Chapter 315: A Golden Finger That Burns Money

In Liangzhou, by the Macheng River, two huge, towering brick-and-stone towers had risen up.

These two tall towers looked much like a chimney with a narrow mouth and a bulging belly. Several small openings had been cut into the lower sides of the towers, and above there were also feed openings for dumping in materials. One could clearly make out designs such as the furnace throat and the furnace hearth.

So these were no temple pagodas, but rather the native-method steelmaking blast furnaces that Zhang Zhao had built based on records.

Getting this done had not been easy. As soon as Shule City had been taken, Zhang Zhao had given the idea and rough drawings to Cao Shisi.

Over four years, Cao Shisi had turned to tackling the construction of these blast furnaces, and it had cost Zhang Zhao more than two hundred thousand strings of cash — enough to buy several hundred sets of iron armor.

But Zhang Zhao was willing to pour money into it, because he knew that what later ages would call a great waste — native-method steelmaking — was, in this era, a weapon of mass destruction.

And in order to obtain the refractory bricks needed to build the blast furnaces, Zhang Zhao had even lit up the red-brick tech tree ahead of time. To fire qualified red bricks, another sixty thousand strings of cash had been thrown in.

Yet the red bricks produced could still only be used to build blast furnaces and low civilian houses. For building fortresses, their hardness was still far too lacking.

"Young lord, look at this blast furnace. From top to bottom it goes: furnace throat, furnace shaft, furnace waist, furnace belly, and furnace hearth. Every part is built of red brick with tabia and glutinous rice juice. No matter how high the temperature, the furnace's safety can be assured."

Cao Shisi stood with his hands on his hips, looking rather like a chief engineer, and introduced it while standing beside Zhang Zhao.

"Are all the steps familiar? If this succeeds, our Hexi will have gained another sharp weapon!"

Zhang Zhao was also somewhat uneasy. Who could blame him, when he too only half understood it? If this did not succeed, several hundred thousand strings of cash would be gone for nothing.

Cao Shisi nodded confidently, and so the smelting began. First the iron ore was crushed, mixed with lime and slag, then water was added and it was fired into lumps. Separately, the prepared coke was also made ready.

Then materials were charged from the feed opening at the top of the blast furnace: one layer of iron ore, one layer of coke, and so on continuously, heating and firing without pause, until raw molten iron could be obtained.

But this was only the first step. Next, the molten iron, before it cooled, had to be quickly conveyed to the converter built nearby for refining.

The sole purpose of the converter was to keep stirring the molten iron and to blow air into it. This allowed the oxygen in the air to enter the molten iron, so that the carbon in the molten iron combined with the oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, thereby reducing the carbon content of the molten iron.

In this era, the greatest reason for poor iron quality was precisely the carbon content problem. Zhang Zhao's blast furnace could fairly reliably produce high-carbon steel and low-carbon steel, each with its own uses.

Zhang Zhao stayed with Cao Shisi from early morning until evening. In the end, in one batch of smelted steel, they even obtained steel close in quality to the material of the hengdao saber in his hand.

The blue-gray raw steel had a metallic beauty to its look. Dunzhu took up one of the most common iron blades of this era and hacked at it. The iron blade broke with a ring.

At once, cheers thundered!

Nearby, Man Xiong, Yan Jin, and the others were overjoyed. Fan Zhi, who had come along to watch the excitement, was even so stirred that he repeatedly congratulated Zhang Zhao.

"Minister of Works, having smelted such divine iron, you may forge divine weapons and treasured armor. In days to come, when you contend for the realm, you shall surely be ever-victorious!"

Zhang Zhao accepted all the flattery from Fan Zhi and his band of fierce generals, and even instructed Guo Tiance that after they returned, he must present the forged low-carbon steel to all the officials great and small, to let them know that he, Minister Zhang, had gained yet another divine instrument.

But after the crowd had dispersed, Zhang Zhao and Cao Shisi sat together on a hillock not far from the blast furnace, looking at the mess all around in silence.

After a few mouthfuls of grape wine, Cao Shisi turned his head to look at Zhang Zhao.

"Young lord, the water-powered blower you had me build has already been used to the point of breaking, and three of the workers who stirred the molten iron fell ill on the spot.

The red bricks of Furnace No. 2 burst from the high heat, and the blast furnace is now damaged. Of the coke we had stockpiled for over a year, less than three-tenths remains. From three thousand jin of iron ore, we smelted less than seven hundred jin of steel."

As he spoke, tears began streaming down Cao Shisi's face. "Young lord, I have let you down. Three hundred thousand strings of silver and cash, and only a few hundred jin of steel smelted."

Zhang Zhao patted Cao Shisi on the shoulder, then simply put his arm around his shoulders.

"Everything is hard at the start. At least we didn't fail, right? I believe you can surely find a better way.

Even if you can't, it doesn't matter. I, Zhang Erlang, will keep throwing money at it until I've smashed out tens of thousands of jin of steel!"

While comforting Cao Yanming, Zhang Zhao sighed deeply in his heart. This golden finger was truly damn hard to activate.

What looked like a fairly simple thing often turned out to be an entire system behind it.

If he, Zhang Zhao, wanted to use native-method steelmaking, then he at least had to light up the ability to mass-produce coke, water-powered and even steam-powered stirring machines, blowers, better-quality refractory bricks, and better carbon-blowing methods.

Otherwise, it would be like it was for him now: every link could only be done the clumsy way, the most primitive way, opening a path with vast amounts of money and manpower, and only after paying an enormous price could he get the result he wanted.

But this was destined to be unsustainable. The silver and cash spent on one jin of steel was more than for twenty jin of pig iron. Open! Open your mother's golden finger!

But temper tantrum aside, Zhang Zhao still decided to keep going. Since he had already thrown in three hundred thousand strings of cash, he at least wanted to hear a sound.

At the very least, he had to build a super-elite force of one thousand to fifteen hundred men armed with steel blades and wearing steel armor. From now on, the Guiyi Army's model would be to fight with a small number of elite imperial guards plus a large number of conscripted garrison troops.

"All right! A grown man doesn't wipe away tears. Pull yourself together — we still have to go celebrate! Tomorrow, come with me to the firing range. Liu Di is said to have already worked out the whirlwind catapult. Let's go take a look together!"

Zhang Zhao grinned and coaxed Cao Shisi like a child. Come to think of it, wasn't it he, the sucker Minister of Works, who had lost over three hundred thousand strings of cash?

Yet in the end, he still had to go around coaxing people, then slap his own face swollen and play the rich man everywhere.

On the road back to Liangzhou with Cao Shisi, a feeling grew stronger and stronger in Zhang Zhao: in this area, from now on, he could not keep pushing things forward by throwing his own money at them.

Perhaps he could consider building an academy where a hundred schools of thought contended, modeled on the universities of later ages, using the development of science and technology to drive the development of productive forces, rather than relying on his own forced personal drive as he did now.

North of Liangzhou City was the special grand army exercise and training ground, and it was also the place where the district archery ceremony was held.

Yesterday, Zhang Zhao had led everyone to tour the blast furnace and returned to the city with several hundred jin of steel of quite good quality for this era, and had even specially held a banquet and boasted at length. Today, without pausing, he came to the training ground to inspect the camel whirlwind catapult, whose technology was already nearing maturity.

Zhang Zhao looked carefully at the whirlwind catapult Liu Di had built. It was still somewhat larger than he had imagined, but a Bactrian camel could still carry it.

This whirlwind catapult was composed of more than eighty parts, large and small, and could be assembled in about two quarters of an hour.

Every two camels were matched with one whirlwind catapult and a number of spare parts, commanded by one banner captain.

Below him were two chief gunners, who were regarded as officers and also served as squad deputies, six assistant gunners, three loaders, two spotters, five assemblers, one camel keeper, and in addition three mules and horses were provided.

This was the basic organizational unit of a whirlwind catapult, called a banner team: three officers and seventeen soldiers in total, three mules and horses, and two camels.

Every five banner teams formed an operational unit, with one squad leader in command. Liu Di had in total manufactured eighty camel whirlwind catapults for Zhang Zhao, with a combined strength of one thousand six hundred twenty officers and men, and two hundred camels.

However, this was still strength on paper, because Zhang Zhao simply could not afford to maintain a specialized camel artillery force of around sixteen hundred men.

His current Guiyi Army Hanhai Garrison and Yucheng Garrison already had five thousand men. After taking Liangzhou and the Six Tribes, he had recruited nearly two thousand more.

He was now supporting an army of seven thousand with a population of a little over three hundred thousand, and these were basically full-time soldiers. This was the number-one militarism under heaven, so to speak.

So now all of Liangzhou, high and low, was somewhat restless, as if holding back a pent-up energy.

This was inevitable. With seven thousand standing troops stationed in Liangzhou, if they did not go out and seize other territory, if they did not find some power to fight, that would simply be abnormal.

As it happened, the Jincheng Wang clan of Lanzhou had seen precisely this situation of Zhang Zhao's, which was why Wang Zongheng did not want to submit.

His analysis was actually not wrong. Zhang Zhao did not lack troops now; what he lacked was how to arrange territory and wealth for his several thousand troops.

Today, Zhang Zhao had twenty banner teams of camel whirlwind catapults to conduct exercises, and the first item was a mobility drill.

Forty-five camels plus sixty or seventy mules and horses could still move across a battlefield quite quickly; compared to a traction trebuchet, the camel whirlwind cannon had something of the feel of a later-generation self-propelled gun.

The main body of the whirlwind cannon, weighing one or two hundred jin, was loaded onto a sturdy camel, while the component parts were carried by another camel.

The whirlwind cannon had two modes. In one, the cannon body was mounted directly on the camel's back. Its power was somewhat less, but it was extremely flexible and could even fire while retreating.

When deployed near complex terrain such as hills, it could to a certain degree suppress cavalry charges.

Fan Quan issued a rapid stream of orders, and red flags fluttered in the wind as the signal soldiers waved them.

Twenty whirlwind cannons aimed forward, and fist-sized stones fell like a sudden storm upon the wooden figures ahead — figures bound together from wooden staves, dressed in armor, representing enemy soldiers.

Even armored, the wooden figures were smashed to pieces at once. And after this volley of stones, in less than ten seconds the next round came crashing down, and this time the wooden figures were utterly shattered into fragments.

While the whirlwind cannons pounded the enemy, the soldiers attached to the whirlwind cannon banner unit, under their officers' command, formed two ranks of archers and one rank of pear-blossom spearmen.

The pear-blossom spearmen lit the gunpowder beneath the muzzles of their spears, and blazing dragons of fire shot forth. At the same time the archers drew and loosed, and with a whistling sound the ground was thick with arrows.

Bai Congxin, standing beside Zhang Zhao, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and said to Zhang Zhao.

"Minister of Works, this whirlwind cannon is truly formidable. If all eighty were fully assembled, firing while retreating, with stones and arrows howling across the sky, and spearmen guarding the perimeter, then even a thousand cavalry charging the formation would gain no advantage."

Zhang Zhao laughed heartily. The gloom of yesterday — when more than three hundred thousand strings of cash had produced only a few hundred jin of steel — was swept clean away.

This camel whirlwind cannon was a fine thing indeed. Historically, the Western Xia had relied on it to make the Great Song's heavy infantry suffer bitterly.

And now, what he faced was the same. The warriors of the Central Plains were fierce and valiant, and compared to them, the Hexi army — apart from its elite units — still fell somewhat short.

If they could be supported by camel whirlwind cannons, they could smash enemy formations at long range, and that would greatly narrow the gap between the two armies.

Even as the two men spoke, Fan Shun began drilling the camel cannons in another method of warfare.

That was to dismount the camel cannons from the camels' backs and assemble them on the spot, and the stones they hurled changed from slightly larger than a fist to roughly the size of an infant's head.

At a single command, the camel cannons assembled on the ground sacrificed mobility, but their power increased.

Amid the howling, huge stones smashed into an earthen wall more than three meters high and over a meter wide.

The twenty whirlwind cannons, following adjusted trajectories, concentrated their fire on one section. After fewer than five volleys, a large stretch of the wall collapsed.

Now it was Yin Yaozi, skilled in defending cities, who broke out in a cold sweat.

"I never imagined the whirlwind cannon could be so formidable. I fear that henceforth, apart from great cities like Liangzhou and Lanzhou, any ordinary small county town — if it had a few dozen whirlwind cannons, they could batter open a breach in an hour or two."

Zhang Zhao thought the same. This smaller version of the whirlwind cannon certainly could not be used against tall, mighty city walls.

But against small cities, small forts, and military stockades, it would be extremely useful.

However, before he could announce rewards for the craftsmen such as Liu Di, a courier with three red flags stuck in his back came galloping from the distance.

Zhang Zhao looked closely. The courier carrying this urgent military dispatch was none other than Fan Shun.

What had happened, to be so urgent?

Everyone was baffled. Nothing major should have happened in Liangzhou recently.

Fan Shun had evidently galloped all the way from Shenniao County. His face was deathly pale. When he saw Zhang Zhao, he tumbled straight off his horse headfirst, and before he had even gotten up from the ground, he shouted.

"Minister of Works! Secretary Pei has sent word from the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture. The court has approved the Minister of Works' request for the Hexi Military Governorship. In addition, a mutiny has broken out in Weizhou. Secretary Pei asks the Minister of Works to prepare the troops to march."

——————Off-topic——————

Today the company sent me on a business trip to a place with no expressway access. The bus ride alone took six hours, and I've only just arrived at the hotel. Tomorrow's update will probably be delayed as well. Please be patient, everyone. Thank you!

Wuwuwu, I really miss the days when I could slack off whenever I wanted!

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