Chapter 1073

These past few days, General Ji Xia had been watching the craftsmen closely, and had picked up a fair number of complaints from their mouths, but these cowards, one and all, did not dare to disassemble anything, terrified that once they took it apart they wouldn't be able to put it back together.

A piece of military equipment like a trebuchet—if they failed to repair it and instead damaged it further, that would surely be a capital offense! To stay alive, these craftsmen would rather stall and stall, even if in the end they were all punished by the city lord, since a living punishment was always better than a death sentence.

"Alright, I understand." Lin Cheng got it.

As it turned out, these craftsmen were nothing more than frauds who deceived the world and stole a reputation; not only did they have no real skill, but once forcibly conscripted they were afraid of taking on responsibility.

He was different—not only did he dare to take things apart, he wasn't afraid of bearing responsibility either, and more importantly, he believed he could repair the trebuchet, and even improving it should be no problem.

"Leave it to me with confidence, I guarantee I'll fix it for you…hopefully when the time comes, you can also release us."

"Naturally." General Ji Xia agreed.

Once the mission was complete and the legion commander did not blame them, the Ranyebu Society naturally wouldn't make things difficult for these craftsmen either. There was no time to lose, so Lin Cheng immediately began the repair work.

At first, Miss Qianhui and General Ji Xia could wait on the side, but later they discovered that Lin Cheng was just hammering away at the trebuchet nonstop, disassembling it piece by piece, and from his mouth came strange sounds every now and then, as if he were studying the trebuchet's internal structure.

During the disassembly, he gradually realized that the trebuchet's construction was simple, but the trebuchet was a heavy piece of military equipment, not a civilian product, and civilians were not allowed to privately manufacture one. But in fact, the principle behind the trebuchet was nothing more than the simple lever principle.

Just as she was getting a little impatient and about to leave, she saw Lin Cheng suddenly make a new move.

In his previous life, Lin Cheng had been a model youth steeped in the atmosphere of science, and was well-versed in everything from ancient to modern times; he knew full well that the country he had lived in in his previous life had once invented many advantageous trebuchets based on the lever principle.

Even though he hadn't understood it back then, could the him of now be the same? Just by imagining in his mind the appearance of those trebuchets he had seen, he pretty much knew how to make one.

"The materials here seem sufficient too." Lin Cheng was afraid the materials wouldn't be enough, so he deliberately looked around, and sure enough discovered plenty of brand-new timber and metal.

Since everything was ready, then let's begin.

Under the gazes of Miss Qianhui and General Ji Xia, Lin Cheng directly picked up the large hammer beside him and, as if abandoning himself to despair, began smashing the trebuchet in front of him.

"This…"

General Ji Xia instantly felt that the other party had come specifically to sabotage it. But the next second, she saw that what Lin Cheng had smashed open was merely the obstruction at the trebuchet's core section, and she had no choice but to patiently continue observing.

The wooden board and the fixing threads seemed to have seized up from being left unmaintained for too long, so Lin Cheng had no choice but to use the iron hammer to smash them open directly.

Once the core section was opened, immediately a pile of wooden parts deformed by compression came tumbling to the ground as if the whole thing had fallen apart; originally they had already been deformed, and because the wooden board had been holding them in place inside the core, now that the board was removed, they naturally all spilled out at once.

"Wow! The damage is far more serious than I imagined…"

The original intention of using the lever principle was not wrong, but in the design of the empire's trebuchet, the overall points of force and balance had not been taken into consideration, which was why the compression was so severe.

A triangular-fixed trebuchet base, combined with a lever made of a giant log over ten meters tall—Lin Cheng could easily deduce backward that when used, it would surely require more than fifty strong men pulling ropes together to secure the throwing scoop. The designer assumed that all the force would be on the triangular base, and it was true that most of the force was, but part of the force still had to be borne by the internal parts, which was why the parts had been compressed so severely.

· ·······Please send flowers····· ·····

"What the hell is this trebuchet design that's hundreds of years behind?"

A trebuchet design that requires so much manpower to operate—how could it actually be put forward?

And it was actually built. What damn era is this? This is the magic crystal era, you know—manpower and all that is way too backward.

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Unable to watch any longer, Lin Cheng angrily disassembled the other parts one by one, and before long the entire trebuchet had fallen apart into a pile of wood and components.

This left the observing Miss Qianhui and General Ji Xia utterly dumbfounded; Lin Cheng had said he would take it apart to repair it, but who could have imagined he would take it apart so thoroughly—if he couldn't fix it, what would they do?

By comparison, wouldn't ten medium trebuchets that only needed five soldiers each to operate be more powerful than this single large trebuchet?

No matter how Lin Cheng thought about it, he felt these people had something wrong with their heads.

Leaving aside mobile medium trebuchets and stubbornly insisting on heavy trebuchets—even if the heavy trebuchet had tremendous power and a large payload, compared to the simpler operation and cheaper cost of medium trebuchets, massed firepower suppression was the true way to go.

And compared to magic crystal cannons, trebuchets could basically only be considered a barely-better-than-nothing toy; shouldn't they be developing lower-cost, maximum-power trebuchets at this time?

When all was said and done, in Lin Cheng's view, the trebuchet was something that should have been eliminated long ago. End.