Chapter 300 Weapon Blueprints

Chapter 300 Weapon Blueprints

Xie Wanniang waved her hand without allowing any argument, "Leave all the guards here and I will return to Tang County, or the guards can stay with me at Zijing Pass. The choice is yours."

Jiang Yuan: ......

He wanted to have a good argument with Xie Wanniang, but looking at her pregnant belly, he swallowed back the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

He asked Xie Wanniang, "So where do you plan to stay? The Xie clan's ancestral lands or Mingfu Village?"

Xie Wanniang shook her head, "No, I plan to stay at my own estate."

She hadn't forgotten that because Jiang Yuan had captured a Tatar princess, she, as Jiang Yuan's wife, was also a thorn in the side of the Tatars.

Although in the kind of large-scale war that Chang Yao and the others had anticipated, Xie Wanniang did not think that the Tatars would target her rather than important figures like the Lady of the Marquis or the Lady of the Heir Apparent.

But as the saying goes, anything can happen, and Xie Wanniang couldn't guarantee that no one on the Tatar side would suddenly have a brain fart and choose to attack her at this time.

If she lived in Mingfu Village or Xiejia Village, and if Tatar spies or small groups of Tatar soldiers who had infiltrated attacked her, the innocent villagers of those two villages would inevitably suffer undeserved calamity because of her.

On the contrary, it was her own estate that made it easier for her to act freely.

Firstly, the village where the tenants lived was not too far from the private villa of the estate owner, so the Tatars could easily bypass her tenants if they wanted to capture or kill her.

Secondly, after moving in, she could secretly renovate her estate to fully protect against any potential dangers.

She picked up a charcoal pencil and, under Jiang Yuan's increasingly wide-eyed gaze, began to sketch various mechanisms and hidden weapons.

—Thanks to the Emperor and Empress for bestowing upon her a skilled craftsman, all of her blueprints could be perfectly reproduced in his hands.

Before the war breaks out, Xie Wanniang plans to have the blueprints urgently sent to the county magistrate's mansion in the prefectural city, so that once she leaves Zijing Pass and moves into the manor, she can arrange everything as soon as possible.

"You... my goodness." Jiang Yuan's expression gradually changed from shock to speechlessness as he watched her draw more and more. He asked Xie Wanniang, "Just how many other things do you know?"

Xie Wanniang didn't even look up. "Huh?"

Seeing that she was completely absorbed in her work and not paying any attention to what he was saying, Jiang Yuan didn't press her further. "It's nothing, you can start drawing now."

After he finished drawing, he asked her if they could use her drawings as a reference when defending the city.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yuan felt so frustrated that he wanted to slap his thigh.

He must be a pig-brain. He knows his wife is skilled in many things, but he has never considered that she might also be good at manufacturing and improving weapons.

The other party had clearly drawn up blueprints and improved farm tools, waterwheels, and windlasses before.

Well, okay, if this person isn't Xie Wanniang, then it's actually quite normal that he can't deduce from her actions that she might also be skilled at weapon manufacturing.

After all, most people in this world, even if they spend their whole lives making and improving farm tools, will still only be good at farm tools until they die, and will not "make connections" and suddenly jump from the field of farm tools to the field of weapons.

But Xie Wanniang was different; she displayed amazing and ingenious ideas in many unexpected areas.

Suppressing the turbulent emotions surging within him, Jiang Yuan began to ponder how to leverage Xie Wanniang's exceptional talent and outstanding contributions to secure as many of the things she needed as possible.

For example, she couldn't force the assignment of his personal guards, and she urgently needed a large sum of money for disaster relief.

Xie Wanniang was unaware of Jiang Yuan's thoughts. At that moment, she was racking her brains to recall the mechanisms and hidden weapons she had learned about through various means in her previous life.

Although she only knew the basic principles and superficial aspects of many things, it didn't matter. She could draw or write down everything she knew, and if the parts she didn't know would affect the production of the actual product, she could ask the craftsmen to figure them out and fill in the gaps.

She was so busy that it was almost dusk, and sheet after sheet of paper was produced from her pen. Jiang Yuan, who was initially excited and amazed, gradually regained his previous calm expression, but this calm was more or less numb after being shocked.

When Xie Wanniang finally put down her pen and stretched to loosen her muscles, Jiang Yuan massaged her arms and patted her shoulders and back while asking her in a low voice, "Can these things you made also be used in battle?"

Xie Wanniang nodded subconsciously, "But the effect probably won't be particularly good."

Thinking that the Northern Hu were also having a hard time and might invade the border at any time, Xie Wanniang immediately forgot about stretching her muscles and sat down again. "I'll draw some other defensive weapons for you."

She had observed the defensive siege equipment of this era before. Although she had never operated it herself, she could roughly estimate from the soldiers' use that the defensive siege equipment of this era was equivalent to the level of equipment in her previous life in ancient times.

When she first arrived, she was concerned about the legitimacy of her background and experience, and did not dare to immediately copy some things from her memory to improve the existing siege equipment. But now it is different. She has been in Zijing Pass for a long time, and when the war broke out, she had risked going up the city wall to help with logistics.

Having had some contact with her, she wouldn't seem too strange to Jiang Yuan. As for others, with Jiang Yuan and the Chang family backing her up, even if others jumped out to question her, it would ultimately be a futile effort.

Thinking this way, Xie Wanniang rejected Jiang Yuan's suggestion that she finish her meal before drawing. She spent almost an hour drawing all the defensive weapons she could remember.

In addition, she casually mentioned a novel matter that the Duchess, who came from a merchant family, had mentioned in a letter to her.

"Do you remember when Lady Du wrote to me about those new firecrackers and fireworks in the capital?"

Jiang Yuan was taken aback. "I remember, weren't those firecrackers and fireworks supposed to have razed the entire workshop and several surrounding houses to the ground because of improper storage?"

Xie Wanniang nodded, "You know, if this thing were used to bomb the Tatars..."

Jiang Yuan's eyes widened, once again stunned by Xie Wanniang's line of thinking.

Xie Wanniang gave him a hint, "Taoist priests and fireworks craftsmen should know how to make this thing explode when it's supposed to explode, and behave when it's supposed to behave, right?"