When Liu Tan returned to the study, Gungun had already found a comfortable place to lie down, like a bear rug.

Liu Tan looked at it, then looked at Miao Rui who was holding the panda lantern frame behind him, and decided to make a different kind of lantern.

Otherwise, the speed at which he works here cannot keep up with the speed of the rolling destruction, and he would probably be angry to death.

Liu Tan thought about it and decided to cook a fish. While he was cooking the fish, Gun Gun was picking bamboo shoots beside him.

Basically, he was building the skeleton over there, and rolling behind it: snap, snap.

He pasted paper on the skeleton and rolled it behind it: snap, snap.

When he finished the lampshade, the sound of rolling was still going: clicking.

Liu Tan faced the eating broadcast scene head-on and made himself hungry. In the end, he simply threw away the food and squatted beside Gun Gun to start eating snacks, while petting the cat.

I don’t know if it was because Gungun led him to eat too much, but Liu Tan finished a plate of snacks without realizing it. When he reached out to touch the plate and found it was empty, he was completely dumbfounded.

He looked at Gun Gun and felt deeply that he couldn't let Gun Gun be around when he was working in the future. Otherwise, when Lu Xuan came back, he might be too fat that the other party wouldn't recognize him!

In the end, Liu Tan had no choice but to bear the pain and let someone take GunGun away before he could continue.

After finishing, he discovered a very serious problem - this fish lamp was pure white.

In Liu Tan's imagination, the Lantern Festival should be a river of colorful lanterns gathered together, which is brilliant at first glance.

It was a pity that the lanterns he had made now ruthlessly shattered his idea. When he thought of the whole city being filled with white lights converging into a river, he felt a little sick. It was too easy to associate it with bad things, such as the whole city being in mourning.

When it comes to coloring lanterns, the easiest two options are probably black and red. Black is self-explanatory, while red is achieved through the use of cinnabar.

It's not that cinnabar can't be diluted into various red colors, but it doesn't look good at first glance if they are all the same color.

As for other colors, Liu Tan thought that even if he wanted to make so many colorful lanterns with his own financial resources, he would probably be poor by the time he finished.

He thought about it. Pigments were not easy to find nowadays, but the easiest thing was probably to dye the paper. He didn't really need to paint anyway, so any color could be found on plants. For example, yellow could be tried with turmeric. Indigo had been around for a long time and could be adjusted by color matching. Purple could be made with comfrey.

Once you have these colors, you can basically make the simplest lantern.

Red is the easiest color to get, so he just made a golden-red koi. Not only was the whole body red, but the edges of the scales on its body were outlined with gold, and there were also golden dots in the middle. The gold was of course made of gold powder. Anyway, he was rich and could do whatever he wanted.

The result was indeed quite good. Liu Tan admired it for a while, and then made a special oil lamp out of clay so that it could be placed inside the lampshade.

When Liu Tan was doing this, he specifically warned, "Don't tell anyone."

It was okay for others, but Huo Guang couldn't know about it, otherwise he would say he was playing in the mud.

After Liu Tan made a suitable oil lamp base, the koi had already dried. After covering it, it looked very bright even in the daytime.

At night, the oil lamp was lit inside, and the whole goldfish emitted a red light from the inside out, with golden reflections on the surface, which looked really luxurious.

Liu Tan felt very satisfied after walking around and planned to make something else, such as flowers.

Whether Liu Che was touring the northern border or opening the trade market, the weather was already very cold. The originally beautifully designed gardens might not be so attractive. With these lanterns as embellishments, they would be much more beautiful.

Liu Tan placed the koi lantern in the yard and went back to sleep, preparing to design something else the next day.

As a result, when he opened his eyes the next day, he heard Miao Rui cautiously say, "Your Highness, the fish yesterday..."

Liu Tan was washing up at the time. After hearing this, he asked, "Fish? What fish? Oh, you mean the fish lantern? What's wrong?"

Miao Rui said, "The fish lantern... is burned."

Liu Tan was so startled that he almost swallowed a mouthful of mouthwash. He quickly spit it out and asked, "Burned? How did it burn?"

Miao Rui said, "No one was guarding it last night. By the time we found it, the lampshade was already on fire. We tried to save it but it didn't. I have already detained everyone. What will Your Highness do with it?"

Miao Rui knew that it was the product of Liu Tan's hard work, which kept Liu Tan busy for several days. Not to mention the lamp base, which took half a day to make and two days to dry. Not to mention the lampshade, which was all drawn by Liu Tan stroke by stroke.

Liu Tan was sober after washing up. He waved his hand and said, "No need. Let them go. It has nothing to do with them."

When he just woke up and his mind was not working properly, his first reaction was naturally how could he have a fever?

After I woke up, I remembered that the lampshade was made of paper, and it was very thin paper, and the inside of the lampshade was airtight. If the lampshade didn't burn when the temperature got high, who would?

Liu Tan asked someone to bring the burned-out koi lantern over. The koi lantern now looked completely different from the exquisite beauty it had last night.

Even if it wasn't completely burned, more than half of it had been burned, and the remaining half had been blackened.

Liu Tan was not surprised. The main reason he wanted to look was to see the lamp holder below.

Not to mention, the lamp holder he made is quite sturdy. Although it was burnt black, it only looks ugly on the outside, and there is no problem inside.

Liu Tan let out a long sigh and felt a little worried. It is now known that ancient lanterns are basically paper lanterns, and the inside of the lanterns are also filled with candles, lamp oil and other things. So the question is, how are those papers treated to make them fireproof?

Leaving openings to ensure air circulation doesn't seem to work. What if the fire burns even brighter because of the wind?

So it is best to focus on paper. As for using other fire-proof materials... that is possible, but if you want to make a lampshade, you can only use crystal.

He could afford to use it in Liu Che's palace, but he could only use it in the Changshou Palace. He also wanted to make it a signature lantern festival!

He locked himself in the study and thought about the burnt paper. He felt that if someone wanted to tamper with the paper, it would definitely not be the production process, but the processing should be done after the paper was finished.

That is to say, brush a layer of fire-retardant material on the surface of the paper.

Fire prevention... Liu Tan suddenly remembered that when his palace was being built, a layer of tung oil was applied to the painted roofs, on the one hand to fix the color and on the other hand to prevent fire.

Liu Tan immediately asked someone to get some paper and brush it with tung oil, and then test the fire-proof ability of the tung oil after it dried.

The paper brushed with tung oil becomes less transparent than before, but it is not only fireproof, but can even repel water.

During the production process, just brush a layer of tung oil on the inside, then paint on the outside, and then brush another layer of tung oil after the painting is finished.

This time, Liu Tan didn't do it himself, but asked someone to do it directly. As for what it should look like, he had already drawn the pattern.

After they were made, they were placed in the yard. Since most of them were red, they looked really prosperous.

Liu Tan held the lotus-shaped lantern and excitedly wanted to put it into the palace's pool to see if he could put it in. However, as soon as he put it in, the lantern sank to the bottom without hesitation.

It was only then that he remembered that the bottom of the lantern was a clay lamp base, which was equivalent to adding a stone to the paper lantern, so it would not sink in water!

Miao Rui looked at Liu Tan cautiously and asked, "Your Highness, do you not like it?"

Liu Tan said with great melancholy, "What a mistake."

If a lantern wants to float on water, it must be very light, or it must be made entirely of paper.

In this case, it is not impossible to put an oil lamp inside, but it may not be stable enough because the shape of the oil lamp makes it easy for it to overflow.

It’s not impossible to change the shape, but candles are probably the safest choice.

Liu Tan felt even more melancholy when he thought of this. He had already made oil paper for the lanterns, and now he needed candles.

In fact, there were candles at that time, but they were very scarce. Even Liu Tan only had a few given to him by Liu Che.

Because most candles nowadays are natural candles, secreted by wax insects, it goes without saying how precious they are.

It is obviously inappropriate to use such rare candles to make lanterns, and modern candles will produce extremely heavy black smoke when lit.

This means that although candles are precious, not many people actually like to use them.

In later generations, paraffin wax was mainly used to make candles. However, paraffin wax is a by-product extracted from petroleum, which is definitely not available now. So there are only two options - beeswax or animal fat.

To make beeswax, you need to raise bees. In the current environment of the Northern Country, it is not completely impossible, but it is definitely a loss.

Why use candles when there are cheaper oil lamps?

Candles were not popularized until the Tang Dynasty and appeared in the poems of literati, but they were not truly popularized until the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Because at that time people had gradually started to use oil to make candles, but even if the oil was used for food, it was much better than making candles, so it was basically only available to high-ranking officials and nobles.

But Liu Tan had no other good idea, so he could only start with oil and fat. Anyway, he had money, so he could do that first.

If there is really no other way, you can also make the storage for lamp oil into a sealed oil pipe, put a lamp cord in the middle, and put it in like a candle.

However, even if thin bamboo or wood is used to make the lamp tube, it still has a certain weight and is far less convenient than a candle.

What's more, all the bamboo in the Northern Kingdom is in his panda garden. If he competes with GunGun for bamboo, that pampered guy will probably be pissed off to death.

After much thought, Liu Tan decided to start with oil and fat. At worst, he could promote the animal husbandry industry. The main reason why the animal husbandry industry cannot be promoted now is that the animals are fed with natural food and take a long time to grow. Ordinary people have to invest huge amounts of money before generating income, which is a very difficult thing for most people.

Liu Tan didn't have any good ideas, so he simply stopped thinking about it and focused on the candles, starting to think about how to make them with oil.

Oil is usually in a fluid state and will only solidify when the temperature is low. However, the solidified state is relatively soft and is far from the quality of a candle.

Therefore, it must be hardened by other means.

The first thing Liu Tan thought of was to add alkali.

However, after he added alkali to the oil to obtain hardened oil, he suddenly realized something: isn't this the legendary saponification?