Chapter 644: Clear Water Tempers Its Edge, Liu Adou's Counterattack

Shuzhong, the outskirts of Chengdu.

Beside the blazing fire, a young and strong man stood as tall as a pine tree.

His upper body was exposed, and his eyes were firm and deep, as if he could see into the depths of the red flames and see the fine iron being smelted.

After a short wait, he used the iron pliers to pull out a piece of red-hot iron, and then the hammer in his hand fell heavily, each blow making a loud sound, like hitting people's hearts.

The sonorous and powerful voice echoed in the empty forging field, like a heroic piece of music.

The man standing like a pine and forging a sword is "Pu Yuan".

According to legend, he was the most outstanding craftsman of the Shu Han Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period. He once made 3,000 knives for Zhuge Liang in Xiegu. The knives he made could split bamboo tubes filled with iron beads and were known as the magic knives.

According to legend, Pu Yuan’s main secret in making knives lies in mastering the quenching technology of steel knives and being able to identify the effects of different water qualities on the quenching quality.

And choose Shujiang water with a high cooling rate to quench the steel knife to the appropriate hardness.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the later period of the Shu Han general Diao Ling, it was the power of the "magic sword" forged by Pu Yuan that prevented the Shu army's combat effectiveness from being completely stretched by the Wei army.

In order to praise his achievements, Jiang Wei even wrote two biographies for him, "Pu Yuan Biography" and "Pu Yuan Biography".

Of course, according to the historical timeline, today's Pu Yuan is just a hermit who fled from Jingzhou to Shu. Although the skill of forging swords has been passed down from his ancestors, Zhuge Liang has not yet discovered it, let alone forged it. Three thousand "magic swords"...

It was because of Liu Chan that he was invited out in advance, which was decades earlier than in history when he was put into important use when Zhuge Liang came out of Qishan.

Speaking of which, this is also interesting.

Previously, Guan Lin's letter to Liu Chan focused on two things. The first was to cut off the Shu brocade and secretly transport the Shu brocade to Jingzhou to solve the Shu army's food and grass problem in a commercial and greedy way.

The second thing is to search for the swordsmith Pu Yuan throughout Shu.

This matter is actually not difficult.

Pu Yuan came here to avoid disaster, not an expert hermit.

In order to make a living, he would still practice his ancestral trade of forging swords and weapons for others. Because of his exquisite skills in forging swords, Liu Chan deliberately sent people to inquire about it. After two trips, he actually found this Pu Yuan. .

After that, Liu Chan sent people to recruit.

Pu Yuan thought it was Uncle Liu Huang or Zhuge Kongming who recruited him, and he was quite happy.

Who would have thought that the person he met was not Liu Bei, but the young master Liu Chan who had a "not very good reputation" in that little-known "village" on the outskirts of Chengdu.

Immediately...his heart was half cold, so cold, so cold. Immediately, he felt a little discouraged. He didn't even show courtesy or greetings, and just went back and forth.

Liu Chan was shocked when he heard this. People came and he took off his pants. How dare you go back suddenly?

At that time, Liu Chan was angry, extremely angry.

So...Liu Chan did a big thing, which was to send someone to deliver cooked beef to Pu Yuan every day, and he had to watch him eat it before leaving!

Pu Yuan was immediately confused. He thought, how could anyone force himself to eat beef every day?

This is going to arouse public outrage...is this going to make the farmers fight him to the death?

But... Shi can be killed and cannot be humiliated. How could Pu Yuan compromise so easily?

Literary men have character, and he, a swordsman, also has character, so he endured the humiliation and hid his courage, and would rather break than surrender. He would still eat the cooked beef sent by Liu Chan, but he would never compromise, let alone Liu Chan. The leader of the "dark forces" surrendered.

Later, Liu Chan would send some forging diagrams, which included steel forging techniques, various weapon tempering methods, and even a book called "Mengxi Bi Tan"...

Of course, these are all sent from Guanlin or Mianshui Villa.

Among them, the most, most, most, and most crucial thing is forged steel!

Although in this era, Baishang Steel has appeared.

However, it is not popular. Many successful steel-making methods are mostly based on repeated attempts and explorations. The level of quenching is also uneven, and there is no standard at all.

However, many of the maps Liu Chan sent over, whether it was steel forging or weapon tempering, were completely new methods...

Even Pu Yuan, a craftsman who has forged swords for generations, has never heard of or seen anything like this.

So, he thought it was humiliation.

This is the continuous humiliation Liu Chan suffered after the "evil forces" forced him to eat beef...

——As expected, Uncle Liu’s son Adou is not a good person!

In desperation, Pu Yuan could only try to forge steel with these methods for the purpose of "criticism" and "verification"...

He first verified the "steel filling method" statement mentioned in the atlas called "Mengxi Bi Tan"...

No, it’s not verification, it’s criticism, deep criticism!

——"The so-called steel in the world of wrought iron is made of soft iron, which is made of pig iron, sealed with mud, and forged into it. This is a fake steel ear. It is considered to be strong by pretending to be pig iron for a while. After two or three times of refining, the pig iron will mature by itself and it will still be soft iron. However, there is no one in the world who thinks it is wrong, because he has never seen the true steel ear. 』

this…

When he read this sentence in "Mengxi Bi Tan", Pu Yuan shook his head repeatedly.

Especially the last sentence:

——"No one in the world thinks it's wrong, it's just because they don't know real steel"

Pu Yuan deeply doubts this view.

Liu Chan is an uneducated son? What does he know about real steel? He dares to say that all the previous methods of forging steel are wrong? Isn't this pure bullshit!

Further down, it is the principle of the steel pouring method, which is to mix pig iron and soft iron through the process of "sealing and refining them in mud, forging them to blend into each other"...

This step alone is more than ten pages in the atlas!

However, this is completely different from Pu Yuan's experience world, which compares pure steel to the tendons in noodles, the so-called "washing away the soft noodles, the tendons will be seen", and the theory that pure iron can only become pure steel after being forged hundreds of times.

With the purpose of criticism... Pu Yuan tried this new steel forging method, but this time it didn't matter.

Although the previous steel pouring ended in failure, Pu Yuan was surprised to find that this "pig iron and soft iron" mixing, this "mud sealing and refining, forging them to blend into each other" process... is really feasible.

Perhaps, it can really create miracles.

So, he closed himself off for seven days, and finally... he really used this method to make steel!

This is a completely different method from his original "Hundred Refining Steel" technique.

The steel made by this pouring steel method... is obviously harder, harder than the hundred-refining steel. The most important thing is that unlike the hundred-refining steel, the refining process is complicated and there is no standard... the quality of the steel cannot be guaranteed.

Immediately, Pu Yuan thought of Liu Chan. That's right... the first thing he subconsciously thought of was this "evil force" leader.

He didn't understand?

Didn't Liu Chan want to take revenge on him?

So? Why give him the map?

Why teach him to make steel? What's the benefit for him?

And... only as a master knife maker can you appreciate the value of the pouring steel map. It's not an exaggeration to say that it is priceless.

The key is that those maps not only contain pouring steel, but also various weapon quenching methods, including a lot of details.

Because of the great success of pouring steel, there is no doubt that this map... makes Pu Yuan feel dizzy.

It's on fire!

He was so excited!

He even had a feeling that if this batch of "divine weapons" were forged, the impact on the entire battlefield would be subversive.

He, Pu Yuan, would also become famous and famous through this, and his reputation would last forever.

It was also at this time...

The "beef stew" sent by Liu Chan arrived as expected, and this time a piece of soft armor was also sent along.

So... Pu Yuan asked the visitor for the first time, "Why do you need to deliver beef every day?"

The visitor's answer was very direct, "The young master said there are two reasons in total. If Mr. Pu asks, tell the truth. The first is that the young master has too many cows. The young master replaced the original plow with a curved plow, which made it possible to plow the land that originally required two cows, but now only one cow is enough... Therefore, the young master bought the surplus oxen from the farmers and slaughtered them every day... The meat was distributed to his subordinates, including Mr. Pu. As for the leather... it was made into such soft armor through a complex process. According to the young master, this soft armor once saved his life. Wearing it close to the body can make it invulnerable to swords and guns!"

This...

Cow leather? Soft armor? Curved plow?

Undoubtedly, these words were shocking, incredible, and deafening to Pu Yuan.

How could he have imagined that Liu Chan, who he called "the leader of the evil forces", "unlearned", "vindictive", and "unreasonable", was actually...actually doing something that made him admire him very much.

Immediately, Pu Yuan gave in... and went to see Liu Chan obediently.

Liu Chan was still eating beef in a mountain villa in the suburbs at that time. When he saw Pu Yuan coming, he didn't feel the complexity and changes in Pu Yuan's mood at all. He said directly, "Mr. Pu is here? Come... Come and eat beef! It's so delicious..."

"Are there other people in Mr. Pu's family? Come together, this beef, the more people eat, the more delicious it is."

Just like that...

This beef was directly boiled into a forging workshop beside the Shu River, with Pu Yuan as the head, forging steel, tempering blades, and making short-handled weapons for frontline soldiers.

As for why it is a short handle? There are many mountains in Shu, and many mountain battles must be lightly equipped, and long-handled weapons are completely useless.

At this moment, Pu Yuan was forging a sword while recalling what happened to him during this period of time.

Suddenly, I don’t know if it was because the time was right or he had some other insights.

He looked at the other blacksmiths in the forging workshop with a sharp gaze, and explained loudly: "Quenching is also called 'dipping for a long time'. When the sword is heated in the furnace to a very high temperature, it is quickly dipped in cold water to make it cool quickly... Repeating this many times is enough to greatly enhance the strength, hardness and wear resistance of the sword. The process is divided into 'annealing', 'normalizing', 'tempering' and 'quenching' according to different speeds... How to do it, I will only do it once, you open your eyes and watch carefully-"

It turned out that Pu Yuan was carefully explaining and teaching the skills of forging swords to other recruited blacksmiths!

There are things passed down from generation to generation in his family, but also the pictures and volumes of craftsmanship texts that Guan Lin entrusted Liu Chan to give him.

These made him integrate theory and practice, and he could explain them in a concise way.

From afar, the "clang clang" sound of Pu Yuan forging could be heard, as well as his loud shouting.

"Clear water quenches its edge——"

…

On the other hand, Liu Chan felt that his life was very boring.

In fact, generally speaking, he was an obedient child.

With the help of Zhuge Ke, he followed Guan Lin's instructions and secretly transported Shu brocade to Jingzhou. Pu Yuan was also found, and the forging workshop beside the Shu River was said to be built...

Even with the help of Zhuge Ke, he recruited 3,000 troops in Shu.

In other words, he strictly followed the requirements of his master Guan Lin to recruit these 3,000 troops from the Qiang people in Sanba area...and he had to select the poorest, the darkest, and the most tattered.

Why Qiang people? Why must they be poor, dark, and tattered?

Because most people in Shu are peace-loving, they are novices in civil wars, but experts in foreign wars...

There are not many belligerent people, but Sanba is located in the mountains, and the few acres of land there obviously cannot support the Qiang tribe.

The mountains here are high and the emperor is far away, and the government management is also lax. Therefore, the Qiang people here will fight to the death for a well or a piece of land. From childhood to adulthood, they fight day and night and never stop until they die!

In such an environment...

The fighting power of the Qiang people is naturally different from that of the Shu people who live and work in peace and contentment.

For example, Wang Ping is one of these Qiang people.

In addition... when Zhang Fei pacified Sanba with a book "Fighting God", he saved a large number of Qiang people who were going to be relocated to Guanzhong. Therefore... the Qiang people's attitude towards Liu Bei and their attitude towards joining the Shu army are at least not rejected!

If you promise them great benefits, such as... always being able to eat beef, then this matter will be stable!

"Oh..."

At this moment, Liu Chan just put a piece of beef that was a little overcooked into his mouth. After chewing it for a while, he seemed to be unable to bite it because of a tendon...

"Puh..." He spit it on the ground and shook his head, a little bored, "I eat this beef all day long, and suddenly I feel that eating beef is just like chewing wax, boring... The beef soup is not good, not as good as the mutton-flavored cold-relieving Jiao'er soup made by Mrs. Ren of the Medical Department... Oh, boring, boring..."

Later, Liu Chan spread his hands and made a look of "boring days... you are really boring".

By the way, ever since he read the book "The Biography of Adou" sent by his master, he saw that he would be imprisoned in Adou Village, imprisoned for life by a man named "Dead Mother", counting cypress trees all day long, and renamed his bedroom to the ironic "Dragon Palace"... His fighting spirit was suddenly high. He not only wanted to be sworn enemies with the man named "Dead Mother", but also with the man named "Cao".

But... no matter how high his fighting spirit was, there was too little he could do.

He couldn't go to the battlefield, and he was not allowed to transport grain. He was only allowed to stay in this villa honestly.

Either he supervised the forging of knives, or he produced and promoted the curved plow;

At worst, he recruited 3,000 Qiang people... Liu Chan didn't know how to train, so he handed it all over to Zhuge Ke. He couldn't do anything except the boring beef shabu every day... Suddenly he felt that life was so boring!

Such a corrupt life will wear down his fighting spirit...

It is also for this reason that Liu Chan always sighs from time to time when eating recently.

Zhuge Ke, who was standing by, knew what Liu Chan was thinking and immediately reminded him: "Sir, it's not time for you to take action yet! The forging of the three thousand divine swords has just begun, the cowhide soft armor is only half forged, and the training of the Qiang people is also in progress. According to your master's instructions, the three thousand Qiang people you recruited and the three thousand divine swords you forged are the secret weapons of our Shu army. They cannot be exposed too early and must be used to exert a fatal effect at the most critical moment!"

"I know, I know, I know..." Liu Chan shook his head, "You've made my ears calloused. ... If it weren't for this secret weapon, I would have been unable to hold back. Speaking of which, my father is really... Two hundred thousand soldiers, but he dared not go to Dingjun Mountain? What a coward... If I were to go, I would have let these three thousand Qiang people carry magic swords, wear cowhide soft armor, and chop from Dingjun Mountain to Hanzhong City... Oh, my father... Alas... It's really embarrassing to even think about him. He can't fight... What's the point of leading troops! He has no courage at all... Isn't this learning from Sun Shiwan who fought in Xiaoyaojin! He has no shame at all..."

Uh...

When these words came out, Zhuge Ke felt inexplicably familiar.

Yes, that's right, a sense of déjà vu.

It's a familiar taste.

He was about to speak and say something to divert the topic.

"Adou——"

A low and restrained voice came from outside the door, and then, with the door "creaking" open, everyone saw Yang Yi.

Of course, this is not the point. The point is that the man behind Yang Yi, wearing a turban, a crane cloak, and holding a feather fan, is Zhuge Kongming!

With the appearance of Zhuge Liang, Liu Chan felt that his words just now were a bit abrupt, and subconsciously covered his mouth.

He stuttered and chanted: "Master Zhu... Master Zhuge?"

Zhuge Ke also looked panicked, muttering: "Uncle... Uncle..."

Zhuge Liang did not mention what Liu Chan had just said.

Instead, he directly asked what he wanted to know most.

"Adou, as you said, your father is restricted by food and grass at the foot of Dingjun Mountain, and the Northern Expedition was forced to be stranded. I came to ask you specifically, do you have any solution?"

Zhuge Liang asked like this...

But who can't understand the implication!

How can he ask Liu Chan? This is clearly about the batch of Shu brocade, and he is here to ask Guan Lin, the man behind Liu Chan!

It seems that in Zhuge Liang's view, in times of desperation, the one who can turn the tide... must be Guan Jia Silang who has repeatedly created miracles in Jingzhou!

only…

In sharp contrast to Zhuge Liang's eagerness to see through, after hearing this question, Liu Chan's panic suddenly disappeared, replaced by his questioning questions.

"What? I'm sorry, my dad... didn't go to Dingjun Mountain because the food wasn't delivered? Wasn't it because he was cowardly? Ah... that... that's not right!"

Liu Chan's brows suddenly knitted together with caution, and he exclaimed in disbelief. "Hasn't the food been delivered yet? Those businessmen, those dog-like things... what on earth do they eat?"

…

…

(Ps: There is another chapter in the evening!) (End of this chapter)