Qin Shaoyou sometimes has to admire Wu Zetian's foresight.

When any ruling group has no choice but to do anything that shakes the fundamentals of rule, the final choice is often the same.

During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, the border was unstable and the court could no longer use its own strength to curb the Hu people outside the pass, so it strengthened the Jiedushi, giving them absolute rights to maintain stability in the border.

In the late Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising was rebellious and the Eight Banners were indestructible and were not enough to quell the chaos. Therefore, the group training was encouraged everywhere, causing countless local warlords to rise up.

Now, Wei has almost no choice but to do anything to Henan Prefecture.

They cannot use force because there is Wu Zetian here. Her daughter-in-law is a traitor against her mother. Moreover, Shence Army is definitely not an ordinary person. Politically, Wu Zetian has begun to be aggressive, which makes the Wei family helpless. Economically, Henan Prefecture has continued to expand, using the canal to expand their territory wildly, and half of the world's money has begun to gather towards Henan Prefecture. This Shence Mansion is like a powerful tool to attract money, and it is becoming increasingly out of control.

Such a situation has completely lost control after Wu Zetian killed Wei Zhengde.

Wu Zetian's face turned cold and said at the end, "So be careful and be prepared as soon as possible." After that, his tone became much gentler and said, "Ziheng is a well-behaved person. You, a father, don't stay at home all day long, and you don't have a good look at your children. It's true."

Ziheng is Qin Shaoyou's son. He was scolded by Wu Zetian, but Qin Shaoyou just called him only.

But he was only thinking about the four words "be careful".

The so-called caution, to put it bluntly, should we strengthen our military. Your own strength is the most important thing.

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Qin Shaoyou said goodbye and left the palace. When he returned to Shence Mansion, before he could sit on his hot butt, Yang Wulian came excitedly and said, "Your Highness, Your Highness, finally improved, finally improved..."

Qin Shaoyou couldn't help but say, "What's the improvement?"

Yang Wulian seemed excited and said, "Bow crossbow, crossbow..."

Qin Shaoyou was stunned for a moment, and he immediately remembered that he had intended to improve the crossbow, so he had a special explanation to Yang Wulian a year ago. He ordered him to gather a group of skilled craftsmen to improve the current Tang crossbow.

Unexpectedly, Yang Wulian was still thinking about this at this time.

There are probably two types of long-range weapons of the Shence Army, one is the artillery and the other is the ox horn bow.

It is natural that the power of the artillery can be regarded as a weapon to break the enemy, but it is often suitable for siege battles. Instead, it has great disadvantages in field battles, especially in encounter battles. After all, this artillery needs to build a position first and take enough time to prepare well, so once it is an encounter battle, the battle is over before the artillery has been used.

As for the Niujiao Bow, although it is one of the most excellent long-range weapons in this era, it also has its weaknesses. On the one hand, the shooting accuracy of the bow and arrow is not enough, and it also has its limitations in terms of range. In fact, these are not important. The most important thing is that the bow and arrow are extremely proficient in warriors.

If you want to train a flying cavalry, you can only use the elite troops of the Shence Army. Practice day and night for a year. You can barely achieve a small success, and only in two or three years can you be considered a qualified flying cavalry.

Because of this, in order to train a qualified flying cavalry, Fang Jing almost used the power of a magistrate.

This has made great advantages when the Shence Army is relatively small in scale, but in recent years, the Shence Army has expanded wildly, and a large number of new recruits have been added. It is obviously a bit time-consuming and labor-intensive to retrain these new recruits, and the most important thing is to waste the training resources.

Human physical strength is limited. If you spend all your time on flying cavalry, it will inevitably lead to shortcomings in other aspects of the warriors of the Shen Ce Army. Although the archers who have changed their positions are sharp, they will inevitably have weaknesses when training such soldiers for special purpose.

Qin Shaoyou originally planned to use the principle of artillery to improve the musket, but after repeated consideration, he finally gave up. This is not a matter of money. Shence Mansion has a lot of money, and even in other aspects, Shence Mansion has time to save, but the cost on Shence Army can be described as luxury.

The most important thing is the limitation of skill level. Qin Shaoyou once ordered people to try out several batches of muskets. The sharpness can only be considered average. More importantly, the limitations of muskets are also quite large, such as the weather has a great impact on them, such as time-consuming and labor-intensive maintenance, such as waste of time on loading, and greatly increasing the difficulty of supply.

Of course, we cannot give up this direction. Qin Shaoyou specially asked a group of craftsmen to repeatedly improve the muskets. However, according to Qin Shaoyou's estimate, it is difficult to have muskets that can be truly applied to actual combat without ten or eight years.

Finally... Qin Shaoyou focused on improving the crossbow.

The East often has great ups and downs in the improvement of weapons. For example, in chaotic times, all kinds of weapons can develop rapidly. Once it reaches a peaceful and prosperous era, swords and guns will be put into the warehouse, and the skills will not only not improve, but will tend to decline slightly.

Just like during the Warring States Period, the crossbows had reached an extremely high level of skill, but over time, when the world was peaceful, the first thing the emperors had to do was to collect the world's weapons. Because the demand for weapons was getting less and less, excellent craftsmen often found it difficult to make a living, and in the end they had to change to other careers. After several generations, many excellent manufacturing processes were completely destroyed. When the next world was in chaos, this business began to prosper again, but they needed to accumulate technical levels again.

To a certain extent, the current Tang crossbow has a tendency to decline in its skill level. At least compared with Qin crossbow and Han crossbow, there are not many improvements.

Especially some crossbows in the army can even be described as shoddy. The characteristic of Tang crossbows is that they have strong penetration ability and can often reach a killing distance of six, seven or eight steps. However, their disadvantages are also very obvious, that is, they are extremely bulky and slowly launched. A crossbow weighs dozens of kilograms, and the carrying is unchanged. Although it has other uses, the demand for the Shence Army is far from the same.

The first thing Qin Shaoyou thought of about bows and crossbows was naturally Zhuge crossbows. Qin Shaoyou also mentioned it to Yang Wulian. Yang Wulian had many complaints about Zhuge crossbows. The so-called Zhuge crossbows are nothing more than a kind of continuous fire crossbow. The rate of fire is indeed fast, but it is not light. Moreover, the range is much worse than other crossbows, so the accuracy needs to be said.

But even so, Yang Wulian still recruited a group of people and began to improve them.

Now that there have been obvious results, Yang Wulian rushed to report the good news without saying a word.

Qin Shaoyou couldn't help but say, "What kind of crossbow?"

"Zhuge Crossbow." Yang Wulian said confidently: "It was improved by a young man named Cheng Xin. This kind of hand crossbow has improved many of the disadvantages of Zhuge Crossbow. Your Highness might as well try it."

Qin Shaoyou didn't dare to be negligent, so he nodded quickly. As Yang Wulian left Shence Mansion, Yang Wulian was chattering along the way.

The so-called Zhuge Crossbow actually has many real problems. The so-called continuous firing of Zhuge Crossbow is actually similar to the automatic rifles in later generations. There is a special arrow clip at the bottom. After one arrow is shot, the other arrow in the arrow clip will automatically pop out and after the string is drawn, it can be continuously fired.

A Zhuge crossbow can be used for half a cup of tea and shoot eight arrows in a row. However, the limit of ordinary hand crossbows can have two or three. However, in order to continuously fire, the most important problem is the cost. If the arrows in the clip can be ejected, the thickness and length of the arrows are very high. This is like the bullets in later generations. If it is in an automatic rifle, the nine-mm ground caliber rifle will have different diameters. Some are one millimeter more and some are one millimeter less. The bullets in the clip will inevitably be "stuck".

Therefore, the arrows must be specially made and must be of the same accuracy. This is an extremely costly thing for the Shu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period. Even now, it is extremely difficult to meet this condition. This not only requires the superb bow and arrow skills of arrow making, but also requires a certain level of integration and management, because once any error occurs, the Zhuge hand crossbow may become a useless thing.

Fortunately, this is actually barely possible for Shence Mansion. Shence Mansion already has a lot of workshop production experience. The small workshop-style production has become a large-scale organization of production, and the quality inspection and management of workshops, as well as management level, and have accumulated enough experience.

In addition, because of the special design of arrows, the manufacturing cost of arrows has naturally increased a lot, which is precisely the reason why the Shence Mansion has afforded it. Even the current imperial court is very difficult to provide for a military horse holding a Zhuge Crossbow, but the Shence Mansion has enough money and food to do this.

"Your Highness, Cheng Xin has replaced many materials, especially the wood and bowstrings on the crossbow body, which has improved the accuracy and range of the crossbow, and has greatly reduced the weight. In order to improve, they almost found all the wood and beef tendons that can be replaced. Fortunately, they have fulfilled their fate. A few days ago, the Xiaguan tried it and the range can reach 350 steps. This distance is far greater than that of the ox horn bow."

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Chapter completed!