Those who reincarnate must die.

Zhang Lang avoided Feng Xi and went to the side to make a call.

"Hunter, we've found an effective weapon against these insects!" Fang Tianhua's voice was excited. "But we need your help!"

"What weapon?" Zhang Lang asked in return.

"Just now, Teacher Luo learned from the craftsmen in the city that there are large quantities of flammable materials stored in thatched warehouses scattered throughout the city's military camps!"

Upon hearing this, Zhang Lang immediately recalled what Luo Zhonghua had said when he first arrived in this world: this city was surrounded by a half-circle of walls, with a highland fortress built near the bridge in the middle, and the campsites in between were in low-lying terrain, resembling a moat...

"Are these flammable materials meant to be ignited when the insects breach the walls?"

"That's right!" Fang Tianhua said, "This is the last line of defense for the fortress! Do you know what those flammable materials are?"

"Oil?" Zhang Lang recalled the claim that this place was an oil field.

"Yes, but not only that!" Fang Tianhua laughed. "Besides kerosene, there are also large amounts of sulfur and saltpeter! That's the source of those strange smells in the barracks!"

"Sulfur and saltpeter..." Zhang Lang narrowed his eyes, as if he had thought of something...

"It's gunpowder!"

Fang Tianhua said excitedly:

"This is the main ingredient of gunpowder! If we can concoct gunpowder and manufacture firearms, we can definitely repel the insects! Remember the restrictions of this mission? It wasn't level one or level two, but rather a restriction that we could only use melee weapons. This was actually a hint from the altar! It gave us a fortress full of raw materials, allowing us to manufacture gunpowder weapons ourselves!"

Hearing this, Zhang Lang's eyes lit up: "What do you need me to do?"

"We've requested a site from the Marshal, and we also have enough raw materials!" Fang Tianhua said.

"Although we have demonstrated some ability, we haven't produced any real results yet, and our influence in the fortress is far less than yours, as is that of your General Feng..."

"Understood!" Zhang Lang nodded and immediately went back to tell Feng Xi what he meant.

"Research, new weapons?" Feng Xi asked doubtfully, "This isn't something that can be done overnight..."

"My friends have heard that there's a large quantity of sulfur saltpeter in the city, and they've come up with a formula!" Zhang Lang said. "It can be used to make a weapon of immense power, one that even the hardest carapace couldn't withstand! However, we need raw materials and a suitable testing ground!"

"Okay!" Feng Xi trusted Zhang Lang completely. "I'll go and apply to the Marshal right away!"

Given Feng Xi's influence, and considering Zhang Lang's reasonable and well-founded explanation, the marshal immediately ordered his men to cooperate and temporarily lend the training ground to the reincarnators for their gunpowder research.

As for the gunpowder formula, anyone who has taken high school chemistry knows that besides sulfur and saltpeter, the main ingredients are charcoal. With the first two readily available, charcoal is even easier to obtain!

"I know that sulfur and saltpeter are flammable, but as you've seen, fire is only partially effective against insects..."

Feng Xi also came over. Watching them busy, she asked Zhang Lang curiously:

"Are the things made from these materials really that powerful?"

Zhang Lang nodded: "If this thing is used properly, it can split mountains and shatter rocks, let alone insects!"

Apart from Professor Luo, who was busy with the project on the city wall, and Professor Yuan, who was in charge of the dissection, the rest of the reincarnators came to participate in the experiment.

"To make it easier to burn, it's been ground into powder!"

The group placed the bags containing three powdered ingredients on the open ground: "Let me see? One is sulfur, two is saltpeter, and three is charcoal..."

Following the commonly circulated formula, Ye Peng took a small amount of each ingredient in the correct proportions and mixed them together. To ensure accuracy, he even measured them with a small balance to confirm there were no problems…

And so a small amount of "black powder" was born. The crowd took some straw paper, wrapped it up tightly, and used an oil-soaked cotton thread to ignite it. After lighting the thread, they hid far away.

The cotton thread burned slowly, reaching inside the paper packet, and soon ignited the "gunpowder" inside.

As expected, the gunpowder ignited violently upon contact with an open flame, the flames leaping high and instantly turning the straw paper to ashes.

However, the crowd didn't cheer. The fire was indeed intense, but wasn't that to be expected? Because the ingredients were all flammable. But that wasn't what they wanted; they wanted an explosion! An effect that could send the enemy flying into the air!

Is the proportion wrong?

None of the people present had ever handled gunpowder before? Their only impression of this ancient invention was the saying, "One part sulfur, two parts saltpeter, three parts charcoal."

"Maybe it's not weight, but volume!" Ye Peng didn't give up. This time, he mixed the three piles of materials together according to volume and tried again.

The effect was better this time than before, but it was still far from enough to cause an explosion!

Feng Xi frowned immediately upon seeing this and looked at Zhang Lang: "Is this the power you were talking about, the power to split mountains and shatter rocks?"

Zhang Lang shook his head and walked over: "The proportions are wrong! By weight, it should be six parts saltpeter, one part sulfur, and one part charcoal!"

"Huh?" Ye Peng frowned and said, "What kind of ratio is that? I've never heard of it!"

"No..." Shang Xue, who was wearing glasses, suddenly frowned, drew her sword, and started drawing on the ground.

The sword tip sliced ​​through the earth, leaving marks that formed a series of characters. Upon closer inspection, everyone saw that the ground read:

S+2KNO3+3C=K2S+N2↑+3CO2↑

"What kind of nonsense is this?" Fang Tianhua frowned.

"It's a chemical equation!" Liu Mofei explained, "But I have no idea what kind of reaction it is; I've forgotten everything I learned..."

"It's the reaction of gunpowder exploding!" said Lin Yiming, who was still in high school.

"S is sulfur, KNO3 is potassium nitrate, which is also the main component of saltpeter, and C is charcoal! The formula is exactly one part sulfur, two parts saltpeter, and three parts charcoal!"

"That's right!"

Shang Xue finished writing, pushed up her glasses, and said:

"I've heard the saying 'one part sulfur, two parts saltpeter, three parts charcoal,' but it's not a gunpowder formula. It's a mnemonic device made up to help students remember the reaction equation for gunpowder. It's a modern invention, so of course it won't work for testing ancient formulas!"

"Look at the reaction formula. When these three materials are burned, they will produce a large amount of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The explosion of gunpowder is not caused by how intense the combustion is, but by the instantaneous production of a large amount of gas during combustion! Therefore, it can only be mixed according to the proportions in the reaction formula!"

"So, if we know this reaction formula, we can know the gunpowder formula?" Fang Tianhua wasn't interested in these things; he only cared about the result.

"Of course, you can just calculate the relative molecular mass!"

Shang Xue explained while gesturing with the tip of her sword on the ground:

"The relative molecular mass of sulfur (S) is 16, so monosulfide is 16; the relative molecular mass of saltpeter (KNO3) is 50, so dinitrate is 100; as for charcoal, carbon (C) is 6, so 3C is 18. Therefore, the weight ratio of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal should be 100:16:18, approximately 75% saltpeter, 12% sulfur, and 13% charcoal..."

At this point, the bespectacled girl looked at Zhang Lang with some surprise: "The hunter is right, it's roughly six to one to one!"

Feng Xi didn't understand her analysis at all... and couldn't decipher the crooked symbols on the ground either. However, hearing her agree with Zhang Lang's opinion, she couldn't help but feel a little happy and turned to ask, "What is she saying and writing?"

Zhang Lang shook his head: "I don't know either..."

He genuinely didn't know; chemical formulas were far beyond his comprehension as a worker in the steam age. But he had at least come across gunpowder formulas. In his world, the formula was 6112: saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal were 611, and the "2" referred to powdered fire crystal!

However, apart from his homeland, there should be no fire crystals in other worlds, so the formula for ordinary gunpowder should be 611.

Although this ordinary gunpowder is also very powerful, it is much less potent than the gunpowder from his hometown because it lacks the catalytic effect of fire crystals.

Of course, what Zhang Lang didn't know was that he had only stumbled upon a lucky coincidence... In a chemical reaction, the addition of one material usually changes the proportions of the other materials.

The problem is that the fire crystal is actually a kind of superpower crystal in this superpower world. It does not participate in chemical reactions, but provides a fire-type enhancement... So even if the fire crystal is removed, the ratio of the other three materials does not need to be changed!

Ye Peng immediately began the experiment, and as the fuse burned, everyone's hearts were in their throats!

Finally, when the open flame met the gunpowder, a loud bang resounded, and a cloud of smoke slowly rose. This time, the straw paper used to wrap the medicine didn't burn to ash; instead, it exploded into fragments!

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