December is already the coldest time of winter.

But yin and yang embrace each other, and the coldest season will inevitably indicate that spring is coming.

After two heavy snowfalls in a row, the sky cleared, and the entire Guanzhong Plain Mountain Dance Silver Snake Yuan Chi Wax Elephant was wrapped in silver, which was extremely enchanting.

Since the incident of Yanmen Pass was stabbed above the court, the atmosphere in Xianyang has been a little dull recently, from the princes and generals to the common people, basically they don't discuss this topic easily, even if they do, they just secretly talk to three or five friends at home to guess the final result of this matter.

And Chen Xu has not cared about this matter recently, his purpose is not to leave Wang Li, and it is estimated that it will not be good in the end, as long as the Wang family does not rebel, the emperor will not move a finger, so Chen Xu expects that after Wang Ben returns, he will take the opportunity to deal with the Yanmen Pass incident to bring forward the matter of reforming the army, so as to promote his last reform to stabilize Daqin.

As long as the military reform is completed, and now that Daqin is safe and sound, it can consider starting large-scale contacts with the countries of Central Asia and West Asia, and strive to explore the situation in Europe and Africa such as Egypt and Rome in two or three years, so that Daqin's tentacles will extend to the prosperous areas of the entire earth civilization, and the Eastern and Western civilizations will begin to truly come and go, so that Huaxia will have the overwhelming initiative in the development of the earth civilization in the future, and tens of thousands of elite troops plus tens of thousands of servant armies of various princes and vassal states will rampage all the way. robbing money, grabbing land, grabbing women, trampling on everything and disobeying ...... Well, there are muskets and artillery grenades that are really unconvinced, in short, today's Great Qin is the most powerful empire on the planet, and there is no one...... Unless the West also crosses several takeaway guys at the same time.

However, this kind of thought Chen Xu only flashed in his mind, if this kind of thing really happened, then it just happened, a few people got together to get the computer out as soon as possible, and sat in the pharaoh's splendid palace to eat a handful of chicken.

Although the atmosphere in Xianyang has been a little dull recently, for Chen Xu, there are two things that make him happy one after another.

The first is that the loom that has been established for three years has made a major breakthrough, which has been successfully overcome by a group of craftsmen and craftsmen who are proficient in machinery and woodworking.

At present, Daqin weaving cloth is based on the family unit, from soaking hemp to spinning to weaving cloth is completed by the women of each family by hand, not to mention the soaking of hemp, the same spring planting and autumn harvest as grain, and do not need to deliberately manage, sprinkle seeds in the open space in front of the house and behind the house, and harvest ramie in autumn, and then soak in water, scrape the skin, clean and dry it to make it into a smooth hemp silk, and when the farm is slack, you can spin the thread, and when the twine is enough, you can start weaving.

Although the history of human weaving has been thousands of years, but the development of technology is very slow, to the current Daqin period, the common is still spindle spinning and waist weaving, and the golden cloth law stipulates that a cloth is eight feet long and two feet five inches wide, and to weave such a cloth, a skilled woman spun all day long It takes at least ten days, and rural women also have to participate in heavy farmland labor, as well as housework such as planting vegetables, cooking, washing and laundry, a housewife can only take time to spare and get up early and stay up late at night, A piece of cloth is intermittent and takes a month or two to complete.

And in the case that most families are not full, cloth as a circulation material equivalent to food, is basically used in exchange for necessities, because farmers can make money means too little, in addition to food, only cloth is a relatively stable income, so a family does not make new clothes for a few years in the countryside or even in the city is commonplace, a set of clothing patches can be worn for seven or eight years or even more than ten years, children's clothes are more economical, the eldest wears the second wear, the second wears the third wear, There are even parents who are not worn out as heirlooms, a set of clothes is worn into hemp strips and is really reluctant to discard it, all of them are ragged and look like they are called Huazi, this is the situation that Chen Xu just saw after crossing, which really made him can't believe his eyes.

At that time, after waking up from lying in a broken thatched hut with a big hole and a panoramic skylight, he grabbed the tattered strips of cloth on his body and left his mind blank for a long time, at first he thought it was a movie prop, until the thin and unsteady Xing'er ran in and called his brother, he slowly realized that he might have crossed over, because it is impossible to find a malnourished girl like Xing'er in the future, if the film crew can find it, he will inevitably be invited to tea by the police, and by the way, talk about how the crew abuses child extras.

It is not easy for poor families to weave, and it is also not easy for noble families to weave, and Qin Shi Huang in order to meet the huge supply of harem clothes, the garment department of Shaofu has a scale of thousands of people, and it is a simple loom, but this loom is only an improved version of the waist machine, in addition to using a wooden frame to liberate the fixed way from the waist of the person, the warp, weft, weft, shuttle, weft knife have not been much improved, still rely on the weaver to lift the heaval shuttle with the weft knife to lift the solid, It also takes a professional weaver about ten days to complete a whole piece of cloth.

A piece of cloth is eight feet long and more than two feet wide, and needs to be woven with a diameter of less than half a millimeter of twine, and it is necessary to repeat the same action thousands of times to weave a cloth that complies with the regulations.

And if it is silk, the yield is lower, a woman specializes in silkworm weaving, three or five horses a year is the biggest result, and in order to increase the output has to relax the warp and weft, so that the quality of the woven yarn has dropped a lot, and the price has naturally dropped a lot.

It is precisely because of the difficulty of weaving and low yield, so cloth has become a hard currency for human communication since its birth, and the nobles gave gifts between nobles during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, cloth is the most sincere item, if it is silk, it is not just sincerity, but a bloody friendship, generally only kings and top nobles are willing to take it out.

For example, the emperor rewarded Chen Xu, never rewarded linen, all of them were silk, and the cart was sent to the Qinghe Marquis Mansion, and such a car of silk dozens of horses, the value was tens of thousands of dollars, it was definitely a heavy reward, and the Manchu Dynasty civil and military were only envious and jealous, because the mulberry silk tax was under the jurisdiction of the Shaofu, and almost most of the silk finally flowed into the palace, and the princely and princely mansions also had their own channels to obtain, but the people were not allowed to wear them, and the merchants with thousands of dollars in their pockets could not do it, so they could only wear linen.

With the continuous development of Daqin's economy, grain has also increased year after year, and after the implementation of currency reform, although cloth has lost its identity as currency, the value of hard currency has not decreased, and with the increasing improvement of civilian life, the demand for cloth is increasing, the people of Daqin are not only getting better and better, but the clothing is also changing in large quantities, but the output of cloth is a serious bottleneck, and it has never been able to provide more quantity, and with the increase in grain production and the firing of cement, The demand for sacks is also increasing, so the emergence of looms will greatly alleviate the demand for cloth among the people.

With the loom, hemp cultivation will soon become a major agricultural project second only to grain production, and will bring another means of increasing income for farmers.

In a carpentry workshop outside the south gate of Xianyang City, a complex woodworking machine with a length of two zhang and a height of one zhang is placed in a closed shed.

There are several layers of bobbins densely inserted on it, each of these bobbins has a yarn through several harness ports, and then bypasses through two reverse rollers to enter the warp area, the warp area has several dense hole heald plates that can move up and down, and behind the heald plate is the shuttle plate......

Looking at this complex machine, Chen Xu's scalp was numb.

At this time, dozens of people have gathered in the factory shed, all of them are involved in the research and development of this loom craftsmen and folk craftsmen, all of them are excited and red-skinned, this machine can be placed here today, these people have been working hard for three years, at this time waiting for the acceptance of Qinghehou, once approved by Qinghehou, it will be an extremely important milestone to improve human life.

"Master Hou, this is our tenth version of the loom, after our repeated verification, this machine has completely met your previous requirements for us!" A gray-haired craftsman from the Academy of Sciences followed Chen Xu and said cautiously.

"Tenth Edition?!" Chen Xu was stunned.

"Yes, this is the tenth improved model, because the previous production is always not up to your requirements, especially the shuttle and jacquard with heald plate and kick board, it is too difficult to achieve, so we can only continue to study and improve the same, have consulted many colleagues of the Academy of Sciences and folk craftsmen, and finally superimposed these verified technologies together, and finally assembled this machine three days ago, this loom can enter the maximum of 800 warp threads at a time, and the width of the weaving cloth reaches three feet, Through the verification of two consecutive days, an hour can weave three to five feet, a weaver can weave at least two pieces of cloth a day, if the operation is skillful, get up early and go to bed late to work, three or four pieces of cloth a day can also be woven......"

"Hou Ye, you see, the most difficult is the coordination of the heald and the pedal, the previous ordinary loom has only one heald, and it is not this kind of dense hole lifting plate, which requires the cooperation of other people, but after changing to the Hou Ye said the heald board, the weaver only needs to step on the heald board, and the heald plate will move up and down the staggered warp, which makes the work of the loom much more convenient, and also saves a labor, this loom we have set up a total of four heald plates, which can weave different weaves at different intervals, if you continue to improve, you can also add more heald boards and shoeboards, It can achieve the effect of the jacquard machine that Hou Ye said at the beginning, and weave more patterns and fabrics of different thicknesses when weaving......"

"The most amazing thing is this, Master Hou, Flying Shuttle...... The shuttle is a miracle, and the shuttle is the biggest reason for improving the efficiency of weaving......"

The old craftsman took Chen Xu to watch the loom, pointing to the position of the shuttle, and was so excited that he was about to burst into tears, and the other craftsmen all looked at Chen Xu with admiration, and their eyes were full of little stars, and even the two weavers standing next to them looked at Chen Xu's cheeks flushed, and they felt like fainting while holding their hearts.