Chapter 179 New Gunpowder

"Here's the beaker, here's the test tube, here's the stirring rod, here's the thermometer, the balance, the weights, the naphtha blowtorch..."

A batch of experimental equipment was transferred from Huangming Mountain overnight, and Zhang Hao explained it to Zhou Xueyao. At first Zhou Xueyao was curious, but gradually she became serious, and she could see that these things were of great use.

Zhang Hao introduced it for a long time before he said with a smile: "Come on, let's start the experiment. Take a portion of ordinary water, low-grade spiritual spring, intermediate-grade spiritual spring, and high-grade spiritual spring, 100ml.

Grind the dragon blood stone, mix well, put 10 grams of powder into each beaker, stir gently and evenly..."

Stir, keep adding, reheat...

A brand new world slowly opened up in front of Zhou Xueyao.

As for Zhang Hao, as the experiment progressed, he was also somewhat pleasantly surprised: It seems that this dragon blood stone should undoubtedly be a 'mutated' saltpeter.

There were a few stone chips at the bottom of the beaker, but the solution in which the dragon's blood stone was dissolved showed a magnificent red color.

At the end of the experiment, Zhang Hao discovered that the high-grade Lingquan dissolved the most saltpeter. When heated to 90 degrees, 100ml of liquid actually dissolved more than 300g of dragon blood stone powder.

Afterwards, the liquid was filtered, condensed and crystallized, and more translucent blood-red crystals gradually precipitated under the beaker; the color of the solution also gradually faded.

"Look, it's purified." Zhang Hao pointed to the crystals at the bottom of the beaker, and said to Zhou Xueyao proudly.

"Let me try..." Zhou Xueyao excitedly took the tools and got busy.

Zhang Hao sat next to him, looking at Zhou Xueyao, who was serious and busy; time passed by, and before he knew it, it was already one night.

With the faint cock crowing in the distance, Zhou Xueyao had refined about 40 jin of pure crystals from the 50 jin brought by Zhang Hao.

In one night, Zhou Xueyao had mastered the concept of melting curve, and knew about precipitation and crystallization. Compared with the traditional methods of alchemy, the brand-new chemical methods are unique and have shown some advantages from the beginning:

Simple, transparent and easier.

With the pure 'dragon blood stone powder', Zhang Hao excitedly rushed out of the courtyard, ready to find some charcoal and sulfur. I didn't want to see a captain of the bodyguard next to my father looking at him with weird eyes just after he came out.

"Wei Qiang, what's the matter?"

"Young master, the master asked you to go to the smelting base and said that it was successful."

"Oh... okay." Zhang Hao left after finishing speaking.

But behind him, Wei Qiang winked at his opponents: "Master spent a night here, a night..."

"The lights were turned on all night." The guards began to comment.

…………

Zhang Hao quickly came to the smelting base, and saw his father and Cheng Tao talking and laughing happily, and Huang Mingshan and others next to him seemed to be listening attentively.

"Xiaohao, come here." Zhang Shengde was very excited, "Thank you, Master Cheng, I found a solution overnight."

So fast? Zhang Hao was a little surprised, but he still expressed his thanks first, and then looked suspiciously at his father, Cheng Tao, Huang Mingshan and others: Who will explain?

Huang Mingshan was still excited, so he took Zhang Hao to check immediately.

Turns out the solution...was too simple! According to the hidden meaning in Huang Ming's words: In fact, this method was not discovered by Cheng Tao at all, but proposed by Huang Mingshan and others:

This method was also used by the Zhang family when producing the 'New Arrow', that is - molten coating.

Just dip the arrow in the melted dark iron water.

But now it is just bathing the newly solidified steel embryo in ordinary black iron water, and covering the surface with a layer of ordinary black iron. In this way, the seal formation can be carved on the ordinary black iron layer.

This is equivalent to adding a soft shell to the hard steel.

As for the method Zhang Hao proposed at the beginning, which was similar to "burning porcelain", it didn't work. The flame is nothing, and the Zhang family has oil; but after calcination again, it will destroy the performance of the steel, and high temperature heating will lead to softening deformation, condensation deformation, etc.

After hearing this, Zhang Hao asked Huang Mingshan in a low voice: "Then Cheng Tao has nothing to contribute?"

"No, there are quite a few. The thickness of the coating, and even the thickness, weight, and standard of weapons and armor, etc., are all determined or modified by Master Cheng. In addition, the master has provided several simple but powerful Formation. Including armor-breaking, defense, reinforcement and other very practical formations."

Zhang Hao nodded, and looked at the freshly baked steel armor, steel sword and so on. The weapons and armor modified by Cheng Tao have an indescribable charm, which seems to be murderous.

Suddenly, Zhang Hao realized that Huang Mingshan and others' designs in the past were at best rigid industrial designs, while Cheng Tao's designs probably had a little bit of art in them.

However, art is also a technique. We know that there is a word called - the art of killing!

Cheng Tao, on the other hand, integrated this 'art of killing' into his weapons and armor.

Spikes have been added to the elbows of the armor, and ribs have been added to the armguards—this increases protection while keeping the weight low enough. And the array pattern just passed through the depressions of the cold ribs, and these ribs also ensured the safety of the array pattern and increased the lifespan of weapons and armor.

There is a waist design on the sword body. This waist design makes the long sword even more chilly.

The long knife is more slender, increasing the thickness of the back of the knife, deepening the blood groove, and greatly reducing the weight of the blade while increasing the lethality of the knife.

In particular, a layer of soft black iron is attached to the surface, which can greatly absorb the impact and increase the strength of the sword. And this layer of black iron covered can also seal the formation. It can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Zhang Hao nodded in satisfaction, encouraged Huang Mingshan a few words, thanked Cheng Tao again, talked to his father, took some charcoal, sulfur, and some ordinary saltpeter powder extracted before, and left.

"Charcoal", Zhang Hao chose three kinds: charcoal, bamboo charcoal, and coke made from petroleum smelting.

For the time being, there is only one kind of sulfur, which is just ordinary sulfur; for the time being, Zhang Hao has not found the sulfur with the "spiritual material attribute".

When she returned to Zhou Xueyao's small courtyard, Zhou Xueyao was eating breakfast; there was an extra serving prepared beside her. Seeing Zhang Hao coming back, he immediately bowed his head, blushing.

"What's the matter?" She was so generous before, why is she now a shameful beauty?

Looking at the suppressed smiles of the maids next to him, although Zhang Hao was a little puzzled, he didn't take it too seriously.

After hastily eating breakfast, Zhou Xueyao took the materials brought by Zhang Hao and began to mix different proportions of "gunpowder".

Zhang Hao vaguely remembered that the formula of ordinary black powder was: 7.5:1.5:1; before using ordinary saltpeter, this ratio was indeed the most powerful. But I don't know what will happen to the Dragon Blood Stone?

It's just that Zhang Hao said this ratio when he opened his mouth, which made Zhou Xueyao very suspicious.

"We have done a lot of research before. It's just that the power of ordinary black powder is really limited, so we didn't use it."

"Oh..." Zhou Xueyao looked at Zhang Hao suspiciously for a while before starting to equip the brand new gunpowder.