The incessant chirping of insects in the tall grass outside the tent was enough to give anyone a splitting headache.
Several basins of burning mugwort, used to repel mosquitoes, produced a choking thick smoke that made eyes water continuously.
Chen Changfeng sat in the seat of honor, holding an urgent secret report sent from Zhenbei City.
Scattered across his desk were several scorched iron fragments, remnants of landmines recovered from the battlefield.
Beside them lay the shattered casing of half a fire-thunder canister.
The report contained few words, but he had read it over and over, three times.
Zhenbei City had developed a new type of gunpowder, and their entire approach to weaponry had changed.
That frontier army camp, whose soldiers had once been so starved they chewed on tree bark, had somehow grown a new backbone. They were restoring their flesh and blood bite by bite, and were now baring their fangs at the grasslands.
Kneeling in the center of the main tent was a row of men. They were the most skilled blacksmiths of the Royal Court, usually quite adept at forging scimitars and crafting armor.
They had even forged heavy armor for the King, making them renowned artisans across the plains.
At this moment, however, they were all huddled on the ground, not even daring to breathe too loudly.
The arm of one young apprentice was wrapped in blood-seeping linen.
A few days ago, a furnace had exploded during a trial run, and a flying shard of iron had sliced a large chunk of flesh from his forearm.
Chen Changfeng shifted his gaze from the secret report to the newly submitted counterfeit weapons.
He picked one up, weighed it in his hand, and simply tapped it against the desk.
The iron casing immediately cracked open, spilling debris all over the table.
The fuse of another had snapped off before it was even lit, and black powder was already leaking from its seams, scattering across half the desk.
Chen Changfeng tossed the broken casing back onto the table. A ball of fire was lodged in his throat, threatening to erupt.
But he held it back. Scolding them was useless; these people simply would not understand.
So, he changed his approach, staring coldly at the kneeling blacksmiths.
To what angle was the flint ground? How thick is the pressure plate?
For the gunpowder inside, what are the exact proportions of saltpeter and sulfur? What material was used for the fuse, how many strands were twisted, and has the thickness been determined?
How many times was the iron casing smelted? How many times was it quenched? When it shatters, are the iron fragments uniform in size?
The questions rained down on them one after another.
The blacksmiths buried their heads until they were almost touching the ground.
The leading old blacksmith stammered for a long time, spouting nonsense about ancestral heat control and achieving the right feel, unable to even answer clearly whether iron filings were mixed into the gunpowder.
Toward the end, the old blacksmith even blurted out, The blueprints from Da Qian are drawn wickedly; they do not conform to the blacksmithing rules of our grasslands...
Chen Changfeng's temples throbbed twice.
He grabbed a counterfeit iron casing from the table and smashed it fiercely onto the ground in front of the old blacksmith.
Get out! All of you, get out!
As if granted a grand pardon, the blacksmiths scrambled and crawled out of the main tent.
Chen Changfeng watched their retreating backs and cursed in a low, suppressed voice.
Their heads are filled with nothing but horse dung.
Aside from riding horses and swinging sabers, they have no idea how to put their minds into the iron.
He walked back to his desk, sat down, and picked up the shattered half of the fire-thunder canister, turning it over in his hand.
Even with the blueprints and the actual object, they cannot make a decent imitation.
When it comes to the front lines, are we supposed to feed the lives of the Helian cavalry to Da Qian's firearms? Use scimitars to hack at those iron lumps?
He put down the broken casing, picked up his completely cold mare's milk wine, and took a sip.
Before he could even set the bowl down, the tent flap was abruptly thrown open from the outside.
A secret scout walked in briskly, dropped to one knee, and handed over a scroll of battle reports.
Reporting to Your Excellency, two more convoys on the northern front have been attacked. One was transporting salt, the other dried meat.
Over half the escorting cavalrymen were killed or wounded, hundreds of warhorses were scattered by explosions, and all the supplies were burned to ashes. Not a single grain of salt is left!
Chen Changfeng snatched the battle report.
How did they fight?
The scout kept his head down and replied, This humble servant visited the scene. The ground is covered with shallow craters and iron shrapnel, but there are no signs of the earth being dug up for prior burial.
The light cavalry of Da Qian did not even engage our escorts. From dozens of paces away, they threw down some black objects, and both men and carts were completely wiped out.
The leg bones of the warhorses were sheared off by iron fragments. The cuts were perfectly clean, not looking like blast damage, but more like they were sliced by sharp blades.
The scout paused, his voice trembling.
Our cavalry did not even have a chance to fight back.
Chen Changfeng said nothing.
He reached out, picked up the broken half of the fire-thunder canister from the desk again, and slowly turned it in his palm.
He had studied the pressure-triggered iron mines of the past.
Not to mention their clumsiness, they had to be buried in the earth in advance, waiting for men or horses to step on them to detonate. Their limitations were too great.
But this new thing on the northern front...
Carried by individual soldiers, lit and thrown, hit and run.
The gap between burying and throwing was not just a thin sheet of paper; it was an unbridgeable chasm.
That place, Zhenbei City, did not even have enough arrowheads last year. How could they conjure up such a deadly weapon this year?
No.
There must be someone behind this.
Someone who understands iron, understands gunpowder, and moreover, understands how to make a piece of iron shatter into hundreds of lethal blades exactly as he envisions.
An expert had arrived in Zhenbei City.
The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Revenue would love nothing more than to scrape the frontier army down to their bone marrow. For Zhenbei City to suddenly be reborn, there is only one explanation.
The situation over there has changed at its roots. It is no longer just patching things up; they have drawn a completely new hand of cards.
If the entire Da Qian frontier army were equipped with these throwing firearms, when Helian's proudest Iron Pagoda heavy cavalry charges across the plains...
What they would crash into head-on would be a wall forged of iron shrapnel and raging fire.
Heavy armor would no longer be protective mail, but a steel coffin for corpses.
Chen Changfeng stood up and walked to the entrance of the tent.
The night wind poured in, causing the oil lamp to flicker erratically.
He looked up toward the south. A layer of dark red clouds pressed against the horizon, the direction of Yin Mountain.
Having observed the astrological signs at night for the past half-year, he had always felt that the stellar energies in the south were off.
But compared to those ethereal things in the sky, this pile of broken iron shards on his desk was the real deadly threat.
The person who created this thing, he had to uncover their background.
If he could not uncover it, he would kill them.
Saddle my horse.
Chen Changfeng turned and shouted outside the tent.
Pick two of the swiftest mounts, and bring ten men.
He grabbed a leather pouch and swept the landmine fragments and fire-thunder canister shards from the desk into it.
The captain of his personal guard chased after him and asked, My Lord, where are you going?
South.
Chen Changfeng vaulted onto his horse.
He pulled the reins tight, taking one last look north toward the campfires of the Royal Court. His voice was as cold as ice.
The person who made this must die.
Otherwise, the one to die will be the entire grassland.
Clamping his legs against the horse's belly, his black steed let out a long neigh and shot forward like an arrow released from a bowstring, plunging headlong into the heavy night.
The rapid clattering of hooves echoed further and further across the wilderness, soon completely swallowed by the howling wind.
