Ning Chen, Qi Yuanzhong and Lei An rode out of the city.
Lei An had brought fifty thousand men with him this time.
The Great Xuan was a broad land with abundant goods and rich resources, and there was no shortage of enemy states with their eyes on so fat a piece of meat.
Nanyue lay to the south, and to the north the Tuoluo Kingdom and the Wu Kingdom were eyeing it like a tiger.
There were plenty of other enemy states that wanted to bite a piece out of the Great Xuan.
So although the Great Xuan’s strength as a state was flourishing, it was still somewhat short of troops.
A great many armies could not be moved.
The army Qi Yuanzhong had brought was already encamped outside the city, tent after tent stretching away farther than the eye could follow.
Ning Chen and the others came to the musket battalion.
Because the cannon were still in parts and the Xuan Emperor had not yet established a cannon battalion, they had been handed over to the musket battalion for the time being.
Every part was wrapped in oiled paper and packed in wooden crates.
Qi Yuanzhong had also brought several dozen master craftsmen from the Ministry of War.
That saved Ning Chen a great deal of trouble.
The parts were taken out one by one.
Qi Yuanzhong’s view was that a few of the master craftsmen should stay and the rest should leave.
Too many men should not be allowed to learn how to assemble a cannon.
Ning Chen refused the suggestion.
Neither the musket nor the cannon was a precision article.
Find a few master craftsmen, take one apart and study it, and they could copy it.
So a leak was only a matter of time. He figured it would not be two years before the enemy states had these things too.
To stand truly unbeatable, secrecy alone was not enough. These firearms had to be improved, and their killing power raised.
Ning Chen had all the master craftsmen watch.
Under his direction, they set to work assembling.
In truth it was not difficult at all.
It was only that they were clumsy at it the first time, so it took four hours to put one cannon together.
Ning Chen’s face was full of excitement.
“Come on, let’s haul it out and try it.”
The cannon was hauled out into open country.
Yuan Long, Mu Anbang, Pan Yucheng and the rest all came hurrying over to join the fun.
Ning Chen had designed two kinds of shell back when he drew them up. One was solid shot, which was really just a large iron ball.
Solid shot was for attacking cities, a fine instrument for blowing a gate open, and easy to make.
On a battlefield its killing power was decent enough too. One shot out and it opened a road of blood, and the soldiers along its path would be smashed to pieces.
The other kind was the hollow shell, which exploded on landing and did a second round of damage.
But that kind of shell was extremely hard to make. It had a firing pin and other precision parts inside it — extremely hard to make, and unstable besides, with the risk of bursting the barrel.
The crucial thing was that Ning Chen had not taught it yet, and the Ministry of War’s master craftsmen had not managed to make one.
So only solid shot had been brought this time.
Which meant that the cannon as it stood was really an oversized musket.
The principle of firing was the same: it worked by the high-temperature, high-pressure gas produced by powder burning inside the barrel.
Since this was the first firing, Ning Chen did not know how far the thing would throw either.
He had the men aim the cannon at a cliff face in the distance, about five hundred paces off.
Under Ning Chen’s direction, powder and shot were loaded.
Ning Chen said, “Give me the torch.”
Lei An quickly lit a torch and handed it to Ning Chen.
Ning Chen walked up to the cannon and was about to light the fuse, then thought better of it and passed the torch to a soldier of the musket battalion. “Here. You fire this first shot. From now on you’re the Great Xuan’s king of cannon.”
The soldier’s face was full of excitement as he took the torch. “Thank you, General Ning!”
Ning Chen nodded, signaling that he could light the fuse.
The soldier lit the fuse with the torch.
The fuse burned fast, hissing and smoking.
Ning Chen backed away quickly, then clapped his hands over his ears.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng had been watching Ning Chen closely the whole time, and when they saw him back away and cover his ears, the two of them followed suit without needing to say a word.
Feng Qizheng most of all — the first time Ning Chen tested a musket, it had nearly deafened him.
BOOM!!!
The terrible blast went off beside their ears like a thunderclap, and the mountains shook and the earth moved.
The ground under their feet was trembling with it.
Fire spat from the muzzle, and powder smoke went up.
The soldier who had lit the fuse was knocked flat on his backside, his eyes blank.
Yuan Long and the others were all rocked on their feet, their heads roaring.
That terrible wall of sound nearly stopped their hearts.
The shot left the barrel and struck the distant cliff face.
BOOM!!!
A second great explosion. A whole stretch of the cliff came down at once, broken rock rolling, dust and earth sweeping up in a wave.
Ning Chen had covered his ears, but even so it left his head reeling.
He hurried forward, delighted. The power of it was far greater than he had imagined.
Ning Chen called out, “Back another five hundred paces! Try it again!”
He had to establish the cannon’s range.
Ning Chen finished speaking, and not one man moved.
He looked back, and saw that every face had gone white, every pair of eyes full of terror.
The sound alone was enough to frighten a man to death.
The terrible noise of the explosion had also stunned the soldiers in the camp in the distance, every one of them white in the face.
Horses screamed and stamped in a frenzy. They had taken fright too.
“Are you all right?”
Ning Chen asked.
All they could see was Ning Chen’s mouth moving. Not a word of it got through.
Qi Yuanzhong shouted, “What are you saying? I can’t hear you.”
Ning Chen quietly covered his face with one hand.
He waved a hand, signaling that it was nothing.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng had covered their ears in advance, but the noise had stunned them too, and they stood there for a long while before they came back to themselves.
This thing was dozens of times more terrible than the sound of a musket.
Pan Yucheng said sourly, “That was a joke taken too far.”
Ning Chen shook his head. “It isn’t a joke. I did it on purpose.”
Pan Yucheng: “???”
“Old Pan, what do you make of this cannon’s power?”
Pan Yucheng said, still shaken, “It’s terrifying!”
Ning Chen said, perfectly serious, “So the first thing we have to do is get our own men used to the sound of a cannon and to what it does.”
“Otherwise, once we’re on a battlefield and the cannon goes off, our own men will go weak in the hands and feet and the horses will bolt. How would we fight then?”
Only then did Pan Yucheng see what Ning Chen was doing.
And it was true. Their own side had to get used to it first. Otherwise, on a battlefield, the cannon would go off, the men would go weak in the hands and feet and the horses would take fright, and then men and horses would go down together and the whole thing would fall into chaos.
It was a good while before Yuan Long and the others recovered.
Lei An’s face was white. “That thing is horrifying!”
Mu Anbang nodded. “If you hauled that onto a battlefield, wouldn’t the enemy be frightened out of their skins?”
Qi Yuanzhong looked at the great collapsed stretch of the cliff in the distance, terrified and astonished at once. “Ning Chen, how did you ever come up with a thing like this?”
Ning Chen smiled. “This is nothing. Wait until I’ve got the exploding shell working, and then you’ll know what terrible means. One burst takes out a whole patch of ground.”
Qi Yuanzhong said, still shaken, “Ning Chen, I am very glad you are one of ours. If you belonged to an enemy state, you would be an absolute nightmare to us.”
Mu Anbang, Lei An and the others nodded and nodded, in complete agreement.
If Ning Chen were their enemy, he would be a nightmare of the first order.
They really were very glad that Ning Chen belonged to the Great Xuan.
Ning Chen smiled a little. In his last life this thing had been obsolete for decades and centuries, not even fit to be taken onto a battlefield.
“Back another five hundred paces! Try it again!”
Ning Chen gave the order.
(End of Chapter 271)