As winter approaches, the situation in various parts of the Han Dynasty is like the frozen undercurrent of the Yellow River. Although it seems to have entered a period of ice and stability on the surface, the water flow under the ice never stops for a moment.

Cao Xing risked his life to seize a complete vine armor from the Yizhou army, and then secretly sent to the Crouching Tiger Weapon Research Institute for research for Ma Jun and his disciples. After several months of analysis and comparison, and Zhao Xing, who returned to Shangdang, provided technical guidance, the State of Jin had fully mastered the production procedures and principles of Yizhou vine armor.

According to the research of Ma Jun et al., their conclusion is that the rattan armor is a armor made of rattan woven with special treatment, which has extremely strong protective power for cold weapons. Compared with metal armor, rattan armor has the advantages of light weight, no fear of water, and strong breathability, and is particularly suitable for equipment in humid and rainy areas in the south.

The vine armor that Cao Xing recaptured was forced to be removed from him after he killed a small leader of the Yizhou army who was sieging the city. The protective parts of this armor are mainly based on the head and upper body. It is used with a vine armor shield to protect other parts of the body of the armor-piercer. After testing, the biggest disadvantage of the vine armor is that it is afraid of fire and is not suitable for use in the cold north where water turns into ice.

Although Zhao Xing was not very familiar with the detailed production procedures of the rattan armor, he remembered that the rattan armor had to be soaked in the tung oil several times during the production process to achieve an invulnerable effect, so he told Ma Jun this point.

After Zhang He led the vanguard army to capture Hanzhong County in one breath, he discovered a green vine in the mountainous area of ​​Hanzhong, which was adjacent to Yizhou. After identification, the same plants used in Yizhou's vine armor were the same. So the Crouching Tiger Weapon Research Institute immediately sent a powerful team to Hanzhong and began an experimental exploration of the production of vine armor.

In the hot summer, the craftsmen of the R&D team asked Zhang He to send troops to help and cut back a large amount of green vines from the depths of the mountains. All of these green vines were removed from the green vines, leaving only the strong inner tendons of the green vines. After soaking in the stream for more than ten days, they were woven into vines according to certain techniques, and placed under the scorching sun for three days. Then they were soaked in tung oil for a week, then taken out and dried in a cool and ventilated place. After that, they were repeatedly soaked and dried several times, and finally made a very light weight but could not be caught.

If the work of the R&D team is completed here, it will be comparable to the craftsmanship level of Yizhou, but this is obviously not in line with the style of the Wohu Weapon Academy. This time they came to Hanzhong, not only to make rattan armor, but also to develop a series of armor with better protection capabilities based on the rattan armor.

The armor used by the soldiers who protect the ** now mainly includes three series: cavalry, infantry and sailors, and the armor of each type of army is refined into three categories: heavy armor, light armor and leather armor.

Among them, the heavy cavalry uses the most outstanding protection capabilities and the most bulky bright light armor and a helmet with completely covered faces; the light cavalry uses the fish scale armor with moderate protection capabilities and a light helmet with half-cover faces.

The heavy infantry was equipped with bright light armor and face-covering helmets similar to the heavy cavalry, but the protection of the lower body was also taken care of, and the plate armor was still used; because the light infantry had to take care of mobility and fire longbows, they were equipped with chain mail and fish scale armor.

The navy of Jin State has not yet officially fought against the enemy on the water, but considering the safety after falling into the water, it basically uses light half-body leather armor. If the sailors are wearing heavy armor of dozens of kilograms, a big wave pounces on them and falls into the water, they can only feed the turtle.

After comparing this, the most suitable equipment for the Jin Navy is currently exploring the vine armor. Because after the sailors wear vine armor, once they encounter the enemy falling into the water, the vine armor will not only not increase the burden, but on the contrary, it can also increase buoyancy, which is of great benefit to the safety of the sailors. Of course, some sailors who need to climb up and down between the masts and various cabins cannot wear any armor, and they are the most skillful, and they will not participate in close combat on the deck anyway.

The second suitable for assembling rattan armor is the heavy infantry that will take on the heavy responsibility of attacking Yizhou in the future. This method of using poison to fight poison can reduce the burden on the heavy infantry, making them take on the offensive tasks longer on the battlefield.

The first direction for the research team to improve the rattan armor was to develop a new composite armor for heavy infantry. This armor must have the fire resistance of steel armor and the lightness of rattan armor, and it must also be able to adapt to the humid and stuffy climate in Yizhou.

After repeated improvements, the first epoch-making composite armor was finally successfully developed by them.

This composite armor is made of vine armor as the backbone, with a thin and fire-proof fish scale armor on the outside, and a soft sheepskin padded inside. In this way, even in the hot summer, soldiers can still wear armor directly with their shirtlessness, and sweat can be discharged from the body through the armor sheets and gaps, so that they will not damage the body.

After acceptance, the protective strength of this composite armor is not inferior to that of heavy armor, but the weight is less than half of the original, and the production cost has decreased. Once it was launched, it was favored by the Pioneer Army heavy armored division.

The craftsmen in the research team thought that since heavy infantry could use this composite armor, could they also improve the armor of heavy cavalry? They thought about it and really started to think about it.

Considering that the reason why heavy cavalry can sweep all cavalry depends on huge inertia and protective ability, neither human armor nor vest can reduce the weight too much. Therefore, the craftsmen in the research group encountered great difficulties in how to perfectly combine the rattan armor and steel armor.

If a large amount of vine armor material is used, the load bearing of heavy cavalry will inevitably be reduced, and the inertia will be reduced, and the boundary between heavy cavalry and light cavalry will become blurred. However, heavy cavalry equipped with vine armor cannot replace the status of light cavalry, because the flexibility of vine armor is obviously not as good as fish scale armor, so the light cavalry cannot fully exert the power of cavalry.

When Zhao Xing heard about the difficulties encountered by the R&D team, he laughed out loud. He said to Ma Jun and others: "Typical inertial thinking! Just thinking about combining the rattan armor and steel armor on one piece of armor, I don't know how to think in reverse? It is possible to equip the heavy cavalry with double armor. Usually, they can marching with vine armor, so that the weight of the war horses can be reduced. When encountering an enemy, if there is no time to replace the rattan armor with heavy armor, wouldn't it be better to just put a layer of heavy armor outside the rattan armor? Even if you don't have time to directly wear heavy armor, and fight with vine armor, your protection ability will also increase?"

Zhao Xing woke up the R&D team with one word, so they began to design and make light and commonly used mutton armor for heavy cavalry.


Chapter completed!