May passed and by early June, the wheat was finally ripe, and wheat harvesting began everywhere. Because they didn’t know how much they would harvest, and the yield was not good, the people did not dare to eat or drink much even if they had harvested the grain.

I'm afraid that if the higher-ups harvest too much and I don't have enough food left for myself, I'll go hungry.

Far away in Zhongshan County, above the tomb of Prince Jing in Zhongshan, there is a large tomb that looks like a hill, with lush pines and cypresses on the tomb.

During the past few days when I came to Zhongshan to worship my ancestors, every night, deep in the pines and cypresses on the mausoleum, I could hear the sound of night trumpets. Zhang Fei had been thinking about it for a long time.

Night horns, that is, owls, night owls. If it were in the past, Zhang Fei would not be interested in night owls at all. But after returning from Luoyang, he talked about the night attack on the military camp in Luoyang. Afterwards, everyone discussed the counter-night attack method.

There is a method of [Night Horn Scout]. That is, raise a night horn and train it to call out when it sees people at night. The night horn has the ability of night vision. With this method, the enemy in the night attack will have no way to hide.

.

The tomb howled for many nights, and Zhang Fei thought about it for a long time. Finally, on this day, after the ancestor worship was completed and he was about to leave, Zhang Fei sneaked away and climbed up to the tomb while no one was paying attention.

When the team set off, Zhang Fei was not seen. Everyone was confused when they saw Zhang Fei carrying something in someone else's arms and carefully covering it up with his hands, coming from behind.

As they got closer, Liu Bei leaned forward on horseback and glanced into Zhang Fei's arms. He asked curiously, "Third brother, what did you get?"

"Hey, bird's nest." Zhang Fei removed his hand and showed a big bird's nest to Liu Bei.

In the bird's nest, the fledglings, all hairless, were chirping.

I thought it was just a bird.

Liu Bei asked casually, "A turtle dove?"

"No, Ye Haozi." Zhang Fei replied.

It's rare to see a night chanter. Liu Bei took a second look and asked, "Where did you catch him?"

"There was a big pine tree on the Mausoleum of Prince Jing in Zhongshan. I climbed up and caught it..."

Liu Bei's expression froze, "Damn it!" He yelled, jumped off the horse, went up and grabbed Zhang Fei's ears and pulled them hard, "Where did you catch him? Put him back!"

Is it possible to climb the mausoleum? Tell me if it is possible!!"

Zhang Fei climbed up the tomb of Liu Bei's ancestor and took down the bird's nest on the tomb. What if this ruined the feng shui?

Liu Bei was so angry that he twisted Zhang Fei's ears like a pig's ears, making Zhang Fei shrink his painful neck and grimace.

Zhang Fei kept begging for mercy, but Liu Bei asked him for a bird's nest but he refused to give it.

“We brought them all back, but the old bird was scared away and flew away. Even if we put them back, the little bird would die!

It's better to take it back and feed it to Xi'er..." Zhang Fei argued.

What happened was done, even if Liu Bei was so angry that he could only spare Zhang Fei.

"Raise the bird well, don't raise it to death!" Liu Bei said angrily, flicked his sleeves, and walked forward angrily.

There were craftsmen accompanying the army. Zhang Fei summoned the craftsmen to weave a hastily made bird cage out of roadside weeds and put the bird's nest in it.

The baby owl from the tomb of Prince Jing in Zhongshan is not ordinary.

——

Giant deer.

Early in the morning, Jian Yong was practicing swordplay with others.

Ever since Jian Yong got the Tiger Head Hook Sword, Jian Yong couldn't put it down for this special sword made for him.

Li Mengxi watched for a while and saw that Jian Yong's hook sword method still couldn't break away from the category of double swords. Li Mengxi walked out and said, "Xianhe, you might as well try the [Gou Lian] method."

The method of hooking is to use one of the double hooks to hook the other hook, and then throw it out violently to hit the enemy from a distance like a whip.

In Li Mengxi's impression, there is such a usage of double hook in martial arts routines.

Following Li Mengxi's suggestion, Jian Yong connected his double hooks, flicked his hand at the target, and with a bang, the hook sword hit the target, and the sharp three-sided sword blade cut an obvious scratch on the wooden stake.

, the lethality is remarkable.

Jian Yong was overjoyed to suddenly get a new martial art. He came over and praised Li Mengxi. Jian Yong asked if there were any other ways to use it.

Li Mengxi smiled and shook his head, "No more."

Li Mengxi, who doesn't understand martial arts routines, can remember how to use the hook sword, which is pretty good.

——

At the end of May, Fang started to stimulate various productions such as lacquerware, twisted silk, leather making, bow and arrow making, etc. It didn't take long for the effects to show.

On June 2, a craftsman came. The craftsman was a blacksmith, an armor forger among blacksmiths. In the past, the army had to produce farm tools, spearheads, and various metal tools. There was no need to make armor. Therefore,

The armor maker has been idle.

Since the opening of various industries at the end of May, the armor-smith began to spontaneously prepare tools, and then tried to make some armor pieces. Today, a certain number of armor pieces were made, and the armor-smith took them over and showed them to Li Mengxi.

Li Mengxi took the armor piece and looked at it. The armor piece forged by the armorer was not much different from the armor pieces removed from the ordinary Han army armor. The shape was the same, and they were all long strips with ten or eight holes.

, it can be seen that the nail craftsman is very careful in creating the nail pieces. The nail pieces are very regular, even in thickness, and they have obviously been carefully polished. The top of the nail pieces is very smooth and slightly reflective.

As usual, Li Mengxi first praised the armor craftsman for a while, praising his superb craftsmanship.

The armorer laughed at the praise.

After speaking, Li Mengxi suggested, "Can you let me see how this piece of armor is made?"

Forging armor is not a secret, so why not? The armor maker happily invited Li Mengxi to take a look.

Arriving at the blacksmith camp, the armorer came to the work station and began to prepare for blacksmithing, while Li Mengxi watched from the side.

The initial forging process is no different from forging other iron tools. You first scoop a spoonful of semi-molten molten iron and pour it on the iron pier, then hold it with pliers and bang it with a hammer.

After that, the molten iron is beaten into a long strip similar to that used for forging swords, and then it is also folded and forged multiple times, and the forging is repeated many times.

In the third step, the armorer continued to make the iron bar that had been forged many times thinner and thinner, and finally made the red iron bar as thin and long as a belt.

At this point, Li Mengxi had some enlightenment. He guessed that the next step would be to cut the long [iron belt] into pieces, and then use a chisel to drill holes.

The actual situation is indeed like this. The difference is that the craftsman drills the holes first. The craftsman takes a small chisel in one hand and a small hammer in the other hand and hammers many small holes along the edge of the iron belt. After the holes are drilled,

Then use a small hammer to gently tap the front and back sides to repair the gouge marks.

Then, the armorer changed to a tool similar to an axe. The ax blade was pressed against the iron bar, and the hammer was struck on the back of the ax blade to cut the iron band into small pieces.

At this point, the nail plate has been divided.

Finally, the nailsmith took a toy-sized hammer that was as small as a finger and could not be smaller, clamped the cut nail pieces one by one, and used the small hammer to finely trim the edges of the nail pieces. Finally,

Shape the nail pieces into a shape with rounded edges.

After completing these tasks, five armor pieces were obtained. The five armor pieces were thrown into the charcoal fire by the craftsman and burned for a while. Li Mengxi understood the principle of this step, which was [annealing].

The principle of annealing is that during the forging process, there are many cracks or microscopic pits inside the armor or sword caused by forging. Therefore, after forging, the shaped armor can be placed in the fire and heated at high temperature for a while.

Iron will become molten at high temperatures and has a certain degree of fluidity. With the help of this weak fluidity, forging cracks or microscopic pits can be automatically smoothed out through "self-leveling".

Annealing requires high temperature, but if the temperature is too high, the iron will melt. Therefore, the annealing temperature is a temperature state where the iron melts slightly but does not turn into molten iron.

Annealing requires a long process.

After waiting for an hour, the craftsman took the armor piece out of the fire, placed it on the iron pillar, and allowed it to cool freely.

High-temperature insulation is annealing, then free cooling from high temperature is [normalizing]. The purpose of normalizing and annealing is actually the same, both are to uniform the internal structure of iron parts. Annealing can be regarded as the internal defects of cracks and pits caused by forging.

The "major tune" is the "major tune", and the "fine tune" is the normal fire.

After a while, the nail plate gradually cooled down, and the nail craftsman came over with the still slightly warm nail plate and said that the nail plate was ready.

Li Mengxi frowned immediately, "Don't you need to temper it?"

The armorer looked hesitant, "...Isn't it necessary?"

Differences arose. The armorer said that the forged armor was never quenched, and that it would break once it was quenched.

Li Mengxi was puzzled. After quenching the sword, the hardness of the sword increased significantly. Why could it not be quenched at the armor plate?

Confused, Li Mengxi asked the craftsman to try to temper the iron.

There were only five pieces of armor. The craftsman took two of the pieces and burned them in the fire for a while. When they were white and red, he clamped them with iron pliers and put them into a bucket of cold water with a hiss.

The nail pieces are taken out of the cold water and quenched.

In order to prove that Li Mengxi was wrong, the craftsman gently broke off the quenched armor piece in front of Li Mengxi. There was a crisp sound, and he saw that the armor piece was easily broken in two without using much force.

So fragile, with the defensive power of a hammer.

Li Mengxi became even more confused, "Try to temper it again!" He ordered with a frown.

Tempering is a process after quenching. During the quenching process, high-temperature iron is suddenly put into cold water. The iron atoms shrink extremely quickly, and very hard crystals are formed between the iron atoms. As a result, the hardness of the quenched iron is very high, but other

The toughness is poor, that is to say, the iron atoms shrink too much during the quenching process, so a "tempering" process is added later to "thaw" the iron atoms that have shrunk too much to reduce their certain hardness.

Return a certain degree of toughness to achieve a balance of strength and softness.

I have to ask, why not do the process of quenching to a balance between hardness and softness in one step? The reason is that it is extremely difficult to find the right quenching material. Even if there is such a material, quenching is too difficult, so

It is better to quench it to the end and then temper it and fine-tune it.

To put it simply, tempering is a process of slowing down the freezing and loosening of iron crystals. The temperature required for this process is not high. There are low-temperature and medium-temperature tempering. This step is very time-consuming.

It is expected that it will take at least one or two hours for insulation and tempering. While waiting, the armorer will take advantage of the time to continue to create more armor pieces.
To be continued...