When Xu Shiyang and his party arrived in the northwest, he saw a rear-mounted rifle modified by a civilian gunsmith with a standard three-type firing rifle in Gansu Province.

The modification method is very simple. Cut the barrel into a section of the barrel near the rear barrel of the bolt, about 65 mm, and convert it into a cap mechanism that can be rotated to the right. Such a cover forms a not very reliable but very simple locking device.

So a breech gun was born.

The gunsmith who invented this thing even specially created an integrated bullet with a shell!

To put it bluntly, this thing is also very simple. In fact, it is just a shell made of oil paper or linen soaked in beeswax, wrapping the bullet and launching medicine.

However, this gun solidly eliminates many necessary procedures when firing with standard three types, such as pouring medicine into the barrel, striking the solid with a straight strip, and biting the bullet packaging, etc.

This means that the firing rate of this rifle will be far beyond the standard three types of field army equipment, and it can allow soldiers to lie down and load and shoot!

In Gansu Province, Xu Shiyang personally met with the inventor of this improved rifle, a veteran named Dai Zi.

He stayed in the local area for a few more days and asked Dai Zi to use the equipment of the local garrison repair center to temporarily process 6 after-installation rifles, and used them to conduct a comparison test with the standard three types.

The result is that Dai Zi's rear-loaded gun can fire twenty times in two and a half minutes! This time is only half of the standard three types. If you shoot at a high speed, a skilled shooter can even complete 15 shots per minute! This is something that a front-loaded gun cannot do in any case.

Moreover, because it is directly modified from the Standard Three, the ballistic performance of this gun is almost exactly the same as that of the Standard Three, and its accuracy, range and other aspects are almost not affected by modification.

In other aspects, such as reliability, the Daizi rifle can shoot 1,000 rounds in four days, and maintain performance even if the barrel is not cleaned.

The shooting experiment results in humid environments and rainy weather are also far stronger than the standard three types.

If the standard three-type fired rifle allows a Han farmer who is pioneering in the border areas to have the power to fight alone and fight against the elite Tartar soldiers, then the performance of the Daizi rifle can allow a Han farmer to have the power to easily kill an elite armored cavalry!

Xu Shiyang was very excited about this. This is a rare example of people who have surpassed their own ideas and are on the right path.

So Xu Shiyang gave Dai Zi the reward he deserved - the purpose was to encourage others to work hard to innovate, just like buying a horse bone with a wealth of money.

The reward Xu Shiyang gave Dai Zi was enough to make everyone jealous:

First, I will directly give Dai Zi a cash reward of 10,000 taels.

Second, Dai Zi will be granted a patent for a side-opening flap door-mounted rifle. In the future, whether it is an empire or other countries, Dai Zi will have to pay a patent fee for producing each similar weapon.

Third, Xu Shiyang will invite Dai Zi to join the newly established scientific association in Yanjing, and Xu Shiyang will directly give Dai Zi Science Association a silver badge to the third-class (first class is gold inlaid jade, second-class gold emblem) to prove his contribution to military science.

However, there is another requirement here. Xu Shiyang wants Dai Zi to take the lead in formulating improvement standards for standard three-type rifles, and everything is spoken by data, rather than by experience.

In fact, Xu Shiyang now attaches more importance to the standard number of a new invention than the new invention itself.

Because of this standard, everyone may continue to improve on this standard, or explore ideas and invent new things on this basis.

This is Xu Shiyang's favorite trend. Strengthening a scientific foundation is far more important than one or two new inventions - anyway, the empire is now invincible, so it doesn't matter whether there are any new inventions.

Having said that, as long as the foundation is solid enough, various new inventions will inevitably have a blowout stage in the future.

This is also the reason why Xu Shiyang continues to invest in basic education - let the children learn basic mathematics, Chinese and other courses well, and then there is room for them to play. Who dares to say that they will not have a Newton in the future?

Back at Dai Zi, Xu Shiyang gave him the fourth benefit:

He directly granted the identity of Baron Dai Zi, allowing him to step into the ranks of nobles with his head held high!

Now, the nobles of the empire are just honorary titles, but this honor is enough to make many people feel jealous.

Moreover, this is the first example of getting a title directly for improving technology. People will understand the empire's emphasis on technicians, and may also lead the future social atmosphere. When social elites cannot rely on the Four Books and Five Classics to achieve class leap, Xu Shiyang pointed them in a new direction - everyone will study more practical technologies or devote themselves to science and engineering!

Xu Shiyang even planned to visit several mathematicians in the next trip to improve their status, so that people could see the Empire's emphasis on science and engineering foundations such as mathematics.

Of course, this is all the next work. After Dai Zi first set an example, Xu Shiyang left Gansu Province and continued his itinerary.

Here, let’s continue to talk about the current cabinet statistics on the strength of the empire in all aspects:

In terms of military affairs, in addition to Dai Zi rifles, the reserves and militias also have other things that civilian gunsmiths transform themselves, such as double-barrel firing guns, large-caliber rifles that mainly fire shotguns, etc.

These things seem to be specialized based on the areas where the militia are located. For example, the double-barrel gun faces ferocious large animals such as bears and tigers, and have the chance to shoot the second shot quickly, and the error tolerance rate is high.

Large-caliber shotguns are very useful for dealing with large groups of small targets - such as wild ducks, various bird groups, etc., and can hit one piece at a time, and the power of the bullet is just right, so it will not break the small prey.

Of course, more militia weapons are just purchased directly or taken away by retired veterans.

In terms of muskets, there are many standard types 1, 2, 3 and shotguns that have never become standard equipment, and even the more backward types 1 and 2 equipment are higher than that of Type 3. The reason is that the bullets of the first two can be made by themselves, while the fire hats of Type 3 must be purchased from state-owned weapons stores.

After investigation, among the 3.8 million reserves and militias of the empire, the musket equipment was 2 million, including 600,000 standard type 2 flintlock rifles, 400,000 type 1 flintlock rifles, 400,000 type 3 flintlock rifles, 300,000 type 3 firing rifles, 300,000 bird guns, and the other 300,000 are pistols.

Considering that there are many people in the civilians equipped with multiple guns, there are still 2.3 million people in the Imperial Reserve and Militia without guns!

This is mainly because the newly formed local militia musket gap in the Jiangnan region is very large.
Chapter completed!