Before the gathered crowd, Sun Yu mixed a small portion of the new gunpowder, then ignited it.
With a booming crash, a wave of hot air hit their faces, tinged with a faint numbing prickle. The new gunpowder was indeed immensely powerful, carried a trace of thunderous might, and left virtually no smoke or ash behind.
Having finished his demonstration, Sun Yu waited for everyone's critique. This was an essential part of research at the Palace of Grand Beginning—stones from other hills could serve to polish jade, and sometimes comments from an outsider could spark inspiration or illuminate overlooked flaws.
Wei Yuan possessed only a superficial grasp of the alchemical dao and pharmacology. Regarding the recipe and the materials' innate qualities, he had nothing useful to offer; if forced to speak, he could only echo Xu Wenwu with a single "holy shit."
Yet Wei Yuan's focus was elsewhere. The new gunpowder's power had vastly increased, but its cost had surged by more than tenfold.
The original gunpowder, after being mass-produced, had dropped to a price of several hundred jin per liang of immortal silver. For this new formula, Wei Yuan estimated that one liang of immortal silver might buy only five jin.
After watching Sun Yu's demonstration, Yu Zhizhuo spoke up. "If we are pursuing instantaneous violence, there is still room for improvement. The powder can be refined like this..."
Yu Zhizhuo scooped up a handful of the new gunpowder and channeled his Dao force to reshape it into rounded grains as fine as sand, their interiors loose rather than densely compacted. When tested again, its explosive force had spontaneously increased by twenty percent.
Sun Yu added, "Right now, this recipe can be refined in two directions. One is to elevate the quality of the thunder sand, inch-gold charcoal, and fire glue to boost its power; taking it further, we could replace thunder sand with profound thunder stone for even greater force. The other direction is to lean closer to the original recipe to produce cheaper gunpowder. Extensive testing will be needed to find the best balance between power and price."
Wei Yuan let out a breath of relief. Previous battles had proven that the sheer number of fire guns was the key to turning the tide. Such weapons were naturally deficient in individual might; if deployed in small numbers, even high-quality ones were inferior to an expert cultivator bombarding the enemy directly with Dao arts.
Wei Yuan was now exceptionally sharp when it came to reading the battlefield. The decisive factor in how fire guns changed warfare lay in enabling mortals to step onto the battlefield and put up a real fight. That was a measure that altered warfare at its very root.
Without fire guns, out of the domain's population of over one hundred thousand, there would be fewer than twenty thousand capable combatants. With fire guns, that number exceeded one hundred thousand. With fire guns and Ephemeral Multitude, Wei Yuan effectively commanded a hundred thousand elite troops for a short duration. Even without Ephemeral Multitude, he still had a hundred thousand ordinary soldiers.
For ordinary people on an ordinary diet, reaching the Sinew and Muscle Realm took at least two or three years. An archer required three additional years of training; a saber-and-shield fighter took only half a year less; and spearmen were the simplest, needing just a single year.
Yet training a steel-tube gunner took only three days—or half a shichen if pressed for time. At ten zhang, a steel-tube gun could blanket a spread as wide as a door; as long as it was pointed in the right general direction, aiming hardly mattered.
With the new gunpowder proving so potent, the cultivators were elated. Ideas flowed freely as they offered countless suggestions, and within a single shichen they had mapped out numerous paths for improvement.
For instance, Yu Zhizhuo suggested that thunder-struck wutong could replace profound thunder stone. The domain had a thunderwood tree; placing phoenix-blood wutong beside it to endure the constant baptism of lightning would yield thunder-struck wutong within half a year. Its properties were slightly inferior to profound thunder stone, but its cost was a mere tenth as much.
Finally came the task of determining the optimal proportions for the recipe. There seemed to be no shortcut for this—it had to be tested bit by bit. Previously, Sun Yu had divided every portion of raw ingredients into ten smaller measures and tested them incrementally: eight parts thunder sand to one part inch-gold charcoal; eight parts thunder sand to two parts charcoal... Relying on this clumsy brute-force method, he had run over seventeen hundred trials before arriving at the current ratio.
Wei Yuan finally understood why Sun Yu kept complaining about a lack of hands even after being assigned more than a dozen assistants.
Touching on this matter, Sun Yu said to Ji Liuli, "Senior Sister Ji, when the time comes, I'll likely need to borrow your Demon-Suppressing Pagoda to save myself some effort."
Ji Liuli's Demon-Suppressing Pagoda possessed the ability to deduce heavenly secrets. The two conferred at length, and Ji Liuli set up a formation on the spot, placing the pagoda at its center. Half the spiritual materials she used for the array had been redeemed by Wei Yuan; he could not keep letting her pay out of pocket to support him.
Beneath the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, Sun Yu used his Dao force to simulate the properties of several ingredients and channeled them into the formation. The two adjusted the array again and again. After a great deal of tinkering, a burst of flame finally surged beneath the pagoda—the raw ingredients Sun Yu simulated with Dao force had ignited!
Though it was not yet an explosion, Ji Liuli examined it closely and said, "It captures eighty percent of the true essence of combustion. This method is viable!"
Looking at the ecstatic Sun Yu, Ji Liuli added, "Renting the pagoda will cost a thousand liang of immortal silver per shichen."
Before anyone realized it, dawn had broken.
The cultivators dispersed, heading off to eat breakfast or attend their morning lessons. Wei Yuan wanted to slip away, but Yu Zhizhuo caught him by the arm. "Where does the Domain Lord think he's going?"
Wei Yuan struggled futilely. "I'm going to read..."
Yu Zhizhuo hauled Wei Yuan along. "Beneath the earth lie houses of gold; beneath the earth wait women fair as jade. Domain Lord, I just found some fine sights down below. Let's go take a look together."
Two shichen later, Wei Yuan had seen nothing fine, though he had laid eyes on another million jin of assorted ores.
Yu Zhizhuo was all smiles. As he directed the cultivators to install support pillars and crossbeams along the tunnel Wei Yuan had cleared, he praised, "Nephew, since your breakthrough, your Dao force has swelled immensely. A dozen of my junior brothers combined can't match you alone. It's just a shame you can't be in two places at once, so I have no choice but to corner you whenever I can."
An idea stirred in Wei Yuan's mind. He manifested a faceless warrior and asked, "What do you think of this?"
A ring of light appeared before the faceless warrior, unleashing the same Rushing Water Blade Art. Its power was modest—equivalent only to an ordinary Mortal Tier cultivator striking with full strength—yet it was enough to shave away rock.
After Wei Yuan advanced to the middle stage of the Dao Foundation, the scope of Dao arts these faceless warriors could wield had expanded. What had once been a simple Water Flow Technique was now laced with water blades, truly becoming the Rushing Water Blade Art.
The faceless warrior maintained an unbroken torrent of water, steadily boring into the rock stratum.
At first, Yu Zhizhuo's brows were tightly knit. After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, his expression turned solemn. After an incense stick of time, surprise showed on his face, and after two incense sticks, he was utterly stunned.
For a normal Mortal Tier cultivator casting arts like this, their Dao force would be depleted in the span of a single cup of tea. An Earth Tier cultivator could hold out for one incense stick at best, and after two, they might even die of exhaustion.
"Nephew, just how long can this puppet art keep going?"
"From dawn till dusk," Wei Yuan said.
He then condensed a speck of light and handed it to Yu Zhizhuo. "This is the mnemonic to control it."
Yu Zhizhuo accepted the formula and ran a quick test. Following his command, the faceless warrior halted the Dao art, moved to the opposite wall, and resumed digging. While Yu Zhizhuo was still hesitating, two more faceless warriors materialized before him.
"Here are two more. I leave them all in your care, Martial Uncle," Wei Yuan said.
A broad grin instantly blossomed across Yu Zhizhuo's face. He clapped Wei Yuan hard on the shoulder. "Go on, go attend to your business!"
Three puppet cultivators who could work from dawn till dusk were far more useful than Wei Yuan, who came and went unpredictably and whose availability was never guaranteed. From now on, Yu Zhizhuo could plan the underground excavations in full; progress would advance by leaps and bounds, and only the toughest stretches would require Wei Yuan in person.
As for Wei Yuan, the natural Dao force he recovered at any given moment was equivalent to three Mortal Tier Dao Foundation cultivators. Thus, even with the three faceless warriors working from dawn to dusk, his own Dao force remained neither depleted nor diminished.
Wei Yuan said, "Right, Martial Uncle, let's adjust the future output slightly. For every three parts of iron and copper produced, set aside one part to forge various tools."
"Fine. Follow me, I'll show you another good thing."
Seeing Yu Zhizhuo lead the way upward, Wei Yuan breathed a sigh of relief that the "good thing" was not deeper underground. All told, he genuinely admired this Martial Uncle Yu. The man could spend more than ten shichen a day underground; to him, stone and mineral veins held greater allure than peerless beauties.
The two returned to the surface, and Yu Zhizhuo guided Wei Yuan toward his private workshop.
Inside this modest courtyard, seven distinct formations were laid out. More than a dozen anvils and workbenches stood in place, accompanied by hundreds of tools. There were over thirty hammers alone, varying in size: the smallest was like an ant, while the largest weighed several thousand jin. Every hammer was at least a high-grade magical artifact, and two were even magical treasures.
Solemnly, Yu Zhizhuo produced a steel tube glowing with a faint blue sheen and handed it to Wei Yuan with a grin. "To forge this thing, I dipped heavily into my private stash."
Wei Yuan took it and inspected it closely. The steel tube was six feet long, hollow inside, and open at both ends. Its inner bore was roughly the size of a hen's egg, while the outer diameter was about as thick as a teacup. Wei Yuan was tall with large hands, so it fit his grip perfectly.
The tube carried a faint chill. It was actually a supreme-grade magical artifact, and despite its unassuming look, it weighed over seven hundred jin—even Wei Yuan had to exert some strength to wield it with ease.
Yu Zhizhuo then took out two spearheads, one long and one short. Fitting them to either end turned it into a short spear.
"Originally, leaving both ends open was meant to prepare for possible breechloading ammunition in the future. But now that Sun Yu has developed the new gunpowder, many concepts can be realized. Let me show you the original design first."
Yu Zhizhuo hauled out a crate filled with gunpowder sealed in oiled paper. Each sealed charge was a foot long, all identical in size, thickness, and length.
Leading Wei Yuan to the target range, Yu Zhizhuo took the steel tube, affixed the buttcap, and said, "This weapon possesses three traits: Indestructible, Frost, and Spotless."
Wei Yuan understood Indestructible and Frost—one was an advanced form of durability, while the other prevented the barrel from overheating and damaging the inscribed formations, all while imbuing attacks with frost power to slow an opponent. But what was the deal with Spotless? Wasn't that typically found on Daoist robes? Robes with that trait barely needed washing and could ward off poisons and gu insects.
Yet thinking deeper, Wei Yuan grew puzzled by Frost as well. Once fired, a steel-tube gun was usually swung like a club, or at most fitted with a spearhead to serve as a spear; whether the barrel ran hot hardly mattered.
Yu Zhizhuo wore an expression that said I knew you wouldn't understand, and brought out another crate. Inside was a full load of spearheads.
Yu Zhizhuo pressed down with an open hand, and five powder charges along with a spearhead flew out on their own. The powder cylinders filed into the muzzle from the front, followed smoothly by the spearhead sliding into place. Yu Zhizhuo leveled the spear, aiming straight at a stone target dozens of zhang away.
A thunderous roar erupted. The stone target—fitted with medium-grade artifact armor and possessing defenses comparable to an Earth Tier cultivator—was pierced straight through by a single shot!
Yu Zhizhuo did not stop. Letting out a sharp shout, he sent all the powder and spearheads airborne. They aligned themselves automatically, then loaded and fired, loaded and fired. The concussions blended into a continuous roar, blasting out more than a dozen shots in the blink of an eye and shattering half of a boulder reinforced with steel plating.
Only then did Wei Yuan realize the truth: the purpose of Spotless was to make reloading silky smooth! Martial Uncle Yu's imagination was truly boundless; he was an extraordinary talent.
Converted by the standards of the outer world, that rapid burst just now had exceeded five hundred rounds per minute—the unequivocal standard of a machine gun.
A muzzle-loading, single-shot machine gun was something that had never once appeared even in the outer world.
Yu Zhizhuo handed the weapon to Wei Yuan and said, "This gun is a supreme-grade magical artifact, not a whit inferior to the artifact flying swords used by Xiaoyu and Cui Yu. I've named it 'Spotless Pure Land,' and I'm giving it to you. Now that we have the new gunpowder, though, I'll need to remake the powder cartridges and reconsider the load. In any case, its power will only increase. Even with a maximum powder load, this gun can handle it."
Taking the Spotless Pure Land, Wei Yuan mused inwardly: Didn't that name simply mean sending people to their next reincarnation?
With this weapon in hand, killing Earth Foundations would be like slaughtering dogs, and even a Heaven Foundation could not withstand a concentrated volley. It was truly a slaughtering weapon for group combat.
Holding the weapon, Wei Yuan felt a surge of heroic pride mingled with a touch of helplessness. Even without this gun, killing Earth Foundations was already like slaughtering dogs to him.
Chapter 297