Early the next morning, the sunlight was as sharp as ever.
Li Daoxuan had just gotten up when he saw Sanshier standing at Gao Yiyi's doorway, shouting.
"Li Da! Gao Yiyi! You two freeloaders who only eat and don't work!"
Hands on his hips, Sanshier pointed at their noses.
"The Celestial Honored One ordered you to forge armor. Half a month passed in the blink of an eye, and when bandits attacked a few days ago, you only produced two lamellar vests. What's the point of you? Don't you feel ashamed eating the Honored One's food?"
The two blacksmiths really did blush at that. Behind them, several blacksmiths from Wang Village, Zheng Village, and Zhong Village also looked embarrassed.
After a long moment, Gao Yiyi stepped forward and bowed his head.
"This wasn't Master Li's fault. The Honored One told him to create some strange new firearm. The armor order was mine. I… honestly didn't expect real bandits to come, and in such numbers. So I only made two pieces and spent the rest of the time slowly learning new forging techniques. We made many armor plates… but didn't assemble them."
The new blacksmiths echoed him:
"We were learning armor forging under Master Li as well. We made piles of plates, but none are assembled."
Sanshier snapped,
"Stop making excuses. You have all these plates? Bring them here."
Gao Yiyi went inside and returned with a large basket full of armor plates—different shapes for shoulders, arms, chest, and more.
Sanshier frowned.
"If you made this many, why not assemble them?"
Gao Yiyi scratched his head awkwardly, unable to answer.
Li Da stepped in.
"Sanshier, it's true this was our fault. First, we truly didn't expect the bandits to come so soon, or so many. We thought Gaojia Village wouldn't need armor yet. Second… we're missing materials needed to join the plates together."
The village chief wandered over.
"The Honored One gave you so much iron. You're missing materials? Did you run out of iron?"
Li Da shook his head.
"The iron is enough. But armor isn't made entirely from iron. If it were all iron, it'd be so heavy soldiers would be crushed before reaching the battlefield."
The chief blinked.
"Then what do you need?"
"Cotton," Li Da replied.
Li Daoxuan immediately understood—cotton cloth for binding and padding.
Sanshier's expression relaxed; he wasn't as angry now.
"If you needed cotton cloth, say so earlier! I could've sent people with flour to the county to trade for some."
Li Da and Gao Yiyi scratched their heads again.
"We didn't expect the bandits to come so fast, so… we didn't rush to report it."
"Useless!" Sanshier groaned.
"Utterly useless."
Listening from inside the chest, Li Daoxuan suddenly grinned.
Wait—I have an old cotton coat I don't need. I could just pull out some cotton for them.
But then another thought struck him.
If cotton fibers enlarge two hundred times, can they still be used to weave cloth?
He paused.
No… something is strange here.
Thinking back to everything he'd put into the chest, he realized the rules weren't simple. If microscopic things—fibers, molecules, bacteria—expanded 200× like apples and bowls did, then nothing would function normally. Food would be inedible, water undrinkable.
He suddenly understood:
Micro-scale things didn't enlarge. They multiplied.
The chest increased quantity, not particle size.
Only one way to confirm.
Li Daoxuan dug out his old cotton coat, reached into a torn seam, grabbed a clump of cotton, pulled it out, and gently placed it into the chest's world.
Just then, Sanshier was still trying to figure out where to buy cotton—when a massive cloud-like bundle drifted down from the sky, landing before Gao Yiyi.
Everyone stared. It was huge—like half a house.
Clearly, a gift from the Celestial Honored One.
They all knelt to thank him.
Sanshier stood up, plucked a handful from the mountain-sized cotton, and rubbed it between his fingers in amazement.
"Heavenly cotton! So fine, so soft, so long!"
Li Daoxuan smirked to himself.
Of course. That's high-quality long-staple cotton from Xinjiang. Ming Dynasty has never seen anything like it.
The fibers were still thin—unchanged. Which meant his guess was correct: micro-scale fibers didn't enlarge; the chest simply created more of them.
Sanshier grinned ear to ear.
"Village chief! Go call all the women who know how to weave. We've got work to do!"
The chief was already beside himself with joy.
"With this much cotton… our whole village might get new clothes!"