The weather is the clearest time, and the sun is emitting its light and heat to make the mountains and grasslands bright. On the Jinlian River grassland, more than a dozen riding horses roaring in the grassland, alarming the birds and beasts on the grassland soar into the sky. These horsemen were wearing shining breastplates and steel helmets, and white feathers were inserted on the steel helmets, which was the symbol of the guards' cavalry.

Chen Dexing raised his hunting rifle and fired with a bang. Of course, his shooting skills were smelly. After all, he had never shot like this in his two lives. The gunshots were heard, and a hare was still running quickly. A bow and arrow shot out and pierced into the rabbit's body, and the rabbit fell head-on.

A man in costume laughed out loud, waved the stubborn horn bow in his hand proudly, laughed at Chen Dexing, and said in stiff Chinese: "Sage, is it really a good use for bows and arrows? I have heard of your sharp shooting in the grassland. Why not replace it with bows and arrows, let's have a good test."

This Mongolian is Haidu Khan. He is now competing with Chen Dexing to fight rabbits on the Jinlianchuan grassland. Haidu uses bows and arrows, but Chen Dexing is using a small and exquisite smoothbore gun.

He looked down at the smoothbore gun in his hand helplessly, as if it was really not as useful as a bow and arrow.

This is a smoothbore gun designed and made by Meng De according to Chen Dexing's requirements. The design that originally thought would take three years to complete, but now it took several months to make many breakthroughs. However, this breakthrough has not fully met Chen Dexing's requirements. Because the gun is still a medley gun, and the flintlock mechanism has not completed the design. However, it is much easier to reduce the weight of the gun body, which is nothing more than a thinner barrel, a smaller caliber, and a shorter body. The weight of this smoothbore gun is reduced to eight and a half kilograms, and the length is only a little more than five feet.

This smoothbore gun is very exquisitely built, and the inside of the barrel is also a boring machine. This is the invention of the craftsmen of the Weapon Bureau. A very primitive boring machine is a drill made of crucible steel welded to the iron rod, and then installed the iron rod on a wheel and bored repeatedly, which is very smooth. It almost reached the smoothness of the inner wall of the steel pipe in the industrial era. Moreover, its effective range barely meets Chen Dexing's requirements. It can hit human-shaped targets outside 70 steps, and its armor-breaking ability is worse. It can penetrate 1 minute of steel armor thickness at a distance of 30 steps. Although its power is not as good as the Tiandao two-year heavy smoothbore gun, it is no longer inferior to the bow and arrow.

In terms of effective range alone, the power of this gun seems to have surpassed most of the smoothbore guns in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe in history. The reason for this is that in addition to carefully polishing the barrel, a student of Mengde came up with a method to wrap lead bullets in deer skin to increase the air tightness of the smoothbore gun. In fact, this method was also adopted in history. Light infantry (scattered soldiers) that appeared at the same time as line infantry sometimes equipped with rifled guns, and sometimes equipped with carefully selected smoothbore guns to fire deer skin bullets.

The carefully crafted smoothbore gun (the mass production is not that good), coupled with the same carefully crafted deer-skin bullets and the best pelleted h medicine, can indeed make a smoothbore gun barely equal to the accuracy of its range with the bow and arrow.

But the premise is that the person who uses bows and arrows is not a master like Haidu Khan or Chen Dexing.

"King Khan, you and I have both started practicing bows and arrows at the age of three, and have 20 or 30 years of skill." Chen Dexing smiled and shook his head. He threw the musket to Baoyin beside him, and took another musket loaded with ammunition from her. "But I only practiced the gun for less than twenty days, and I only fired more than a hundred ammunitions in total."

While talking, another rabbit was running over. Chen Dexing hurriedly raised his musket and hooked the trigger. Another gunshot sounded, and the rabbit was not lucky and fell down in response.

This time it was Chen Dexing's turn to laugh proudly, "King Khan, how about it? I have been practicing guns for more than 20 days, and I can compete with you who have been practicing bows and arrows for more than 30 years!"

Haidu's face looked a little ugly. He was also one of the most outstanding military strategists of this era. How could he not understand the profound meaning of Chen Dexing's words? The era of bow and horse is about to end. A Mongolian warrior who rode and archery since childhood may not be as good as a Han farmer who has been practicing smoothbore guns for several months when he went to the battlefield!

He laughed dryly, "Although this coercion is good, it is not cheap, and H medicine is very expensive, how can it be cheaper than bows and arrows?"

Chen Dexing handed the musket to Baoyin. He took another smoothbore gun loaded with lead bullets and smiled and said, "The musket is not expensive. The material is just a few kilograms of cooked iron and a few kilograms of wood, which costs artificial... The labor is actually not expensive. How many workers can a musket be used for? How much money can a manpower cost for a manpower? If this musket is cooked and mass-produced, it will be only a dozen jin per. A slightly better bow will be more than this. Unless you find a piece of wood to cut a bow shape and use it, it will be cheap."

Mass production, mass sales... This already has a bit of industrialization! Chen Dexing introduced the concepts of standardization and assembly line production as early as when he was in Yangzhou City. Later, in Haidong and Mingdu, the weapons factory opened in Mingdu, still adhered to this idea. Later, the weapons bureau reformed, and only the three core departments of H medicine, steel and artillery were retained. The craftsmen from other workshops were released to start their own businesses. Some of these people spread the concepts of "standardization" and "assembly line".

Therefore, in recent years, many factories have emerged in Mingdu Prefecture that use "standardized" production and "assembly line" production. The same is true for the Mengji Musket Shop, which was run by Mengde. Moreover, simple machinery driven by various hydraulic and animal powers have been widely used, greatly improving production efficiency and reducing production costs.

Therefore, the prices of various weapons used by the Ming army have been declining in recent years. Taking steel armor as an example, the price of a pair of 30 kilograms of infantry steel armor has fallen from 1,500 jin at the beginning to about 250 jin (the factory price of Mingdu Mansion)! The price of a large steel cross-cutter knife has also dropped from the earliest hundreds of jin to the current dozens of jin. The price of a long spear has dropped to more than ten jin.

A large number of weapons workshops have also diverged in this wave of industrial decline in price and demand expansion. Some workshops have expanded in scale and become workshops; some workshops have closed down, and the employer of the workshop owner has become a workshop. The proletariat, who has become a workshop, has been born in the workshops in Mingdu!

However, there are some weapons that are difficult to achieve large-scale production due to complex production processes and long processing time. For example, horse lances, such as composite bows, are still expensive. A horse lance can often cost thousands of stakes! And there is no market price. A good bow can easily cost two or three hundred stakes, which is equivalent to the price of five or six Tiandao two-year convex guns!

The two of them rode their horses while talking, climbing a high slope, and under their feet was a military camp under construction. The outer trenches and civil and wooden walls (wood covered with soil) had been formed, and it could be seen how large the size of the military camp was. A gust of mountain wind blew, causing the sea with many fine beads of sweat to appear on their foreheads and felt a hint of chill.

"Baoyin, take a two-year stylistic style for Haidu Khan to see." Chen Dexing suddenly smiled at this time, asking Baoyin to take a two-year stylistic style from his subordinate and hand it over to Haidu.

What a big musket! Haidu held the musket, and after looking at it, his face couldn't hide his likeness. He had known about Kublai Khan's sharp defeat of Aluhu with his muskets. Naturally, he wanted to get the musket. But the craftsmen on the Mongolian grasslands couldn't make it at all, and it was useless to build it, because there was no iron production on the Mongolian grasslands, and there was no h medicine.

Chen Dexing stretched out a slap and smiled, "This Tiandao Two-Year Style is a musket made last year. It is much larger than the mesh gun I used just now, with a longer range and a greater power. It can break the steel armor within seventy steps. The price of Meng Ji's gun store is only 50 guan! Brother Haidu wants to buy some?"

‘Only 50 guan!? True or fake?’ Haiduhan took a deep breath and was skeptical. 50 guan was not cheap for Mongolia, but for the Ming Empire, which had a gold and silver income in Jiangnan, had an annual income of more than 12,000 guan (of which the central government had an income of about 80 million guan), it was nothing at all.

"If I want to buy 5,000 pieces, can I have one?" Haiduhan thought for a while and decided to try to buy some.

"5,000 pieces are 250,000 guan." Chen Dexing nodded with a smile, "But the export of weapons in the Ming Dynasty requires tariffs. A cowboy must be charged 10 guan, and 5,000 pieces are 50,000 guan, a total of 300,000 guan. If you want to deliver the goods at Kaiping, you have to add some shipping charges."

Of course, the combs cannot be exported at will. Like bronze cannons, this thing is a controlled weapon. However, it can still be exported after approval by the Ministry of the Army. Those who can be approved by the Ministry of the Army are naturally allies or vassal states of the Ming Dynasty.

Chen Dexing paused and said, "As long as the Ming Dynasty and the Great Mongolian formed an alliance, not to mention a comb, even a bronze cannon can be sold to Brother Haidu."

"The condition for forming an alliance is..." Haidu knew that he didn't have much weight to bargain with Chen Dexing, but he still had some bottom lines that he had to stick to. For example, he could not surrender to the Ming Dynasty, and of course he could not recognize Chen Dexing as his father.

Chen Dexing said: "The first is to demarcate the boundary. The south of the border between the two countries is divided by the desert. The north of the desert is Mongolia and the south of the desert is the Ming Dynasty. The Mongolian tribes are not allowed to nomadic in the south of the desert. The east of the border between the two countries is not demarcated, but the Mongolian tribes are not allowed to enter a place close to Mount Mengke and a hundred miles west of Mount Halawen.

The second is trade, which stipulates the location of mutual trading, and one mutual trading place in the south of the Moon and north of the Moon. The south of the Moon is Kaiping, and the northern part of the Moon is chosen by Brother Haidu. In addition, the "Trade of Trade" must be signed to stipulate tariffs and various commercial matters.

The third is missionary. Tiandaoism can spread freely in Mongolia without restrictions.

The fourth is to open an embassy, ​​the Ming Dynasty set up a museum at the location of the inter-market between Helin and Mongolia, and the Mongolia set up a museum at the Hekaiping, Yanjing.

Fifth, King Khan, you must become the Great Khan of Mongolia!”

Hearing the last condition, Hai was stunned for a moment, "What? Do I want me to call Da Khan?"
Chapter completed!