Li Hao quickly opened the door of the dilapidated room, and the bamboo hat and bamboo basket he was wearing were hung on the wall.
The whole house is very small and has no windows. This was not his house originally. His house is on the east side.
But in order to repay the loan sharking from a month ago, he had no choice but to sell off all his property, leaving only a torn quilt and a sheet in this abandoned house to stay for a while.
"Ten taels, one month left...One penny can stump a heroic man."
Lifting up the coarse cloth gown on his chest, he gently took out the arrow bamboo leaves wrapped with wire silkworms.
When you open the bamboo leaves, you will see that the wire silkworm inside is squirming non-stop, with its plump cylindrical body segmented one after another.
It is true that wire silkworms can be sold at a high price, but that is for others, and now he is being targeted by the eldest young master of the Shui family.
Even if this method temporarily solves the problem, it only treats the symptoms rather than the root cause.
As long as the eldest young master of the Shui family is around, he will never have a peaceful life.
And if he wants to deal with the young master who is surrounded by countless warriors in the town, he must use all means.
And the wild wire silkworm in front of us is one of them.
He gently picked up the wire silkworm with his fingers and used the light coming through the crack in the door to carefully observe this creature he had never seen before.
The head of the wireworm is oblate and small, located at the front of the body, with compound eyes on both sides, similar to the eyes of a fly.
There are chewing mouthparts under the head.
The chest is composed of three body segments, each segment has a pair of legs, which should be used to assist the mouthparts in controlling mulberry leaves.
The other abdominal and gastropods can help the body move. There is a protrusion on the dorsal side of the rear end, which is the tail horn. Through the tail horn, you can see a black spot inside.
Presumably it is the silk gland organ of the iron silkworm, which is an important organ for spinning silk.
"The entire body organ structure is no different from ordinary silkworms." After carefully observing the general structure of the wire silkworm's body, Li Hao murmured to himself.
"It's a pity that we don't have a microscope, otherwise we should know the structure of the silk gland organ."
Take out a mulberry leaf from your arms, place it on top, and let it be used.
During the meal, Li Hao placed his right thumb on the tail corner of the wire silkworm. He was stimulated and kept swinging. The muscles of his head expanded and contracted with the swing, and the liquid silkworm silk was squeezed out of the body.
Some liquid silk quickly condenses into a solid upon contact with air.
After applying a little bit of it to the thumb, he pulled it back, and a thin and long gray silk thread came out.
"This resilience..."
Li Hao was a little surprised that he pulled so fast and with a relatively large force, but it didn't break directly.
Recalling the method of making wire silkworm silk, Li Hao carefully approached the slender silk, holding a breath of hot air in his mouth, and let it out gently.
The constant temperature of the human body is around 36 degrees, so the hot air emitted from the lungs is also within this threshold.
Silk does not change in appearance at all after being exposed to heat.
"However, it has solidified."
Shaking his thumb, Li Hao noticed that the silk, which was originally as soft as catkins, seemed to be stiff at this moment.
"Is it because the temperature is not enough?"
Although it is hardened, it is still far from the rumored iron quality.
The current hardness and flexibility can only reach the level of plastic materials in previous lives.
But just like that, I want to be scary.
The structure of this silk will continue to harden as the temperature rises.
"Amazing nature."
As a master of biology, Li Hao couldn't help but admire him.
Even in the previous life, if you wanted to obtain this kind of thing, you could only produce it on a large scale during the period of industrial development.
Based on the daily output of mulberry farmers, it can be roughly inferred that Shuinan Town has at least tens of thousands of wire silkworms, and a complete breeding process has been formed.
Only in this way will a large amount of mulberry leaves be consumed every day.
Bright light flashed in his pupils, "If my guess is correct, it should be like this..."
Based on the understanding of silkworms and what is contained in mulberry leaves.
Li Hao can roughly deduce the principle. Of course, since he does not have scientific equipment such as a microscope, this speculation can only be confirmed through practice.
He repackaged the silkworms and put them on his chest. He opened the door without looking around and walked straight to a house with a chimney that was emitting green smoke. He picked up a few branches along the way.
"Aunt Zhang, can I lend you some fire seeds?"
Maybe she was right, and she didn't say anything to make up for it. Aunt Zhang also hurriedly took out two pieces of slowly burning firewood from under the burning stove.
"Xiao Haozi, I'm sorry, my aunt is too..."
Before he finished speaking, Li Hao quickly waved his hand and said: "It's okay, ma'am, I'm not that petty, and if someone targets me, it's easy to hurt you."
"These are the wild vegetables I picked, you can take them home." Aunt Zhang returned to the house, and when she came out, she grabbed a large handful of wild vegetables with both hands and stuffed them into Li Hao's arms.
"Thank you, ma'am." Li Hao nodded and thanked him sincerely. The other person was someone who had always been kind and helpful until he came to this world.
Clamping the flaming firewood with branches and holding a large handful of green wild vegetables in one hand, Li Hao returned to the back of the house.
Here, there is a large vat, a well, and a stove made of six irregular stones, which are extremely simple.
I had no choice but to use flat stones as pots and bowls.
There is some firewood next to the simple pot stove, and next to the firewood is a well.
From the moment I came here, I relied on these to complete the necessities of daily life.
First, they used the bucket tied to the well to wash vegetables, cook rice, and eat their fill.
To fill his stomach, Li Hao also grabbed a lot of soil, put it in a stone pot with a large irregular depression, and boiled it over high heat.
During this period, I continued to use wooden sticks to remove impurities.
He is going to extract flavonoids, which are minerals that are basically found in soil and are also found in mulberry leaves.
In Li Hao's opinion, there is only one possibility to turn silk, which should be composed of protein, into iron.
That is, iron silkworms do not absorb the flavonoids contained in mulberry leaves, so they secrete them together with proteins.
If protein plus flavonoids are heated, a hardening reaction will indeed occur.
To put it simply, the iron silkworm can be compared to a conversion furnace that can purify and secrete the minerals in mulberry leaves.
In order to achieve this step in modern industry, it must be fired and melted in a high-temperature furnace, but this little silkworm can achieve this by eating it.
Even because of the protein in it, silk has extremely strong and simple plasticity when it is secreted.
This provided Li Hao with a bold idea.
After more than ten years of schooling, I don’t know much about the gunpowder production process.
Coupled with this extremely malleable material, it couldn't be easier to make a very simple firecracker.
Of course, there is a necessary condition for all of this to begin, and that is whether the wire silkworm is as he suspected.
Returning to the house, the silkworms were taken out again. As a mulberry farmer, naturally there were many mulberry leaves, so they smeared mud cooked at high temperature on the mulberry leaves and released the insects into the yellow mulberry leaves.
The same stimulation method was used again.
Only this time the silkworm's tail horn sprayed not gray silk, but a pool of liquid.
"It's done!"
Li Hao's face lit up, and he pinched the small pool of liquid with his fingers. It showed good plasticity and flexibility.
This was the result he expected.
After all, it is too difficult to make a fire gun with silk. The principle of the fire gun is to use gunpowder to burn instantly in a closed space to generate explosive pressure, and the iron ball will be rushed up at an extremely fast speed.
There are always tiny gaps between the silk weaves, making it impossible to form a closed space.
It's different now. Li Hao can completely store the liquid, and when it's almost the same amount, he can shape the prototype of the firecracker with his bare hands.
As for why wire silkworms do not spit out formed silk, it is mainly because the threads are thin.
If you consume too much flavonoids, it will be difficult to avoid dilution.