The next morning, the sun rose with its usual, blinding persistence, scorching the cracked earth of the Shaanxi plains.
Li Dao Xuan had barely rubbed the sleep from his eyes and crawled over to the craft box when he witnessed a scene of high-octane verbal domesticity. San Shier was standing in front of Gao Yiyi's workshop, giving the blacksmiths a piece of his mind.
"Li Da! Gao Yiyi! You two useless, rice-guzzling loafers!"
San Shier stood with his hands on his hips, his finger practically poking their noses as he vented.
"The Great Dao Xuan Tianzun commanded you to forge iron armor. It's been over half a month! When the rebels swarmed us a few days ago, you managed to produce exactly two suits of Liangdang armor. Two! What use are you to the Tianzun? When you're stuffing your faces with the food He provides, do you not feel even a flicker of shame?"
The lecture was brutal, and the two blacksmiths turned a deep shade of guilty red. Behind them, several new smiths who had migrated from Wang Village, Zheng Village, and Zhong Village hung their heads in collective embarrassment.
Finally, Gao Yiyi found his voice. He kept his head bowed, looking like a student who had forgotten his homework.
"This... this isn't really Master Li Da's fault. The Tianzun told him to focus on those strange new firelocks. The armor was my job. I just... I didn't think the bandits would actually show up so soon, and certainly not in those numbers. I only finished two sets of Liangdang armor because I was spending so much time studying different plating techniques. I've forged plenty of individual plates, I swear! I just haven't had the time to assemble them into full suits."
The newcomers chimed in with their own apologies.
"We've been following Master Li Da's lead, sir. We've hammered out piles of iron plates, but we haven't linked them yet."
San Shier snorted, clearly unimpressed by the "I have the parts but not the bike" excuse.
"Don't try to pull a fast one on me. You have plates? Fine. Show me."
Gao Yiyi scurried back into his hut and emerged a moment later carrying a large winnowing basket. It was indeed filled to the brim with iron plates of varying shapes and sizes, shoulder guards, arm bracers, chest pieces, all waiting for a final home.
"If you have this much ready," San Shier demanded, "why aren't they assembled?"
Gao Yiyi scratched his head, a sheepish, awkward grin plastered on his face. He struggled to find the words.
Li Da stepped in to save his colleague.
"Mr. San, it truly is our failure. First, we underestimated the speed and scale of the rebel threat. We thought the Gao Village Family wouldn't need heavy armor for a while, so we got complacent. Second... well, we're missing the essential materials needed to join these plates together."
The Village Chief, who had been drifting nearby to eavesdrop, chimed in.
"The Tianzun gave you mountains of iron! How can you be short on materials? Is there not enough metal?"
Li Da shook his head.
"The iron is plenty, but a suit of armor isn't made entirely of metal. Think about it, Chief. If we linked these plates using only iron rings, the weight would be astronomical. Our boys wouldn't even make it to the battlefield. The armor would crush them into the dirt before they took ten steps."
The Chief blinked. "Then what do you use?"
"Cotton," Li Da replied simply.
Inside the box, the word was "cotton," but for Li Dao Xuan watching from the outside, the lightbulb went off immediately.
"Cotton," or more accurately, cotton cloth.
He vaguely recalled reading in a historical archive that surviving examples of Ming Dynasty armor were almost never pure iron. They all utilized cotton cloth to some degree, with the iron plates being riveted or sewn onto heavy fabric backings. Some armors used more cotton than iron, famously known as cotton armor.
Compared to traditional iron suits like lamellar or chainmail, cotton armor was superior in almost every way for this era. It was significantly lighter, preventing soldiers from collapsing of heatstroke or exhaustion before the fight even started. It was cheaper to produce, easier to maintain, and didn't rust into a useless hunk in the rain. Most importantly for the North, it provided excellent insulation against the freezing winters and offered surprisingly high resistance against early firearms.
Seeing Li Da's explanation, San Shier's expression softened. The anger drained out of him, replaced by a practical frown.
"If you're short on cotton cloth, you should have said so! I would have arranged a caravan to take some of our flour to the county seat and trade for it."
Li Da and Gao Yiyi scratched their heads again, looking like absolute goons.
"We just didn't think the rebels were that close. We weren't in a rush to speak up."
"Good grief!" San Shier groaned, shaking his head. "Utterly, fundamentally... stupid!"
Up above, Li Dao Xuan found the whole exchange hilarious.
I actually have an old cotton-padded jacket I was planning to throw away, he thought. Maybe I could pull out some cotton and give it to them?
But then a technical question stopped him.
If I put a cotton fiber in there and it scales up 200 times in thickness, would it be too coarse to weave?
He paused, thinking back on all the items he had introduced to the craft box. The rules of this miniature world weren't as simple as "everything gets big."
He realized that microscopic details, things invisible to the naked eye, didn't seem to scale the same way.
For example, when he gave them cabbage leaves, the fibers didn't become 200 times thicker. If they had, the little people wouldn't have been able to chew them. The same went for the structure of eggs and rice. If atoms or molecules grew 200 times larger, the chemical properties of everything would collapse into chaos. And if the bacteria in the water had grown to the size of insects, the pond would be a literal horror show.
He had a hunch.
Microscopic things like bacteria, molecules, and even fine fibers didn't increase in size by 200 times. Instead, their quantity increased proportionally to make the overall object larger.
There's only one way to find out, he thought.
Li Dao Xuan marched over to his wardrobe and fished out an old, beat-up cotton jacket. He found a small hole in the lining, reached in, and yanked out a fistful of white, fluffy cotton.
Gently, he lowered his hand into the box and dropped the fluff right in front of the arguing group.
San Shier was in the middle of calculating travel times to the county seat when the sky darkened for a split second.
A massive cloud of white fluff drifted down from the heavens, landing softly in front of Gao Yiyi.
The crowd froze.
It was a mountain of cotton, literally the size of a small house.
"The Tianzun has provided!" they shouted in unison.
Everyone immediately dropped to their knees to offer their thanks.
San Shier finished his kowtow and scrambled up, reaching out to the house-sized cotton ball. He plucked a small tuft from the side and rolled it between his fingers. His eyes lit up with professional excitement.
"This celestial cotton... it's magnificent! So white, so fine, and the fibers are incredibly long!"
Up above, Li Dao Xuan smirked.
Well, obviously. That's premium Xinjiang long-staple cotton. It's a variety introduced from the Soviet Union in 1955. You won't find anything like that in the Ming Dynasty for another few centuries. Of course it looks like magic to you.
His experiment was a success.
The fibers themselves hadn't become thick like ropes. They remained fine and delicate.
This confirmed his theory. Items in the box didn't just grow. They became denser, packed with more microscopic components.
With the fiber quality verified, the mountain of cotton became a gold mine.
San Shier clutched the long-staple cotton and turned to the Village Chief with a wide grin.
"Chief! Go and gather every woman in the village! Anyone who knows how to spin and weave has a job to do. We're going to be busy!"
The Chief looked at the massive pile of white fluff, his heart swelling with joy.
"At this rate," he whispered, "I think every person in this village is going to get a brand new set of clothes!"