Earlier, some officials had already advised Guo Peng not to conduct such detailed and frequent censuses of the population and acres of land in the localities, which would put great pressure on the grassroots.

Recording data requires a large number of recording carriers, but these things are very lacking.

Whether it is bamboo slips, silk books, or paper, the price is not cheap, it cannot be used on such a large scale, it is used too much, and it is inconvenient to store it.

In the past, bamboo slips could be reused, and when you made a mistake or needed to update, you could use a carving knife to scrape off the words that had been written before, and then continue to write.

Now, in order to compare the authenticity of the data, such behavior is not allowed, so the department that makes the bamboo slips can only make the bamboo slips thinner and thinner to reduce costs.

However, this will increase the time required to make bamboo slips, and make the bamboo slip manufacturing workshop tired.

Tian Feng, who is also in charge of the Ministry of Works, has repeatedly expressed the hope that Guo Peng will consider this issue, but Guo Peng did not listen, but reprimanded Tian Feng for not doing things well.

Whenever there is a war or when it is necessary to mobilize manpower and material resources, it is still mandatory for the local government to conduct a detailed and comprehensive census of the population and the number of acres of land. In normal times, the census is prescribed every three years, and there must be no mistakes.

Tian Feng was worried about this,

This financial expenditure is very high, and the pressure on the Ministry of Industry, the local government is also very great, and the pressure on the grassroots officials is even greater, and they run up and down all day to deliver news, which is unspeakably miserable.

However, Guo Peng said that population and land were of great significance to the empire's finances and military, and that all materials came from population and land, and that if they could not be fully understood, the imperial court would make mistakes in implementing its policies.

Whether it is an emperor or an official, you must have a good idea of how much population and land you control, and you can't be confused.

Otherwise, if the decision is wrong, the whole country will suffer, and it will even cause social unrest and starve to death.

Rather than making the people suffer and starve, shouldn't you, the officials who have the country's bounty, do something to help?

Did I give you so many benefits so that you could be a lord?

If you can't do it, get out of here!

There is no need to drink tea in the government to care for the elderly!

Guo Peng set strict rules for supervising and lazy administration, using a large number of central officials to conduct data statistics, and came up with a very rudimentary and primitive concept of big data.

Based on the comparison of data from all parties, it is possible to make judgments on the data aggregated to the central government.

The method of judging is also very simple.

Once there is a large difference between a certain data in a certain place and the average data of surrounding counties and villages, or a longitudinal comparison of the past data of the area in which it is located, and a large difference is found, it can be immediately judged that there is a problem in this place.

As soon as the problem was judged, Guo immediately ordered people from the central government and the imperial history platform to form a picket group, and immediately set off to the local area to investigate the matter.

Basically, through this kind of inspection, the problem is checked one by one, and the central picket group is sure to find out a batch of rice worms that eat rice and do nothing or deliberately conceal the existence of problems.

This set of big data oppression from the central government is full of power and has never been seen before, so that the oppressive power of the central government has penetrated into the grassroots level like never before, making the grassroots officials in the Central Plains and Hebei regions with developed transportation tossed by the central government.

Guo is everywhere in their opinion, no matter what, he can find out the problem, and he can't be lazy and do something.

They're really hard.

But it doesn't matter, Guo is very confident and never worries that these people will pick and choose, because they can't let go of their tempting power and benefits.

They know that there are still many people who are staring at them and waiting to replace them, and the eyes of those people who are staring at them are red, and they can only be obediently squeezed by the central government and Guo someone.

It's wonderful.

Guo Peng's request is like this, but the consumption of bamboo slips is really large, the price of silk is too expensive, and the output of paper is very low, so the pressure on the financial situation is indeed very great.

This is a fact, after the financial statements of each quarter are reported, the expenditure on the writing carrier is an astronomical amount, and it is no wonder that Wang Cang and Tian Feng always have to come over to complain to Guo Peng.

Up to now, the handling of the Shouyang Mountain Lecture Hall and the teaching scale of 500 people have made the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Finance finally can't help but raise this matter again.

Wang Cang and Tian Feng jointly signed the table and asked Guo Peng to reduce the use of bamboo slips and reduce the frequency of using writing tools, so that everyone can take a breath, the local pavilion needs to take a breath, and the central government also needs to take a breath.

That's too much money, and the finances are running out.

Well, it looks like it's pretty much it.

Guo then realized that the time had come.

It's time to start replacing bamboo slips with paper.

I didn't force this, you took the initiative to ask for me.

Don't blame me.

In fact, when Guo Peng went to Luoyang to study, he had already found that the rich families in Luoyang at that time were very popular in using a kind of paper made in Qingzhou.

This kind of paper has been greatly improved compared to Cai Lun's paper back then, and of course it is not very easy to use.

Guo Peng also used it back then, whether it was writing, or painting ink landscape paintings, the use experience was not very good, the ink absorption ability was relatively poor, and it was very expensive.

Later, with the passage of time, the paper from Qingzhou has been greatly improved.

The texture is getting better and better, of course, the price is getting more and more expensive, and the people who can use it are still upper-class scholars and rich local tyrants.

Later, before and after the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a kind of paper called Zuobo paper became inexplicably popular in Luoyang.

According to Guo Peng's inquiry, in Donglai County, Qingzhou, a papermaker named Zuo Bo stood out and mastered the great papermaking process, and the quality of the paper he made surpassed all local paper.

Therefore, it is naturally sought after by literati and ink writers.

Cao Cao, who was an official in Luoyang at the time, once wrote a letter to Guo Peng on Zuobo paper, and after Guo Peng read it, he felt that the difference between this Zuobo paper and the paper he made of bamboo was not very big.

Of course, it is still very expensive, and Cao Cao specially wrote to Guo Peng with Zuo Bo paper to complain about the high cost of Zuo Bo paper.

But during this period, Guo Peng can clearly feel it.

After his arrival in Luoyang and before the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the number of people who used paper to write and use paper in Luoyang City increased.

In those years, there was a clear leap forward in the production and quality of paper.

However, this leap was dealt a heavy blow after the Yellow Turban Rebellion, especially after the second Yellow Turban Rebellion in the Zhongping period, and the war and population loss caused a countercurrent in the writing culture, and bamboo writing became the mainstream again.

The reason is very simple, Qingzhou was the hardest hit area during the two Yellow Turban Rebellions.

Especially in the second Yellow Turban Rebellion, the Qingxu Yellow Turban occupied almost the entire Qingzhou, and in the past few years, the local life order was completely disrupted, and the paper industry was naturally interrupted, and it was impossible to continue to produce paper.

Qingzhou was the papermaking center of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and when Qingzhou was in chaos, the entire Eastern Han Empire began to lack paper on a large scale, so it naturally had to pick up bulky bamboo slips and expensive silk again.

The historical process of paper writing was interrupted, and even retraced began.

After Guo Peng became the pastor of Qingzhou, he spent more than a year sweeping away the Yellow Turban in Qingzhou, re-settling Qingzhou, stabilizing the social order, rebuilding Qingzhou under his control, and gradually turning Qingzhou into a paradise in troubled times.

So since then, there have been people who have fled Qingzhou and returned to settle in their hometowns in Qingzhou.

Zuo Bo is one of them.

It was too late for him to return to his hometown, before Guo Peng and Lu Bu fought a decisive battle, he returned to his hometown, and after Guo Peng defeated Lu Bu, Zuo Bo went to Guo Peng and asked Guo Peng to allow him to re-start the manufacture of Zuo Bo paper.

Only then did Guo Peng think of this Eastern Han Dynasty papermaking giant that he had forgotten.