Chapter 232

Behind the battlements of the city wall, Wang Qingzhi unslung the sniper rifle from her back. This specially crafted rifle was a gift to her from Xia Huai'an. A scope was mounted on the barrel, which was also longer than that of a standard rifle, and the iron sights had been repeatedly adjusted for higher precision. The stock was wrapped in anti-slip deerskin, and a soft piece of sheepskin was padded against the cheek rest—sewn by Yufang's own hands, with the delicate characters "Ping'an" embroidered along the edges. The principle of the sniper scope was the same as that of a monocular telescope, both utilizing the "layered lens" technology of the Xia Family Village Glass Factory: precisely combining two convex lenses to magnify targets a hundred meters away by more than five times. Inside the scope tube, hair-thin crosshairs and precise ranging markings were etched; last night, she had dipped her brush in fluorite powder to trace them over and over until she could clearly locate positions even in the dim candlelight. This high-precision scope had been successfully developed by the Glass Factory only last month, and so far only a few dozen scopes had been manufactured, all mounted on the rifles of the snipers.