In the fifty-third year of the Qin Dynasty, New Year's Eve in the second year of the second year finally arrived.
At the beginning of the lanterns, snowflakes began to fall in the sky again. Before it was time to drink tea, the sparse snowflakes turned into goose feathers and heavy snow fell from the sky with a soft rustling sound, covering the entire earth.
Since two or three days ago, the sound of burning firecrackers has been everywhere in Xianyang City. Of course, these firecrackers are not gunpowder firecrackers, but bamboos that burn until they explode. The sound of firecrackers reaches its peak on New Year's Eve.
Piles of firecrackers set off and lanterns hung everywhere turned the entire Xianyang City into a city that never sleeps.
Of course, Xianyang is definitely not the only place that is lively and happy. At this moment, places all over the Qin Dynasty including Pingyi, Korea, Inner Mongolia, Guilin, Xiangjun, etc. are also beginning to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, and celebrate the new year happily.
After all, due to Hu Hai's tax exemption in the past three years, the lives of ordinary people should be more comfortable than those of a group of noble families. After all, people at the bottom are the easiest to be satisfied.
All the royal palaces were brightly lit, and the Epang Palace, the most luxurious palace in the Qin Dynasty, also opened its doors unprecedentedly on this day to welcome visitors from all directions.
Today, Hu Hai, the second emperor of the Qin Dynasty, will hold a banquet for his ministers in the main hall of Epang Palace.
In addition to the officials of Great Qin, there are also hundreds of representatives of meritorious soldiers, representatives who have contributed to Great Qin in various walks of life in the past three years, and representatives of relatives of fallen soldiers who have fought for Great Qin in previous battles.
There were probably no fewer than thousands of people gathered in the entire main hall of Afang Palace.
From the beginning of the construction of Epang Palace to now, this New Year's Eve in the third year of the Second World War should be the largest number of people admitted to Epang Palace.
However, not to mention the ordinary soldiers and common people who have never even entered Xianyang Palace, even the vast majority of the courtiers in the Qin Dynasty have very few people who can go deep into Afang Palace to explore its secrets.
You must know that the people raised in Afang Palace were all the concubines and princesses from the six countries. Although the First Emperor had not touched these people when he was here, it did not mean that others could touch them. When Hu Hai ascended the throne,
After that, he even regarded the concubines and princesses of the Six Kingdoms in Afang Palace as his forbidden concubines, and no one dared to come in and seduce Hu Hai's Ni Lin.
Although Hu Hai later stopped the construction of Afang Palace, because of Hu Hai's changes, those who originally had some thoughts about the concubines and princesses of the Six Kingdoms who were raised in Afang Palace had to quickly clamp down on their right and wrong roots, let alone
Dare to take a step beyond the realm of possibility.
This sudden lingering snowflake made the already extremely luxurious and magnificent Epang Palace look as beautiful as a palace in the sky. It made all the courtiers and military and civilian representatives who were led into the Epang Palace watched by the forbidden army.
I was so overwhelmed that I was shocked and speechless.
If this wasn't the Epang Palace, if the cameras hadn't appeared at this time, and if it weren't for the leadership of the imperial army, everyone in the Epang Palace would have been unable to move.
The only ones who were slightly better were Feng Jie and other military commanders who had never entered Afang Palace.
However, Feng Jie, Weng Zhong and others were slightly better. It was just that they were not as shocked and dazzled by the scenery in Afang Palace as others. Rather, they seemed to be a little absent-minded.
It is even more accurate to say that their minds are not in Afang Palace at all.
Tian Ren, who was walking with Feng Jie and others, as well as a group of alchemists and chemists who had been kissed by Hu Hai and had the honor to enter the Afang Palace tonight, saw the expressions of them all. They were amazed at the scenery in the Afang Palace.
Laughing endlessly.
The reason for all this is naturally the test launch that took place in the Liangshan Valley a few hours ago, which was initially very frustrated and then erupted.
The huge sound like thunder in winter and the shrill sound that broke through the air like a group of demons dancing at the center of the explosion made all the military commanders who were still snickering in their hearts swallow hard in an instant, not to mention the iron
How powerful is the bullet? Just the huge sound and the shrill sound of breaking through the air. If it appeared on the battlefield, it would probably demoralize half of the soldiers in an instant, not to mention those war horses that are extremely sensitive to sound.
In this sound, the cavalry was basically destroyed before the battle started.
After all, no one can guarantee that their cavalry will remain calm when encountering such a noise during a charge. It would be a blessing if the entire army could stand their ground, let alone continue to fight.
If the sound only made Feng Jie and others see the promising prospect of the iron bomb, then when Hu Hai led a group of generals to the place where the iron bomb exploded, the expressions of Feng Jie, Xin Sheng, Shejian and other generals were
It turned a little white instantly.
The test firing of the trebuchet this time was not just a direct shot into the open space. Tian Ren followed Hu Hai's instructions and placed a lot of life-size wooden figures within a few tens of feet of where the iron bullets were expected to land. These wooden figures had sleeping positions.
Some fell down and some stood up.
Therefore, what appeared in front of the generals at this moment was not only a crater several feet in diameter and half a foot deep, but also wooden figures that had become in pieces within a dozen steps around the crater.
The iron ball fragments exploded by the gunpowder were densely covered in the three or four wooden figures around the crater. These three or four wooden figures were also the most seriously injured. They were either missing their heads or their arms and legs. Of course, it was even more chilling.
The other ones were the dark iron pieces that were deeply embedded in the three or four wooden figures, with only a little bit of their tails exposed. In addition to these three or four wooden figures who were the most seriously injured because they were closest to the crater, there were also wooden figures further away.
Most of them were hit by one or two or three jet black iron pieces, which were also deeply embedded in the wooden man's body. The wooden man who was unlucky also had his hands and feet cut off by the iron pieces.
Everyone knew that there should be a wooden man where the iron bullet rolled down, but at this moment, the wooden man had completely disappeared. Except for a broken wooden foot that appeared in the crater, the wooden man could no longer be found.
Any part of the body.
The lying wooden figures around the crater were in much better shape than the standing wooden figures. Most of them had no iron plates on their bodies, but they also tended to fall apart due to the shock.
At that time, Hu Hai just looked at the small crater and sighed lightly. The power was still too small. He originally thought that a crater with a diameter of at least ten feet would appear for such a big crater, but he did not expect that it would only explode a crater with a diameter of more than ten feet.
The small crater is only over one meter, and there are too few shrapnel and too little power. Some of the shrapnel are bigger than a slap, and some are only as big as a fingernail. The result is such a big lump of iron bullets.
Only the wooden figure closest to the explosion point was injured. Apparently the Ordnance Department has not yet overcome the difficulty of uniform explosion of shrapnel.
After reading the results of the test firing, Hu Hai looked at the generals who were all pale and swallowing saliva, and said "How?" and walked away, leaving some worried generals to think alone.
He was going to explain to Tian Ren that he could imprint a watermelon-like pattern on the iron ball, so that after the gunpowder in the iron bullet exploded, the iron bullet on the outer shell would explode more easily, the shrapnel would be distributed more evenly, and the lethality would definitely be able to
Turn it over several times.
Feng Jie and the others who were left behind naturally did not dare to ask the emperor for questioning. They wanted to ask Tian Ren and the others about the situation, but they were called away by the emperor. They stayed in Liangshan until dark before the Imperial Guardsmen who went to look for them were summoned.
The soldiers were brought directly to Xianyang Palace.
Seeing Tian Ren, he wanted to ask what was going on with the gunpowder. The emperor wanted to deploy it first in that legion. However, the imperial guard who was leading the way said coldly, "No loud noises" and then suppressed the generals who were holding heavy troops.
The words in my stomach were all blocked.
In fact, this is exactly what Hu Hai wants to achieve.
The pre-Qin era cannot be said to be the most prosperous era in China, but it is definitely the most enlightened era in social and cultural atmosphere. Except for the hundreds of years of pre-Qin, which other dynasty in later generations really paid attention to farming and miscellaneous things?
Art, Baigong (general name for various handicraft manufacturing industries) and other matters? Not to mention the ability of the pre-Qin Dynasty to argue on the same stage with Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism and other major schools, and to issue formal edicts to the outstanding ones among the Baigong
The imperial edict was issued to the world.
Looking at the history of China for thousands of years, all dynasties and dynasties can only do this in the pre-Qin Dynasty.
The collapse of rituals and music in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period left the Qin Dynasty not only an empire where various rituals were exchanged, but more importantly, it gave the elites at that time ideas that allowed them to see the world with more enlightened eyes.
The collapse of rituals and music left them with no sense of resistance to new things as in later generations.
Feng Jie, Weng Zhong, Xin Sheng, and Shejian, these current generals of the various legions of the Qin Dynasty, cannot be said to have experienced hundreds of battles, at least most of them have been trained in blood. As the elites of the Qin Dynasty who have dealt with the most frequently in battles, they have been trained through many years of battles.
With their sense of war, they naturally know better than ordinary people what good ordnance, especially leading ordnance, means to an army.
Because of this, after seeing the power of gunpowder, they were much more shocked than the students of the Royal Military Academy who had never been on the battlefield.
Although they were only test-firing today, the power displayed by this test-firing alone was enough for Da Qin to invest all its manpower and material resources into researching the use of gunpowder and better projecting vehicles using gunpowder.
If gunpowder is really used on the battlefield and equips the Qin army, it will bring an unprecedented subversive change to the Qin army. The significance of this to the Qin Dynasty is no less than the changes brought to the Qin Dynasty by Shang Yang's reform.
They already know that this aristocratic family is infinitely large, and they also know that this aristocratic family is not just a country of Great Qin. In the farther west, His Majesty the Emperor once said that there is a powerful country that is not much different from Great Qin.
So, as long as the Great Qin army can really use such heaven-defying weapons, who else in the world can be the opponent of Great Qin? (To be continued...)