There was complete silence on the training ground.
Those straw men were smashed to pieces.
A pit was left in its place, with straw and wood chips scattered everywhere.
Amidst the flying dust, the craftsman who was lighting the fuse in the front could even feel the dust blowing towards him.
A large number of craftsmen gathered behind and wanted to gather around to watch the fun, but were stopped by the guards.
Zeng Gongliang and others opened their mouths wide and watched all this in disbelief.
As people from the Firearms Department, except Zeng Gongliang, they were basically officials and craftsmen from the Guangbei Siege Bureau.
They are of course aware of the power of firearms.
Even if it was a Thunderbolt Fireball, loaded with three or four pounds of gunpowder and thrown out, the noise it made wouldn't even be one-third of this.
Because the Thunderbolt Fireball hurts people by using ceramic fragments and poison inside. After it explodes, it will emit poisonous smoke, which can be used to attack cities.
In history, when Zhao Guangyi destroyed the Northern Han, he used this thing to attack the city, and it was placed in a catapult and thrown out.
But the power caused by this pound of gunpowder is far greater than that of the thunder fireball, and is even several times more lethal than all the gunpowder weapons currently in the Song Dynasty arsenal.
If all other firearms used this kind of gunpowder, the power would be unimaginable. If it were made into a bomb that could be thrown, then...
This is terrible.
At this moment, everyone's faces were filled with shock, surprised that black powder had such great lethality.
Only Zhao Jun managed to remain satisfied.
Firearms in the Song Dynasty were not very powerful, although they were of many styles and types.
However, its lethality is impressive, and its actual effect is not as good as that of cold weapons, so its development has always been limited.
So what are the causes of this?
There are two reasons for this. One is that adding all sorts of random things to the gunpowder reduced the power of the gunpowder itself, causing the development of firearms manufacturing to stagnate.
Secondly, the gunpowder ratio was incorrect. According to the "Wu Jing Zong Yao" (Wu Jing Zong Yao), the ratios of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal at the time were 50.6, 26.6, and 22.8, respectively. Adding a small amount of other ingredients naturally made the resulting gunpowder less powerful, essentially only useful for fireworks.
For these two reasons, the manufacture of firearms can be said to be fraught with difficulties.
This is a problem of not having a solid foundation. It's like solving an arithmetic problem. If you learn that one plus one equals three, then no matter how you calculate, the final answer will be wrong.
In this case, even if muskets and cannons are developed in the future, they will not cause much damage if fired with gunpowder of incorrect purity and proportion.
Therefore, the appearance of Zhao Jun was equivalent to filling the missing foundation, which directly saved the Song Dynasty hundreds of years of gunpowder research and development time.
And the power is the limit of black powder.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, our army's grenades were also made of black powder, with a loading capacity of about 750 grams.
However, due to the shortage of supplies in the anti-Japanese war zone, the amount of gunpowder loaded in the grenades would be short, not to mention that egg whites would be used to make more powerful granular gunpowder.
Therefore, the power it can cause at the moment is actually better than the grenades we used during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
At least after the finished product is made, its lethality will be much greater than the grenades used in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Although it is not as good as chemical explosives, in the era of cold weapons, it is a pure dimensionality reduction attack. Bullying the Western Xia and Liao should be no problem.
The only trouble is that it consumes a lot of eggs.
This was not the era of abundant supply of eggs in later generations. According to the "Song History Food and Goods Records", from the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song to the early reign of Emperor Renzong of Song, prices were relatively low due to the end of the Little Ice Age and the recent completion of the agricultural revolution of Champa rice.
The price of rice fluctuates greatly, about 100 wen per dan, and the price of eggs fluctuates basically between 1250 wen per catty.
In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, a jin (a jin) weighed about 640 grams. Assuming each egg weighed 50 grams, it would cost one to five wen each. Considering the price of rice in Bianliang during the Jingyou period, which was around 300 wen per dan (a dan), one egg, at its peak, could buy a jin (a jin) of rice.
Therefore, if all gunpowder is made of granular gunpowder, the cost will still be very high.
When Zeng Gongliang told Zhao Jun about this problem, Zhao Jun pondered for a moment and said, "From now on, ordinary firearms will use ordinary pure black powder, and only grenades will use granular black powder."
"What is a grenade?"
Zeng Gongliang was quite puzzled.
Zhao Jun explained, then said, "The secret recipe for black gunpowder must be kept secret. We must not let the enemy know, or they'll use it against us. Right now, only you, me, and that craftsman know it. If it gets out, both you and that craftsman will lose your heads."
Zeng Gongliang rolled his eyes and asked, "Then why don't you lose your head?"
But he also knew that what Zhao Jun said was right, so he nodded and said, "Yes."
Zhao Jun then waved his hand, signaling the craftsman to come over.
The craftsman was still in shock from the explosion. When he saw Zhao Jun calling him, he hurried over.
He was probably in his forties and dressed quite decently. Handicraft workers in the Song Dynasty made relatively good money. Craftsmen like them could earn three or four strings of cash a month, which was quite a bit of money.
From Zeng Gongliang's attitude towards Zhao Jun, he knew that the man before him was a high-ranking official, so he nodded and said, "Sir."
"This is the Duke of Song."
Zeng Gongliang introduced it with a sentence: "Now he is the acting head of the Political System Council."
The craftsman was startled at first, then he quickly bowed and said, "My humble servant greets the dean."
Although they were working in the Guangbei Siege Bureau, the craftsmen at that time were not kept in prison. After get off work, they went home and naturally knew the news of the Bianliang market, and also knew the famous name of the current director.
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