I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 108 Mass Production of Wart Armor, Popularization of Double Hook Spears

Murong Yan followed the maids of the Zhao family, traveling upstream along a tributary of the Qiantang River, passing through workshops lined with waterwheels, and finally arriving at a newly built manor at the foot of Yunqi Mountain.

Everything I saw along the way exuded a sense of raw, undeveloped simplicity, yet within that simplicity lay a vibrant energy. There was no doubt that it wouldn't be long before this place would transform into a paradise.

As soon as Murong Yan entered the manor, she heard people cheering:
"Excellent! Your Excellency's spear technique is truly superb! No wonder you were able to kill Fang La's general Deng Yuanjue in battle!"

"Wearing this cold-forged armor, he looks truly majestic and extraordinary; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he's a reincarnation of the Overlord!"

Murong Yan looked in the direction of the sound and saw a familiar figure holding a strangely shaped spear, which he was twirling and dancing around.

While it couldn't be described as being enveloped in silver light or like drifting snow, it was at least as sharp as a dragon, with a cold glint like lightning.

Murong Yan's heart skipped a beat, and she almost cried out. Wasn't that Brother Zhao, whom she had been worried about for months? But she knew there were outsiders present, so she forced herself to hold back and watch from the sidelines for a while.

She was also a martial artist, and once she focused her attention on the moves, her mind quickly calmed down.

"Brother Zhao's spear is shaped like a '卜' halberd, or a hook-and-sickle spear, but it has small horizontal blades on both sides. Well, it should be said to be closer to a double-hook spear."

However, the tip of a typical double-hook spear is not sharpened on the front, but only on the inside. Brother Zhao's spear tip is sharpened on both the front and back; I wonder if it's strong enough, and whether it will break in a fight.

Brother Zhao's armor doesn't look ordinary either. It's so finely crafted and fits perfectly, emitting a cold, eerie color that's also dull and doesn't reflect light. Could it be a Qing Tang wart armor? Isn't that the finest armor the Western Xia people wore? My mother once said that she traveled to Western Xia when she was young and saw that kind of armor. When will we in Jiangnan be able to forge such precious armor?

The double-hook spear that Murong Yan thought of was indeed a weapon that had appeared in the Song Dynasty. It was also the symmetrical version of the hook-and-sickle spear that Yue Fei later used to defeat the Jin army's Iron Pagoda. The hook-and-sickle spear only had a hook blade on one side, while the double-hook spear had hook blades on both sides.

Later Ming dynasty novelists wrote "Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties," claiming that Qin Qiong's cousin Luo Cheng used a double-hook spear, but this is purely fictional. During the late Sui and early Tang dynasties, double-hook spears were not a standard weapon in the army, but they certainly existed by the late Northern Song dynasty.

But at this moment, the weapon Zhao Zicheng was using was not a ready-made double-hook spear, but one that he had further improved upon himself.

This is the product of his thinking over the past few months on how to improve the weapons used in the Mandarin Duck Formation, how to refine the existing mountain warfare weapon configuration, and how to optimize the configuration for anti-cavalry warfare on the plains.

Zhao Zicheng knew of Yue Fei's later fame for using the hook-and-sickle spear to defeat the Iron Pagoda, but he also knew that using the hook-and-sickle spear was too dangerous. It was almost a suicidal fighting style. With the heavily armored cavalry already charging in front of them, hoping to use a single move to hook and break the horse's leg was risky. If they were not careful, the hook-and-sickle spearman would have his head crushed by the iron hooves. It was almost a life-or-death struggle.

Although Yue Fei won several great victories in history, they were actually Pyrrhic victories. The Yue Family Army suffered heavy casualties, including Yue Fei himself and his sons and nephews, many of whom died on the battlefield.

Zhao Zi said he didn't want to see such a brutal fighting style and would optimize it as much as possible.

So he thought of drawing inspiration from the "cross-shaped spear" that the Japanese later developed, and wanted to combine the cross-shaped spear with the hook-and-sickle spear—the biggest advantage of the hook-and-sickle spear was its specialized force for pulling backward and hooking off a horse's leg. However, the leading edge of the hook was not sharpened, so when pushing forward, only the tip of the spear was lethal; the side branches, even if they hit the enemy, were not lethal.

Such minor imperfections were not a problem when stabbing the torso of a soldier or warhorse, as the torso has a large surface area and is easy to pierce.

However, this disadvantage of the hook-and-sickle spear becomes very obvious when thrusting at a horse's leg. The front of the side hook is not sharpened, which means that the spear tip must be thrust precisely into the thin horse's leg to injure the enemy. If the spear tip is misaligned, the side hook will at most trip the horse's leg.

As a result, the hook-and-sickle spear could only injure the horse's leg when pulled back, and it was extremely difficult to injure the horse's leg when pushed forward, which greatly reduced its combat effectiveness and caused the casualty rate of hook-and-sickle spearmen to skyrocket.

Zhao Zicheng was determined to create a weapon that could severely injure a horse's leg by pushing or pulling it, as long as the shaft was pressed against the horse's leg. This is how the strangely shaped spear in front of us came to be.

The Japanese cross-shaped spear has a cross blade that is sharpened at both the front and back edges. Zhao Zicheng fully adopted this design, but made slight improvements, so that the tip of the cross blade is not perpendicular to the main spearhead, but is slightly curved backward like a hook-shaped spear.

The advantage of this is that it ensures that the hook-horse leg's power is not lost at all when pulling back, remaining as strong as a regular hook-and-sickle spear. The trade-off is that when sweeping with the shaft, it's difficult to peck through armor like a cross-shaped spear or a halberd.

This small change was not a decision Zhao Zicheng made on a whim, but rather the result of thorough experimentation. When he first started the trial production, he had several samples forged in the exact same form as the Cross Spear.

However, when actually tested with armor, it was found that the sweeping motion of the cross-shaped spear could not penetrate the heavy armor of the Song army at all. In fact, the reason why the divination halberd, which is similar to the cross-shaped spear, was only popular in the Qin and Han dynasties and the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties, and gradually disappeared from the historical stage in the Tang Dynasty, was because the armor of the Central Plains dynasties became more and more sophisticated after the Tang Dynasty.

Chinese heavy armor consisted of layers upon layers, like fish scales, with very few gaps. Only a full-force thrust could pierce it; a horizontal slash with minimal force was simply ineffective. After the Tang Dynasty, the effort was no longer put into developing such elaborate and ornate designs.

In contrast, the Japanese still used bamboo armor until the Warring States period. The gaps in the bamboo armor were very obvious, and the plates were not overlapping. When the cross-shaped spear swept across, if it was deflected and slid into the gaps in the bamboo armor, it could easily injure a person. Therefore, the Japanese were slow to eliminate the cross-shaped spear, which was similar in structure to the halberd.

Later, during the Ming Dynasty, when Japanese pirates invaded, Qi Jiguang carefully studied all their weapons and found the Japanese swords to be valuable. He even imitated and improved upon them, trying to find ways to counter them. However, after studying the cross-shaped spear, which also came from Japan, Qi Jiguang felt that it was "completely worthless to learn from and introduce, because the sweeping blows of the horizontal blade could not penetrate Chinese heavy armor." He also found it wasteful of materials, increased costs, and the heavier spearhead made the weapon's center of gravity shift forward, making it difficult to hold.

Zhao Zicheng had so much experience from his predecessors to draw upon, and he was always pragmatic, never making decisions on a whim. Whenever he came up with an idea, he would first conduct trial production and experiments, repeatedly refining and optimizing it. This is how the gun Murong Yan saw came to be. As for the problem of the overall strength decreasing after the leading edge of the hooks of the double-hook gun was also sharpened, Zhao Zicheng used new forging techniques to compensate for it.

He introduced a waterwheel for flow measurement at a location on the Qiantang River with a large drop and rapid current, and then built a reservoir to store potential energy, using uniform water power to drive the forging hammer.

The steel weapons forged by water hammer are far stronger than those of today, and can even surpass the metallurgical forging levels of the Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty in later history.

In this way, the decrease in strength caused by the thinning of the leading edge of the double hooks can be compensated for. After the double hooks are thinned, the overall weight increase of the spearhead is also reduced. The spearhead weight of the new double hook spear is almost the same as that of the original single-sided hook-and-sickle spearhead, so there is no need to set a counterweight at the spear tail. At most, the spear shaft can be slightly lengthened.

This improved double-hook spear could, to some extent, replace the wolf-brush used in the Mandarin Duck Formation in mountain warfare during plains battles. The double-hook spear's horizontal blades, like the branches of the wolf-brush, could also interfere with the thrusting of enemy long weapons.

Although it doesn't have as many or as dense branches as the wolf's tooth, and its interference effect is somewhat reduced, it's still better than nothing.

The only drawback is that the production cost of this double-hook spear, which is processed using a water-powered forging hammer, is much higher than that of an ordinary hook-and-sickle spear. Only specialized new-style forging workshops can manufacture it, and Zhao Zicheng cannot outsource its production to the existing ordinary military workshops of the Song Dynasty government.

Fortunately, Zhao Zicheng did not intend to produce too many at the beginning. He planned to prioritize equipping his elite spearmen with these double-hooked spears, giving them only to his most trusted troops, and also allocating a small number of high-quality custom-made ones to generals.

Soldiers using this weapon also need stronger arm strength to control the longer shaft and heavier spearhead. Zhao Zicheng planned to change the equipment of the wolf-brush soldiers who were originally trained in the Mandarin Duck Formation, and have them become double-hook spearmen.

……

Zhao Zicheng, lost in thought, practiced for the time it takes to drink several cups of tea, finally perfecting the entire set of moves. With a flick of his spear, which moved like a dragon, he nailed it to a wooden pillar in the courtyard. Then, he casually stretched out his arm, and the maidservant standing in the courtyard immediately understood. She poured a large bowl of hot tea and was about to hand it to the lord.

Murong Yan snatched the teacup from the maid's tray and carried it to her herself.

Zhao Zicheng was suddenly startled to notice that the woman pouring tea who was approaching him was breathing evenly, unlike usual. He then turned around and saw Murong Yan.

"Yan... Brother, you've arrived so quickly. I calculated the journey and thought you wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. You may all leave now."

Zhao Zicheng was about to speak when he remembered there were outsiders present, so he casually waved them away.

Murong Yan handed him the tea, watching him slowly drink it with tender affection. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she forcefully pulled the cross-shaped double-hook spear from the pierced wooden pillar, held the butt of the spear, and casually twirled it a few times to test its strength and power.

"Brother Zhao, your sister and I have been very worried about you these past few days. The fierce battle with Fang La must have been very tough. Were you injured? We feel that you are practicing martial arts more diligently than before. Did you encounter some danger on the battlefield to make you work so hard?"

Zhao Zicheng reached out and grasped Murong Yan's wrist, gently taking the spear from her. He comforted her softly, "Not at all. I'm just being cautious in times of peace, which is why I'm practicing martial arts so diligently. I've never seen an enemy general who could injure me on the battlefield."

I'm tinkering with these things only to prepare for dealing with the iron cavalry of the barbarians in the future. The bandits of the Central Plains are not my concern.

Murong Yan felt a little relieved after hearing his open-minded and confident words, and couldn't help but subconsciously reach out and stroke Zhao Zicheng's chest.

Zhao Zi said that in order to completely replicate the battlefield environment, he wore a full set of newly made Qing Tang Wart Armor while practicing martial arts today.

Murong Yan felt a chill when she touched the nail plate. It had a slightly matte finish and no large areas of mirror reflection. Instead, it resembled a Zhangqiu iron pot with many fine, fragmented surfaces, appearing to be somewhere between mirror reflection and diffuse reflection.

Murong Yan then voiced her question, wanting to know how Brother Zhao had crafted this armor.

Zhao Zicheng, of course, would not hide anything from his own people, and patiently explained in a low voice: "The materials used for this kind of Qingtang wart armor are actually not much different from those used for high-quality infantry armor and Mingguang armor. They are all made of the same steel."

However, when the Western Xia people forged the Qing Tang wart armor, they mostly used cold forging and did not preheat the armor plates until they were red-hot. In contrast, the craftsmen of the Central Plains mostly heated the armor plates until they were red-hot, making them softer and easier to shape.

Cold-forged armor plates are denser and tougher, but the manpower required for forging is several times or even ten times that of hot forging. The Western Xia people relied on manpower to swing hammers, and it required a huge amount of manpower to make a single set of wart armor.

I have now created a waterwheel forging hammer, the kind of waterwheel you saw on your way here. Inside, it uses a steering wheel and rope knots to accelerate the flow of water, propelling the small hammer to strike rapidly. This water hammer, with its low force and frequent strikes, is perfect for forging wart armor. If the ratio of the steering wheel and rope knots is adjusted to make the forging hammer powerful yet slow, it will be perfect for forging this kind of cross-shaped double-hook spear.

"Hey, you've just arrived, why are you saying all this? Let's talk about your family's arrangements. Now that you're here, your businesses in Hangzhou need your help managing them. As the prefect, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to personally intervene."

(End of this chapter)