Chapter 125: Treasure to Guard the House

The Italian Cannon in *Drawing Sword* wasn't actually made in Italy — it was a standard French 75. During World War I, France half-sold, half-gave a batch of 75s to Italy for use against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the romantic Italian fellows looked down on the French-made ladies, so they were tossed into a storehouse and left there. By World War II, Italy gave the ladies to Japan, and that batch eventually ended up on the battlefields of China, where one of the ladies was captured by the Second Battalion Commander... so the tattoo on her body is engraved in French, not Italian.

But the cannon now standing on the drill ground of the Dayuan Trading Post is standard Italian manufacture, its barrel engraved with Italian numerals. This is a son-generation Bofors Italian descendant, more ferocious than its father, full name: "Bofors L/70 40mm Anti-Aircraft Gun."

The first-generation Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft gun was successfully designed in 1933, just in time for World War II, and swept the globe — America alone copied and produced sixty thousand of them at the time.

However, more than twenty years later, the former star was showing its age, so in the 70s the Bofors Company began work on an upgraded 40mm gun; the final product began equipping armies in the late 70s, and was gradually copied by several nations, Italy among them.

So this brand-new Bofors before us, gleaming silver-gray with a murderous sheen, polished to a mirror finish, never having fired a single shot, is actually a post-90s individual — an old cannon over twenty years out of the factory.

After obtaining the license in the late 80s, the Italian fellows produced quite a few of these new-model Bofors in batches to arm their destroyers. But time slipped by, and before anyone knew it another twenty-plus years had passed — even the yokels' ships were playing with knockoff Dense Arrays and Sea Sparrows, so the Bofors copies of various nations once again found themselves unemployed...

Outdated, they were sold by arms dealers to low-intensity conflict areas, and in the course of this, a local tyrant surnamed Cao, not wanting to deal with Britain or America and having no confidence in India's products, bought a few of the Italian fellows' guns on a whim... after all, Oto Melara is a veteran artillery company.

The first-generation Bofors had a 60-caliber barrel, while this upgraded version before us has a 70-caliber barrel, 2.8 meters long — a perfect match for Cao Chuan's spatial side length. This gun has an effective range of 3.7 kilometers and a maximum horizontal range of 12.5 kilometers, making it the absolute daddy of the 17th century — and note, 3.7 kilometers is for hitting airplanes... if used against a sailing warship, which is enormous and has a speed relative to an airplane of near zero, then within ten kilometers, once a sailing ship is spotted by the electro-optical aiming system attached to this Italian Cannon... the outcome defies imagination.

Chairman Cao brought two crates this time. One held the bases, barrels, and some spare parts and ammunition for the two Italian Cannons; the other crate was entirely 40mm high-explosive incendiary rounds — the only time you'd need to trouble the Italian gentlemen is definitely for hitting sailing ships, and for punching through wooden hulls, this is the most devastating thing, no other ammunition type needed.

Of these two single-barrel Italian Cannons, one will be placed on the fort at the northwest corner of the trading post, where it can fully command the Taijiang Inland Sea, the open sea off Dayuan, and even the coast off Chikan. In a few days, once the old trading post is demolished, a blockhouse will be added in the pier district to keep the situation firmly in hand.

The other cannon will be placed in the future Imperial City, forming crossfire with the blockhouse. Cao Chuan still has two backup guns stored in his warehouse in Africa. Once the Crossing Faction can produce its own diesel, two propeller-driven main battleships will be fitted with Italian Cannons, serving as treasures to suppress the qi and guard the fate, protecting the transmigrators' industrial empire.

And the Many-Treasures Daoist, Cao Chuan, was at this moment sitting smugly on the drill ground, surrounded by quite a crowd, with several army and navy brass busy singing the great immortal's praises. But when words like "howitzer" and "six-barrel machine cannon" started popping out of these men's mouths one after another, the Many-Treasures Daoist instantly knelt in defeat.

Realizing things were going off the rails, Chief Executive Dong quickly stood up and raised one palm vertically: "Stop, stop. Hey, do you people think I'm buying spicy sticks at a supermarket?"

Sweeping a glance left and right, Cao Chuan said irritably: "Let me put it this way — in the CIA's supercomputer, I'm definitely on file by now, just not a high priority. Anyone who buys this many weapons gets a file opened on them. These days, which arms dealer doesn't have an organization behind them? Don't think that just because it's changed hands several times, they can't trace it — they can trace it even if it changes hands eight times. It's just that since most of it is old weaponry, they can't be bothered to investigate me."

"Now that everyone's got a firm footing." Cao Chuan said with a serious expression: "I'm announcing this here: from now on, things like RPGs — rebel-specialty items — including cannons and heavy machine guns, I won't be buying anymore. At most I'll scrounge up some light weapons and ammunition. Use them sparingly. If you want howitzers... rely on yourselves. I'll see later if I can find some blueprints for you."

The officers who had been eyeing Shu after taking Long ate humble pie this time, and slunk off dejectedly to tinker with their new toy. The original Italian Cannon's entire system weighed a full five tons, and a certain faction extremely short on import quotas naturally had no need for such a complete setup.

The first thing to be removed was the heavy "X"-type gun bed. In the design, this cannon was meant to be towed by a vehicle for mobility; in combat mode, like a tank in StarCraft, the X-type gun bed would lower, supported by four jacks. Now both the gun bed and the four corner tires were left in Africa: the transmigrators didn't need it to be mobile — just hold position and guard the house.

The second thing removed was the thick gun shield: if the day ever comes when a Red Barbarian Cannon on some sailing ship can fire an iron ball from several kilometers away and threaten the fort... it won't be too late to jury-rig some homemade iron plate then.

The third thing removed was the motor-assisted system and radar fire control. That cool movie scene of a quadruple anti-aircraft gun spinning in circles to chase down an airplane won't be happening in the 17th century — the transmigrators are absolutely certain their opponents won't have Zero Fighters. So, take your time using the manual wheel to adjust the gun's parameters. Also, electric firing is a deviant path — we don't need that either. Pedal firing has been tested by history, it's stable, we'll use that. No rush, there's plenty of time...

Imagine: a sailing warship at a standard speed of four knots would take a full hour to travel from seven kilometers out to the open sea off Dayuan. In that time, the gunner could take a nap, and after waking up, spend two minutes to lock onto the approaching ship.

Then fire, pump one, two, three rounds into it. If the sailing ship is lucky enough not to sink, and hasn't been burned through by the firestorm from the high-energy explosives, then it must be struggling to turn around — and by the time it completes that tactical maneuver, the gunner will have finished his coffee, smoked a cigarette, taken a trip to the toilet, returned to his gun position, and the sailing ship's stern will be in his sights again...

Alright, this truly, truly is 17th-century warfare — the rhythm is just this slow, and wars are typically measured in units of "months."

After all the weight reduction work was complete, the core combat components left from the Italian Cannon weighed only 1.6 tons in total. So by the next morning, a roar began to sound across Dayuan Island — with the trading post as the center, everything around it, sea and land alike, came under bombardment: the gunners had begun to determine the firing tables.