Daming Yinghua

Chapter 112 Blacksmith, Gunfire and Beauty
After entering the dog days, Shoukuan School had a "summer vacation" according to Miss Zheng's rules.

Boys and girls all received some simple work from the tailor shop, went home to do it, and then returned it to the school. The school gave some corresponding rewards, but the premise was that the embroidery or men's shirts and socks must meet the foreign trade order standards.

Although Zheng Haizhu runs a private school that does not charge tuition fees, she does not want the children to mistakenly believe that Bodhisattvas and Gods really exist. Capable people will always give away resources for nothing.

Poor children in the late Ming Dynasty did not need fairy tales, they needed a strong self-survival ability.

The children heard that if they worked hard, they could get copper coins, so they happily went back with the raw materials.

However, the academy, which used to be as noisy as a bird's nest, did not turn into a quiet pool because of the holiday.

Just like the half of the banana garden set aside to become a tailor's shop, a corner of the garden was requisitioned to build a blacksmith's workshop.

"Ding ding ding..."

"When, when..."

"Bah..."

In the workshop, the sound of beating and quenching can be heard from time to time.

In the scorching heat, Lu Xiangsheng, the jade-faced son, changed his old scribe's attire, just like the three blacksmiths, wearing a short shirt and single trousers, with the sleeves rolled up high and the front almost completely open.Even so, he was still hot and sweaty, and his fair face was roasted like a piece of tender pork liver by the flames of the stove.

The three blacksmiths Lu Xiangsheng invited from Danyang, Zhenjiang belonged to a family.

His father's name was Ge Hong, who had the same name as the alchemist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. When Lu Xiangsheng ran to several villages to find him, he found it interesting. The mastery of it often depends on years of experience, which looks like metaphysics to outsiders.

Ge Hong is 36 years old, his son Ge Tian is [-] or [-] years old, and his nephew Ge Hai is [-] or [-] years old. They are all old enough to be a wife.

Ge Hong's younger brother was digging stones for the government many years ago, fell down the mountain and died.Ge Hong and his younger brother have a deep brotherhood, and they treat their only nephew, Ge Hai, as their own.

He was worrying about saving his wife's money for the two boys, when a god of wealth, Mr. Lu, fell from the sky, and offered six taels of silver per month to invite the three of them to come to Songjiang to work on iron, with food and shelter included.In this way, if he can work for more than half a year, he can save 50 taels of silver. Of course, Ge Hong came happily with his skills and two children.

Only when I came to Songjiang did I realize that the real God of Wealth is not Mr. Lu, but his god-sister, surnamed Zheng.

Ms. Zheng was very polite, and when they met, she gave the three sets of soft and breathable summer clothes, saying that they were good cotton cloth that people in Songjiang loved to wear.

But she seemed to be very busy. After hearing Ge Hong say a few words about the cost of building a blacksmith's shop, she gave Mr. Lu a bank note and let them figure it out, and then left in a hurry.

Ge Hong and his son were still delighted at the kindness and generosity of the master's house. They never expected that after the shop was repaired, Mr. Lu asked them to forge something that was far more difficult than ordinary swords.

At this moment, in the scorching heat of the shop, Ge Hong and Ge Tian stood on both sides of a deep grooved mold, using a concave hammer to hit the iron material with a red hot surface like a fireball.

Ge Hai held on to a slender iron bar with a wooden handle, and the iron bar was threaded between the iron materials that Ge Hong and his son were forging.

Amidst the clinking, Lu Xiangsheng stared intently for a while, and asked, "Is it only wrought iron and steel that can be used to strike this kind of object? No pig iron at all?"

Ge Hong wiped the sweat off his face, nodded and said, "Young master, pig iron is very brittle and not easy to forge."

"Oh, what can pig iron do?"

"Pig iron melts quickly. It is very convenient to pour it into a grinding tool to make an iron pot or something. But pig iron is brittle. If you want to make a good knife and sword, you must have different ratios of wrought iron and a mixture of raw and wrought iron. The steel in the room, if we were blacksmiths, why would we call the steel a hundred-smelting steel?"

Lu Xiangsheng gave a clear "Oh".

Ge Hong's son, Ge Tian, ​​has an outgoing personality. Seeing Mr. Lu as a dignified scholar, he has always had no airs and is not ashamed to ask questions, so he is also talkative. While forging materials, he told Lu Xiangsheng: "Mr. The military lord was delivering the farm tools, and just when they saw a soldier with blood on his face, he said that the shotgun had exploded. The military lord asked the little one to see what was going on, the way of firearms, the little ones don't understand, Just looking at the barrel, it should be made of pig iron. If you are young, you can guess that the pig iron is brittle, and the fireball inside it was too strong, blowing it up."

Lu Xiangsheng sighed: "Understood, Marshal Qi's three-eyed blunderbuss often exploded, probably because of the pig iron. But it is too slow for us to make a barrel by forging wrought iron and steel."

Ge Hongdao: "That's right, my lord. Besides, for the forged gun barrel, you have to use a lathe drill (note, there was a complex wooden vertical lathe in the Ming Dynasty) to drill the inside smoothly..."

Just as Ge Hong was talking about this, a woman's voice suddenly sounded outside the door: "Not only the inside needs to be drilled, but the outside has to be sharpened with a file."

Lu Xiangsheng looked back and saw a slim girl in a light blue skirt standing at the threshold, holding a qin in her hand.

Lu Xiangsheng quickly pulled back his skirt to cover his exposed chest due to the heat, cupped his hands and said, "Excuse me, who is the girl?"

"My surname is Wang, and my name is Wang Sheng. I belong to General Chang Sheng. I was introduced by a friend to Miss Zheng as her husband."

Ms. Wang stepped in, announcing her family name, and squatting down politely.

She was standing at the door just now, it was against the light, Lu Xiangsheng couldn't see her face clearly at first glance, but now that she entered the workshop, her features and face naturally became clear under the light of the iron smelting furnace.

In a short moment, Lu Xiangsheng remembered Liu Yong's words: Lifting the noodles makes Shaorong and Huaguang jealous.

The three blacksmith men behind Lu Xiangsheng directly sighed in a low voice: Mother, is this a fairy descending to earth?

After they met Zheng Haizhu before, looking back, Miss Zheng was not bad looking, but for some reason, when Miss Zheng talked to them, they didn't seem to think that the person standing opposite was a woman.

And this Miss Wang in front of them is so pretty that they dare not take a second look.

Lu Xiangsheng was the first to realize that he couldn't lose his composure anymore.

He recovered his expression management ability, glanced at the Qin in the other party's arms, and asked, "Mr. Wang is here to teach the rhythm?"

"I can play the piano, and I can also chop the piano."

"Oh," Lu Xiangsheng said with a smile, "I heard the girl's advice just now, and you also know about smelting and forging?"

"My ancestors were craftsmen who made weapons for the imperial court. When I was young, a cousin even entered the Beidu Wang Gong Factory as a craftsman."

Ms. Wang's tone of voice was calm and not cold, but Lu Xiangsheng, who was wise and intelligent, had already felt that in her own family, she only wanted to stop and didn't want to go deep.

She called Shuntianfu in the capital city Beidu, and she spoke Nanjing mandarin with perfect pronunciation. She looked about seventeen or eighteen years old, and she was not dressed as a woman, but there was no evasion and shyness of a girl on her face.

"Introduced by a friend, come from afar to be a gentleman", there is no husband's family, no Taoist nun, let alone a self-combed girl like Zheng Haizhu.

Lu Xiangsheng guessed that this Miss Wang must not be from the Qinhuai River.

He then quickly brought the topic back to the gun barrel in front of him.

"Just about to ask Miss Wang, the outside of the barrel should also be filed, is it to make the thickness of the wall even?"

Ms. Wang nodded: "Yes, otherwise the pressure will be different, and the chest will explode. If you do it seriously, you have to file it while measuring it with a caliper."

As she spoke, her eyes fell on a book spread out on the wooden table by the window.

She leaned forward in a very elegant posture and looked closely, her eyes lit up: "Is this Zhao Shizhen and Zhao Gong's "Sacred Artifact Book"?"

Lu Xiangsheng nodded, and said with a slight embarrassment: "I like to participate in the research of firearms. Miss Zheng trusts me and asks me to try some craftsmen. After a while, Xu Hanlin returned to Songjiang to visit his relatives and just presented it to Mr. Xu, asking for advice. two."

"Xu Hanlin, is it Xu Gong Guangqi?"

"Exactly."

Miss Wang's eyes fell on a gleaming iron ax beside the quenching pool.

She pursed her lips slightly, and said to Lu Xiangsheng, "I guess, you guys want to be Thunderbolts."

This time, Lu Xiangsheng no longer concealed his admiration.

The Thunderbolt is a firearm recorded by Zhao Shizhen in "Magic Spectrum", which combines the bird gun and the three-eyed gun, reduces the caliber of the gun barrel, and increases the length of the gun barrel.

The Thunderbolt has five barrels arranged in the shape of plum petals, which pass through the cowhide shield together with the iron spear on the central axis, and are supported by an iron ax underneath.After the long-range firing of ammunition, if the enemy still rushes to the front, the iron gun and iron ax can be used as cold weapons for close combat.

Therefore, when Lu Xiangsheng saw that Miss Wang deduced from the iron ax that they were making "Xunlei Gun", he knew that this woman was really an expert.

He was about to say a few compliments, but Miss Wang shook her head and said, "The most useless thing in "Magic Spectrum" is the Thunderbolt. Why don't you make a combination gun?"

Lu Xiangsheng frowned, and when he was about to ask why, he heard Zheng Haizhu's voice behind him.

"Look at Xiang Sheng, Miss Wang is the same as me, suggesting that you become a single-barreled gun, right?"

Lu Xiangsheng turned his head and saw that Zheng Haizhu and a young gentleman in fine silk and brocade pattern robes also walked in the door.

The young man has handsome features, but his expression has the meaning of being playful and tired. Together with the gorgeous and light brocade clothes, he interprets the word "dandy".

This dandy who looked like Pan An greeted Lu Xiangsheng and said, "I'm in Zhanggu, Shanyin, Shaoxing, and my name is Yanke."

When Lu Xiangsheng heard that the sponsor of Shoukuan School was here, he hurriedly bowed deeply to Zhang Yanke: "I'm not talented, but Zhang Zhu in Yixing. Lu Xiangsheng, whose name is Jiandou, pays homage to Mr. Yanke. I have benefited a lot from wandering in the library for several months. , Miss Zheng said, the books are all gifts from your house."

The corners of Zhang Yanke's mouth twitched, and he said: "Well, this "Book of Divine Artifacts" in Mr. Lu's hands was obtained by my brother after many searches. You must be careful when you bring it to a place where sparks shoot out like Ironworks."

Zhang Yanke spoke softly and softly, with the innocent joy of a child chatting with others on his face.

Zheng Haizhu knew that he was uncomfortable.

This kid must be jealous for his brother Zhang Dai after seeing Miss Wang and Lu Xiangsheng have a flirtatious conversation.

The beautiful Jiao'e who calls herself Wang Sheng is exactly the woman Zhang Dai has kept in his heart for several years, Qinhuai envoy Wang Yuesheng.

Last year, Zheng Haizhu used other people's short-mouthed and soft-hearted, and used the Zhang brothers' funding to run the school. He could only agree to Jin Advocate Yanke, and placed his brother Zhang Dai's sweetheart in the school.

When Zhang Dai learned that his younger brother had reached an agreement with Miss Zheng, he was quite happy with this solution, so he traveled between Shaoxing and Nanjing, and finally redeemed Wang Yuesheng in the early summer of this year.He originally wanted to take Wang Yuesheng to Songjiang personally, express his gratitude to Zheng Haizhu first, and then make some requests not to underestimate Yuesheng.

Unexpectedly, an uncle of the Zhang family was seriously ill, and the Zhang family was anxious to celebrate the wedding of their eldest grandson Zhang Dai. They actually wanted to welcome his fiancée Liu Shi into the door for Zhang Dai in the dog days when people in the south of the Yangtze River would never drink.

Zhang Dai had no choice but to beg his good brother Zhang Yanke for help.Zhang Yanke showed his unscrupulous appearance in the clan, so he found an excuse to go to Nanjing to buy antiques, slipped away from Shaoxing, took Wang Yuesheng to Songjiang, and sent him to Zheng Haizhu's school.

When Zheng Haizhu and Wang Yuesheng met, Dong Erya, who was recruited from Zhenjiang, recognized at a glance that this Miss Wang was the kind-hearted boatman who paid extra money to hire their sisters to pull the fibers in Guazhoudu, and then gave them clothes as gifts.

With this section foreshadowing, Zheng Haizhu's first impression of Wang Yuesheng was good, and the tension in his heart about arranging a private room for Zhang Dai dissipated a little.

Today, Zheng Haizhu took Zhang Yanke and Wang Yuesheng to visit the school. Seeing that Wang Yuesheng was not very interested in telling Zhang Yanke about his Fujian adventures, he asked her to go to the campus to see which place in the garden is suitable for teaching rhythm or explaining the skills of playing the qin .

That Zhang Yanke really took a close look at this non-staff sister-in-law. From the pavilion in Qingyuan, he saw Wang Yuesheng entering the smoking iron room. For a while, he didn't care about listening to Zheng Haizhu's talk about the actual sea battle, and rushed away come over.

Lu Xiangsheng didn't know there were so many twists and turns in it.

He was well-educated, he didn't suspect the cleverness of Zhang Yanke's words, he only acted as if he had come to his senses, and hurriedly said apologetically, "Brother Yanke reminded me that books and blueprints are most afraid of fire, so don't enter this room."

After saying that, he picked up the "Sacred Artifact Book" and another book on firearms, and put them on the stone table in the courtyard outside the house.

Zheng Haizhu said at the right time: "Let's all go out, and listen to Miss Wang's talk, why not make a thunderbolt, but a combined machine gun."

Then he said to the Ge family: "The three masters also take a rest. There is mung bean soup soaked in well water at the tailor shop in the banana garden. Go and drink a few bowls to dispel the heat and bring us a bucket. Master Fan and I've said it several times, everyone is a craftsman, so don't be restrained."

Ge Hong thanked him gratefully, and took his son and nephew to the banana garden.

After Zheng Haizhu sat down at the stone table, he glanced at Zhang Yanke with a smile.

Zhang Yanke smiled slightly, and for some reason, remembered the few words that Miss Zheng had teased about her impatience when she investigated the case of Sister He's injustice.

Looking at Mr. Lu on the opposite side, he looked extremely gentle and gentle.

For a moment, Zhang Yanke felt as if a ball had been deflated in his heart.

His mouth was also dumb, and he only picked up the "Sacred Artifact Book" to read it.

Wang Yuesheng was still clear-eyed and indifferent, and didn't care about the weirdness in this atmosphere that was related to him. He only looked at Zheng Haizhu, then at Lu Xiangsheng, and said: "Miss Zheng, Mr. Lu, I think the fit is better than the thunder. It is more worthwhile to do it because I think of what an old man said."

(End of this chapter)