Chapter Twenty-Five: Anti-Theft Device

The repeating crossbow was considered high technology in ancient times.

However, by the Ming Dynasty, the repeating crossbow was no longer a weapon of war, but merely a household tool for deterring thieves.

The blueprint Liu Xiangyu handed to Liu Chengzong depicted a crossbow with a quiver capable of holding ten bolts. Relying on gravity, one bolt would be fired and another would fall into place. The quiver was connected to a system of levers and linkages, which could both draw and cock the string. All it required was a pushing and pulling motion to achieve rapid fire.

This device was quite large, with a hollowed grip at the front of the crossbow and a curved brace at the rear, meant to be pressed against the chest and abdomen.

Its construction took longer than that of an ordinary crossbow. Because it was so easy to cock, its draw strength was weaker than that of a large waist-drawn crossbow. What’s more, the mechanism made it difficult to attach fletching to the bolt tails, making the bolts prone to tumbling at longer ranges and thus hard to hit the target.

That was why it was operated by bracing it against the chest and pushing to fire—a motion not well-suited for precise aiming.

Its design was intended to deal with unarmored enemies at close range: ten or twenty paces, where rough accuracy would suffice.

Liu Chengzong made a small adjustment to the blueprint, replacing the hollowed grip at the front with a more comfortable handle.

At noon, the old carpenter in Xingpingli received the blueprint; before dusk, he had already sent his grandson to Liu Family Hill to find Liu Chengzong, who was training mechanized soldiers, to ask him to procure a bowstring.

For a skilled carpenter with the right tools, a crossbow—especially a civilian-grade repeating crossbow—was the easiest to make. A suitable string, however, was harder to come by, as that wasn’t his specialty and he didn’t have any on hand.

In fact, hunting crossbows used by local hunters were even more difficult to craft, because their triggers required metalwork. The repeating crossbow relied on the stock to bear the tension, so only a metal plate needed to be inlaid at the catch.

As for the string, that was no problem for Liu Chengzong.

He could make strings and always carried a few spares with him; he had brought quite a few home this time, so it was a perfect opportunity to use them.

By the third day, a repeating crossbow and ten wooden bolts had been delivered to Master Liu.

For experimental purposes, not even iron tips were used. The bolts were merely eight-inch-long sharpened wooden sticks. Dressed in wide-sleeved scholar’s robes, Master Liu braced the crossbow at his waist, gripped the lever, and pumped it up and down. One after another, the wooden bolts shot swiftly toward the matchlock target.

The rate of fire was impressive. After the sixth bolt, the mechanism jammed. Master Liu tapped the crossbow to clear it, then fired off the last three bolts. Stretching his hand, which had been working the lever nonstop, he remarked, “It’s quite tiring—let’s see how accurate it is.”

Liu Chengzong, watching with a puzzled expression, took a while to realize that his father’s scholarly eyes weren’t what they used to be. He simply said, “It’s fairly mediocre. One bolt hit the earth target; three hit and bounced off without embedding; the other six missed entirely.”

Mistakes in aim were certainly related to technique; with practice, accuracy would improve somewhat, but the lethality remained low.

“At this range, barely fourteen or fifteen paces, the wooden bolts can’t even stick in the earth target. If a bandit wore a coat, he’d likely only suffer a flesh wound.”

He was unimpressed with the repeating crossbow’s power. To put it bluntly, if he moved a few steps closer, he could have driven those sharpened wooden bolts into the target just by throwing them, as he would a dagger.

The force reminded him of when, as a boy of twelve or thirteen, he first learned archery, and Li Hongji used a small, light bow.

But the rural craftsmanship of the post house’s bowyer was crude—wrapped in ragged cloth strips and rough-looking. Yet even a mere twenty-pound draw bow could send arrows thudding into a thick wooden target with resounding impact, more forceful than this repeating crossbow.

Yet Master Liu was quite satisfied with the repeating crossbow. He walked forward, picking up and retrieving the wooden bolts, and hugged the crossbow with a smile. “It doesn’t matter if the draw is weak.”

“So long as it’s easy to use—this is only a single-braced crossbow. Perfect for women. Xingpingli has plenty of strong farmhands with strength to spare.”

“Today, I’ll go home, split all our bamboo for two- and three-braced crossbows, and have the blacksmith make a batch of iron-tipped bolts. Twenty paces.”

In the long history of crossbow use in ancient China, the weapon, like the bow, had become highly refined. With the advent of gunpowder and firearms since the Tang and Song dynasties, it gradually lost its status as a weapon of war and became common knowledge accessible to all.

The two- and three-braced structures Liu Xiangyu mentioned were ways to increase the crossbow’s power. The arms, often called wings, were made of tough, flexible wood. A single wing of ideal thickness had the greatest killing power.

But good materials were hard to find. For a balance of cost and effectiveness, multi-braced wings were more suitable. Flexible wood was used for the main wing, with shorter, gradually diminishing bamboo strips beneath—two, three, or even five or seven braces, though a seven-braced bow was too strong for one person to draw.

Such structures were rarely used on repeating crossbows, usually reserved for powerful fortress crossbows capable of firing several bolts at once.

Liu Xiangyu’s three-braced repeating crossbow was a compromise, forced by the scarcity of materials in difficult times.

“We must also make a batch of three-braced heavy crossbows. The guards have monkshood poison; we’ll prepare poisoned bolts for skilled marksmen, so that a hit is instantly fatal, or at least frightening enough to drive the enemy off.”

Liu Xiangyu set down the repeating crossbow, stroked his short beard, and said, “And with a fortified city and a hundred crossbows firing in unison, no matter how rampant the bandits, they will not disturb our Xingpingli.”

A hundred crossbows firing together?

Liu Chengzong grinned like a fox that had stolen a chicken; ‘a hundred crossbows firing together’ was surely an exaggeration, but with such a declaration, at least forty crossbows would be needed.

Forty crossbows—whether single-braced, three-braced, repeating, or heavy—meant forty operators.

And it would be a waste for burly men to use the single-braced repeating crossbows. Those were best left to half-grown youths and women. As for especially robust women and strong men, the heavy crossbows would be more suitable.

“If we’re to prepare like this, a single squad of mechanized soldiers won’t be enough. At least five squads are necessary—training crossbowmen, training crossbowmen is the way to go!”

He spoke while laughing, counting on his fingers. “Universal conscription is the only way forward.”

The crossbow was a marvelous invention. In Liu Chengzong’s eyes, it was a peerless weapon for one reason—it resembled the matchlock musket.

Despite their similarities, especially since the Chinese crossbow was essentially a bow mounted on a stock, a skilled crossbowman who hadn’t trained with the bow would still be inaccurate with it.

But it was different with the musket; a trained crossbowman could quickly master firearms with ease.

On the battlefield, the two weapons occupied similar tactical roles. In Liu Chengzong’s opinion, the musket surpassed the crossbow.

Its advantage did not lie in lethality or range—those could be set aside—but in one crucial aspect: the crossbow relied entirely on human strength.

After firing, a crossbowman’s combat effectiveness with a blade would drop; a musketeer, on the other hand, could join the infantry line and fight hand-to-hand.

That single point made all the difference.

Yet Liu Xiangyu did not respond, but stood on the edge of the hill, gazing down at the small village nestled among the mountains for a long time before finally saying, “Once the fortress is complete, we will first see to securing your and Chengzu’s marriages.”