Spring is brilliant, warm and cold.

In this spring, although all kinds of creatures have long been devoted to the short and eternal course of life with incomparably vigorous energy, the heavenly lord is not very beautiful.

In spring, when even the laziest locust trees have already pulled out their leaf buds, the temperature begins to fluctuate like a roller coaster.

Fortunately, the ground is warm, and the lowest is about 10 degrees Celsius, and even cold-blooded insects can barely tolerate it. Only some people with weak physique will unfortunately be eliminated in this season full of vitality.

Today is a slightly cold day, and many insects choose to hibernat, but a large group of ants did not honestly nest in the warm underground nest, but climbed onto this tall, large, long-standing poplar tree.

This is an army of ants, a newly formed army of the Divine Envoy King under the command of the protagonist, and the commander is the Praying Tiger. They are on a mission.

The goal of the mission is a beehive at the top of the tree.

This poplar tree is a poplar tree near the entrance of the nest of "Dongyang City". The beehive in the tree is also an old acquaintance of the protagonist.

The idea of this hive was played by the protagonist a long time ago, when he mainly wanted to obtain some bee eggs and domesticate them as mounts for the Flying Knight. In addition, some honey was available as a substitute for honeydew, which was scarce at the time.

However, bees are no more than ordinary insects, they are very similar to ants, they have a social structure, and each bee will become the most fearless warrior when the nest is attacked.

The protagonist was not sure that he would be able to achieve enough results with low casualties, and the fly mounts were still up to the task, and the aphid colony was growing steadily, so the protagonist dismissed this unrealistic idea.

What prompts the protagonist to make up his mind again is the technological progress of the Divine Envoy King Legion.

After the copper smelting experiment, "Dongyang Castle" excavated a new copper smelting blast furnace again, improved the copper outlet, and finally obtained a small amount of copper that could be used.

But the problem is that the ants don't have the means to process the copper that has been refined.

Ants process stone tools to find gravel blocks of the right size and shape, or heat large pieces of gravel and sprinkle water to break them, and then find suitable pieces. Then keep sharpening to get tools like gravel knives.

However, this process is not suitable for processing copperware, and the copper block will only melt when heated, and will not crack into a suitable shape, and the polishing efficiency is also very low.

In the human world, bronze objects are generally cast.

At first, the protagonist also wanted to learn from this method, for example, the mold for making copper knives can cast a large number of finished products at one time, which is not only efficient, but also standardized.

The commonly used mold casting method is the lost wax method.

The lost wax method, also known as the "dewaxing method" and "investment molding method", is a precision casting method used for metal objects made of bronze and other materials. The lost wax method is a major creation of the early metal civilization, which occupies an important historical position in the metallurgical history of the East and the West, and plays an important role in promoting the evolution of casting technology.

The general method is to make a model of the casting with beeswax, and then fill the clay core with other refractory materials and apply the outer fan. After heating and baking, the wax model is all melted and lost, making the entire casting model an empty shell. Then pour the molten liquid into it, and it will be cast.

The advantage of the lost wax method is that it can cast castings with complex shapes, and the casting utensils are exquisitely clear and have a hollow effect. In addition, raw materials such as wax can be reused, which also reduces costs.

The principle of lost wax casting technology originated from the incineration method, which is more primitive than the lost wax method, which is to incinerate and destroy the wax and other fillers inside, which is very wasteful. The Chinese incineration method was first seen in the middle and late Shang Dynasty, and this technology gradually died out after the advent of the lost wax method.

The history of China's lost wax method can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the earliest bronze cast by the dewaxing method is the Chu Gongwang Xiong Shenyu, in addition, the cloud pattern copper ban unearthed from the Chu tomb in Xichuan Xia Temple and the bronze plate of the tomb of Zeng Hou Yi in the Warring States period unearthed from the Suizhou drum pier are also typical artifacts made by the lost wax method. From the Han and Tang dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the lost wax method was inherited and carried forward by generations of craftsmen, and it has endured for a long time, and until now, it is still a commonly used bronze casting technique.

In the West, the lost-wax method also has a long history, and ancient civilizations in Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt and other places have used the lost-wax method to cast ornaments and small devices around the middle of the third millennium BC or earlier, earlier than in China. In ancient Greece and Rome, a large number of lifelike statues were cast using the lost-wax method, and the craftsmanship is still impressive.

The biggest and most important difference between Chinese and Western lost wax methods lies in the preparation method of the wax material used and the production technique of the wax model, which also affects the process and even the artistic style of the casting.

The traditional wax material in China is composed of beeswax (or insect white wax, paraffin), rosin and vegetable oil (or butter and sheep fat), which are composed in different proportions according to climatic conditions.

When preparing, wax, rosin and oil are put in turn in a heated container, and stirred into a paste while melting; After a little cooling, take it out and repeatedly pull it to become a suitable wax.

This technological measure is of decisive importance. The plasticity of the multiphase system composed of solid dispersed phase and liquid dispersed medium is determined by the dispersion degree and uniformity of distribution between the solid phase and the liquid phase when the composition is constant. Through repeated mechanical pulling, the solid wax is fully mixed with the liquid rosin and oil, and the color changes from dark yellow to light yellow, becoming a wax with excellent plasticity, which can be twisted and bent at will, rolled into sheets, pinched into stems, and kneaded into strips under pressure.

With such good plasticity, the caster has a great deal of freedom to operate, depending on the situation and needs, or it can be shaped by hand (hence the term "pinched wax"), or shaped with a "pick" (commonly known as "wax picking"), or pressed into shape with a wooden template ("wax stripping").

In other words, the wax model production of the traditional Chinese lost wax method is made in a solid state using wax material processed by a special method.

The Western lost wax rule is to use wax and rosin to prepare wax, and a small amount of animal and vegetable oil must be added to improve plasticity. Wax molds are formed by casting, enameling or brushing with liquid or semi-liquid wax, and some of the wax is pressed into sheets and attached to the inside of the mold, and the details are mostly processed with the help of engraving.

Regardless of the Chinese and Western lost wax methods, a large amount of wax is required. And in nature, although wax is not rare, at the moment the protagonist has very limited options.

This forced him to set his sights on this nest of long-coveted bees.