The following evening, a carriage, completely covered up, slowly drove into the inner fortress of Donic Castle under the cover of a whole troop of soldiers.
On the longest section of the inner fortress wall, several armored, humanoid wooden planks stood at one end. At the other end, Serena, Andrew, and other key figures of Donic were gathered together. Before them stood two craftsmen operating a massive crossbow. Beside the crossbow lay several bolts, each with a different arrowhead and shaft.
Yun Zhe rubbed his hands together, watching the two perform with the same anticipation as the others, but Serena, Blake, and the others had a different feeling.
Yesterday I was worried about when it would be built, and it was built overnight?!
Ignoring the noise, Yun Zhe finished tidying up and walked up to Serena respectfully, saying, "Your Excellency, the crossbows are ready and can be fired at any time."
Serena's eyes lit up, and she nodded, signaling to begin.
McClenon returned to the crossbow, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The black crossbow bolt shot towards the target like lightning, then snapped in two with a crack.
However, the arrow still pierced the armor and became firmly embedded in the wooden board.
McClane replaced the bolt with a white-shafted crossbow bolt, then pulled the trigger. The bolt shot out and, with a click, pierced the wooden board.
Faced with such a stark contrast, Serena's first thought was that there was a problem with the first arrow. This was also the consensus of everyone except Yun Zhe.
McClane nodded in relief. He had tried Yun Zhe's explanation that day, but it didn't seem quite right. Seeing the results today, he finally stopped doubting Yun Zhe's explanation.
"It's really hard work for Yun Zhe to build one so quickly." Serena was very satisfied after looking at the wooden plank. She had already begun to imagine how invincible and amazing this kind of crossbow would be when it appeared on the battlefield.
"These crossbows must be expensive to make, right?" Blake was still worried about the cost; money was his biggest concern right now.
"The cost is indeed not cheap. I used six craftsmen, but if it could be mass-produced, it would actually be much cheaper."
Blake was a little confused, but he quickly figured out the key point. However, he still wanted to know the specific numbers.
Yun Zhe didn't mention the price again, but instead had McClane fire several more shots, using crossbow bolts of different arrowheads and thicknesses. Finally, after repeated comparisons by McClane and another craftsman, Candy, they chose a design that balanced both lethality and cost.
When everything settled down, McClane gave the final price: a single crossbow bolt cost about five to six silver coins, and with mass production, the price could be reduced by about 20%. The cost of a crossbow mechanism was about eight to nine gold coins, depending on the materials used, and even with large-scale adoption, the price could only be reduced by about 10%.
"So, even the cheapest crossbow costs seven gold coins, and a single bolt is about four or five silver coins?" After hearing McClane's words, Blake still expressed some resistance to the cost. The price of this crossbow was almost the same as the cost of forging a complete set of armor, not to mention the exorbitantly expensive bolts, one of which was equivalent to more than a dozen ordinary bolts. And he simply couldn't calculate based on the lowest price; that would be too optimistic.
Yun Zhe rubbed his hands together. "The price is indeed a bit high, but it's expensive for a reason. If one crossbow bolt can kill a heavily armored cavalryman, do you think the cost-effectiveness ratio is much better?"
Blake frowned and thought for a moment, recalling Yun Zhe's analysis of a heavily armored cavalryman, his horse, soldiers, armor, and the manpower and resources behind him, and instantly felt much better.
“If one of these crossbows can fire two or three arrows on the battlefield and take out two or three cavalrymen, that’s already quite good.” Yun Zhe paused. “Let’s take a thousand heavily armored cavalrymen as an example. If we kill one-third of their group charge, we can repel them effectively. In that case, we only need one hundred to one hundred and fifty of these crossbows on the front line to effectively block the enemy.” Yun Zhe spoke eloquently, finally dispelling Blake’s doubts.
Indeed, compared to the cost of thirty or forty gold coins for heavy cavalry, even trading one crossbow for one cavalryman is worthwhile.
"We just need to speed up the training, otherwise we might not be able to fire that many crossbow bolts, and we might even accidentally hit the same horse with each other. Anyway, the training task is more demanding," Yun Zhe said with concern.
“Don’t worry about the training,” Philby suddenly chimed in. “I’ll select six or seven hundred great young men and get all the stuff sorted out.”
Yun Zhe nodded, which was considered an agreement with Philby's statement.
"How's the crossbow project going?" Andrew suddenly interjected, startling Yun Zhe.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
