After Xiao Yanxi left, Ning Chen went back to working out how to improve the musket.

An AK was out of the question.

After an afternoon of work, he had improved on the original design and turned the musket into a double-barreled shotgun. Really it was just a crude homemade gun, only with two barrels.

That meant more bullets at once and more stopping power... The drawback was that it was less accurate.

He couldn't call it a success yet. So far it was only drawings, which made it no more than fighting a war on paper.

Ning Chen put the drawings away and sighed... If only he'd worked at an arms factory in his last life.

He came out of his room and went to find Pan Yucheng.

Pan Yucheng had lately been in charge of recruiting skilled craftsmen.

"Old Pan, how's the search going?"

Pan Yucheng looked helpless. "Xuanwu City is brand new, so artisans and carpenters are a dime a dozen. But people who really know their odd crafts and clever tricks are few and far between." (TL Note: Literally "phoenix feathers and qilin horns," an idiom for things so rare they hardly exist.)

Ning Chen rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'll write to the woman emperor and see if she can find a batch of skilled craftsmen in the Wu Kingdom. If that doesn't work... we'll just have to poach people from the Great Xuan at high wages."

No sooner said than done. Ning Chen immediately wrote a letter to his woman emperor wife and sent a rider galloping off to the Wu Kingdom with it.

Everything else could wait, but not the firearms.

Then there was recruitment. So far Yuan Long had only signed up ten thousand or so men, a long way short of the forty thousand they'd planned.

"What's Old Feng been up to these past few days? I haven't seen him at all."

Feng Qizheng had been leaving early and coming back late lately, sneaking around, and nobody knew what he was busy with.

Pan Yucheng hesitated. "He's been busy with…