The weather was getting colder and colder, and the whole city of Guangzhou was freezing. Although it didn't snow, Li Jia felt as if it was about to snow. He put on a fur coat and went straight out of the palace and came to the Ordnance Department.

The location of the Ordnance Department is very remote. Although it is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry, it has always been independent and located on a small island.

It started to rain in the sky. As the Chinese New Year approached, the weather became more and more changeable. However, Li Jia was not afraid of the cold and came by boat.

The person currently in charge of the Ordnance Department is a scholar, Huang Dezhang, who likes weapons and spares books. He came to surrender after Li Jia captured Guangzhou City.

"I have seen your Majesty——" Huang Dezhang had dark skin and many wounds on his fingers. He was very happy to see the emperor coming.

"No gifts! Show me the situation in the Ordnance Department!" Li Jia smiled, which relieved the tension of these craftsmen.

"Promise!" Huang Dezhang agreed, then showed his white teeth and led the emperor into the craftsman's workshop.

Several people walked into a room, closed their umbrellas and shook off the rainwater on their robes. Li Jia immediately frowned and covered his nose with a handkerchief. A choking burning smell came to his face with a wave of heat!

The house was very noisy, and the noise made my ears buzz, which was very uncomfortable.

The donkey in the basement pulls a huge runner, making a tooth-piercing sound, driving a row of blowers to blow air against the furnace. The blast furnace, which is built with bricks and mud on the outside, is the main heat source for the high temperature in the house.

There is also the sound of the blacksmith swinging his hammer and banging.

Looking over, I saw a few bare-chested blacksmiths, their yellow muscles covered with sweat, hammering away at them.

"Now the Ordnance Department has ten superior blacksmiths, hundreds of intermediate and junior blacksmiths, plus carpenters, and hundreds of other apprentices. Plus their families, the entire island has a population of nearly two thousand people!"

Huang Dezhang has a dark face, but his teeth are white, and he knows a lot about the Ordnance Department.

"Because of the water pressure, after the iron plates were made on land, they were made with the apprentices. It only took two or three hours for a blacksmith to complete the work!"

"And the more delicate chain armor, as well as the bright light armor, etc., need to be hammered carefully by blacksmiths!"

Huang Dezhang took the emperor around several rooms and saw the scene of hundreds of people doing their homework. It was extremely shocking.

"Now, we have assigned some apprentices to make farm tools, shovels, shovels, and trolleys. We are also making them, but since they are not very important, we have arranged them on land, which is cheaper, but we will not make them after a while.

Private carpenters are already good at it, but they can't make any money and it's a waste of manpower..."

After that, Li Jia came to an important sword-making place. Due to the application of cow urine, cow urine was used during quenching to get excellent iron swords, which were far better than ordinary swords. This time, he went north without any equipment.

, just apply it among your own guards.

He has never taken Hunan and Nanping seriously. How can one kill a chicken with a bull's knife?

"How many knives does Su Tiejian have in reserve?" Li Jia asked.

"These days, I can produce hundreds of pills every day, and I have saved nearly 30,000 pills..." Huang Dezhang said directly after thinking for a moment.

"Where are the crossbows?" The Southern Han Dynasty paid more attention to crossbows than Li Jia expected, so much so that the Forbidden Army was equipped with divine crossbow troops, numbering tens of thousands. They were also used on a large scale in water battles, as were the Jingbo Army.

In this case, Li Jia must also pay attention to the fact that it is not easy to train archers with strong bows and powerful crossbows, but it only takes a few months to achieve it. Since he cannot compare with the Northern Song Dynasty in terms of soldiers, he must surpass it in terms of ordnance.

The cavalry cannot be defeated, but the same cannot be said for the cavalry equipped with crossbows.

The crossbows were lined up in rows, and the cold air was overwhelming. Li Jia was quite excited to see them. He calmed down and said again: "Go to the testing place to see how the artillery is doing!"

Compared with the artillery, the catapult was too big, and it didn't have much accuracy. If he didn't cheat, Li Jia found that he really couldn't defeat the Northern Song Dynasty. This was a Forbidden Army that could compete with the Khitans!

For the sake of one's own life and the sake of one's own world, this kind of killer weapon must be released.

After walking for a long time, they came to a small valley. Houses appeared one after another, and Li Jia's mood was also shaken.

After walking in, not long after, a big man wearing a thin and ragged linen jacket came over and was wiping the white dust on his face with a sweat towel.

Huang Dezhang said: "Your Majesty, he is Wei Tie!"

"Oh? What a name!"

Li Jia dedicated a piece of land to the Ordnance Department to test-make firearms. It cost a lot to raise so many people every year; but after several years of research and development, he still failed to achieve anything...

It's just useless to come up with those "explosive bombs", gunpowder cannonballs, and use catapults to throw them.

In the past, the impurity removal method of saltpeter dissolution and filtration to granulate gunpowder to burn faster was the emperor's personal idea, and the Ordnance Department only implemented it.

Now that the end of the year is approaching, Huang Dezhang has to summarize the results of the Ordnance Department this year... When writing the memorial, did he write "Waste money and food, no results"?

Huang Dezhang was really angry, but there was nothing he could do about it. The emperor was visiting today, and he still had some confidence in his heart.

"Can you try it?" Huang Dezhang asked.

Wei Tie hesitated a little, glanced at the emperor, and said loudly: "It's hard, anyway, the barrel is cast, so the hole will be big and the body will be thick; the gunpowder will run out of gas, so it won't be able to hit far!"

"Wrought iron is too soft and will deform when exploded; slightly hard and brittle, it will crack when exploded. But I thought about it and found that there are two problems. One is that the iron material is not good, and the other is that gunpowder is not good."

Li Jia turned around and said to an accompanying scribe: "Write down what he said."

"The gunpowder we used was too strong. If it burned too fast, it would burst the iron pipe. But there was little smoke, and the projectile could not travel far in the chamber. I readjusted the ingredients and added more charcoal. In addition, the iron used to forge the barrel was too cooked.

Soft, slightly hard and brittle. I have tried many methods, adding limestone can improve... But I used to add limestone powder while hammering the wrought iron, and the slag was completely beaten into the iron material. Now I have a new idea, in

Add molten iron to the furnace!"

When Wei Tie saw that the emperor cared about him, he was very happy and said quickly.

What is the principle of adding lime powder to iron materials? Li Jia is really confused. He is not a professional. How much does he know?

However, with these words, he understood that these man-made cannons were always made of iron? It was simply...

The emperor listened like this, his face getting darker and darker. After a while, he walked out of the room and said to Huang Dezhang:

"Have you always used iron?"

"You said you want to make cannons. We have the most iron in ordnance, so we can only use iron!" Huang Dezhang said doubtfully.
Chapter completed!