Chapter 45: She has waited for this day for far too long!
After meeting Oda Nobunaga, Yuan Ye felt that there would be no problem for him to survive in Owari Province for a long time. After all, he had gained prestige, possessed self-preservation combat power, had bodyguards, and had met two levels of lords, the Aragiko Maeda family and the Oda Danjō no Chū family. There was nothing that could threaten his personal safety anymore.
Of course, if something like a meteorite fell from the sky and crushed him to death, it would be an act of God, unrelated to personal effort, and he could only accept it.
As long as he wasn’t crushed to death by a meteorite, his survival problem would be solved, much earlier than expected. He suddenly felt a bit lost, not knowing what to do for a while, and felt a sense of emptiness.
He couldn’t help but start pondering what was urgent, whether to start advancing the life improvement plan ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, A Man had already entered a state of frantic activity. Oda Nobunaga had only thrown down the matchlock gun; all other items like bullets, matchcords, priming powder, and gunpowder were completely absent. If she wanted to use this matchlock gun and master the “All Beings Equal Cannon,” she would need to gather all these components.
She was very hands-on and acted immediately. She immediately tricked the Momoi Brothers into scraping some saltpeter from the manure pit for her, then ran out to beg villagers for things. She obtained some clay jars, fine hemp rope, castor oil, and black vinegar. Without stopping, she stripped the rope and separated the threads, then soaked them in black vinegar mixed with saltpeter and castor oil.
“You can even make matchcords?” Yuan Ye watched her come and go, filling the room with a strong odor that completely disrupted his train of thought. He couldn’t help but come over to take a look.
“Of course!” A Man said proudly. If these hemp threads were soaked for seven or eight hours and then twisted, they would become matchcords. One foot could burn slowly for an hour, which was perfectly fine for use with a matchlock gun. She didn’t just think about mastering the “All Beings Equal Cannon”; she had already figured out all the technical details. She just couldn’t afford a matchlock gun before. Now that she could make some consumables herself, it was as natural as a dung beetle pushing a dung ball upside down!
Yuan Ye wasn’t too surprised. After all, this wasn’t a profound technique. It was just his engineering mindset acting up again. After watching for a couple of glances, he started pointing and criticizing, attempting to improve the process. “You should purify the saltpeter first and filter the black vinegar. This way, you wouldn’t need castor oil, and you could save soaking time or soak them all at once. The effect would be better than it is now.”
“As long as it works, why bother with all that!” A Man didn’t listen. After soaking the hemp threads, she went out again.
She had black powder, so she took a portion of it and added some sulfur powder to make it an explosive priming powder. Moreover, Yuan Ye had sulfur powder in his pharmacy, which he sometimes used to fumigate medicinal materials. He could just take a little to use. The only difficulty was the lead block for making bullets, so she would have to go out and look for some more.
Hmm, she also needed to make “cartridge bottles,” so she had to go get some bamboo. In any case, she was very busy and didn’t have time to pay much attention to Yuan Ye.
She had waited for this day for far too long!
…
A Man was very capable and had strong execution. After some tinkering, by the afternoon of the next day, she had gathered all the necessary items for firing the matchlock gun. She immediately began practical operations, starting to practice her “All Beings Equal Cannon.”
Yuan Ye was quite impressed by this. In any case, if you brought an eleven or twelve-year-old child from later generations, they definitely wouldn’t be as resourceful as her.
Of course, to prevent accidentally killing villagers and ruining their reputation, Yuan Ye stopped her attempt to fire a couple of shots in the courtyard. People of this era had no safety awareness at all, which was truly exasperating. He escorted her out of the village and deliberately went further away to practice, so as not to disturb the villagers with noise or scare the village chickens into not laying eggs.
A Qing, Yayoi, and the Momoi Brothers were also very curious. At this time, matchlock guns were still super novelties in Owari, so they followed along to watch the excitement.
When they were far away from the village, A Man confirmed her target: a small woods about thirty paces away.
She looked silently for a moment, recalling the steps. Then she took out a pointed bamboo tube and intended to pour priming powder into the priming pan. However, she hesitated, feeling that this matchlock gun seemed different from the information she had gathered before. It seemed like the propellant should be loaded first…
“Can you do it?” Yuan Ye came over, took a look, and worried that she might mess up and blow herself up.
“I should be able to, let me think again. I’ll definitely make it fire today!” A Man said, but her expression was hesitant. Before, she had only yearned for such powerful advanced weapons. Whenever she had the chance, she would beat around the bush and try to extract information, obtaining quite a bit of relevant intelligence. However, she had never had the chance to practice. Now, the configuration of this matchlock gun didn’t match the intelligence she had gathered, so she was a bit flustered.
“Let me do it!” Yuan Ye hadn’t played with a matchlock gun before and felt a bit itchy to try. He couldn’t help but take the matchlock gun, intending to fire a shot himself first to see.
A Man didn’t object either. After all, Yuan Ye was a “matchlock gun expert.” She felt it would be good to learn from him secretly. So, before the practice even began, the person in charge changed. It became Yuan Ye practicing, with A Man observing cautiously from the side.
Yuan Ye carefully examined this inferior matchlock gun again, becoming increasingly convinced that it was a copy of a copy, meaning it had undergone multiple rounds of imitation. Each copy would alter some parts, or omit some details. Or, thinking maliciously, perhaps someone teaching others had secretly withheld some details, resulting in this shoddy matchlock gun with missing parts.
Anyway, it’s unclear which idiot modified it in the process. To save some iron, they removed the priming pan cover. Loading the priming powder first was definitely not an option. If the gun was held upright and the propellant was loaded, more than half of the priming powder would fall out. Even if the priming powder was loaded afterward, without a cover, if the matchcord quality was poor when clamped, sparks would fly out, easily causing premature ignition. It would become an “automatic weapon,” saving you the trouble of even pulling the trigger.
It was no wonder Oda Nobunaga casually discarded this expensive matchlock gun worth 160 kan. He probably noticed something was wrong when he used it.
Yuan Ye pondered for a while, then held the matchlock gun upright and asked A Man for a cartridge bottle to start loading the propellant into the barrel. While loading, he shook the cartridge bottle vigorously. A Man was diligently learning from the “matchlock gun expert” beside him, suspecting it was a mysterious ritual before firing. She immediately asked with concern, “Why are you shaking the bamboo tube?”
“Because you are using crude black powder that hasn’t undergone wet granulation and has been shaken during transport. The powder might have stratified. If you don’t shake it to remix it, it might lead to incomplete combustion later, affecting its power and range,” Yuan Ye replied casually. The amount of powder was also what he estimated last night, so it wouldn’t explode. Now, he just needed to pour carefully and not spill the powder, which was very easy.
A Man didn’t understand, but that didn’t stop her from learning. The cartridge bottle needed to be shaken before pouring it into the barrel. As she was memorizing it carefully, Yuan Ye glanced into the barrel again and asked curiously, “How many lead shots did you put in the cartridge bottle?”
“One large and two small.”
“Why did you put so many?”
“Everyone else puts them like this. I even put fewer!” A Man had firsthand intelligence and was loading the ammunition according to the requirements in the intelligence. She asked somewhat strangely, “I heard some matchlock guns even use one large and five small ones to ensure accuracy. Is there something wrong with that?”
Yuan Ye was stunned for a moment, then pondered. He did recall that it seemed to be the correct way to load ammunition.
Many people in later generations, relying on inertia, would imagine that matchlock guns had very poor accuracy and no rifling, so they generally wouldn’t hit anyone. However, in reality, the hit rate of matchlock guns on the battlefield at close range was as high as 192%, mainly due to the ammunition loading. No one ever stipulated that a matchlock gun could only fire one projectile at a time. Firing one bullet at a time is more characteristic of modern weapons.
Data on this aspect has been obtained through restoration tests of matchlock guns, including some flintlock guns, in modern times. Within thirty meters, the accuracy of classical firearms was not only impressive but extremely high, making them effective battlefield weapons, much more useful than bows and arrows.
There are also many relevant records from the era of classical firearms, such as “never missing a shot within a hundred paces” and “able to shoot down flying birds.”
Of course, the accuracy of matchlock guns at long distances was indeed poor. The hit rate dropped significantly every ten meters. Beyond a hundred meters, it dropped to just over two percent, and the lethality also plummeted, making them less effective than bows and arrows again.
Yuan Ye was almost misled by inertial thinking, instinctively believing it should be one shot, one bullet. It was only after A Man’s reminder that he remembered that loading ammunition this way was not a problem, so he didn’t say anything more.
He then used the ramrod to tamp down the ammunition according to the steps, laid the matchlock gun flat, poured in the priming powder, clamped the lit matchcord, aimed… he didn’t dare to aim. The seal at the rear of this matchlock gun’s barrel was also problematic, so he didn’t dare to aim. Instead, he held it level and directly pulled the trigger. The serpentine lever moved, piercing the matchcord into the priming pan. The priming powder ignited, igniting the propellant through the flash hole, and finally, with a loud bang, the projectiles were propelled forward by force.
It produced a large cloud of white smoke that made Yuan Ye cough incessantly, mostly caused by the priming powder, which he couldn’t avoid. The sulfur smell was very strong. Long-term use of matchlock guns would definitely lead to respiratory diseases.
However, apart from that, it felt alright to use.
Yuan Ye waved away the smoke and went to look at the woods. He found that the accuracy was not a problem; two out of three shots hit. The hit rate was as high as 200%. However, they didn’t hit the same tree. The most errant projectile flew quite far off. If this were on a battlefield, it would be like aiming at the armor and hitting the person behind it.
A Man, on the other hand, was excited by the large chunks of bark that had been blown off. She was very satisfied with the power of the matchlock gun. She dug into the tree with a shuriken and recovered the projectiles, which had turned back into lead blocks due to the high-temperature impact, preparing to remelt and reuse them, being very economical. Then, she snatched the matchlock gun back from Yuan Ye, affectionately wiped it with her sleeve, and then looked at A Qing with a malicious gaze. She was now invincible. With the “All Beings Equal Cannon” in hand, no matter how talented A Qing was in martial arts or how skilled she was at fighting, she would have to kneel and call her father.
A Qing, stroking the large pieces of bark blown off by the lead bullets, the scorched and blackened pits, had a very cold expression on her small face. She probably didn’t expect the power to be so great and instinctively felt a sense of threat. The power of gunpowder projectiles could only be blocked by heavy armor. For an unarmored person like her, there was no need to even think about it; one hit would create a large bloody hole, and she would immediately fall.
Yuan Ye glanced at them and didn’t intervene. A Man wouldn’t really do anything to A Qing; they were very close. Moreover, even if she wanted to do something to A Qing, she couldn’t. Even with diligent practice, if A Man could fire one shot with this inferior matchlock gun in twenty seconds, she would be doing well. In twenty seconds, A Qing could run from a hundred meters away and stab her three times.
Matchlock guns were not weapons for duels, nor could they even be considered self-defense weapons. Using them alone was foolish; anyone who used them was an idiot.
A Man didn’t care about these things. Having learned the “art of the matchlock gun,” she ran off to practice again. Even though the matchlock gun had many flaws, she didn’t care. After all, it was still better than her going up to chop people with a small axe. She could wait until her opponent was squatting in the latrine, then load the ammunition outside, light the fuse, and extend the barrel into the pit to blast her opponent to death in the manure pit.
Since the opponent would be dead, the duel wouldn’t happen, and she would naturally win by forfeit. It was perfectly reasonable!
She then fired two more shots herself, “bang bang,” getting a feel for it while also trying to simplify the operating steps. This created clouds of gunpowder smoke that were almost suffocating.
Yuan Ye lost patience watching the spectacle. He only reminded her to pay attention to the barrel temperature, to clean the gunpowder residue from the priming pan and barrel in time, and not to blow herself up or get burned when loading. Then he prepared to go home to continue reading his books and make some plans, preparing to start the life improvement plan. Now that survival was no longer an issue and he had firmly established himself in this unfamiliar era, it was indeed time to improve his daily life.
He couldn’t adapt to the “hard life” of this era and couldn’t fully integrate into it. Everything had to be stewed or roasted. He was already finding it difficult to swallow, and there were too few seasonings to make anything tasty. The food tasted bland to him.
There were many other problems, concerning food, clothing, housing, and transportation, too many to list at once. At the very least, he had to purify the coarse salt. Eating salt with heavy metal exceeding the standard every day made him feel uneasy, fearing premature aging, and it was also bad for his son’s health.
In any case, there were many things to do. He had to go back and plan carefully. Perhaps he would need to set up a small chemical laboratory first. He also needed to think carefully about security.
As he walked back to the village, pondering in his mind, A Qing suddenly tugged lightly at his sleeve from behind. He turned his head and saw Maeda Toshiie approaching on horseback, followed by a walking follower.
