Originally, in Wang Jinghui's eyes, the funds spent on artillery research and development plans could exceed one million guan, but it should be enough to reach hundreds of thousands of guan. However, now Su Song and Shen Kuo presided over this plan. They spent tens of thousands of guan to build an experimental metal smelting workshop. But they didn't know that the future generations Wang Jinghui lived in, and the funds spent on choosing any advanced technology were astronomical figures. This plan has not even been used for 100,000 guan, which made Wang Jinghui, who was fully prepared, feel a little uncomfortable.

"Mr. Zirong, I will prepare 500,000 guan specifically for the development of artillery. As for the various metal materials used in the experiment, I will also find a way. As long as I can develop artillery, I will not hesitate to pay no matter how much the price it costs!" Wang Jinghui cheered Su Song and said.

"Five hundred thousand coins?!" Su Song obviously had no idea about this number. In his opinion, 100 thousand coins was the limit of the court. Now it seems that the prince consort's determination to win artillery is far beyond his imagination.

"The Song Dynasty needs artillery. If 500,000 guan can be made, the benefits it produces are unimaginable for the Song Dynasty - imagine that the entire north can reach half of the disarmament and its combat power can still deal with the military pressure of the border countries. The military expenditure saved by the imperial court on the border of the Song and Liao Dynasty every year will reach millions of guan. With artillery, a large pillow can be used to enter or defend. In the future, it will be easy to deal with the Liao city walls. Imagine using artillery outside the range of the opponent's defense equipment to deal with them, and directly aim at the city gate to break the city. The war speed of the Song Dynasty is dozens of times faster due to the emergence of artillery and its own losses will be reduced to a new level - Mr. Zirong, you may not realize what you are doing now, but here we can guarantee that people in the world will also remember the merits of Mr. Zirong!"

Wang Jinghui continued to inspire and said, with a full expression on his instigator. However, Su Song on the opposite side did not realize that he was now shocked by the huge benefits of artillery. Although Su Song had been an official for decades and had experienced many ups and downs, his mind was still a traditional Confucian scholar. Loyalty to the emperor and serving the country had long been deeply imprinted in his heart. He never thought that his talents could bring such great benefits to the country, which he had never dared to imagine in the past.

Su Song seemed to have made up his mind and said, "Change it. Now you have any good suggestions for artillery development plans?!"

Wang Jinghui took the pen and ink from the table and drew a simple schematic diagram of the cannon on the paper and said: "Now the steel smelting technology needs to be improved. Brother Cunzhong will return to Biandu soon. He will be responsible for these. This work must not be put down. How to reduce the cost of large amounts of steelmaking is not only related to the future production cost of artillery, but also has important significance for other Chinese and other people's livelihoods in the Song Dynasty! We must first bypass steel and use copper as gun barrels to test-making artillery. Although this consumes a lot, it can allow the emperor and other ministers to see the power of artillery and maintain confidence. The successful development of this copper artillery is also a huge psychological shock to the enemy country, making it dare not act rashly when it is unclear its specific situation!"

Su Song saw Wang Jinghui draw a strange map on the paper. It was obviously a cannon on it, but the difference was that it was marked with a size that showed that its size was obviously smaller than the cannon he imagined. To put it bluntly, there was a bracket on a pipe sealed at one end.

Wang Jinghui saw Su Song's puzzled gaze and said with a smile: "This is a new artillery idea. It is not as strong as the barrel and is easy to make. The only disadvantage is that it is relatively close in range and has relatively small power. We can call it a mortar!"

In later generations, a military layman also heard the name of mortars. However, in fact, although Wang Jinghui knew the structure, it was difficult to lie in the shells. There were no such things as thunder and mercury in this era, and flowering bullets were also a problem. The ultimate inspiration for him were two types of firecrackers in later generations - the second kick and the sky thunder. Wang Jinghui had played with these two types of firecrackers. Compared with the sky thunder, the sky thunder was closer to the principle of mortars. More importantly, in Wang Jinghui's memory, the production of this kind of firecrackers should be extremely simple. The areas he stayed in the army were all in the rural areas. Every year during the Chinese New Year, fellow villagers in the surrounding villages would send various homemade fireworks and firecrackers, and this sky thunder was also the most important one.

Second kicking is just a kind of research idea. Even if this thing is hit, it only serves as a threatening effect. At most, it will break the skin and have limited lethality. However, this thunder is different. When it is set off, it uses iron pipes and can explode in the air for hundreds of meters. Some villagers have accidents during the setting off, breaking their palms and even fatal ones. Wang Jinghui imagines using thunder as a mortar shell, increasing the size, and mixing iron nails or arsenic, crotons and other things that are often mixed in the Dasong firearm to enhance its power, which is also a good choice.

"The mortar is easy to make. The key is that the production of its shells is different from the shells of artillery. The cannon can still fire solid shells and can still kill the enemy, but its power is small and its range is only more than a hundred feet long. If a solid shell is not only affected, it will not have much power even if it hits a person, so it needs to use flowering bullets!"

"Blooming bullet?! Change it, I have tried many methods on the Blooming bullet, but it has no effect. The shell alone is a very difficult thing..." Su Song obviously put some effort into this, but unfortunately he failed.

"We don't need iron shells for now! Now it's the trial production process. You can go around some problems before trying slowly!" After that, he drew a general structural diagram of the later thunder in the sky on paper, pointing with a pen on it and said: "First verify the possibility of flowering shells. We use hard paper as the shell. Here is the launching part. After the fuse is ignited, the shells are placed in the iron pipe. After the launching part explodes, it generates thrust to knock out the shells. After the shells fly for a period of time, the explosion will detonate the explosion part... This is the general structure. This thing is much more difficult to make, and it can be regarded as the original form of flowering shells. First make this flowering shell. As long as there is such shells, the mortar is completed, and the power of the shells will be gradually strengthened in the future so that it can enter the battlefield as soon as possible!"

After seeing it, Su Song smiled and said, "Change it, why does it look more and more like fireworks?"

Wang Jinghui smiled and said, "This is fireworks, but kitchen knives can kill people, so why can't fireworks be? Mr. Zirong, we encounter many difficulties in weapon design. Sometimes the solution is something in daily life. Just relax your mind. What's wrong with fireworks making double shells? As long as you can kill and damage the enemy on the battlefield, this is a weapon!"

The mortar is simple to make, and the difficulty lies in the shells. Although Wang Jinghui gained inspiration on firecrackers in this world, it was not easy to make it. Fortunately, there were many masters in the military weapons prison of the Song Dynasty. More than a dozen craftsmen took turns to solve various problems for the first time. Xiangtian Thunder was originally a kind of firecracker, and there were fireworks similar to firecrackers in later generations. Although the production of Xiangtian Thunder encountered some trouble, it was solved quickly.

Compared with the development speed of mortars, hot air balloons are much slower. Although the principle is very simple, to put it bluntly, it is an oversized Kongming lantern, but this size is not bad... When the simulated replacement product of the flowering bullet, the Tianlei, had already been tested dozens of times under the leadership of Wang Jinghui, decided to increase the size next, Su Song was still staring at the oversized Kongming lantern that was staying on the drawings. Fortunately, Shen Kuo, who was in charge of the Bian River dredging project, came back!

"The terrain height difference between Kaifeng and Sizhou is 19 zhang, four twelve and eight twelve inches and six cents, and a total of more than 25,000 hectares of land are silted!..." Shen Kuo returned to Beijing to report his work. After returning home and sorting out, he went straight to the prince-consort's mansion. He knew that he had made another great contribution this time, but in addition to his own efforts, the most important contribution was the opportunity given to him by the prince-consort.

Wang Jinghui listened to Shen Kuo describing the achievements of the Bian River dredging project and nodded to express his appreciation. Indeed, in this era, Shen Kuo was an excellent scientist and made extraordinary achievements in most natural disciplines. In order to manage the Bian River, Shen Kuo personally measured the terrain of the river section of more than 840 miles from Kaifeng to the Huai River bank of Sizhou in the lower reaches of the Bian River. He adopted the "layered dam building method" to divide the Bian Canal into many sections, build a step-shaped dike in layers, and dig water into the inside. Then measure the water surfaces of each section step by step, and the sum of the differences in each section is the "reality of the terrain" between Kaifeng and Sizhou. This is an innovation in the history of world water conservancy. Although history has undergone great changes, Shen Kuo was directly inspired by Wang Jinghui in the Bian River dredging project and adopted the "layered dam building method", but this was originally Shen Kuo's first in history. Wang Jinghui just took it out in advance for Shen Kuo's reference to speed up the project progress.

As the project received strong assistance from Wang Jinghui, both manpower and financial resources were strong. Shen Kuo's Bian River project produced far more silt fields than in history, reaching more than 25,000 hectares, which is 8,000 hectares more than 17,000 hectares in history. Wang Jinghui was naturally very welcome. Silt fields are the engine of the Bian River project funds. He has promised many investors that he can make more land for a thousand hectares, and then the dividends will be more relaxed in the future. More importantly, the silt fields produced by Shen Kuo's Bian River project this time are all high-quality silt fields, and they are equipped with ready-made farmland water conservancy irrigation projects. It can be said that they are guaranteed to harvest by drought and flood. According to Shen Kuo's reply, even in a rare year of disaster, such high-quality silt fields can obtain good output, which is another bargaining chip for Wang Jinghui's disaster relief plan next year.

A few days later, Shen Kuo was rewarded for his operation - Emperor Zhao Xu promoted Shen Kuo to a Hanlin bachelor's degree based on his performance in the Bian River dredging project. The important weight was not because of the clearing of the Bian River, but because of the more than 25,000 hectares of farmland that were born! Wang Anshi and Sima Guang of the Secretariat had no objection to this extraordinary appointment, because they also knew that the drought next year seemed to be about to become a reality - the weather unexpectedly continued to maintain dry and high temperatures. The worst thing was that it had been three months now, but the rain had not fallen!

The autumn grains of the Song Dynasty have been put into storage this year. Although there is a drought now, the harvest this year has been considered to be in hand. But what is the impact? But next year!? Shen Kuo’s more than 25,000 hectares of farmland can produce no less than 800,000 stones of grain next year. This is very good news for Zhao Xu, Wang Anshi and Sima Guang, who are already in a hurry.

"Hot air balloon?!" Shen Kuo, who had just been promoted to Hanlin Bachelor, was a little stunned when he heard Wang Jinghui and Su Song's words. However, after Su Song's explanation, he quickly understood what was going on. Although he was a little dissatisfied with this "political show", it involved strengthening the attention and confidence of the top leaders in their work. He recognized it after doing a show. Shen Kuo quickly devoted himself to solving the hot air balloon related work.

In Wang Jinghui's view, concentrating Shen Kuo and Su Song to make hot air balloons is simply a waste of talent, but now he doesn't care about it. This political show must be done well. Only by continuously allowing the senior ruling officials to see the achievements of philosophical officials can we gradually change the status and treatment of philosophical officials. As long as a social atmosphere of respecting technology is formed, everything will become easier, just like the role of the Renaissance on the rise of European science.

In Wang Jinghui's memory, the first hot air balloon in later generations was completed by the French. The rough size was about 30 meters in length, which was similar to the size of the geothermal air balloon he saw in later generations. Su Song didn't dare to do it before because he didn't know how big the size of a balloon should be made. It was too small to take off, and it was difficult to make it when it was big. Now that Wang Jinghui gave a general range, Su Song's work can skip this theoretical calculation step and go directly to the hot air balloon production.

The craftsmen in Wang Jinghui's industry cooperated with their work. In ten days, a sheepskin balloon with a maximum circumference of about twelve meters was sewn with a maximum circumference of about twelve meters. However, when Wang Jinghui saw this guy, he shook his head - how to make such a thing rise? Shen Kuo and the others had thought of using a bracket to support the main balloon to heat it, but this thing was so big that it was beyond everyone's imagination. It was really difficult to make this super-large Kongming lantern fly.

However, Shen Kuo came up with a blower to connect a coal stove to blow hot air directly into the balloon. Under the leadership of Shen Kuo and Su Song, in an open place near Huaying Academy not far from the outskirts of Biandu, after more than two hours of preparation, Su Song and Shen Kuo finally saw the result they wanted - the huge hot air balloon finally floated in the air!

Since Wang Jinghui was going to visit Zeng Gongliang this morning, he had not arrived here yet. Shen Kuo and Su Song saw that the hot air balloon was ready to fly, so they sent someone to run back to the city to find Wang Jinghui and let him share the success. However, it seems that every time Shen Kuo and Su Song gathered together to try out new things, some accidents would happen. This hot air balloon test flight was no exception. Originally, they did not plan to fly the hot air balloon, but they did not expect that after successfully inflating the hot air balloon, they did not stop! As a result, Su Song and Shen Kuo found something wrong soon - the height of the hot air balloon was slowly rising, and the sandbags filled in the hanging basket were not enough to calm the hot air balloon. When they found that something was not very good, the hot air balloon had risen nearly half a foot high!

Shen Kuo immediately woke up and quickly asked someone to stop using the blower to transport hot air into the hot air balloon, and asked someone to find a thick hemp rope to fix the hot air balloon to the surrounding trees. Shen Kuo's idea was right, but it was too late now. Breaking the hot air transport will not prevent the hot air balloon from continuing to take off. In a hurry, the craftsmen around him went to find the thick hemp rope?! In desperation, everyone ran with the hot air balloon!

After visiting Zeng Gongliang in the morning, Wang Jinghui successfully exchanged opinions on some issues of the court. Although the words said in the mouth of the old fox on the other side were not credible, the two sides had already formed a close economic alliance. Even if Zeng Gongliang had ulterior motives and wanted to imprison himself, he had to consider it. After coming out of Zeng Gongliang's prime minister's mansion, because it was almost time to dinner, Wang Jinghui planned to go outside the city in the afternoon to see what Shen Kuo and the others could do to stand up the big guy. But halfway through the person who was sending the letter, he thought in his mind that Shen Kuo and the others really had a way. After a while, he met the person who reported the message and said that the hot air balloon was out of control and flew away.
Chapter completed!