Go back to ancient times to engage in sideline business

The whistling sea breeze passed through the tidal flats and forests, constantly blowing the grass in the rocks. A team of horses galloped past the rocks.

Ordered to suppress the Japanese pirate army, they set up camp outside the city of Ningzhou. Cheng Li led the Tiger Wing Guards to dismount in front of the camp gate. After a lot of effort, he finally entered a large tent.

"The last general, Cheng Li, led the Tiger Wing Guards to meet General Yuan!"

On the camp couch, the veteran in black armor had already walked quickly and helped everyone under the steps up one by one.

"Please hurry up! When the letter was sent two days ago, you were still in Minzhou. You didn't expect to arrive so soon. You have worked hard along the way!"

"The battle is urgent, and the last general and all the Tiger Wing Guards dare not delay for a moment."

Old General Yuan patted Cheng Li on the shoulder in relief, and his eyes swept over the people behind him in turn.

"You are all capable people with unique knowledge. This time, you have worked tirelessly to come to Ningzhou Camp to provide advice for the Pingkou. I am here, thank you in advance!"

As he said that, Old General Yuan was thirsty for talents, so he immediately saluted the corporals and bowed to the Tiger Wing Guards. Tang Zhong followed the crowd and immediately returned the salute.

After getting to know each other one by one, Old General Yuan stopped the greetings, and directly led everyone to the war map, and described in detail the current confrontation with the Japanese pirates.

In Tang Zhong's previous cognition, there are mountain bandits in the mountains, and water bandits in the water, and Japanese pirates are sea bandits who roam the coast and make trouble.

When the army was strong, they hid at sea and waited for an opportunity to move.

If the officers and soldiers were slack, they would come on the waves, loot the coastal cities, and then flee back to the sea, disappearing without a trace.

But in General Yuan's narration, this time, the situation is different.

In recent years, several Japanese pirate leaders have emerged from the sea. They competed with each other and finally merged into a powerful Japanese pirate army.

Today, the Japanese pirates have built hundreds of warships and recruited tens of thousands of thieves, and their strength is enough to confront the imperial army head-on.

Since the Japanese riots started at the beginning of this year, Japanese pirates have harassed more than ten coastal cities, and countless fishing villages have been looted and slaughtered.

And whenever the imperial army arrived, the Japanese pirates did not flee as before, but immediately rectified their soldiers and launched an organized counterattack.

After several months of fighting, the court officers and soldiers did not get much advantage from the Japanese pirates.

However, during the battle half a month ago, a brave young general under General Yuan shot dead the son of the Japanese pirate leader with an arrow in the scuffle.

Only then did the army and the Japanese pirates confront each other in Ningzhou for two months.

"This group of beasts slaughtered the city everywhere, and owed more than tens of thousands of blood feuds to the people along the coast? It is difficult to comfort the souls of the people who died in vain and the soldiers who died in battle if they don't crush the bandits and burn their bones to ashes!"

Old General Yuan spoke of the pain, and thrust the sharp sword in his hand into the ground fiercely.Cold light shot out from the edge of the sword, and several shattered lights appeared on Tang Zhong's face.

"Weary all the way, you can take a rest in this tent!"

After Cheng Li arranged a place for the only girl in the team, Aning, he led the other Tiger Wing Guards to a tent. He was about to leave when he was stopped by a scholar.

"Commander, Old General Yuan said just now that there have been small groups of Japanese pirates attacking the camp in the middle of the night recently. I would like to ask the approximate number and time of each Japanese attack, and see if I can deduce their intentions."

Cheng Li nodded slightly, with an affirmative expression on his face: "You are good at mental calculations, and you must be able to see the strange things that ordinary people can't detect. Come, follow me back to the Chinese army tent."

After the scholar left, the other three people entered the account one after another, saying that they were resting, but none of them could fall asleep with peace of mind at this time.

The first one who couldn't sit still was the oldest man with gray beard and hair, Lao Geng.

Lao Geng is a craftsman who is good at making weapons. The knives, guns, swords and halberds he crafted are all sharp and tough, cutting iron like mud.

Before he entered the tent and sat down, he said that he had thought of a way to improve the bow and crossbow, and he wanted to discuss it with Cheng Li.

Tang Zhong was lying on the bed, the exhaustion from traveling for many days spread all over his body, his hands and feet were already sore.But as long as you close your eyes, the fishing village that was slaughtered by Japanese pirates will appear in front of you.

The lingering smoke, the burnt walls, and the wailing crows all reappeared in my mind over and over again.

No, he can't sleep!

It was still early, and he had to do something when he came to the front line!

Opening his eyes, he saw that Daoist Peng was already meditating on the opposite bed.

Tang Zhong couldn't calm down, but he didn't want to disturb the other party, so he also walked out of the tent, and being blown by the sea breeze made his mind feel better.

This time the Japanese pirates rebelled, the imperial court dispatched the veteran general Yuan Yuan to lead an expedition with [-] soldiers and horses to sit in Ningzhou.

Compared with the tens of thousands of Japanese pirates, although the number of officers and soldiers is superior, when it is difficult, there are not many soldiers in the [-] army who can really fight at sea.

The imperial court imposed a maritime ban decades ago, not only prohibiting maritime trade, but also dismantling most of the warships and shipbuilding workshops.

The soldiers who were able to fight at sea decades ago are now old and retreating. Only the old General Yuan, who is over seventy years old, has the experience of boarding a ship when he was young.

The few remaining old warships were rushed into the water, and naturally they could not gain the upper hand against the Japanese pirate warships with strong ships and powerful guns.

And the new type of warship is being built in the reopened shipyard, and it is unknown when it will be put into the battlefield.

After the two sides clashed several times, more than half of the warships of the imperial court were damaged, and they were no longer able to expel the Japanese pirates by the sea.

Now that the offense and defense have changed, the Japanese pirates are entrenched on Dongluo Island outside Ningzhou, waiting for an opportunity to retaliate.

The army stationed a ten-mile long battalion here, guarding the coastal fortress, ready to face the bandits who came ashore at any time.

And in recent days, small groups of Japanese pirates have been raiding the camp one after another, seeming to be preparing for the upcoming war.

Tang Zhong wandered around in the camp, and before he knew it, he had already reached the gate of the camp.

Around the camp, several rows of wooden fences are used as walls to guard the barracks, and on the left side of the camp gate, a high watchtower is erected as a warning.The sergeants patrolling outside the camp wear armor and hold shields to guard against possible incoming enemies at any time.

There are dozens of camps in the ten-mile long camp, there are dozens of watchtowers, and dozens of teams of sergeants patrolling around the camps.

As a gatekeeper, Tang Zhong was used to being lazy when he was the gatekeeper at Dongchengmen in Qingjiang County. He would often find excuses and slip away. Compared with the guards in front of him, he felt a little ashamed.

Xu Shi brought in his identity as the gate guard of the city, Tang Zhong was quite concerned about the fortification of the camp gate, he climbed up the wooden stairs, and he had already climbed the sentry tower before he knew it.

"Who is it!" Seeing Tang Zhong's face, the sentinel standing guard upstairs vigilantly drew his sword from his waist and pointed it at the person coming.

Tang Zhong held up his waist card: "Tiger Wing Guard Tang Zhong, come up to check the camp defense."

The sentinel recognized the tiger stripes on the card, put his sword back into its sheath, and continued to look ahead to alert the enemy.

Tang Zhong stood on the watchtower, only then noticed that every few steps outside the camp, tall wooden frames were erected, on which were placed iron basins for holding firewood.

"Do you rely on this lighting to check the enemy's situation at night?" Tang Zhong turned his head to look at the sentinel, and pointed to the row of shelves.

"Of course, sunset lights and sunrise goes off."

"How far can such a pot of firewood shine?"

The sentinel just thought that this man was so strange that he climbed up the sentry tower for no reason and asked some useless questions.

"Within twenty steps, if there is an enemy situation, you will be able to detect it!"

Tang Zhong nodded and pondered: "In other words, the lighting radius is only ten steps away."

The word "only" caused the sentinel to stare at him unhappily.Watching Tang Zhong walk down the sentry tower thoughtfully, the sentinel felt a little more at ease.

Tang Zhong hurried back to the tent, Daoist Peng was still meditating on the couch, but the dull scholar had already returned, and was counting the numbers on the table with a pen and paper.

"It's just right, let me use a pen and paper!" Tang Zhong sat around, picked up another brush dipped in ink on the inkstone, and took out two pieces of rice paper from the scholar, took the corner of the table opposite him, and began to write. Write and draw.

The scholar deduced and calculated on paper, thinking for a long time, but still didn't get anything.Feeling stuffy in his head, he turned his head to massage his temples, and inadvertently, his eyes flicked across the handwriting that Tang Zhong was writing.

It was marked with circle after circle of strange symbols on the disc-shaped pattern.

On another piece of rice paper, Tang Zhong seems to be doing some kind of calculation.But unlike the calculations commonly used by ordinary people, the things he wrote are more like - drawing symbols?

At this time, Tang Zhong was busy using Arabic numerals to form vertical lines, so naturally he would not have thought that his scribbled handwriting, in the eyes of others, was no different from the symbols drawn by Peng Daochang.

The drawing was almost finished, and after annotating the marked numbers in Chinese characters, Tang Zhong blew on the half-dried ink on the paper, and got up and walked out of the tent amidst the doubts in the scholar's eyes.

At noon, Lao Geng was still in the arsenal. He didn't even have time to eat. He was dismantling a bow and crossbow into pieces, and then adding the parts he had just made to put it back together again.

He suddenly received the blueprint sent by Tang Zhong, and he couldn't help being stunned for a moment.

"This is... a bamboo hat?" Lao Geng took the blueprint in his hand and turned it around, trying to come up with the most similar thing.

Tang Zhong corrected the blueprint again, pointed at his masterpiece, and said, "This is the lampshade!"

lampshade?The military camp is no richer than the official family, and ordinary lighting does not need to be exquisite, what kind of lampshade do you need?

Lao Geng didn't have the heart to mess around with him, so he threw the blueprint aside: "I'm busy with business! Find someone else to do it!"

"I'm on business too!" Tang Zhong picked up the blueprint, and slapped hard on the table in front of Lao Geng: "It's about patrolling and guarding, we'd better make it this afternoon!"

Old Geng's suspicious eyes fell on Tang Zhong's face again.

"really?"

It was getting dark, and upon hearing the sergeant's report, Old General Yuan, who had just finished discussing the military situation with the generals, walked out of the Chinese army tent and walked towards the camp where the Tiger Wing Guards lived.

Before reaching the gate of the camp, Old General Yuan saw a beam of bright fire shining on the ground from the front tower.

What surprised him was that not only was the beam of fire more dazzling than ordinary flames, but it was constantly changing its angle and direction, shining back and forth on all directions within fifty steps in front of the camp gate.

Following the light from the sentry tower to look outside the camp, Old General Yuan was shocked again.

I saw a circle of illuminated braziers placed at the gate of the camp, and the lighting distance of two braziers was abnormally far away.

Like the light from the fire on the sentry tower, the light from the two braziers was also like a big hand gathered to form a long and narrow light path, shining straight to a place fifty paces away.

If a circle of braziers outside the camp were transformed in this way, the visible range outside the camp at night would be directly increased from the previous twenty steps to a hundred steps away.If the Japanese pirates come to steal the camp again at night, they will be discovered earlier.

"There really are some experts in the Tiger Wing Guard!" Old General Yuan stroked his beard excitedly, and urged the sergeant leading the way: "Where are they now? Take me there quickly!"

Outside the armory of the barracks, there is an oven and a hammering table, which were originally used to repair worn out weapons after the war. Now they are being occupied by Lao Geng and Tang Zhong, where they hammer ironware.

"It's done, take a look!"

Old Geng handed over the iron lampshade that had just been coated with a layer of silver powder to Tang Zhong for inspection.

Each of the three large lampshades made in the afternoon was as long as an adult's arms outstretched, and they fit perfectly on the brazier at the gate of the camp.

But the piece that has been made now is only about one foot in size, and it has been beaten into a thin piece, which does not feel heavy in the hand.

Tang Zhong took down the torch pinned to the wall, and screwed the iron ring at the lower end of the lampshade to the handle of the torch to fix it.

In an instant, the light that the torch originally diffused in all directions was immediately gathered and shrunk by the lampshade into a parallel light path, which was the same as the three large lampshades made before, enough to illuminate things fifty steps away.

The distance between the lampshade and the fire source, after repeated trials and deliberations by Tang Zhong and Lao Geng, finally found a suitable position.

It will not be too close, so that the tongue of fire will blacken the silver powder coating, but it will not be too far, affecting the distance of lighting.

Looking at the remodeled torch in his hand, Tang Zhong was very satisfied with the current results.

Although compared with the powerful searchlights of later generations, no matter in terms of illumination intensity or distance, the thing he designed can only be a younger brother.But he can't make a light bulb, let alone attract electricity.

But having said that, there are so many mature technologies in the later generations, but he can only use a small part of them, which is the most daily, which is really a pity for the status of time travel.

"What... what is this?"

As soon as Old General Yuan entered the door, he happened to see Tang Zhong holding a remodeled torch. He couldn't help but clapped his hands happily and praised: "That's good! What a clever idea! Can I have a look?"

"Of course." Tang Zhong handed over the torch: "I would like to ask the general to give you some pointers."

It is a polite way to say that giving advice, at this time, Old General Yuan couldn't wait to take the torch, held it in his hand and looked at it carefully.

"That's right, if the night patrol soldiers have this item, it will definitely help a lot!"

When Tang Zhong and Lao Geng heard the words, they immediately bowed their hands and said: "The subordinates will definitely do their best to speed up the construction!"

"Hey, I've worked hard today, so it's okay to do it again tomorrow!" Old General Yuan's eyes were full of approval, and he said casually, "What's the name of this thing?"

Tang Zhong thought carefully, he made it according to the lighting principle of a flashlight, but there is no electricity, why not call it...

"Return to the general, this is the torch!"