Wanting to engage in papermaking in this world was an idea that Sui Xiong had a long time ago. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

One of the main reasons for the slow spread of culture in this world is the lack of cheap cultural carriers - paper. Here, books are assembled from hidement paper made of various animal skins, and the cost is simply perverted. A blank book, about thirty pages, costs six gold coins in a wholesale store, and the retail price is usually eight to ten gold coins.

Why are there not many mages in this world? Some people blame it on the intelligence of ordinary people, emphasizing that only those with high intelligence can become mages. In fact, the problem is not about money.

A mage needs to learn at least the "common languages" such as lingua franca, ancient elves, dragons, dwarven runes, celestial, abyssal, infernal, arcane, and so on. And a mage who is truly proficient in languages often knows more languages - for example, Satan, the mage leader of the Void Masquerade Church, a mage who has just stepped into the upper echelons in the past two years, knows a total of thirty-three languages, and is still learning more languages - For example, this year he taught himself the language of a strange species called the Mind Eater, which is basically absent in the main plane, but is still quite distributed in countless worlds and worlds floating in the void, and they are good at using mental shocks to make their prey heartbroken, hence the name "Heart Eater".

According to him, the plan is to master more than 100 languages.

It's not just the language that a mage has to learn, it's also the culture. Astronomy, geography, customs, biology, history...... Forget it, if you list them all, it's very suspicious of cheating the number of words, all in all. The reason why mages spend so much money is that the cost of "studying" accounts for the majority of it.

And the main body of learning expenses. It's the purchase of books.

Books don't fall from the sky, you have to spend your own money to buy them. Or buy a blank booklet. Write it yourself. A senior mage will often have several shelves of books, or even an entire library. What are these? It's all money!

The reason why there are relatively many mages in the Mystic Tower Federation is because they have a systematic training mechanism, and young people who are interested in the path of magic can spend less money borrowing books here, which greatly saves money.

Not only that, but in the process of learning spells, "copying scrolls" and "copying spell books" are inevitable, and failure is commonplace. If you fail once, you will lose a page of vellum paper. Many books are directly soaked in the soup. One hundred and eighty failures - this is really not a lot at all, and poor Parin has nearly two hundred scrapped scrolls in order to learn the intermediate spell "Ice Storm", plus books and ink, and healing potions...... In the past few years, he has basically spent all his salary in the stationery store.

Even without taking into account the expenses of the mages, at least thirty or fifty books were needed to learn the language, writing, and arithmetic, which was almost the minimum requirement to get rid of the title of illiteracy. If you want to learn a little more about law or art, you have to add a zero to that number. Learn a little more history or something...... Alas, don't count so much.

In a world where the poor are common, a family may not be able to save a single gold coin a year. The cost of studying is really too large for them to support.

So if there was papermaking, and there was a lot of cheap paper and books, maybe the culture of this world would be able to spread more widely, right?

It is said that "knowledge changes destiny". If cultural knowledge could be spread among the poor, perhaps their fate would be improved.

Sui Xiong didn't know if his conjecture was correct, but he felt. You can try.

So he built himself a small experimental workshop by a river near the sea in the ash forest. Try to study papermaking.

"I want to think about what papermaking is like......" Sui Xiong sat next to a pile of freshly cut trees, looking down in thought. "I learned in history class, it was Cai Lun who smashed the broken fishing nets and scrap wood and boiled them into pulp, and then spread them out on the cloth to dry, and then they became paper--it seems to be quite simple......"

With a wave of his tentacle, a large tree flew up beside him, crushed by an invisible force, making a creaking sound, and quickly crumbled and shattered, and in a short time it turned into a ball of sawdust.

Then Sui Xiong ingested the river water, mixed it with wood chips, and then boiled it with a spell.

The river water and trees polluted by the negative energy rose up a thick black mist during the boiling process. These black fogs are not the chemical gases in the paper mills on the earth, but the negative energy that is dispersed, and ordinary people can die if they touch it - in terms of danger, it is even more terrifying.

After boiling for a long time, the mass that I didn't know what to count had turned into a muddy slurry, and there was no negative energy dissipated on it. Sui Xiong tried to take some, spread them out on the linen cloth he had bought in advance with a spell, and then dried them with a spell.

After a while, the stuff was completely dry. Sui Xiong took it off the sackcloth and got a thick piece of black-green paper, hard and thick, which did not look like it could be used for writing.

"There seems to be something wrong with this......" he said to himself, "If Cai Lun had made this kind of thing back then, the emperor would have been kind if he didn't kill him, how could he still be famous in history?"

He thought for a moment, then took some more from the mass of what was probably pulp, and spread it out on the sackcloth. However, this time he paid special attention to spreading it a little more carefully, and it turned out that there were many small pieces, and there was no way to spread them very finely.

"It's not enough to smash!" he suddenly understood, and used his spell to shatter the pulp again. This time he greatly increased the intensity of the crushing, and he felt that even steel had turned into iron powder, not to mention wood.

As a result, the pulp was indeed spread very thinly and evenly this time, and after drying, it did get a flat paper.

Gray-green, crumpled soft paper that seems to be used to wipe your butt.

"It's toilet paper...... I'm going to make paper that I can write on!"

He pondered again, thinking about what else he had not done well.

The first thing to do is to remove the color, because what he needs is white paper.

How do you get rid of the color?

He tried to strain it, and filtered out a lot of dirty gray-green water. But there was no significant improvement in the color of the pulp.

It seems that filtration is not working, what about washing?

He used spells to create some pure water. A small ball of pulp used for experiments was washed and filtered several times, this time the color of the pulp was slightly lighter. If the requirements were lowered, it might be possible to use it for writing - provided that it was done with a brush.

The most popular thing in this world is the quill, that is, the long feather of a bird dipped in ink to write. Obviously, it is impossible for this kind of pen to write on soft and rough paper, at least not on this kind of paper invented by Sui Xiong.

"So...... I'm going to invent ink and brushes?"

He pondered for a moment and decided to improve the papermaking technique first.

However, as the saying goes, "the book is less when it is used", by this time, his reserve of knowledge has been exhausted, and he does not know how to further purify the pulp and make it whiter.

I thought about it for a long time. He decided to develop a spell, a spell to purify the pulp.

The essence of this spell is to absorb the pigment from the pulp, and it is not particularly high-end. It only took Sui Xiong a few hours to design it, and then a few hours to experiment and refine 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, an entry-level spell, the spell is composed of spells and runes, and the casting material is a small piece of charcoal. Use this spell to extract the pigment from the pulp. It turns into a viscous colored colloid, and the original 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's still soft, crumpled paper, and it doesn't look like a quill can write on it.

What's more troublesome is that this kind of paper is obviously not good for packaging and preservation. Just look at the shape and you know it's definitely not something sturdy and durable.

Sui Xiong thought about it carefully. Try to flatten the paper a bit.

Smoothed out a bit, but not enough.

He thought again. Try spreading a little more pulp on the linen, then flattening it and drying it.

This time, he finally got a smooth white paper.

Of course, there seems to be a big gap compared to the blank paper on the earth, but Sui has really exhausted his talents, and he can't think of any means to improve it.

He experimented with a quill and ink, and unsurprisingly found that the paper would spread the ink on it, making it impossible to write delicate small print.

"Well, next is the brush. ”

The brush is theoretically very simple, that is, the appropriate length of animal hair is bundled, stuffed into a thin bamboo tube, and then tied firmly.

"It's not difficult at all!"

It only took a moment for Sui Xiong to make perhaps the world's first brush.

However, its ink absorption effect is very poor, and after absorbing ink, it is not continuous at all when writing, and the effect makes people want to scold their mother.

This is clearly a failure.

Sui Xiong thought about it for a long time, and then wondered - is it because there is oil on the hair?

To remove the grease, it is necessary to use soap, which is not difficult for him, and there are people in the world who have invented soap for a long time - even if the quality is not as good as that on earth, and the price is slightly higher.

After washing, the animal hair is really much better, although it is still a little difficult to use, but at least it can be written smoothly.

That's it, and let the users overcome the rest of the problems!

Sui Xiong set his sights on the ink again.

The price of ink in this world is very expensive, a small bottle of about fifty grams, it costs almost twenty gold coins. For the quill, which consumes less ink, it is not enough, the brush is a big eater of ink, and if it is used in this way, it is estimated that the poor still cannot afford to use it.

So Sui Xiong began to study the manufacture of ink again.

This time he shamefully failed, however he found an alternative.

Mix a little glue with water and mix the soot to write. Although the writing effect is not so good, it can be used anyway.

The biggest problem with this method is that the ink has to be temporarily mixed every time it is used, which is not convenient at all. But "inconvenient" is better than "no", isn't it?

Sui Xiong had the intention of creating an "ink block" that his ancestors had used for many years, and he tried to glue the soot into a block, but found that this ink block could only be cut and crushed.

Well, that's fine......

A few days later, at a high-level meeting of the Church of the Void Masquerade, Sui Xiong triumphantly demonstrated his invention.

"Look!" he said to everyone, "this is something that is going to change the whole world!" (To be continued.) )