Chapter 1076

"Not bad, not bad — this is my masterpiece!"

"Very nice!"

Qianhui wore a face full of smugness and pride as she gazed at the Xiangyang Cannon before her, her heart full of emotion — she never imagined that one day she too would complete a mechanical work.

Perhaps because it was her first time assembling one with her own hands, the more Qianhui looked at the Xiangyang Cannon before her, the more pleasing it seemed to her eye; only for the moment, she could not think of any word to describe her masterpiece, and she strutted with her chin raised and chest puffed out like a big rooster.

"Got it… flawless and perfect."

"Ahem-cough!"

"What's wrong with you?"

Lin Cheng, who had been resting at the side, had nearly choked on the water from his canteen, but in the end he did not expose Qianhui's narcissism.

"Nothing, as long as you're happy." He even gave her a thumbs-up. "You're awesome."

But he thought that if he displayed outstanding mechanical-skill technique and talent, wouldn't he be very conspicuous, appearing very different from those craftsmen who only knew how to freeload and wait for death, and then the city lord here would be reluctant to let him leave.

No no no, he could not perform so outstandingly; he had to design things to be a bit mediocre, showing that he was only a little stronger than those craftsmen — just a young man with novel ideas, different from those old fellows in their seventies and eighties, possessing an innovative spirit of questioning the sages.

The main body of the Xiangyang Cannon seemed to have only a triangular fixed frame, and a lever distributing the counterweight arm and the throwing arm. But in fact it was not so — the main body and the gears hidden inside the chassis complemented each other, employing mechanical drive. Simply put, like the operating principle of a trebuchet, in the Middle Ages one end of the lever was usually pulled by people, then ammunition was loaded and launched.

If it were an ordinary small trebuchet, two or three people would be enough to pull it, but the power would be limited — this was related to the amount of ammunition and the launch angle; but if one wanted to pull a medium trebuchet or a heavy trebuchet, then the manpower pulling the lever would have to be multiplied by more than ten.

In the year 757 AD, Li Guangbi created a giant cannon fired by 200 men pulling ropes, each shot able to wound dozens of people.

Two hundred people wounding only dozens of enemies — if that number of people were sent directly onto the battlefield, they would probably kill more than ten enemies. But considering that a giant cannon is also a heavy weapon, and the damage is penetrating damage, even though 200 people could only wound dozens, for the enemy it was still a form of deterrence.

But Lin Cheng was still dissatisfied with this. If mechanical drive were adopted, with multiple gears turning, and with controllable restrictions to prevent the gears from reversing, one person could turn the handle to make the gears rotate, thereby slowly lowering the lever to a certain height; two people would each hug a boulder to load it; one person would be responsible for firing; one person would aim.

Perfectly achieving the operation of a trebuchet with the minimum number of people — and this was the Xiangyang Cannon medium trebuchet! The maximum ammunition load could fire shells weighing up to kilograms.

Just imagine a boulder of nearly 300 jin, hurled into the air, with the inertial impact force of acceleration and gravitational descent — even a sturdy city wall would be smashed into a huge crater, and if it hit a person, they would probably be carried away on the spot.

Although the medium trebuchet did not have as much ammunition capacity as a heavy trebuchet, in terms of firing frequency, it absolutely crushed the heavy trebuchet.

Of course, Lin Cheng thought so too.

The Xiangyang Cannon trebuchet he had improved could crush the Empire's heavy trebuchets in every aspect. When Lin Cheng and Qianhui had finished assembling the Xiangyang Cannon, the group of craftsmen from earlier had finally finished their ten laps and returned to the armory. As they came in and lay down to rest, sharp-eyed craftsmen noticed that there seemed to be two extra people in the armory, and also an extra new trebuchet, and could not help but feel a little surprised.

"Look at that… it looks like a new-style trebuchet!"

"Really, hey, is that a newly assigned master craftsman?"

"Amazing, it's actually a new-style medium trebuchet — I wonder how its power and firing frequency are?"

"Should we go over and say hello? There seems to be a girl too!!"

"Forget it, you can tell at a glance they're together."

These people had some self-awareness — within such a short time, the other party, with just two people, had astonishingly assembled a new-style medium trebuchet; regardless of whether it could successfully fire, this talent and skill was already above their entire group.

On the other side, the city lord of Yongjicheng and commander of the Yongye Legion, Lord Xuan Wuji, after receiving General Ji Xia's report, immediately took it seriously — someone actually dared to claim they could improve the trebuchet, and moreover a mobile trebuchet that only needed five people to operate.

Someone who could say such a thing was either extremely foolish, or a genuine, capable master craftsman.

He just hadn't expected that within the Empire there was still such talent — one had to know that those good-for-nothings in the Empire's Ministry of Works hadn't been able to research out so much as a single hair to this day.

"Ji Xia, what's his background?"

"According to the inspection captain at the city gate, the other party comes from Black Stone City — oh, right, the other party claims to be a young blacksmith who understands alchemy, and when he arrived he was riding a metal wolf — so what? Commander, is there a problem with him?"

"No." Xuan Wuji shook his head, but his heart gave a start — it should be him, that's right.