Chapter 108: Cryomollis Silk

Chapter 108: Chapter 108: Cryomollis Silk

Raising Grass Worms with red mulberry leaves demanded a meticulousness no different from raising silkworms on Earth.

After eating continuously for about four to five days, the worms would stop eating, lying motionless for over a day and night to "sleep" and shed their cramped old skin. Every time they finished molting to enter a new instar, their size doubled and the amount of mulberry leaves consumed also increased exponentially.

Liam assigned the tasks of changing the worm frass, cleaning the rearing trays, and spreading mulberry leaves periodically four times a day to the two farming Robots to handle. The worm frass excreted after eating red mulberry leaves had a dark red color and radiated a mild herbal aroma; Liam had it collected separately to be sun-dried into medicinal tea and high-grade fertilizer for the fruit orchard. As for himself, every morning and afternoon he strolled leisurely out to the greenhouse to check their temperature, humidity, and growth rate.

The first batch of five thousand worms went through four molting sleeps, entering the stage of heaviest feeding before ripening by the twenty-fifth day since they were first released for rearing.

The Grass Worms at this moment were already as thick as an adult’s thumb, about seven or eight centimeters long. The strange thing was that after nearly a month of eating red mulberry leaves non-stop, their originally opaque white bodies had completely turned into a translucent ivory white like crystal; looking through the thin layer of skin, one could clearly see two silk glands running along their bodies glinting with a sparkling golden-yellow hue!

Liam stood beside the rearing tray, looking at the plump, round worms raising their heads to look for a place to climb up, unable to keep from asking Nirvana:

[Nirvana, what is that golden-yellow gland running along the inside of their bellies? Mutated radioactive toxin?]

Nirvana jumped onto the rim of the tray, its blue eyes scanning a round of data before exclaiming in astonishment:

[It is not a toxin! It is the complete opposite, host! The red mulberry leaves of a level-3 world contain pure Fire Origin energy; throughout the past twenty-five days as the Cryomollis ate them and went through four molts, the energy in the leaves automatically neutralized and expelled most of the radioactive toxin in their black veins! Right now, if you take this batch of ripened worms to cook into dishes, the content of the active Cryomollis compound is three times higher than wild worms out in the fields, while the radioactive toxin when alive has dropped to nearly zero!]

Liam was overjoyed upon hearing that: [Really? Then the therapeutic effect for that person down in the cellar and Daniel’s eldest brother will increase threefold!]

However, Liam’s joy did not stop there.

Nirvana stared fixedly at the two golden-yellow silk glands inside the bellies of the ripened worms for a few more seconds; suddenly its entire body trembled, its fluffy fur standing on end:

[Wait a minute, host! This translucent belly glinting with golden yellow... I remember now! In the encyclopedia of the S-grade ABO plane it is recorded that Cryomollis in the wild, due to lacking Fire Origin energy, remain in the state of parasitic larvae inside grass leaves for their entire lives. However, when nourished with red mulberry leaves for a full twenty-five days through four molts, they accumulate enough energy to enter the "ripened" stage, spinning cocoons to pupate and emerging as moths to lay eggs! And the golden-yellow silk they are about to spin to form cocoons is none other than the legendary Cryomollis Silk!]

Liam blinked: [Cryomollis Silk? Meaning it is identical to ripened silkworms climbing onto frames to spin silk on Earth? Is this silk used to weave silk fabric?]

[Weaving silk fabric is merely a mundane way of calling it!] Nirvana excitedly waved its claws: [Host, do you know what the greatest property of the active Cryomollis compound is? It is stabilizing pheromones and soothing rioting mental power! So think about it, if the silk thread is spun by the Cryomollis body itself after accumulating energy for twenty-five whole days, what kind of effect will it have?!]

Liam’s heart pounded wildly, a flash of light streaking through his mind:

[You mean... that silk thread also carries the properties of Cryomollis? Capable of isolating and suppressing mental power riots?!]

[100 points for accuracy!] Nirvana jumped up for joy: [Cryomollis Silk is not only soft, smooth, light as a cloud, impossible for blades, swords, and low-grade laser beams to sever, but each silk thread in itself is a natural energy-regulating conduit! In a high-level ABO world, garments woven from Cryomollis Silk are strategic protective items reserved exclusively for warriors of S-grade or above and Omegas with fragile glands!]

Liam felt his heart race with excitement upon hearing that. He saw that the worms in the trays had stopped eating completely, their bodies shortening, their skin taut, glossy, translucent as they kept raising their heads to reach up into the air—the typical sign of ripened silkworms looking for a place to build a nest—so he immediately told Gabriel and the Robots to urgently make bamboo-woven "mounting frames" divided into small square grids before placing them onto the shelves.

The ripened worms had barely been picked up to be released onto the bamboo mounting frames when they quickly found a suitable square corner for themselves. They began raising their heads to wave back, forth in a figure-eight pattern, spinning out the first silk threads to shape the cocoon frame.

Beneath the biological lights of the greenhouse, each silk thread, as fine as mist yet glinting with a warm pale golden-yellow hue, was spun out continuously without pause. This process of spinning silk to form cocoons lasted for three whole days, three whole nights straight.

By the morning of the fourth day, when the worms inside had drawn out the very last thread of silk and lay still to enter the pupation process, the bamboo mounting frames were packed full of five thousand oval cocoons as large as hen’s eggs, radiating a gentle light like miniature lanterns.

Liam stood inside the greenhouse, able even to feel the surrounding air grow extraordinarily tranquil and soothing; all the heaviness of his pregnant belly that had neared the seventh month automatically melted away the moment he stepped into this space.

Liam selected one thousand of the largest, roundest, most beautiful cocoons, dividing the ratio of male cocoons and female cocoons evenly to set aside in the breeding area. After waiting another ten to twelve days for the pupae inside to turn into moths, bite through the cocoons to crawl out, mate, and lay eggs on sheets of coarse paper, he would have a completely self-sufficient source of breeding stock for future batches without needing to depend on wild thorny weeds anymore.

As for the remaining four thousand cocoons, he decided to send them in for silk reeling right before the moths bit through the ends of the cocoons to sever the continuous silk thread!

Liam immediately called his older sister Isabella, who was at the weaving mill on the Mason family’s industrial planet, telling Isabella to bring a high-precision spinning machine over to Cygnus for a trip.

When Isabella and her boyfriend Sebastian arrived at the greenhouse on planet Cygnus and saw the four thousand cocoons glowing brightly on the bamboo mounting frames, both of them stood frozen like wooden statues.

"Liam... This thing... was really spun out by those fat grass worms that you have been raising for the past month?!" Isabella held a weightless cocoon in the palm of her hand, her voice trembling with disbelief.

The feel of the cocoon was soft, warm as though possessing life; the moment it touched her skin, it caused her D++-grade mental power to well up with a pleasant, refreshing sensation, while all the eye strain from staying up late drawing design patterns melted away.

"It really is them." Liam smiled until his eyes narrowed into slits, pointing at the hot water basin beside them that had already been adjusted to the standard temperature of eighty degrees Celsius: "Use the spinning machine to try drawing silk from this first batch of cocoons to see how the thread quality is. I already told the Robots to use micro-point ultrasonic waves to separate the live pupae inside first through a microscopic slit at the pedicel joint of the cocoon to keep the active compound intact for medicine; the spiral structure of the cocoon shell remains intact, guaranteeing that a continuous silk thread thousands of meters long can be drawn out."

The eyes of fashion designer Isabella immediately lit up brightly. She skillfully adjusted the parameters of the micro-spinning machine, dropping the golden-yellow cocoon shells into the hot water basin to soften the outer layer of biological sericin gum, then used a small brush to find the root silk ends before hooking them onto the winding reel.

The winding reel of the machine began to spin steadily.

Each slender yet unbelievably tough silk thread was drawn out of the cocoons one after another, stretching over one thousand two hundred meters long without snapping once. When seven single silk filaments were plied together into one complete silk thread wound onto the bobbin, the entire spool of silk looked as though woven from moonlight blended with early morning sunlight, carrying a pure ivory-white hue while flowing with a luxurious golden-yellow luster.

Sebastian stood beside her; originally a former soldier sensitive to protective materials, he could not hold back his curiosity, reaching out a hand to test holding a length of silk that had just been plied. He tried using the strength of both hands of a B-grade Beta to pull hard toward both sides, even drawing the alloy dagger at his hip to test slicing a line across it.

The thread-thin silk filament did not snap at all beneath the sharp blade; on the contrary, it stretched slightly before cutting a deep mark into his tactical protective glove!

"Its tensile strength and cut resistance are on par with the B-grade alloy fiber used to make scout armor!" Sebastian drew in a breath of cold air, exclaiming in shock: "Yet it is lighter, more breathable, and a hundred times softer than climate-control fiber fabric!"