Chapter 658 The King of War

In fact, this is what Qin Lei wanted to say to Chen Liefeng. Facing the Hulao Pass that thousands of men could not open, he had to take out the things under the box.

I saw the fiery red flags dancing, and a roar of cannons rang out.

As soon as he heard the cannon sound, the Qin army gunner who had already debugged the range neatly cut off the thick rope that connected the noose and the cannon base. The giant tendon noose made a strong sound of breaking the wind. The tip of the cannon suddenly flipped over, and the shells in the nest popped up, and the flight trajectory was more than twice as high as eight years ago.

The shells crossed the sky and hit the Hulao Pass city one after another. As soon as they fell, they burst out loud. Then, fire lights rose into the air. Countless sharp iron nails and stones flew across the sky, and suddenly the rain covered the city like pear blossoms. Everyone in the city screamed and fell to the ground.

The city wall was immediately chaotic, the injured were screaming and moaning, and the rest were serking like headless flies, and were immediately knocked down by the increasingly violent rain of bullets. Even the officers and soldiers who ran down the city to hide were unable to survive, because the same violent rain of bullets completely covered a few feet east of the city wall.

The anti-aircraft crossbow under the city also began to speak. The shooters sprinkled clusters of sharp arrows at the city without any money. They also fired thousands of garrottoes and garrotto bombs, turning the city into a sea of ​​fire.

The Qi soldiers screamed and ran away, scattering everywhere, completely chaotic.

But although Chen Liefeng on the city gate tower had his eyebrows twisted, he was just worried that the troops had suffered too much casualties. As for the city defense of Hulao Pass, he was not worried at all.

Because a tall arrow tower made of bricks and stones stands every few feet on the city wall, under the arrow tower is a hollow hidden military cave, and there are elite archers hidden in the cave. With a command, they will return to the battle post in the shortest time and use the most powerful arrow rain to attack the enemy from a high position.

Chen Liefeng was proudly hearing a muffled sound coming from a distance, followed by a huge explosion under his feet. The entire city gate tower shook, and the dust on the wall also fell down, which made him almost sit on the ground.

"What's wrong?" he asked loudly.

The people around him also looked at each other, not knowing what had happened.

It was not until loud noises rang one after another that someone pointed to his left in shock and said, "Look at the military gate!"

When Chen Liefeng heard this, he saw a large basin-like hole in an arrow tower on the left, and black smoke was whirring out of the hole. Then an explosion that had never been heard before was heard, and clusters of orange fire exploded in all directions. Each explosion would stir up countless gravels. When the wind blew away the smoke and dust, a large black pit as big as a watermelon appeared on the solid wall.

"What the hell is this?" The amazing power exceeded Chen Liefeng's perception. He couldn't help but say in horror: "How can even break the bricks?" Decades of military experience told him that there is no long-range weapon in this world that can be destroyed by the city wall.

But now the power of Qin army's weapons has obviously exceeded his cognition.

After taking Hangu Pass by sneak attack seven years ago, Qin Lei was always thinking of fighting Hulao Pass. But he also knew that Zhao Wujiu must be impatient and could not give him an opportunity to take advantage of it. There is no other way except for hard attacks, and he had already had this enlightenment.

Therefore, in recent years, he has spent several months every year to enter the "Second Independent Farm" hidden in the depths of the desert. It is actually his top secret arsenal. There are the most outstanding craftsmen in the Qin Dynasty, blacksmiths, gunpowder craftsmen, or even alchemists... Qin Lei opened a door for these people, which is how to use the gunpowder that makes firecrackers to turn them into powerful killing weapons.

Of course, Qin Lei did not expect to create killing weapons such as rifles and breech guns. Although he could make several types of long guns and short guns as long as he was given a lathe, there were no lathes in this era. Not only was there a lack of lathes? What he lacked was a complete modern industrial chain and could not bring those powerful weapons to the stage of history.

Those medieval firearms with slightly less powerful power, such as muskets, bird guns, earth cannons, lifting cannons, etc., have a difference in sight, low power, slow speed, and explosive chambers. They are not the opponents of elite cavalry at all, so he has never thought about developing those things before.

However, things change quickly. When he focused on the attack, he created a powerful firearm and finally put it on the agenda.

Generally speaking, there were two main categories of ancient firearms: the first category was fire guns and bird guns placed with hand-held points. The shape and caliber were small. Generally, the barrel was loaded with lead bullets and iron bullets, and the range was only a few dozen steps to 200 steps. The four problems mentioned just now were the same. Qin Lei asked to overcome them one by one and develop a flintlock rifle or a rear-loading gun, which would take at least twenty years... After all, the improvement of productivity in the entire society was slow.

So Qin Lei gave up this type and concentrated resources to study the second type...that is, artillery installed on the mount, with a large caliber and body launch! The range of this thing is generally from hundreds of steps to two or three miles away, and is mainly used for defending villages and siege cities!

He knew that the bigger the thing, the simpler the simpler it was, because it was large and the barrel was thick, so the requirements for the materials used were not that high, and even if it was cast into pig iron, it was not afraid of explosion. Moreover, the diameter was larger and the charge was more, which could effectively increase the range, which was considered a way to increase the power.

After careful consideration, Qin Lei focused on two types of artillery development, one was the small artillery Bolang machine. The cannon barrel of this thing was five to six feet long. Its advantage was that the projectiles were fired at a high speed, long range, and had great lethality. It also adopted the structure of a mother gun and a son gun. The mother gun refers to a cannon barrel. The son gun is actually a small fire gun, which is generally equipped with five to nine, and is loaded with ammunition in advance or in turn. When used, first load a son gun into the cannon chamber of the mother gun. After firing, the hollow son gun is withdrawn and replaced with another son gun. Because the son gun can be replaced in turn, the time for loading ammunition on site is reduced, thereby increasing the firing speed.

In addition, the gun is equipped with sights, sights and other devices, which can aim and shoot the target and improve shooting accuracy.

He also installed a latch at the bottom of the gun body, and a guide tube and a tail handle were installed at the tail. The gun body was installed on the gun stand through the latch; and then controlled the guide tube and tail handle, which could rotate the gun body left and right, adjust the shooting angle, and expand the shooting range.

In order to increase safety and shooting accuracy, he used repeated forging from cooked iron and white iron to produce high hardness, high strength, and toughness, and then melted in a coke-heated blast furnace to recast the gun barrel. This cost a lot, but Qin Lei believed that the most precious resource in the original artillery troops was the gunners... A gun could be rebuilt for a few days after a gun was lost, but if a skilled gunner was gone, it would not be retrained in three or two years.

Therefore, he would rather spend more money than let the gunners be killed by their own cannons. Moreover, the high-quality gun barrels are conducive to improving the stability of multiple shootings and have a great boost to the gunners fully exerting the power of the cannons.

In this way, the four problems solved three, and the remaining one was the power of the artillery. Qin Lei started from two aspects, one was to improve the quality of the gunpowder... Because there were too many impurities in the black gunpowder, even if the configuration was reasonable, the power was just like that, so he decided to change to a more powerful one.

This is not a difficult task for a former special instructor. In his mind, almost all the methods of making gunpowder were stored. After careful consideration, Qin Lei chose the "cotton gunpowder" with relatively balanced performance and production difficulty.

Yes, cotton can explode after being soaked in nitric acid. Just soak the cotton in a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid and wash off the excess acid, you can make nitrofiber. Making this nitrofiber gunpowder into a gun-cannon launcher is much more powerful than black gunpowder and is also very safe.

Although nitric acid is not ready-made, as long as there is sulfuric acid, you will not worry about nitric acid. Qin Lei doesn't even need to worry about sulfuric acid, because alchemists have mastered a set of "Stone Refining Gallbladder Essence Method" handed down from Emperor Gaozong of Tang, that is, the method of obtaining sulfuric acid by using dry distillation stone gallbladder, that is, gallbladder alum.

Of course, in order to improve efficiency, Qin Lei made a small improvement in this method. He distilled saltpeter and green alum together, and the resulting gas dissolved in water and became sulfuric acid.

As long as sulfuric acid is applied to sodium nitrate, the most critical nitric acid can be obtained.

Sodium nitrate is derived from sodaite. This thing is mainly composed of rotten animals and plants and plants decomposed by nitrification bacteria, and the nitrate produced is combined with the sodium in the soil. The high-purity ones are white or even colorless, and are dyed into light gray, light yellow, light brown or reddish brown due to impurities.

But this thing is most easily dissolved and lost by water, so the hot and dry desert areas are a good condition for sodium saltpeter enrichment. This is also one of the reasons why Qin Lei chose the western desert as an arsenal. In addition to keeping it confidential, he also collects those small crystals. He was very lucky. He even found a small surface mine dozens of miles away. Among the minerals at the same time, there was a large amount of soda stone... enough for him to use it for ten years.

After he produced nitric acid, he mass-produced the "cotton explosive". Of course, he also thought about it and went further and developed the colloidal Dana explosive, but nitroglycerin was too difficult to deal with and too dangerous. He didn't want the craftsmen to die in a few days, so he just settled for the second best and frozen the Qin army's artillery fibre explosives.

Isn’t there a saying that there is no best, but only the most suitable? In today’s era, at this level of craftsmanship, relatively simple cotton explosives are undoubtedly the best choice.

After improving the quality of explosives, Qin Lei started to work on the shells. In addition to the solid bombs made of iron and stone, he also opened an opening on the cast iron bullet body, plugged it with a wooden "trusted tube" and installed slow-burning gunpowder into the tube to detonate. This is the legendary flowering bullet like a fairy scattered flower, which can kill and injure enemy soldiers on a large scale, and the effect is more than ten times that of the solid bomb?

After solving all four problems, Qin Lei encountered new trouble, that is, the gap between the breeze of the Flang machine and the gun barrel is difficult to overcome, so it will cause gunpowder gas to leak and cannot convert all the explosive force into firing force, resulting in limited range of the cannon.

Therefore, Qin Lei imitated the red-clothed cannon. This is a big guy. The principle is similar to the Folang machine, but the caliber is larger, the pipe wall is thicker, and it can withstand a large chamber pressure. It was the most powerful cannon at that time. It was more than two feet long and weighed two thousand kilograms. It can crack the stone city and shake dozens of miles! It was definitely the world's number one killer for a considerable period of time!
Chapter completed!