The second is that it is easy to explode, and there is a risk of exploding the chamber if dozens of cannons are fired. ”

Sun Yuanhua nodded frequently, these two points are the unavoidable defects of the Hongyi cannon.

The Hongyi cannon was copied from Western naval guns, but the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty apparently only learned to cast the skin of the cannon, which resembled but did not resemble the gods. With the same weight of the cannon, the power of the cannon fired is not as good as that of the people, and to increase the power of the cannon, it seems that the caliber can only be increased, so it is very easy to explode, so the barrel has to be thickened and thickened, resulting in the cannon moving several thousand catties, which is often inconvenient to transport in the field and delays the fighter. He didn't interrupt the other party this time, obviously he could bring up these two points, there must be a solution, and he had a faint expectation and excitement in his heart.

The villain spent a lot of money to search for talented people everywhere, and the emperor lived up to his wishes, and finally found a strange person who was obsessed with iron-making and casting cannons. The original solution lies in the pig iron used for casting cannons, which is hard but not brittle, easy to cut, and used for casting cannons, which can reduce the weight of the cannon and not easy to blow up. ”

Sun Yuanhua got up and praised: "It's hard but not brittle!" It turns out that the trick is here! This word vividly illustrates the difference between white iron and gray iron, Sun Yuanhua naturally does not understand metallography, but the pig iron used for casting cannons is hard and brittle, not easy to process, and he knows the shortcomings of cracks after firing many times.

He excitedly instructed the messenger: "Please Brother Xia ascend to the kang!" "This is a sign of the upgrade of etiquette. It is a great honor for the governor to invite a common man to sit on the kang.

In the summer, Nanzuo was flattered, and waited for the messenger to move the gaiwan tea to the kang table, thanked him and sat down.

As soon as Xia Nan sat down, Sun Yuanhua couldn't wait to ask, "Brother Xia, has you ever refined this kind of pig iron?" ”

"This kind of pig iron refining is not easy, not only to select the best ore, but also to master the heat, we have done all this, but there is one thing missing." Xia Nan saw that Sun Yuan had fallen into the trap he had set, so he began to close the net and lead the topic to the purpose of his trip.

Sun Yuanhua vaguely guessed a few points: "Brother Xia came to Dengzhou from Guangdong thousands of miles away, presumably for such a thing, right?" ”

"My lord! The villain is here for this. Usually charcoal is used for iron smaking, but we use coal for iron smelting, and what we lack is coal. ”

Sun Yuanhua was a rare technical official in the Ming Dynasty, and he was no stranger to ironmaking. As far as I know, many places in the north use coal to make iron, but the pig iron smelted is not very good. On the contrary, Guangdong does not use coal for iron smelting, but it is better than pig iron in the north, and the cannons cast are more sophisticated. ”

Although he didn't understand the principle, he pointed out the key to the better quality of the southern cast cannon than the north during the Ming and Qing dynasties: the north directly used coal as fuel to make iron, resulting in too high sulfur content in the pig iron, this kind of pig iron is very brittle, and the cast cannon is very easy to explode, the south is rich in forest resources, and the iron is made with charcoal, and the sulfur content is much lower than that of pig iron smelted with coal, so the quality is better than that in the north. The government did not understand the mystery, only knew that Guangdong and other places were better than the north, from the end of the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, they were cast in Guangdong, and then transported to the capital and Liaodong. (To be continued.) )

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