"The wooden cannon is very simple to make. Let me tell you the principle. You can find a few carpenters."

After understanding the reason why his uncle came to find him, Xu Shiyang said frankly:

"But the key to the wooden cannon lies in gunpowder. I have only one craftsman who can make gunpowder now and cannot be handed over to anyone, so I can only sell some finished gunpowder."

"But, this gunpowder is my nephew's treasure. What are the two uncles planning to exchange for?"

The Wang brothers looked at each other, and they could understand the result - the Wang family is indeed Xu Shiyang's mother's family, and the Xu and Wang families are indeed in good relationship, but after all, they are two surnames. How could Xu Shiyang give his skills to others for free?

Not to mention that the Wang family is not good, I am afraid that even the Xu family itself has to be on guard against it, right?

"Shi Yang, how much gunpowder can you give us?" Wang Ping asked.

Let’s talk about supply volume first, and then the price.

"My nephew wants to ask first, who are the two uncles representing?" Xu Shiyang smiled and said, "You yourself? The Wang family? Or is another fortress entrusting your uncle to come to me?"

The two began to communicate with each other with their eyes again.

After a while, Wang Ping replied:

"There are many other fortress owners who have looked for us, not all, but most of them."

Xu Shiyang is too domineering to his appearance and others dare not look for him directly, but it seems much easier to pass messages through his uncle.

"Let's dosage of gunpowder for my two uncles every month. I don't care about how my uncles distribute it to others after they take it back."

Xu Shiyang didn't mind adding a distributor to his gunpowder business. He didn't have that much time and had the energy and connections to negotiate with people who were interested in gunpowder one by one.

In this case, letting your uncle be the distributor becomes a natural choice - at least you can win over these relatives and sell personal favors.

"Shi Yang, what do you want?" Wang Ping continued, "What do you lack now?"

"Uncle is joking, what are we short of now?" Xu Shiyang smiled and said, "I lack population, food, iron, gold, silver, wealth, and animals as long as it is useful."

"Well, let's do this. I'll offer 5 jin of copper coins or materials equivalent to 5 jin of money."

"What if you use a human exchange?" Wang An, who had not spoken much, couldn't wait to ask: "How many people can one portion of gunpowder be exchanged?"

After two months of bandit suppression war, all the forts received a lot of labor, which is probably the thing they can do most now - gold, silver and wealth are for the fort owners, not for strengthening their defenses.

"Popularity..."

Xu Shiyang is also short of population, but he doesn't know how to offer a price.

These people are all Han people. Unlike the Tartars or Japanese pirates, Xu Shiyang can buy and sell them as slaves and animals with peace of mind.

Once human dignity is trampled on, it will be difficult to pick it up again. This needs to be avoided for Xu Shiyang, who is always thinking about reorganizing the national customs.

"If it is a population, it cannot be traded."

Xu Shiyang said seriously:

"I'm sorry to ask my uncle to go back and tell them clearly that in a month, I will hold a 'job fair' and all the people who plan to go to my fort will come to apply for the job, and I will refuse anyone. After that, I will give the gunpowder I deserve to get to each family."

...

Xu Shiyang lacks a qualified officer corps, but for now, the proportion of non-commissioned officers is a bit extravagant.

The growth rate of the new army soldiers is very gratifying. The original personal soldiers can already be regarded as qualified non-commissioned officers. The spearmen and musketeers who participated in the Battle of Fulaishan have also grown up. Even other new recruits in the new army have participated in the bandit suppression war. It is estimated that it will be barely enough to get Jiangnan, who has been safe for a long time, to act as grassroots non-commissioned officers.

Under such circumstances, Xu Shiyang naturally began the second round of new army expansion operations.

In fact, according to his vision, after each expansion of the new army, it should conduct 3 to 4 months of intensive training, and then find a suitable target and conduct a practical battle so that the soldiers can feel the battlefield.

Then expand again, continue training, and find opportunities to fight again.

It is best to fight two wars every year, and after the number of people exceeds one thousand, the troops will be expanded by at least twice each year.

Of course, these are just beautiful visions. To achieve the goal, we still need to move forward step by step.

At this stage, Xu Shiyang plans to expand the 200-man New Army troops to 500.

Among them, the proportion of melee soldiers, spearmen and musketeers has more than doubled, and a separate artillery and cavalry unit has been formed to train a group of professional signal soldiers.

The human resources are relatively easy to solve. Although Xu Shiyang is still only a 15-trunk lord, he actually has three full-fledged forts, with 2,300 males. At the same time, he can also get support from other lords of the second lords - for example, Xu Shiyang's father allowed him to recruit soldiers he liked in Ertun.

Another point is that Xu Shiyang's job fair ended successfully, perhaps to show his goodwill. The population quality sent by the fortress owners in the alliance to Xu Shiyang is quite good. Some of them can even be said to be quite brave. They can be directly drawn out to enrich the melee soldiers.

But it becomes a bit difficult to supplement other professional arms and weapons.

Xu Shiyang now has many craftsmen and more craftsmen apprentices. There is no problem in building long spears, but the speed of producing muskets is still not enough.

So, Xu Shiyang began to sacrifice the methods used by countless time travelers to break down musket production into semi-assembly operations - all apprentices were attacked to train how to make gun barrels, and then they only focused on doing this kind of work. Practice makes perfect, and they would probably be able to procure the apprentice soon.

As for creating other weapons, bayonets, waist knives, spear heads and farm tools, you can hand them over to a few craftsmen.

Of course, the waist knife and spear head do not need to be built for the time being. Xu Shiyang's previous seizure is almost enough - now his own saber is replaced with a Fusang knife seized from the Japanese pirates.

There are more than 20 blacksmith apprentices in Shiwutun, all of which are used to make gun barrels. Xu Shiyang can expect to obtain the first batch of finished products within three months and then get 20 new guns every month.

In view of this, he planned to use fire door guns as training tools to increase the number of soldiers' live ammunition shooting training times. In this way, the new army only needs some adaptive training and can directly replace the convex gun.

Live-fire shooting training requires a lot of gunpowder support. At the same time, Xu Shiyang also has to provide gunpowder to our family and other dock owners within the alliance. Fortunately, with the material support from Xu Muhe, and Gongsun Sheng has always been very concerned about recruiting apprentices, so the output of gunpowder has steadily increased, which is enough now.
Chapter completed!