Chapter 155 Traveling Through the Middle Ages 155

Chapter 155 Crossing the Middle Ages 155

"We can wait if there isn’t one," Louisa explained to Helena. "This isn’t something urgent. Auniō hasn’t even started its own silk production yet! The current silk output is low—at least, it won’t be too late to find a good opportunity after Prince Guillaume and I return to West Island."

"Of course, doing this as soon as possible is always good. Auniō’s silk industry is just starting, and the more money and workers it attracts, the brighter its future will be."

Louisa wasn’t in too much of a hurry, but the news of this plan spread ahead of time. As always, there were always people around Louisa and Guillaume, so their words and actions were never secrets. Some matters were too significant to discuss openly, while others, trivial yet gossip-worthy, spread quickly.

Louisa’s plan to promote Auniō silk by wearing dresses made from it at major events wasn’t especially gossip-worthy. However, Auniō was a small town with little news to talk about, and with Guillaume’s royal visit, he and Louisa became the center of attention.

Even the smallest details were worth discussing, so it was no surprise that this matter spread.

Unrelated listeners didn’t think much of it—at most, they felt Louisa truly lived up to her reputation of caring about commerce and industry while being remarkably approachable. Going out of her way to help a few small silk merchants was far more involved than simply issuing orders for others to handle.

"Ah, Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Consort is truly..." Yang Weir, upon hearing the news, was so moved he could hardly speak. Still young, he lacked the ruthless drive of seasoned merchants and was more sincere in his emotions. His gratitude at this moment was genuine.

Xia Pengjie, standing beside him, wasn’t as easily swayed by emotions, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful. He understood better how Louisa’s actions could benefit Auniō’s silk industry and added, "Her Royal Highness is incredibly thoughtful, hinting at a method to put Auniō silk on the map! With her support, Auniō silk might even command luxury silk prices..."

Higher profits would undoubtedly attract more merchants to invest in Auniō’s silk industry—though that was still uncertain and far off. But at the very least, the current silk merchants stood to make a substantial, quick profit—assuming Louisa’s influence was as vast as the rumors suggested.

Overall, Xia Pengjie leaned toward believing the rumors. Since the grand wedding celebration of Louisa and Guillaume, thanks to guests from all over, many stories had spread. Even a remote southern town like Auniō had heard plenty.

The tales exaggerated Louisa’s influence to unbelievable degrees, but after meeting her in person, Xia Pengjie understood completely. His experience told him that some people were simply different. He had once encountered a similar figure in Rolancy during his youth—a patriarch of a great merchant family whose charisma was overwhelming.

Meeting such people was mesmerizing. Attention naturally gravitated toward them, and their words carried extraordinary persuasiveness. It wasn’t just about appearance—that Rolancy patriarch hadn’t been particularly handsome, just an old man. It was an aura, a presence shaped by demeanor, gaze, and bearing.

Louisa had a similar aura, likely tied to her double life. Beyond her noble birth, status as an heiress, and beauty, what truly set her apart was her past life as a modern person.

She carried a distinctly modern air, coupled with an unshakable sense of alienation, melancholy, and loneliness from never fully belonging to this world. This made her inexplicably captivating, drawing eyes toward her simply because she stood out.

With this foundation, her beauty and other qualities amplified her influence, making those who noticed her watch her more intently—almost like the girdle of Venus.

"...Since Her Royal Highness is helping us so much, we ought to thank her again," Xia Pengjie said after some thought. While gratitude was genuine, his deeper motive was to strengthen ties and stay in Louisa’s memory. Even if no future opportunities arose, having her remember Auniō silk would be worthwhile.

No one objected, but to avoid annoying the Crown Princess with repeated thanks, Xia Pengjie went alone this time, accompanying a prominent local to the palace. The audience was originally the dignitary’s, and Xia Pengjie planned to stay silent, only expressing thanks afterward.

Everything went as planned—until, to his surprise, after his effusive thanks, Louisa didn’t dismiss him. Instead, she seemed in a talkative mood, inviting him to stay for refreshments while discussing Auniō’s silk industry.

Louisa outlined her support strategies and reassured him, "This should help Auniō’s silk industry flourish. Don’t worry about newcomers eating into your profits. Look at Rolancy—its silk industry has grown for years without slowing down."

"The more silk is woven, the greater the reputation, and the bigger the business becomes!"

This was both reassurance and a precaution against the common tendency of early industry players to shut out newcomers. Unlike those who preferred limiting competition, Louisa wanted the industry to expand, supporting more families.

Her goal wasn’t just enriching a few merchants—she genuinely believed this industry could sustain many households.

"...If Auniō’s silk production succeeds, I’ll teach you a technique to outdo Rolancy’s silk makers," Louisa added casually, hinting at a future edge without revealing details.

This wasn’t an empty promise. She had in mind the "cocoon-drying method," a technique popularized in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Silk production was, undeniably, a harsh process.

It required boiling cocoons to kill the pupae inside before they could hatch and ruin the silk. The cocoons were then spun into thread for weaving.

Silkworms were raised in spring and summer when mulberry leaves were plentiful. While they could eat other leaves in winter, this often harmed silk quality. Only mulberry leaves ensured top-quality silk—unless you didn’t care for quality at all.

All of this is quite understandable, but it raises a question. Did ancient textile workshops really shut down in autumn and winter, leaving their machines idle and sending the weavers home until the next silkworm-rearing season?

That’s clearly impossible!

Or perhaps they gathered large quantities of cocoons during spring and summer, then reeled and wove them after the season ended?

This sounds like a good solution, but in practice, it doesn’t work. Silkworms across regions spin their cocoons within a concentrated period of just a few days, and once cocooning begins, experienced silkworm farmers must carefully monitor them. To obtain high-quality silk, the timing of cocoon harvesting is extremely strict—neither too early nor too late.

Even if one settles for ordinary silk rather than the finest quality, there’s still a time constraint… After a few days, the silkworms will pupate into moths and emerge! By then, the cocoons become completely unusable!

Thus, harvesting cocoons is inevitably a race against time. Raising too many silkworms often results in an overwhelming workload that simply can’t be completed in the short window available—sericulture is typically managed by individual households. Even if they work harder and raise more silkworms, the cocoon-harvesting phase isn’t something that can be rushed through with extra effort. It’s a task where even an extra pair of hands wouldn’t be enough!

Hiring additional labor isn’t feasible either. In regions where sericulture is practiced, virtually every household is busy with it. When cocoon harvesting is at its busiest, every family is equally occupied—where would one find experienced workers to hire? This isn’t a job that can be done by just anyone unfamiliar with the craft.

This is somewhat similar to how everyone knows cash crops like dye-producing safflower or indigo are highly profitable, yet no one can dedicate all their land to them. Aside from some cash crops being unsuitable for continuous cultivation and requiring heavy water and fertilizer inputs, the most critical issue is that they demand a large workforce during key growth periods!

In comparison, staple crops are far less labor-intensive!

Historically, to resolve the contradiction between the limited cocoon-harvesting window and the year-round demand for silk, the solution was to extend the storage life of cocoons.

In this regard, ancient China made early attempts. During the Han Dynasty, methods like shade-curing and sun-curing were used, but these only extended storage by a few days at most while significantly degrading silk quality. These methods were employed purely out of necessity!

Yet, they were still used—which shows how vital cocoon preservation was to the silk industry.

As technology advanced, the salting method became popular during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. This involved salting cocoons, sealing them in jars, and burying them underground. The silkworm pupae would die inside the cocoons without contaminating the silk, keeping the cocoons fresh for later use, indistinguishable from newly harvested ones.

However, the salting method had many drawbacks: complex procedures, high losses if failed, and significant costs—ten pounds of cocoons required two liang of salt (~75g). While this may not seem like much, the cumulative expense was substantial. In fact, some later Chinese dynasties even established special "cocoon salt" reserves—salt specifically levied by the imperial court for official textile institutions to preserve cocoons.

While the salting method marked significant progress over shade-curing and sun-curing, its flaws remained glaring. Eventually, it was replaced by the steaming method, which had its own detailed procedures but centered on—as the name suggests—steaming the cocoons to kill the silkworms before drying and storing them.

The drying method emerged shortly after the steaming method and coexisted with it for a long time, though it was relatively more advanced (given how slowly knowledge spread in ancient times, superior techniques often took years to disseminate widely, especially if some families kept them secret as hereditary skills).

Compared to steaming, the drying method was less dependent on weather conditions. Steaming required immediate drying afterward, which was highly weather-dependent, whereas drying eliminated this step (since "drying" was inherently part of the process).

It wasn’t until sericulture entered the industrial era that the drying method was replaced—though it remained common in household production. Even then, it wasn’t truly obsolete, as the industrial process still essentially involved drying, just with more efficient machinery replacing traditional cocoon-drying stoves.

With the drying method, people could raise silkworms without restraint! There would be no fear of being unable to process them in time. Moreover, transforming fresh cocoons into storable form via drying stoves required minimal labor and was cost-effective.

This meant that large quantities of silkworms could be raised in spring and summer, limited only by the availability of mulberry foliage or other fodder. The dried cocoons could then be reeled at a more leisurely pace, spun into yarn, and supplied to weaving workshops year-round… This was a massive boost to productivity!

As for whether the Near East or Luolanxi had similar drying techniques—definitely not.

The knowledge of sericulture spread from the East before the Tang Dynasty, long before the drying method was developed. Given that it was acquired through espionage, it was likely incomplete—they might not even have known about the salting method! As for independently inventing such techniques, unless by sheer chance, the scale and prevalence of sericulture in the Near East and Luolanxi made it unlikely for such innovations to emerge naturally among laborers. From what Louisah had observed, no such "stroke of genius" had appeared yet.

Louisah was confident that with the "drying method" as a trump card, Aunio’s silk industry could grow exponentially, with production costs undercutting Luolanxi’s competitors… giving them a competitive edge.

Moreover, the drying method reminded Louisah of the silk floss quilts she had made. Pausing thoughtfully, she added, "I won’t teach you this technique yet—it depends on how well you perform and whether you prove worthy of support. If not, another suitable city could become the silk industry hub… For now, focus on planting more mulberry trees. Otherwise, once sericulture begins, there may be a prolonged shortage of mulberry leaves."

"However, while I can’t share this technique, I can introduce another profitable avenue to diversify your downstream industry… Gina, could you fetch a silk floss quilt? Just the batting, without the cover." Thinking a physical sample would make her point clearer, Louisah turned to Gina.

Gina brought a silk floss quilt wrapped in natural-colored linen, quilted in lozenge patterns. Louisah snipped the edge of the linen to reveal the fluffy, soft silk floss inside.

"Light, soft, and exceptionally warm—far superior to wool blankets or fur bedding," she declared. This wasn’t just her opinion; everyone who had used silk floss quilts agreed, so she spoke with confidence.

Xia Pengjie hefted the quilt cautiously, acknowledging that its lightness was undeniable. As someone familiar with silk, he quickly realized the batting was made from silk floss, grasping Louisah’s intent.

He started doing mental math: how many cocoons went into a single quilt, and at what price it would need to sell to turn a profit… The economics seemed doubtful, given that silk thread production barely met existing demand. Unless the quilts commanded premium prices, there’d be little incentive to produce them.

With his years of business experience, he didn’t believe silk quilts could normally fetch such a high price.

Louisa guessed his thoughts from his expression. She had someone put away the silk quilt and said leisurely, "Silk quilts aren’t made from reeled silk but directly from cocoons—usually poor-quality, defective, or soiled ones. The proportion of such cocoons isn’t low. I’ve heard it’s lower in the Silk Kingdom, but in the Near East, about a third of cocoons fall into this category, and Roland should be similar."

"The Silk Kingdom has ways to utilize most of those cocoons, weaving them into relatively low-quality silk. From what I hear, the Near East and Roland don’t have this technique. There, they either crush these cocoons to stuff into fabric casings for bedding—same material, but nothing like a real silk quilt—or sell them to paper mills to produce special types of paper."

"Though I don’t know the Silk Kingdom’s techniques for spinning and weaving those cocoons, I can teach you how to make silk quilts. You could even start this business now by purchasing unusable cocoons from the Near East and Roland—I imagine the price would be very low."

"Ship them back to Auvnio and turn them into high-end bedding for the market… You don’t need me to spell that out, do you?" Seeing Xia Pengjie listening intently, Louisa smiled slightly and asked.

Xia Pengjie was no fool. With such a clear path laid out before him, how could he not take it? He immediately replied, "Yes, My Lady! I understand completely!"

After answering, Xia Pengjie felt a surge of excitement. He knew a little about the waste cocoons from silk reeling but had never paid much attention—some byproducts in production were normal. He had assumed that once sericulture developed in Auvnio, they could simply follow how their counterparts in the Near East and Roland handled such waste.

It never crossed his mind that silk quilts were a thing—a way to make good use of silk wadding without mastering the Silk Kingdom’s advanced techniques. Perhaps it wasn’t as efficient as weaving low-grade silk, but this simpler method was far more suitable for Auvnio, where the silk industry was just beginning and lacked the capacity for cutting-edge technology.

Yes, a "simple method." He had examined the silk filling closely earlier. Even if he couldn’t immediately grasp how cocoons were transformed into such light, fluffy silk, he could tell the process wasn’t particularly refined—it reminded him of the wool industry, where tools like bows were sometimes used to fluff wool before carding it.

Whether a process was refined or not could often be sensed intuitively.

Later, when Louisa explained the method of making silk quilts, it confirmed his intuition: Boil the cocoons, clean them, cut them open, remove any undeveloped moths, then stretch multiple cocoons over a frame to form melon-sized silk pouches. Finally, these pouches were pulled and stretched.

A single pouch, once cut open and stretched into a thin, translucent layer, would be layered on a platform until the desired thickness and weight for a quilt were achieved. The process wasn’t exactly delicate—newcomers might stretch it unevenly or rip the silk. But like anything, you’d get the hang of it.