Chapter 147: Test Firing

With the first Army-Navy dispute finally settled, spectators gathered eagerly to witness the power of the transmigrators' first homemade firearm. Anyone without pressing duties had come to watch the demonstration.

Lin Shenhe assumed the temporary role of artillery instructor, walking the men through the complete smoothbore firing procedure. By the seventeenth century, European smoothbore artillery had long since standardized both its procedures and specialized equipment. Beyond the ammunition itself, the most essential items on any gun carriage were the loading tools—without them, a cannon was nothing more than a useless hunk of iron. In combat, if infantry or cavalry overran an artillery position and the gunners lacked time to withdraw or spike their pieces, they would destroy the loading tools first. Likewise, artillerymen forced to abandon their guns always carried the tools with them. This simple precaution prevented the enemy from immediately turning captured weapons against their former masters, while allowing the original crew to resume firing should they recapture the position.

"What the hell is all this stuff?" Ying Yu examined the array of long and short wooden rods with undisguised bewilderment. A retired 130mm cannon artilleryman, he found it somewhat absurd to be taught how to fire by a kid who had never served a day in uniform.

Lin Shenhe had drafted the blueprints for this tool set himself, and the Lumber Factory and Mechanical Plant had manufactured it together. The first tool was the bore sponge—a wooden rod with a wool-wrapped tip, soaked in water to extinguish residual embers inside the barrel. Since the Artillery Group couldn't find wool in their database, they had substituted kapok for the time being. Second was the dry sponge, used to absorb the moisture left by the wet one. Third was the worm, a coiled iron hook mounted on a wooden rod for clearing out residual paper or fiber—contemporary European cannons used pre-measured powder bags wrapped in paper or flannel. Fourth was the rammer, a rod with a bulbous head for tamping down powder and projectile. Finally came the linstock. The original design was complex, so Lin Shenhe had simplified it: a captured short spear wrapped with slow match.

"Now, let's begin the test firing." After several dry runs, Lin Shenhe could see that everyone had basically mastered the procedure. It was time for live fire.

For the test, shooting at the open sea would have been simplest, but the waters off Bopu lacked any reefs or islets to serve as reference points for measuring distance. After some deliberation, a stretch of wasteland near Lingao Point was selected as the firing range. The targets were already in place: twelve grave-mound-like earthen piles arranged in three groups at four hundred, eight hundred, and twelve hundred meters, with a marker stake standing at fifteen hundred meters.

"Report—how do we aim?" Ying Yu had fully entered the role of artilleryman now. He suddenly realized that all his modern artillery knowledge was useless for this weapon. Without his familiar instruments, he had no idea how to use the barrel sights or calculate firing angles.

"Use this." Lin Shenhe unloaded a small briefcase from the limber. Unlike the plain wooden boxes from the Bopu Lumber Factory, this one was clearly an antique—finely crafted and aged with the patina of centuries.

"Brought it from America—a genuine eighteenth-century artillery measurement toolkit."

"That badass?" The artillerymen crowded around to examine this period artifact.

Inside lay something resembling a protractor—two copper rulers, one long and one short, joined at a right angle and connected by a calibrated quarter-circle arc. Lin Shenhe explained that this was the gunner's quadrant, used for measuring cannon elevation. He demonstrated its use: insert the long arm into the muzzle and read the elevation from the plumb line on the arc scale.

"What's this angle for?" someone asked. Lin Shenhe continued, "It works with the firing tables." He pointed to a table engraved on the inside of the case lid—columns of English text and numbers.

"These are firing tables—factory data from pre-shipment trials. For example, using solid shot with a one-pound charge at five degrees of elevation, it tells you how far the projectile travels. This table has data not just for solid shot, but for explosive shells, shrapnel, and incendiary rounds."

"Modern cannons have these too," Ying Yu said, recalling the firing tables for his 130mm gun.

"Exactly—that's where modern tables originated. An American gun enthusiast I shot with told me these appeared as early as the sixteenth century."

The phrase "shooting cannons" drew lewd smirks from several faces—the term was local slang for masturbation.

"With firing tables, gunners just estimate the distance, then they know what elevation to set." Lin Shenhe picked up a copper plate with strings attached. "This is the gunner's square—a period rangefinder." He explained its principles and usage. It was a simple mathematical tool that used similar triangles to calculate distances—trivial for transmigrators with a modern education.

"But does this even matter?" Zhang Bailin asked doubtfully. "We all have binoculars. Binoculars can roughly estimate distances. We also have specialized instruments."

"If we're training native artillery crews, this works perfectly for them. Simple to make, not hard to use. And losing them isn't heartbreaking."

"This is the gunner's rule—actually a special proportional scale for calculating powder charges." Lin Shenhe produced another copper ruler.

For cannon propellant, Western artillerists believed the ideal charge was one where the powder burned completely exactly as the projectile exited the muzzle. Burn too early and you wasted powder; burn too late and bore friction reduced muzzle velocity. This ideal was difficult to achieve, but casters constantly experimented to find optimal powder-to-projectile ratios. Since the sixteenth century, European casters had included gunner's rules with each batch of cannons, allowing artillerists to calculate approximate charges for different projectiles. With these rules, gunners could estimate charge amounts for various projectile weights—saving powder, increasing safety, and greatly improving accuracy.

This technology had been transmitted to China by Western missionaries during the seventeenth century. Although China allegedly invented firearms first, research into artillery science was basically nonexistent. Ratios were vague, and loading was arbitrary. Intense combat often led to excessive charges, causing barrels to burst. Thus, gunner's rules were immediately treasured as "secret methods"—many firearms manuals either omitted or glossed over them entirely.

China had invented gunpowder and cannons, but not artillery science. This strange contradiction made everyone uncomfortable.

"Begin firing."

Without firing tables for this specific gun, the transmigrators started from zero degrees elevation.

First up was the traditionally cast cannon. Several men maneuvered the carriage, aiming the crude sights at a mound four hundred meters away.

"This accuracy..." Ying Yu felt like an adult playing kindergarten games.

Smoothbore firing had eleven steps. For a cold shot, the first two—sponging—were skipped. The propellant was the Chemistry Group's granulated captured black powder, wrapped in rough paper at two hundred fifty grams per packet.

"Load two packets?"

"Okay, two packets."

A six-pound iron ball rolled into the muzzle without obstruction. The windage was good. Zhang Bailin carefully rammed the powder and projectile—this was technical work, as ramming too tight might cause the charge to smolder without detonating. Lin Shenhe then pierced the powder bag through the touch hole with a long iron probe and filled the vent with priming powder.

"Ready to fire!" At his shout, people nearby raised red flags, warning of imminent firing.

"Fire!"

"Foreign slave," someone from the Navy muttered, mocking the English command.

At Lin Shenhe's order, Ying Yu—handling ignition—blew on the slow match wrapped around his short spear and brought it to the touch hole. His heart pounded; even his first live-fire drill after basic training hadn't been this nerve-wracking. The priming powder hissed alight, sprouting a half-foot flame like fireworks and crackling sharply. Instantly, the cannon lurched backward, belching dense white smoke and fire with a thunderous roar. A black projectile streaked out.

"Banzai!" the Navy sailors cheered.

"Traitor. Absolute traitor," Zhang Bailin muttered under his breath at the Japanese exclamation.

The iron ball trailed smoke past the four-hundred-meter mark, smashing solidly into the ground and sending dirt and powder residue flying.

"Damn powerful." Zhang Bailin's face had gone ashen. This self-proclaimed artillery maximalist had obviously never witnessed actual cannon fire before. The violent explosion, the shudder of recoil, and the acrid smell of powder made the weapon's power palpable—completely different from the previous miscellaneous firearms that had felt like oversized firecrackers.

The cannon had recoiled several meters, but the barrel and carriage remained intact. Ignoring the heat and choking smoke, Lin Shenhe carefully examined the barrel.

"How is it?" Ji Wusheng asked anxiously—casting this cannon had been a first for him too.

"Everything normal."

"Don't be careless—check for cracks," Zhan Wuya reminded them. Cast-iron cannons weren't modern factory products. "I have a flaw detector—want to take it back for inspection?"

"Unnecessary." Lin Shenhe thought it too extravagant. "Save the detector for future steel cannons."

Ying Yu ran over too, his face blackened by powder smoke. "Cannon's okay?"

"Fine—very solid."

"Let's go check the projectile impact together."

(End of Chapter)