The Jingzhao Army's firearm research and development and testing site is located on the west bank of the Bashui River, twenty miles north of Chang'an City. There is a small basin here, about ten miles in radius, surrounded by mountains, many caves in the mountains, and the air is relatively dry, which is very suitable for the manufacturing and research and development of firearms.

In the afternoon, under the escort of a thousand cavalry, Li Yanqing brought a group of important officials here.

Everyone was immediately attracted. It turned out that the famous thunder was created here. At this time, a muffled sound of "boom!" came from a distance, but the sky was very clear and there was no sign of rain.

Li Yanqing smiled and said to everyone: "This should be an experiment on the thunder of the sky."

Liu Wei asked in confusion: "The Thunder of the Sky should be a very mature firearm. Do you need to continue testing?"

"Of course, it is necessary to constantly change the gunpowder formula to make the explosion more powerful, or to test various characteristics of the sky-shaking thunder, such as the explosion just now blew up on the Bashui River, which is likely to be a sky-shaking thunder in the test water."

"What does the thunder in the water look like?" Wu Jie asked curiously.

"Actually, the principle is very simple. It is a large wooden box, and the thunder is fixed in the box. After igniting the fuse, cover the lid and put it in the water to drift to the center of the river and explode. It is usually used to explode pontoon bridges and other things. It is also possible to bomb ships. If you have time when you come back, I will take you to see it. Now we will go to the shooting range."

At this time, another explosion came from the direction of the Ba River, stirring up a white river water, which was more than ten feet high.

Everyone looked in the direction of the explosion, but the shooting range was in the other direction, so they had to wait to see if there was time when they came back.

Soon, everyone came to the shooting range, which was an archery range. In everyone's memory, the archery range was used to test rockets, fire kites or the latest burst crossbow in firearms. The burst crossbow was also a new type of firearm that appeared at the beginning of the year. It was a two-inch-long sealed thin bamboo tube filled with explosive gunpowder, which was very powerful and could explode the shield, mixed with iron sand. When it exploded, the iron sand splashed, which was also a potential damage to the soldiers' eyes.

This kind of burst bamboo tube is usually tied to the crossbow arrow of the Divine Arm Crossbow or the city guarding bow, so it is called a burst crossbow. It is actually an upgraded version of the gunpowder arrow.

At this time, a row of ten soldiers were half kneeling on the ground and shooting. Everyone was immediately attracted by the firearms in the soldiers' hands. It turned out to be a six-foot-long black tube. With a command, "Bang! Bang! Bang!", and white smoke came out from the mouth of the iron tube.

"What is this?" everyone asked in surprise.

"This is called a musket!"

Li Yanqing smiled and introduced to them: "A powerful shooting weapon was developed for a full six years before it was successful. The key was the material. It was made of pig iron to cast pipes. After experiencing various failures, it finally decided to use copper pipes, which are easy to cast, and are smooth in the pipes and not easy to explode."

Li Yanqing took a musket and handed it to everyone, "Let's take a look!"

From the appearance, this is no longer the first musket that appeared in history. The muskets in history appeared in the late Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty. Li Yanqing advanced it more than a hundred years ago and made excellent wooden butt stocks that can be used to shoot with butt stocks. From the appearance, they are completely a fuse-rope smoothbore gun from later generations.

"What is it shooting out?" Zhang Shuye asked.

Li Yanqing took a lead bullet the size of a little finger from the soldier's hand and smiled and said to everyone: "It's just that, the range of killing is 200 steps, which is slightly further away than the Divine Arm Crossbow, but the armor-breaking effect is stronger than the Divine Arm Crossbow."

Seeing that everyone was still confused, he smiled and said to a soldier: "You can demonstrate it to everyone!"

"Abide by the order!"

The soldier put the gun barrel upwards and took out a tube of gunpowder. The tube was a bamboo tube with a lid on it. A tube of gunpowder was exactly the explosive gunpowder needed for a shooting. It was very standard. The soldier poured all the gunpowder into the gunpowder, pulled out a long iron bar to thrust the gunpowder tightly, and then put the lead bullet in.

He then set out shooting support, scooped a spoonful of fire-induced powder from his waist and put it into the gunpowder pool, took out a five-inch long fuse rope and inserted it into the gunpowder pool. At this time, he pulled out the fire stick from his back and threw it. The fire stick immediately ignited. The soldier lit the fuse rope, took back the fire stick, and immediately took a shooting posture, aiming at a straw man a hundred steps ahead.

After a moment, there was only a sound of "bang!", and a stream of Mars spewed out from the mouth of the tube with white smoke, and the lead bullet shot away quickly, "bang!" hit the grass man.

Everyone was stunned again. After a while, Li Guang stuttered: "Master, this is too troublesome!"

Li Yanqing smiled and said, "It seems troublesome, but I am skilled. In fact, it is like the Divine Arm Crossbow. I just showed it to everyone just now, so I deliberately slowed down my motion. Let's take a look again below."

It was the same soldier, and he was filled with medicine, filled with bullets, lit the ignition rope, and shot in one go, as fast as flowing water, even a little faster than shooting at the divine arm crossbow.

Everyone nodded. Sure enough, after being proficient, they were extraordinary and looked very pleasing to the eye.

At this time, Li Yanqing waved his hand and said, "Pick it up!"

Two soldiers carried the grass man target from a hundred steps away. There was a piece of armor on the grass man target. At this time, Wu Jie and Xu Huiyan exclaimed in unison: "Cold forged armor!"

Everyone's eyes lit up. It turned out that this dark armor was the most famous cold-forged armor in Xixia. It is said that it is extremely difficult to build and the success rate is very low. Xixia has only made thousands of pieces in the past century. Except for the three thousand iron kites, the other cold-forged armors are all in the hands of the nobles in Xixia. Unexpectedly, one item appears in front of them.

Li Yanqing introduced to everyone, "This is indeed a cold forged armor. A complete set of cold forged armor includes cavalry armor and war horse armor. The war horse armor is slightly weaker than the cavalry armor. I have not been able to get it. This cavalry armor was purchased by me from a ruined nobleman in Xixia through the channel of the Black Party Encyclopedia. Please take a closer look!"

Li Yanqing ordered the soldiers to peel off the cold forged armor and spread it for everyone to take a closer look. They saw that the thick cold forged armor was covered with dense holes, and everyone was stunned.

Liu Wei suddenly realized, "Is this the musket that was penetrated?"

Li Yanqing nodded, "You can't penetrate it within one hundred and fifty steps, you can penetrate it in one hundred steps. This is the secret weapon I told you to deal with Iron Harrier."

Iron Harrier is actually a heavy armored cavalry. It cannot penetrate the arrows and cannot penetrate the guns. It has always been the Western Xia army that the Song army feared the most. Now it finally has the weapons to restrain it, which has made everyone see hope.

Li Yanqing smiled but said nothing. In fact, not only the fire guns, but also the city-burning thunder can kill the Iron Harrier in large quantities. Its huge shock wave can definitely kill the Iron Harrier cavalry. Although it has not been tested, Li Yanqing was full of confidence.

At dusk, Zhang Shun quickly walked into the Jingliu Mansion with a middle-aged man. The two soldiers behind him were carrying a box. They waited in the yard for a while, and a personal soldier led them into Li Yanqing's official room.

Li Yanqing had just returned from the firearm test site and was fiddling with a musket brought back from the firearm base. It was actually a coercion gun. Li Yanqing was amazed at the superb handicrafts of the Song people, and he could make such a slender and even long copper tube, which was extremely delicately ground. It is said that it took craftsmen ten days to make such a copper tube. It took two years for the craftsmen to build a thousand copper tubes.

With the current technology, it is not realistic to make internal spiral rifles, but Li Yanqing is considering whether he can make a flintlock rifle. With the craftsmanship of the Song Dynasty, it should be feasible. As for how to do it, Li Yanqing will not consider it too much. He only needs to put forward ideas, and the skilled craftsmen will naturally think about it according to his ideas.

At this time, a soldier reported at the door, "Zhang Tongzhi of the scout camp is here!"

"Let him in!"

After a moment, Zhang Shun walked in, knelt down on one knee and bowed, and introduced the man behind him to Li Yanqing, "This is Tuoba Lu, the chief of the black party Xianghuizhou, and the owner of the Helan Old Sword Weapons."

Tuoba Lu hurriedly stepped forward to salute, and Li Yanqing smiled and said, "You don't have to be polite, please sit down!"

Li Yanqing asked Tuoba Lu to sit down and asked his personal soldiers to serve tea. He smiled and said, "You have troubled you last time with the cold armor!"

Tuoba Lu hurriedly said, "Xiaomin got another cold forged armor this time. I wonder if Tong Li is interested?"

Li Yanqing's eyes lit up, "Did you bring it?"

"Bringed!"

Zhang Shun quickly asked the soldiers to carry the box in. When he opened it, it was indeed a dark cold-forged armor inside. Li Yanqing was so excited that he rubbed his hands. He took the one before to test the gun, but he was always very sorry that if he got another one, he would definitely use it to study and imitate it.

He had always wanted to rebuild a heavy armored infantry against cavalry, that is, the Modao Army of the Tang Dynasty. The Modao forging technology of the Tang Dynasty had disappeared, but the Song Dynasty also had oar swords and three-pointed two-edged swords. In the era of Emperor Shenzong of Song, the horse-killing swords appeared. Li Yanqing had carefully studied them. The hardness was enough, but the sharpness and durability were still a little worse. Until they cracked the gold-forging method of Xia Guojian, they could create a new Modao.

What Li Yanqing needs now is heavy armor, and cold forged armor is undoubtedly the best heavy armor. Finally, he got another one. If it can be cracked, he can imitate it in large quantities.

Li Yanqing simply hugged the cold forged armor on the table and put it down. He gently stroked the cold feeling on the armor. He suddenly realized that the armor seemed to have never been worn, and the standards were different. It was not the armor of the Xixia people, but it looked like the black hammer armor.

"Is this also purchased from that devastated nobleman?"

Tuoba Lu shook his head, "This one was obtained from a Qiang family on Xihe Road."

Li Yanqing was stunned, as if he remembered something again, and then asked quickly: "Can it be Qingtang Qiang?"

The cold forged armor was not invented by the Xixia people, but the Qingtang Qiang ancestral skill that lived in Huangzhou. The armor they forged was also regarded as a treasure in the Song Dynasty and was called the Jingzijia. There are detailed forging records in "Mengxi Bitan", but they did not record them all, resulting in the armor forged by the Song Dynasty not as strong as the Qingtang Qiang forged. Later, Qingtang Qiang was attacked by the Xixia army and was all captured to Xixia. This armor forged technique was passed down in the Xixia.

Tuoba Lu nodded, "It is a branch left by Qingtang Qiang. They have not forged armor for nearly fifty years. However, they still retain the forging method of cold forged armor. This time, Xiaomin brought three old men, who can oralize the full set of cold forged armor forged armor."
Chapter completed!