The process of making shotgun shells first requires a stamping die that can match the caliber of the gun barrel.

But now I've used up all the iron powder, and I have no more iron powder left to use.

I could only search through those nooks and crannies to see if I could find any scraps of iron. But unsurprisingly, someone as thrifty as me wouldn't waste a single piece of iron.

Unfortunately, I had no choice but to go to the lake again.

After my previous encounter with the lake monster, I would never easily approach the lake's surface, especially in this season.

To safely obtain the iron powder, I tied a bamboo basket of magnets to a long bamboo pole with hemp rope, and then used the magnets to draw black iron powder from the sand and gravel in the lake.

After a whole day of work, I finally managed to collect a pound or two of iron powder. This should be enough to make molds.

Back home, my husband lit a torch and put the iron powder into a crucible. The next step was to make clay molds for the shotgun shells.

Making the clay mold is very simple. First, lubricate the inner wall of the rear loading barrel with soap, then stuff a lump of casting clay of suitable hardness into the barrel, and after pulling it out, you get a precise caliber.

Remove the soil from the flat end to make it a flat surface, then bake it over a low flame until it hardens.

Once the clay has reached the right hardness, grind it down to a smaller size, then take a piece of casting clay and use it to imprint a negative mold from top to bottom onto the cylindrical clay.

Pour out some of the molten iron to cover the casting holes, and let it cool. This will give you a punch that can be used to hammer out bullet casings.

Repeat the same steps, drying and hardening the same caliber casting clay taken from the gun barrel.

This time, the dried cylindrical clay doesn't need to be sanded. Take some more clay and dig out a rectangular cavity four centimeters long and wide.

After smoothing the inner wall, place the dry cylindrical clay vertically in the center of the cavity, about one centimeter above the bottom of the cavity, and fix the cylinder with clay to prevent it from falling.

Finally, pour the remaining molten iron into the mold, and after it cools naturally, remove the outer soil and the central cylindrical clay.

With the molds made, we can now begin hammering gold sheets to prepare the raw materials for the cartridge cases.

The hammered gold sheet is rolled into a cylinder according to the diameter of the mold, and then the bottom of the cylinder is hammered around to form a pointed cone shape.

Place the hammered cylinder into the mold, then insert a punch and hammer it twice. The cone at the bottom is squeezed into a cylinder by the force of the punch and the mold.

The flattened center point of the cone is where the firing pin ignites the primer.

Remove the punch, trim the excess gold material from the edge of the cylinder with a knife, and a special standard cartridge case is made.

This method produces cartridge cases that are all the same size, making them virtually indistinguishable from real shotgun shells.

Now we need to lay a base layer on the shotgun shells. I used nitrocellulose made of mugwort wool, which I glued together with a little pine resin into a one-millimeter-thick block.

When using it, simply cut off a small piece with a knife and stuff it into the bottom of the cylindrical cartridge case to cover it completely. The knife must be sharp and cut it in one stroke; do not pull it back and forth, otherwise it may ignite the nitrocellulose.

After adding the primer, place a small, flat stone in the center of the primer to act as an anvil for the firing pin. This will improve the ignition rate.

The principle is the same as when we were kids, we would throw firecrackers at hard objects like rocks to make them explode more easily.

Next comes loading the chemicals. Simply stuff the nitrocellulose directly into it and then gently poke it a couple of times with a stick to make it compact.

I've run out of iron for the projectiles. Shotgun pellets are usually made of lead, which has a high density and weight, resulting in greater power when fired.

However, I thought that gold was denser than lead and therefore more dangerous, so I did not hesitate to use gold for my own safety.

I was so extravagant that I knocked off some gold nuggets, about eight millimeters in size, and put them into a cylinder before plugging the cartridge exit with some thatch.

Finally, melted pine resin was used to seal the thatch and bullet holes, and a standard gold shotgun shell was born. A shotgun shell with gold inside and out—you'd probably only dare to do something like that in a video game.

After that, I made a slug-dum bullet and loaded it into the shotgun shell. This slug-dum bullet is also called a deer hunt bullet, and its only characteristic is that it is extremely violent.

If we consider the power of shotgun shells filled with gold nuggets as that of a velociraptor, then this type of shotgun shell with only a single projectile is like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Dumdum bullets are several times more powerful than gold nuggets. When they hit their prey, due to their unique structural design, the bullet will bloom like a flower inside the prey.

Its horrific internal organ lacerations meant that even the most resilient beast would perish with a single shot in the Northwest.

However, this type of bullet also has a drawback: it requires the user to have excellent accuracy. If the distance is too far and a bullet misses, it will not cause any harm to the prey.

However, I never intended to kill from a distance. My shotgun can fire twice, one barrel loaded with gold pellets and the other with dumdum bullets.

These two types of bullets don't reload quickly, so I initially planned to use them to save my life in a critical moment. I would first use the gold particle bullet with the left trigger to cover the thing that was threatening my life.

If one shot isn't enough to calm the opponent down, a close-range FAM round will surely put them into a very satisfying deep sleep.

I used up all the materials and made a total of twenty gold-dust shotgun shells and eighteen dumdum bullet shotgun shells.

These bullets are very precious to me; they are my trump card for survival.

But I still need to take one out and test its performance first, otherwise it would be embarrassing to find out it was a dud when things get really tough.

To avoid scaring Top and the others, I deliberately brought this new weapon to the lakeside, far from my residence, to test it.

I excitedly took out a gold shotgun shell containing gold nuggets, pressed down the sear, and put the shotgun shell into the specially enlarged barrel at the rear.

The sear automatically popped up and reset to block the barrel. I pressed the 7-shaped firing pin back, and with a slight click, the firing pin completed the chambering.

I rested the butt of the rifle against my shoulder, aimed the muzzle at the lake, and pulled the trigger.

"Bang!"

A deafening sound rang out, startling all the nearby birds into flight, and the snow on the willow trees was shaken off by the huge sound wave.

I felt a ringing in my ears; the power of this nitrocellulose with four times the nitrogen content was truly impressive. My shoulder sockets were numb from the enormous recoil.

I was firing horizontally, and the bullets flew for nearly five seconds before I saw a three-meter-wide barrage of bullets fall into the water.

Based on the minimum standard for shotgun shells, the initial velocity of the projectile is 400 meters per second, so it travels at least 2,000 meters in five seconds.

This data sent chills down my spine. Is this even a shotgun?