Crazy at the end of the Ming Dynasty

The Dragon Lord finally opened his eyes.After entering May, it rained several times in a row, which greatly improved the drought situation.Wu Shigong arranged all the labor and asked them to rush to plant crops, so as to ensure that they could harvest more grain during the autumn harvest.

Because Wu Shigong used a lot of labor and livestock, and Wu Shigong built and dredged a large number of irrigation ditches in advance, the whole process of rushing to plant crops was very smooth.

In addition, Wu Shigong also started to deal with the captured spoils.He organized a caravan, loaded some of the supplies he had seized and was temporarily unused, led by Yuan Xingshan, and transported them to Jining Prefecture.

Unexpectedly, after Wu Shigong's caravan was formed, Yao Yuanwai and other local businessmen asked to go together.Although the rebellion of the Holy Spirit Society has been wiped out, many scattered rioters fell to the grass, so the situation in the countryside became chaotic instead.

These merchants were afraid that their caravan would be hijacked by robbers on the way, so they were willing to pay Wu Shigong some protection fees to keep them safe.Of course, Wu Shigong was disrespectful to these extra money delivered to his door.

After walking twice like this, Wu Shigong received more than 300 taels of guard fees in addition to the silver earned by his own caravan. What Wu Shigong himself paid was nothing more than sending more than 100 soldiers to guard each time the caravan set off.

Although in the official circles in Henan, except for a few officials who knew about it, the other officials were almost ignorant of Wu Shigong's contribution to the suppression of the Holy Spirit Society's rebellion.

However, as those scattered people spread word of mouth, Wu Shigong became a ghost in the eyes of those green forest heroes.Therefore, during the two caravan guards, there was not even a shadow of a small thief around the caravan.

This made Wu Shigong very happy, he seemed to see a new source of income.But the good times didn't last long, and the departure frequency of the caravan dropped rapidly.Up to once a month at most.

The small town where Wu Shigong lives is only a distribution center for commodities in several nearby counties. In terms of the total amount of commodities in circulation, there are actually not many.Of course, the bulk of the commodity trade between Guide Mansion and Jining Prefecture is between Guide Mansion City and Jining Prefecture.From the point of view of the distance, the goods in Wu Shigong's small town are not dominant.

In addition, the circulation of commodities in the Ming Dynasty, especially the circulation of bulk commodities, was basically by water.The cost of waterway transportation is low and relatively safe.

If you go overland, the only advantage is that the time is relatively short.From the small town of Wu Shigong to Jining Prefecture, the longest journey is no more than five days, and if it is by water, it will take more than a month.Therefore, only those urgently needed goods with high prices and low weight will go overland.

For this situation, Wu Shigong can only feel very regretful in his heart.But think about it carefully: the earning of these silver coins was beyond my expectations.Now, although the money is small, at least it has made up for it.After thinking about it this way, Wu Shigong calmed down.

All the affairs of the Qianhu Office were also on the right track, and there were people busy with every business. At this time, Wu Shigong also had some free time.

One day, he found that the women in the clothing workshop were also very free, so he ordered them to make a uniform for each soldier.Anyway, Wu Shigong seized a lot of coarse cloth this time, and the coarse cloth could not be sold for a few taels of silver, so he simply made these coarse cloth into military uniforms and distributed them to the soldiers as a benefit for the soldiers.

But when Yang Goudan's wife came to ask Wu Shigong for his opinion with the style of the military uniform, Wu Shigong suddenly had an inspiration.

Now all of Wu Shigong's soldiers, except for those guards from the capital, basically don't have any armor on them.Even the guards in the capital are basically covered with cotton and leather armor, and only the main bosses have the twenty sets of ring-arm iron armor for body protection.

And Wu Shigong's current number of soldiers is very small. To Wu Shigong, every soldier is very precious.Therefore, Wu Shigong also specially wanted to equip his soldiers with more armor, so as to preserve the combat effectiveness of each soldier as much as possible.

But Wu Shigong had already inquired about it.Even the cheapest cotton armor costs more than 20 taels of silver, while the ring-arm iron armor costs one to two hundred taels of silver.The more expensive plate armor is said to cost more than 200 taels of silver.

As for why the armor is so expensive, Wu Shigong also asked Yang Goudan.Na Yang Goudan told Wu Shigong: Every iron part of the armor is hammered out by the blacksmith.All steel is used.The armor made in this way will effectively resist the damage of weapons.

However, the production requirements of Baisteelmaking are very high, and blacksmiths who can master this technology are very rare.Of course, Yang Goudan also boasted a bit, saying that he himself has mastered the technology of steelmaking.

But what's more troublesome is that it takes a lot of tempering to make steel, and the production time is quite long.Especially for plate armor, it takes one and a half months to two months to make the front and rear plates.That's why the price of these armors is so expensive.

After Wu Shigong knew these truths, he realized that it would be impossible to mass-produce armor with the craftsmen under him.However, Wu Shigong didn't have that much silver to buy armor.Therefore, his mind cooled down at that time.

However, now that Wu Shigong saw the style of the military uniform, he remembered the bulletproof vest he wore in his previous life.Wu Shigong definitely couldn't make the Kelaf material used to make bulletproof vests in his previous life, but a design of the bulletproof vest gave Wu Shigong an inspiration.

On the body armor in the previous life, there were always several large pockets in the important protective parts. When the person wearing the body armor faced a battle, he would insert alloy steel sheets or ceramic bulletproof sheets into these large pockets to increase the The bulletproof performance of your own body armor.

Wu Shigong thought: Can't I do this?As long as you sew pockets on your military uniform, and put iron pieces in these pockets during battle, wouldn't it also serve as armor?

Moreover, the cost of such soil armor is very low. Even if a few pieces of iron are damaged during combat, it is very convenient and cheap to replace.The only shortcoming, that is, the protective ability seems to have dropped a bit.But for these soldiers, having soil armor is much better than having no armor.

After Wu Shigong put forward his idea, everyone greatly appreciated it.This made Wu Shigong quite proud.He thought to himself: "My buddy, after time travelling, finally opened a golden finger! My buddy finally fulfilled his dream of invention!"

Wu Shigong's concept of soil armor was later widely used and developed in his army.When Wu Shigong's soldiers did not have iron pieces, they would put wood pieces in their large pockets, or even fill them with stones.Although the effect of this is not as good as that of inserting iron, it still has a protective effect.

The only regret is that Wu Shigong's military uniform, worn on the soldiers, makes these soldiers look like beggars in patched clothes.Therefore, this kind of military uniform also has an alias called "beggar military uniform".For this reason, many soldiers wore a set of clothes over their "beggar uniform".But this way of wearing made Wu Shigong's novel design of soil armor not spread for a long time.

The days just passed by day by day.One day in July, Wu Shigong suddenly received an invitation, inviting Wu Shigong to a banquet in the county town.It was Lu Yunhuan, a gentry in the county, who sent out the invitation.

What made Wu Shigong even more interested was that in the invitation, the one who invited Wu Shigong to the banquet was the Yangzhou salt merchant Lu Jianchen.So Wu Shigong readily accepted their invitation.

Then Lu Yunhuan is a big salt merchant who is in charge of salt sales in several surrounding counties. Both he and Lu Jianchen are now in big trouble in salt sales.Therefore, they wanted Wu Shigong to come forward to help solve the problem.