My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 474 A Thunderclap
Normally, if Liu Rong visited other government departments, they would be surrounded by people and there would be a huge crowd.

The departments under inspection are more likely to have their entire staff come out to welcome the emperor with loud gongs and drums, and accompany Liu Rong throughout the inspection.

But when Liu Rong appeared outside the mysterious Lu Ban Garden, accompanied only by Li Cang and two imperial guards, everything was very different from usual.

——Liu Rong and his group, including Liu Rong, consisted of four people in total.

Outside Lu Ban Garden, including the ten Yu Lin Lang standing guard on both sides, there were only twelve people in total to welcome the emperor.

To be precise, there were only two people.

One of them is the deputy of Luban Yuanling and contemporary tycoon Qin Zhuang.

The other person was an ordinary craftsman and also a Mohist.

Under the guidance of these two people, Liu Rong and his four companions stepped into the gate of Lu Ban Garden.

To be precise, it was the first gate of Luban Garden: the outer gate.

Entering from the outer gate, what comes into view is a circular layout similar to the layout of large cities in later generations.

The outermost part is a circle of outer wall connected to the outer gate, surrounded by a simple fence.

It looks ordinary, but in fact, not far away is the former military camp of the Yulin and Huben armies, which is also the current rotating camp of these two imperial guards.

Inside the outer wall of the fence, there is a circle of gray-black brick wall that is two meters high, with battlements on top and garrisoned soldiers - the area between the two is a workshop that also looks normal.

There are blacksmith workshops and carpentry workshops - without exception, there are at least two soldiers guarding them.

After walking about two miles from the outer gate, Liu Rong and his party arrived at the second gate: the inner gate.

Unlike the outer door that opens and closes to the left and right, this inner door is a wooden hanging door similar to a city gate.

It was on this floor that Liu Rong and his group of four, three of whom except Liu Rong himself, were interrogated by the guards outside the door.

But it was not too complicated. The three of them passed this checkpoint after each showing their identity cards.

After waiting for the portcullis to drop, Liu Rong and his party stepped into the inner door.

Then the scene that came into view underwent a drastic change.

——They were no longer open-air or semi-open-air workshops, but large houses separated from each other from front to back and from left to right, and guarded by soldiers on all four sides!
There were always two soldiers guarding outside the door. Whenever someone walked in front of these big black houses, the soldiers would always cast a vigilant look at them.

Obviously, even people in Luban Garden cannot easily enter or exit these big dark rooms.

But Liu Rong and his party still did not stop.

Continuing inside, after walking two hundred steps, we finally arrived at a stone gate connected to a blue brick wall.

This door is called Mo Gate inside Lu Ban Garden.

As the name suggests, the Mo Gate is made of a single dark-colored stone slab.

And unlike any other door in the world today, this Mo Gate is hung upwards horizontally.

Along with the regular ticking sound of the capstan and the harsh creaking sound caused by the tightened hemp rope, the Mo Gate was opened.

At the same time, the identities of Liu Rong and four others, including Liu Rong himself, were strictly checked!
Liu Rong managed to save some trouble by simply asking the guard to compare the portrait and show the token that had been prepared earlier.

In addition, Liu Rong was not wearing ordinary clothes, but the emperor's black crown, which made him pass the test.

But it was hard for the other three people - especially the two jailers;
He took out almost everything on his body that could prove his identity, as well as all the people in his mind who could prove his identity, but he still had to give Liu Rong an "oral instruction" on the spot before he could successfully step into the third level of the Mo Gate.

The moment you step into Momen, the view in front of you suddenly becomes clear.

——Earlier, in the area between the outer gate and the inner gate, and between the inner gate and the Mo gate, it was actually not possible to intuitively feel the "ring-shaped" layout of Lu Ban Garden.

But after entering the inner door and seeing this circular area with a diameter of about one hundred steps, it is not difficult to recall the previous two floors, which were actually circular in shape as a whole.

It’s just that the previous two circles were too large, making it difficult to feel them intuitively.

"Old Qin!"

"Look who's here?!"

Having already entered the Mo Gate, the defensive force that originally made the atmosphere a bit depressing has become visibly less.

Apart from the two imperial guards who were guarding closely behind Yuan Ling Qin Zhuang, who was bowing his head in front of the desk with a frown on his brow, there were almost no imperial guards wearing armor and with long swords on their waists.

When Kurikara's wanton shouting sounded, almost everyone in Momen subconsciously looked towards Kurikara.

After seeing who was coming and the emperor Liu Rong next to Li Cang, everyone did not immediately step forward to greet them.

Instead, he stood up on the spot, bowed to Liu Rong from a distance, and then continued with his work.

What's worse, some were so busy that they couldn't even free themselves. They just focused on their work without even raising their heads, pretending not to hear Kurikara's shouting, let alone see Liu Rong's appearance.

Liu Rong didn't take this to heart at all. He just followed Kurikara's gaze and walked towards the figure in the core area.

It was only a distance of fifty steps, but every time Liu Rong took a step, he would be slightly shocked by the "device" he saw out of the corner of his eye.

——Liu Rong saw that in front of a wooden platform, a Mohist made a leather bag into a sphere, and suspended it in the air with a silk rope, and connected the center point of the lower part of the spherical leather bag to a pot of boiling water with a leather tube!
The boiling water sublimates into steam, which enters the leather bag along the leather tube and then gushes out from the slanted opening on one side of the leather bag.

As a result, the spherical leather bag was given a rotation force by the oblique ejection of steam, and it began to spin in the air with a humming sound...

Liu Rong also saw another Mohist bending over a table, twisting the finished iron wires into a bundle, then fixing one end and pinching the other end with tweezers, while rotating it and trying to stretch it outwards.

There are many more 'devices' like this.

Its structure is complex and its purpose is unclear, but its ingenious pulley and gear system can be seen at a glance.

What makes Liu Rong feel most "proud" is not the ongoing scientific experiments or equipment manufacturing projects.

Instead, the Mohists picked up auxiliary tools from their side and used them skillfully during the process.

For example, tweezers;

For example, pliers.

Another example is the vernier caliper...

"Old Qin?"

"Calling you~"

"Your Majesty has arrived!"

Until Liu Rong and his party walked from the inside of Momen to the center of the big circle, Old Craftsman Qin—Qin Zhuang—did not look up again.

Even though Kurikara had greeted him, it was still the same.

Liu Rong and his party were left alone for a long time. After finishing the work in his hands, Qin Zhuang finally straightened up and let out a long breath, unable to hide his fatigue.

But he still did not bow immediately, but said very naturally: "Your Majesty, please look."

"This is the wheel linkage gear set that was reproduced according to the drawings that His Majesty gave me back then."

"——The idea of ​​using steel and iron for gears can basically be abandoned." "It is too difficult to make. It takes too much time, effort and money to make it. It is simply impossible to mass produce it."

“So it is still mainly made of wood, and lubricated with grease to extend its life.”

Hearing this, Liu Rong walked forward with a smile and looked down at Qin Zhuang's special craftsman's table.

When Liu Rong saw the palm-sized wooden cart clearly, he couldn't help laughing and almost laughed out loud.

——Isn’t this the base of the foreign four-wheel drive car that Liu Rong used to play in his childhood?
However, unlike the four-wheel drive vehicles of later generations, the wheels were not much thicker than the floor. At this moment, the wooden board + wheels held in Liu Rong's hands presented an extremely unreasonable, unsightly and uncoordinated proportion.

The wooden board serving as the base was about the same size as Liu Rong's palm.

According to the standards of later toy four-wheel drive vehicles, the base should be about the size of an adult's palm, and the wheels should be the size of a thumb nail, or slightly larger.

But at this moment, the wheels of the "car base" held by Liu Rong were as big as lemon slices!
Judging from the style, it is basically the same as the horse-drawn carriage commonly seen in the Han Dynasty today, with the carriage and front room removed, and the single-axle two-wheeled one changed to a double-axle four-wheeled one.

After secretly complaining, Liu Rong's attention was quickly attracted to the structure below the template, that is, "under the car".

——It is exactly the same as the curved four-wheel drive vehicles of later generations: the front axle and the rear axle are connected by a wooden pole with gears at both ends!

When Liu Rong pinches any wheel with his fingers and turns it, it is no longer the wheel on the opposite side of the same axis that turns along with it, but the other three wheels!

Although this is of no use at the moment.

Although there is not much difference whether the front and rear axles are connected or not - it is just the difference between front-wheel drive/rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive, but this still makes Liu Rong excited, and a smile of excitement blooms on his face.

——The front and rear axles are linked and driven together, which really doesn’t make much sense for a horse-drawn carriage!

But the thinking that this design has brought to today's era - more than a hundred years before Christ - is unparalleled!

With this foundation, in the future, no matter what they make or what project they are responsible for, the craftsmen will have a backup plan of 'gear connection and linkage' in their minds.

It may not be used, and there is a high probability that it will be thrown into a corner for a long time, just like a "spare" until the end of time.

But even so, Liu Rong still felt that his expectations for Lu Ban Garden and the future of the Han Dynasty had more possibilities of being realized.

Of course, Liu Rong's purpose of coming today was not to really inspect the multi-faceted scientific research of Lu Ban Garden, which was "casting a wide net to catch more fish."

But before Liu Rong could take the initiative to speak, Qin Zhuang took the lead in opening the conversation.

"Three-edged arrows are not difficult."

"It can be mass-produced and put into service, and the arrowhead, arrow body, and arrow tail can be replaced and assembled at will. I have reported it to the Ministry of Finance, and it will be mass-produced and put into service soon."

"As for the Mo Dao, the problem of the initial version using too much steel and being too expensive has been basically solved."

"——In addition to the original Mo Dao, an improved version was made. It weighs 70% of the original and uses half the amount of steel, but its lethality is still 80%."

"I think it shouldn't be a problem to equip a Modao army of less than 10,000 people..."

Seeing Qin Zhuang talking about the progress of military work, Liu Rong could only smile awkwardly.

——Qin Zhuang once again saw through Liu Rong’s intention.

But after all, it was not the worm in Liu Rong's stomach, and Qin Zhuang could not guess exactly what Liu Rong wanted this time.

So Liu Rong stopped beating around the bush and directly stated his purpose.

"The battle of Gaoque is imminent."

"But the difficulty of attacking Gaoque is no less than attacking Hangu Pass from outside the pass!"

"The results obtained by the deductions I made with the generals are truly shocking."

"——There were at least 10,000 casualties, and the success rate of taking Gaoque was less than 30%."

"If we fail to capture the city after a long siege, the casualties will likely reach tens of thousands, and the chances of successfully capturing Gaoque will still not be increased."

"So, I intend to bite the bullet and try out 'that' thing in this battle of Gaoque..."

As soon as Liu Rong finished speaking, Qin Zhuang's already exhausted face became even more solemn and rare in severity.

——Gao Que, Qin Zhuang had never seen him, and had hardly even heard of him.

But Qin Zhuang still knew about Hangu Pass.

When Qin Zhuang, as an "old Qin man", heard Liu Rong say that the Han Dynasty planned to attack a pass comparable to Hangu Pass, his eyelids twitched violently.

And when Liu Rong mentioned "that thing", an inexplicable sadness surged between Qin Zhuang's brows.

After a long while, Qin Zhuang finally let out a long breath and fixed his gaze on the workbench in front of him.

He finally gave a hesitant response to Liu Rong's words.

"Since Your Majesty sent the formula of 'that' thing to Lu Ban Garden, my Mohist School has lost nine Mohists and thirty-one apprentices so far."

"Especially in the early spring of this year - in just three days, there were three level 1 fire accidents, killing 17 people and injuring or disabling more than 30 people."

"You should know that when Your Majesty wanted to establish the Lu Ban Garden, there were only fourteen talented people in the Ministry of Personnel."

"If Lu Ban Garden had not been established, most of the Mohists in the world would have gathered in Chang'an. I'm afraid that the Mohist school would have been completely cut off by this thing..."

As he said this, Qin Zhuang did not forget to lower his head and observe a moment of silence for his deceased disciples - for his dedicated colleagues.

Then, Fang turned around with an extremely serious look and looked directly into Liu Rong's eyes.

"That thing is far from being ready for use on the battlefield."

"Let's not talk about whether it harms the harmony between heaven and earth or between people - even if the Huns cannot be considered 'people', I do not recommend that Your Majesty should consider using that thing now."

"——Your Majesty just said that if we forcefully attack Gaoque, our Han family will suffer tens of thousands of casualties, and we may not gain anything in the end."

"But I can tell Your Majesty with absolute certainty that if this thing is stored, transported, or handled improperly, it is very likely to explode, killing thousands of Han soldiers, leaving no trace of their bodies."

...

"The casualties on the battlefield are ultimately caused by a knife or a gun."

"But the casualties caused by this thing are not as simple as low morale - it is likely to directly break the morale of the army and cause the army to collapse."

"Even the camp roars!"

"Your Majesty, please be cautious."

After saying that, Qin Zhuang smiled bitterly and shook his head, saying self-deprecatingly: "It may take three to five years at most, or one to two years at least. If a hundred or so people die, this thing will probably be usable and controllable."

"But before that, I will not be surprised at all about the terrible consequences that will be caused if this thing leaves Luban Garden."

“——This thing is extremely terrifying!”

"It's not just for the enemy, it's for both of us. It's extremely terrifying..."

(End of this chapter)