Sui Xiong had wanted to make paper in this world a long time ago.
The spread of culture in this world was very slow, and one of the main reasons was the lack of cheap cultural carrier — paper. In this world, books were made of various kinds of animal skins, and the cost was extremely high. A blank book with about 30 pages would cost 6 gold coins even in wholesale stores, and the retail price would usually be 8 to 10 gold coins.
Why were there not many mages in this world? Some people attributed it to the intelligence of ordinary people, and emphasized that only those with high intelligence could become mages. In fact, the problem was not this, but money.
A mage needed to learn at least the common language, ancient elf language, dragon language, dwarf rune language, heaven language, abyss language, hell language, arcane language, and so on. A mage who was really proficient in languages often knew more kinds of languages — for example, Satan, the leader of the mages of the Church of the Void Mask, a mage who had just become a senior mage two years ago, knew a total of 33 languages, and was still learning more. For example, this year, he learned the language of a strange species called Mind Devourer, which basically didn't exist in the Main Plane, but was distributed in countless big and small worlds floating in the void. They were good at using mental attacks to make their prey feel pain, and that was how they got the name "Heart Devourer."
According to him, the plan was to master more than 100 languages.
Mages needed to learn not only languages, but culture was also a big part of it. Astronomy, geography, local customs, biological history … Forget it, if he listed all of them, it would be a waste of words. All in all, the reason why mages spent so much money was because of the cost of "learning."
And the main part of learning expenses was the purchase of books.
Books didn't fall from the sky, and they had to be bought with their own money. Or they could buy blank books and copy them by themselves. A senior mage often had several shelves of books, or even an entire library. What were these? They were all money!
Why were there so many mages in the Mifata Federation? It was because they had a systematic training mechanism that young people who were interested in the path of magic could spend less money to borrow books here, greatly saving money.
Not only that, in the process of learning magic, "copying scrolls" and "copying magic books" were inevitable, and failure was also common. Every time he failed, he would lose at least a page of animal skin, and at most, he would lose a book. Failure a hundred and eighty times — this number was really not much at all. Poor Palin, in order to learn the intermediate spell "Ice Storm", had copied nearly two hundred scrolls, plus books, ink, and healing potions … In the past few years, he had basically spent all his salary in the stationery store.
Even without considering the expenses of being a mage, just learning language and arithmetic — which was the minimum requirement to get rid of the title of illiteracy — would require at least thirty to fifty books. If he wanted to study law or art, he would have to add a zero after that number. Learn some history or something … Sigh, don't bother too much.
In this world where the average poor family might not even be able to save a single gold coin a year, the cost of studying was too huge for them to support.
Therefore, if there were papermaking techniques and large amounts of cheap paper and books, perhaps the culture of this world would be able to spread even more widely, right?
It was said that "knowledge changes fate". If cultural knowledge could be spread among the poor, perhaps their fate could be improved?
Sui Xiong didn't know whether his guess was correct, but he felt that it was worth a try.
So he built a small experimental workshop for himself by a river in the Ashes Forest near the sea and tried to study papermaking techniques.
"Let me think about what papermaking is like …" Sui Xiong sat next to a pile of freshly cut trees and lowered his head to think. "I learned in history class that Cai Lun mashed broken fishing nets and waste wood into pulp, and then spread them on cloth to dry in the sun. That's how paper was made — it seems quite simple …"
He waved his tentacles, and a big tree beside him flew up and was crushed by an invisible force. It made a creaking sound and quickly collapsed into pieces. After a while, it became a ball of sawdust.
Then Sui Xiong took the river water, mixed it with the sawdust, and used magic to heat it up.
The river water and trees were polluted by negative energy, and in the process of boiling, a thick black fog rose up. This black fog was not the chemical gas in the paper mills on earth, but the dispersed negative energy. Ordinary people would die if they touched a little bit of it — in terms of danger, it was even more terrible.
After boiling for a long time, the unknown thing had turned into a muddy paste, and there was no longer any negative energy leaking from it. Sui Xiong tried to take some of it, spread it on the linen he bought in advance with magic, and then dried it with magic.
After a while, the thing was completely dry. Sui Xiong took it off the linen and got a piece of dark green thick paper, hard and thick, which didn't look like it could be used for writing.
"It seems that something is wrong …" he said to himself, "If Cai Lun made this kind of thing, it would be kind of the emperor not to kill him. How could it still be recorded in history?"
He thought for a while, took some from the thing that was probably pulp, and spread it on the linen. But this time he paid special attention to spread it more carefully, and found that there were many small pieces, and there was no way to spread it very carefully.
"It's not crushed enough!" He suddenly understood, and used magic to crush the pulp again. This time he greatly increased the strength of the crushing, and he felt that even steel would become iron powder, let alone wood.
So, this time the pulp was spread very thin and evenly, and after drying, it was indeed flat paper.
It was dark green, wrinkled, and seemed to be soft paper that could be used to wipe one's butt.
"This is toilet paper … I want to make paper that can be used to write!"
He pondered again, thinking about what he did not do well.
First of all, he had to remove the color, because he needed white paper.
How to remove the color? Filter?
He tried to filter it, and filtered out a lot of dark green dirty water, but the color of the pulp was not very obvious improvement.
It seemed that filtering would not work, but what about washing?
He used magic to make some clean water, and washed and filtered the small ball of pulp used for the experiment several times. This time the color of the pulp was a little lighter. If the requirements were lowered, maybe it could also be used to write — provided that, he used a brush.
The popular brush in this world was the feather brush, which was to write with the long feathers of birds dipped in ink. This kind of brush obviously could not write on the soft and rough surface of the paper, at least the paper invented by Sui Xiong certainly could not.
"So … I have to invent ink and brush?"
He pondered for a while and decided to improve the papermaking technique first.
However, as the saying goes, "When you need to learn, you will regret not having enough." At this time, his reserve of knowledge had been used up, and he did not know how to further purify the pulp and make it whiter.
After thinking for a long time, he decided to develop a magic, a magic to purify the pulp.
The essence of this magic was to absorb the pigment in the pulp, which was not particularly advanced. Sui Xiong only spent a few hours designing it, and then spent a few more hours experimenting and perfecting it. Finally, he came up with the first magic in this world that could really be spread and used to leave his name.
Sui Xiong's Pulp Purification was an entry-level magic. The magic was composed of incantations and runes, and the casting material was a small piece of charcoal. Using this magic, the pigment in the pulp could be extracted and turned into a sticky colored gel, and the original color of the pulp would become white.
After completing this magic, Sui Xiong finally got the white pulp he wanted. Using this pulp as the raw material, he got white paper.
However, it was still soft and wrinkled paper, which did not look like it could be written on with a quill at all.
What was more troublesome was that this kind of paper was obviously not good for packaging and preservation. Judging from its appearance, it was definitely not something strong and durable.
Sui Xiong thought carefully and tried to press the paper flat.
It was a little smoother, but not enough.
He thought again and tried to spread a little more pulp on the linen, then pressed it flat and dried it.
This time, he finally got a smooth white paper.
Of course, compared with the white paper on the earth, it seemed to be a big gap, but Sui Xiong was really out of ideas and could not think of any improvement methods.
He tried with a quill and ink, and not surprisingly found that the ink on this kind of paper would spread, so it was impossible to write delicate small characters.
"Well, next is the brush."
The theory of the brush was very simple. It was to choose the appropriate length of animal hair to tie it up, put it into a thin bamboo tube, and then tie it firmly.
"It is not difficult at all!"
It only took a moment for Sui Xiong to make what might be the world's first brush.
However, the ink absorption effect was very poor. After the ink absorption, the writing was not continuous at all, and the effect was so bad that he wanted to curse.
This was obviously a failure.
Sui Xiong thought for a long time and then wondered, "Is it because of the grease on the hair?"
To remove the grease, it needed to be washed with soap, which was not difficult for him. Some people in this world had already invented soap, but the quality was not as good as that on the earth, and the price was slightly higher.
After washing, the animal hair was really much better. Although it was still a little difficult to use, at least it could be used to write smoothly.
This was enough, and the rest of the problems would be solved by the users themselves!
Sui Xiong looked at the ink again.
The ink in this world was very expensive. A small bottle was about 50 grams, and it cost about 20 gold coins. It was okay for the quill, which consumed less ink, but the brush was a big ink consumer. If it was used like this, it was estimated that the poor could not afford it.
So Sui Xiong began to study how to make ink.
This time he failed very shamefully, but he found an alternative.
He mixed a little glue with water, mixed the ash, and then he could write. Although the effect was not so good, at least it could be used.
The biggest problem with this method was that he had to mix the ink at the last minute every time he used it, which was not convenient at all. But "inconvenient" was better than "no", wasn't it?
Sui Xiong wanted to make the "ink block" that his ancestors had used for many years. He tried to use glue to stick the ash into a block, and found that this ink block could only be used by cutting and crushing.
Well, this could also work …
A few days later, at the high-level meeting of the Church of Void Mask, Sui Xiong proudly showed his invention.
"Look!" he said to everyone, "This is something that will change the whole world!"
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