Sui Xiong had an idea that he wanted to develop papermaking technology in this world a long time ago.
The spread of culture in this world is very slow. One of the important reasons is the lack of cheap cultural carrier-paper. Here, books are assembled into volumes using animal skin paper made from various animal skins, and the cost is extremely high. A blank book with about thirty pages costs six gold coins in a wholesale store, and the retail price is generally eight to ten gold coins.
Why are there not many mages in this world? Some people attribute this to the intelligence of ordinary people, emphasizing that only those with high intelligence can become mages. In fact, the problem is not that, but money.
A mage needs to learn at least Common Language, Ancient Elf Language, Dragon Language, Dwarf Rune Language, Celestial Language, Abyss Language, Hell Language, Mystery Language and other "common languages". And a mage who is truly proficient in languages often understands even more types of languages - for example, Satan, the mage leader of the Church of the Mask of the Void, is a mage who has just entered a high level in the past two years. He knows a total of thirty Three languages, and he is currently learning more languages—for example, this year he taught himself the language of a strange species called the Mind-Eating Monster. This species basically does not exist on the main plane, but it exists in countless worlds floating in the void. There are still quite a lot of them inside, and they are good at using mental shock to make their prey's hearts ache, hence the name "Heart-Eating".
According to him, the plan is to master more than a hundred languages.
A mage has to learn not only the language, but also the culture. Astronomy, geography, customs, biology, history... forget it, listing them all would be like cheating on the number of words. All in all, the reason why mages spend a lot of money, and the cost of "learning" accounts for a large part of it.
The main part of study expenses is the purchase of books.
Books don’t fall from the sky, you have to buy them with your own money. Or buy a blank book and copy it yourself. A senior mage often has several shelves of books, or even an entire library. what are these? It’s all money!
Why is there a relatively large number of mages in the Mystic Tower Federation? Because they have a systematic training mechanism, young people who are interested in the path of magic can spend less money to borrow books here, which greatly saves money.
Not only that, in the process of learning spells, "copying scrolls" and "copying spell books" are inevitable, and failures are common. If you fail once, you will lose at least a page of animal skin paper, or at most, a book will be completely ruined. Failed a hundred and eighty times - this number is really not much at all. In order to learn the intermediate spell "Ice Storm", poor Palin copied nearly 200 discarded scrolls, plus books, ink and Healing Potion... In the past few years, he basically spent all his salary in the stationery store.
Even if you don't consider the expenses of a mage, just to learn language and arithmetic - which is almost the minimum requirement to get rid of the title of illiterate - you will need at least thirty to fifty books. If you study law or art, you will add a zero directly after the number. Learn some more history or something... Oh, let's not count that much.
In this world where poor people generally cannot save a single gold coin a year, the cost of studying is really too huge for them to support.
So if there is papermaking technology and a large amount of cheap paper and books, maybe the culture of this world can be spread more widely, right
It is said that "knowledge changes destiny". If cultural knowledge can be popularized among the poor, maybe their destiny will be improved, right
Sui Xiong didn't know if his guess was correct, but he thought he could give it a try.
So he built himself a small experimental workshop by a river near the sea in the Ash Forest and tried to study papermaking.
"I want to think about what papermaking is like..." Sui Xiong sat next to a pile of recently felled trees, lowering his head and thinking, "I learned in history class that Cai Lun smashed up broken fishing nets, waste wood and other things and cooked them into pulp. , and then spread it flat on the cloth to dry, and it becomes paper - it seems quite simple... "
He waved his tentacles, and a big tree beside him flew up. It was crushed by an invisible force, making a crunching sound, and quickly collapsed and shattered. After a while, it turned into a ball of sawdust.
Then Sui Xiong took the river water, mixed it with sawdust, and then used magic to heat it and boil it.
The river water and trees polluted by negative energy caused thick black mist to rise during the boiling process. These black mist are not the chemical gases in the paper mills on the earth, but the negative energy that has been dissipated. Ordinary people will die if they get a little bit of it - in terms of danger, it is even more terrifying.
After boiling for a long time, the unknown thing had turned into a turbid slurry, and no negative energy was lost on it. Sui Xiong tried to take some, spread them on the linen cloth he bought in advance with magic, and then dried them with magic.
After a while, the stuff was completely dry. Sui Xiong took it off the linen and got a piece of black-green thick paper, which was hard and thick and didn't look like it could be used for writing.
"There seems to be something wrong with this..." He said to himself, "If Cai Lun had built this kind of thing back then, the emperor would have been kind if he didn't kill him. How could he still be remembered in history?"
He thought for a while, then took some of the stuff that was probably paper pulp and spread it on the linen cloth. But this time he paid special attention to spreading it thinly, and found that there were so many small pieces that it was impossible to spread it thinly.
"It's not crushed enough!" He understood immediately and used magic to crush the pulp again. This time he greatly increased the intensity of the smashing. He felt that not only wood, but also steel had turned into iron powder.
Therefore, this time the pulp was indeed spread thinly and evenly, and after drying, smooth paper was indeed obtained.
Grey-green, crumpled, soft paper that looks like it could be used to wipe your butt.
"This is toilet paper... I want to make paper that can be written on!"
He thought about it again, thinking about what else he didn't do well.
The first thing to do is get rid of the color, because what he needs is white paper.
How to remove color? filter
He tried filtering it and filtered out a lot of gray-green dirty water, but the color of the pulp did not improve significantly.
It seems that filtration is not possible, what about washing
He used magic to create some purified water, washed and filtered a small ball of paper pulp for the experiment several times. This time the color of the paper pulp was slightly lighter. If the requirements were lowered, it might be possible to use it for writing - provided that a brush was used. .
What is popular in this world is the quill pen, which uses the long feathers of birds dipped in ink to write. It is obviously impossible for this kind of pen to write on soft and rough paper, at least not the kind of paper invented by Sui Xiong.
"So... I'm going to invent ink and a brush?"
He thought about it and decided to improve the papermaking technique first.
However, as the saying goes, "When a book is used, it becomes less regrettable." By this time, his reserve of knowledge had been used up, and he didn't know how to further purify the pulp and make it whiter.
After thinking for a long time, he decided to develop a spell, a spell to purify pulp.
The essence of this spell is to absorb pigments from paper pulp, which is not particularly high-end. It only took Sui Xiong a few hours to design it, and then he spent a few more hours experimenting and perfecting it, and finally came up with his first spell in the world that could really be spread and used to leave a name. .
Sui Xiong's pulp purification technique is an entry-level spell. The spell consists of spells and runes, and the casting material is a small piece of charcoal. Using this spell, the pigments in the pulp can be extracted and turned into a thick colored colloid, and the originally variegated pulp becomes white.
After completing this spell, Sui Xiong finally got the white pulp he wanted. Using these pulps as raw materials, white paper is obtained.
However, it was still soft and crumpled paper, and it didn't look like it could be written on with a quill at all.
What's even more troublesome is that this kind of paper is obviously not conducive to packaging and storage. You can tell from the appearance that it is definitely not something strong and durable.
Sui Xiong thought carefully and tried to flatten the paper.
Smoothed out a bit, but not enough.
He thought again and tried spreading a little more pulp on the linen, then flattened it and dried it.
This time, he finally got smooth white paper.
Of course, there still seems to be a big gap compared to the blank paper on earth, but someone in the Sui Dynasty has really exhausted his talents and can't think of any improvement methods.
He tried it with a quill pen and ink, and surprisingly found that the paper would cause the ink on it to spread, making it impossible to write delicate small letters.
"Okay, next is the brush."
Theoretically, the writing brush is very simple, just choose animal hair of suitable length and tie it up, stuff it into a thin bamboo tube, and then tie it tightly.
"It's not difficult at all!"
It only took a moment for Sui Xiong to create perhaps the first brush in the world.
However, the ink absorption effect is very poor. After absorbing the ink, the writing is not continuous at all. The effect is simply embarrassing.
This one was obviously a failure.
Sui Xiong thought for a long time, and then wondered - is it because there is oil on the hair
To remove grease, you need to use soap, which is not a problem for him. Someone in this world has invented soap a long time ago - but the quality is not as good as that on earth, and the price is a little more expensive.
The animal hair is indeed much better after washing. Although it is still a bit uncomfortable to use, at least I can write smoothly.
This is enough, let users overcome the remaining problems by themselves!
Sui Xiong focused his attention on the ink again.
Ink in this world is very expensive. A small bottle costs about fifty grams and costs almost twenty gold coins. That's fine for a quill pen that consumes less ink. The quill pen consumes a lot of ink. If you use it like this, the poor may still not be able to afford it.
So Sui Xiong began to study the production of ink.
This time he failed ignominiously, but he found an alternative.
Mix a little glue with water, mix the ash, and you can write. Although the writing effect is not that good, it is still usable.
The biggest problem with this method is that you have to temporarily adjust the ink every time you use it, which is not convenient at all. But "inconvenience" is better than "nothing", right
Sui Xiong was interested in making the "ink block" that his ancestors had used for many years. He tried to glue the soot into a block, but found that this kind of ink block could only be cut and crushed for use.
Well, that's okay too...
A few days later, at the high-level meeting of Masked Void Church, Sui Xiong proudly showed off his invention.
"Look!" he told everyone, "this is something that's going to change the whole world!"