Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 190: Chapter 60

Bringing paper-making technology to this world was an idea Sui Xiong had long ago.

The spreading of culture was very slow. One of the crucial reasons was that there was a lack of cultural carrier: paper. Here, the books were compiled into booklets with papers made with various beast skins, hence the incredibly high cost. A blank booklet for about 30 pages would at least cost six gold coins in the wholesale store, while the retail price normally cost eight to ten gold coins.

Why aren’t there many mages in this world? Some of the people laid the blame on the commoners’ brain power, emphasised that only people who were highly intelligent could become a mage. Actually the problem wasn’t that, but the money.

A mage would at least need to learn the common language, ancient elven language, dragon language, dwarven runes, heavenly language, Abyss language, h.e.l.l language, mystery language and the other “common languages.” A true mage that was proficient in languages, normally knew even more different languages. For example Void Mask Church’s mage group leader, Satan, was a mage that had just gotten into the higher order in the recent two years. He knew 33 languages in total, and was learning more languages then. For instance, that year, taught himself the language of a mutated species, Heart Eater Soul Monster. The species was basically non-existent in the main dimension but it was distributed across countless worlds that were floating in Void. They were good at using attacks on their prey that caused heartache, hence the name “heart eater.”

According to his way of saying things, his plan was to master above a hundred languages.

A mage not only had to learn languages but also know the more headache-inducing study, culture. Astrology, geography, customs and practices, biology, history… forget it. Listing them out one by one seems as though I am trying to fulfil the word count. All in all, the reason why mages had high expenditures was mainly because of “learning.”

And princ.i.p.al part of the learning expenditure was the purchase of books.

Books wouldn’t fall from the sky but required to be bought using one’s own money. Or maybe one could buy an empty booklet and copy by hand. An experienced mage normally had a few racks of books, or even a library. What were these? These were all money!

Why did Mifata Fedaration have more mages? Because they had a systematic nurturing standard, and youngsters that intended to go down the path of magic could spend less money to borrow books which helped to cut down the expenses by a lot.

Not only that, but in the process of learning magic, “copying scrolls” and “copying magic books” were inevitable. Defeat was a common sight too. With a failure, one would lose at least a beast paper, or one might lose the entire book straightaway. Encountering 80 to 100 counts of failure wasn’t a huge number. The poor Palin wanted to learn an intermediate magic “ice storm,” and wasted almost 200 scrolls, plus booklets, ink, and therapeutic medicine… These few years, he basically spent all his salary in the stationary shop.

Even if they didn’t take the expense of a mage into consideration, merely language learning and calculation, which was pretty much a basic requirement to shake off the nickname of illiterate, would need at least 30 to 50 books. If he were to learn law or performing arts, there should be an extra zero behind the existing figure. Plus history… Sigh, it would be best not to calculate so much.

In this world where a poor commoner’s family might not even make a gold coin, the education expenses were enormous and hard to afford.

If there were paper making technology, with a large amount of cheap papers and books, the culture in this world might be able to spread more widely.

Like the saying went, “knowledge will change one’s fate.” If cultural knowledge were to be common among the poor, maybe their fates would be improved.

Sui Xiong didn’t know if his speculations were accurate but he felt he could give it a try.

So he built himself a laboratory by the river near the sea in the Ashes Woods, and tried to research and develop paper making technology.

“Let me recall how does paper making works…” Sui Xiong said at the pile of wood that had just been chopped. He hung his head low as he thought, “I learned it in history cla.s.s. It said that Cai Lum produced broken fishnet and chopped wood into paper paste, then spread it flat on a cloth to dry, and it became paper. It seems quite easy…”

He waved his tentacles and the big tree next to him flew up and was crushed by an invisible force. After some squeaking noises, it quickly shattered into a ball of shredded wood.

Then, Sui Xiong got some river water to mix with the shredded wood. He then boiled it with magic.

Because the river water and wood that were polluted by negativity, they gave off thick clouds of black smoke during the boiling process. The black smoke wasn’t the chemical gas commonly seen in the paper making factories on Earth, but the negativity that was dispersed. Any commoner would die if they were to get in contact with it. Looking at the danger aspect, this was more terrifying.

After boiling for a long time, that ball of unknown mixture had turned into thick murky fluid and the negativity in it had fully dispersed. Sui Xiong tried to take some and used magic to spread it on the linen that he prepared earlier. Then, he oven-dried it using magic.

After a while, it was fully dried. Sui Xiong took it down from the linen and gotten a piece of thick paper in a blackish green colour. It was hard and coa.r.s.e, and didn’t look like it could be used for writing.

“This doesn’t look quite right,” he mumbled to himself. “If Cai Lun made this back then, the emperor was kind enough to not beat him to death. How could he even leave a good name in history?”

He pondered and took out some again from the mixture that would likely be paper waste, and spread it on the linen. But, he purposely spread it thinner. then he realised that there were many small pieces, and he couldn’t spread it nicely.

“It’s not fine enough!” He suddenly understood, so he used magic to shred the ball of paper waste again. This time, he strengthened the pounding power. Even steel could turn into powder, not to speak of wood.

Hence, the paper waste was spread thinly and evenly. After it oven-dried, he had gotten a flat piece of paper.

Greyish blue in colour, a little crumpled; it looked like soft paper that could be used to wipe one’s a.s.s.

“This is toilet paper… I want to make writing paper!”

He pondered again, wondering it went wrong.

Firstly, he had to remove the color because he needed white paper.

How to remove the colour? Filtration?

He tried to filter it, and there was murky water that was greyish green. But the color on the paper paste obviously didn’t change.

Well, filtration didn’t work; how about was.h.i.+ng?

He made some purifying water with magic, used a ball of paper paste for experimentation and washed it a couple of times. The color of the paper waste was slightly lighter. If he were to lower his standards, he might be able to use it for writing. But, the prerequisite of it was that, it needed to written on with a writing brush.

This world was popular for the feather brush, which was to used with beast feathers and dipped into ink to write. The type of brush obviously couldn’t be used to write on soft but coa.r.s.e surfaces; at least not on this kind of paper that Sui Xiong had invented.

“If so… Do I have to invent ink and writing brush?”

He pondered and decided to improvise the paper-making technology once again.

It was like the saying, “It is when you are using what you have learned from books that you wish you had read more books.” By that time, his reserved knowledge had been used up, he didn’t know how to further purify the paper paste to whiten it more.

After thinking for half a day, he decided to develop a magic spell that was used to purify the paper paste.

The character of the magic was to absorb the coloring in the paper paste; it was not very high tech. Sui Xiong only used a few hours to design it and spent another few hours to experiment and improvise. He finally invented the very first magic spell in this world that he could spread and leave him a good reputation in the history.

Sui Xiong’s paper-paste purifying spell, beginner magic. The spell was made of an incantation and runes and the material required to cast the magic spell was only a small block of charcoal. Using the magic could help to extract the coloring in the paper paste and turn into stringy colour colloid, while the originally variegation paper paste turned white.

After completing the magic, Sui Xiong had finally gotten the white paper paste that he wanted. Using this paper paste as raw material, he had gotten white paper.

But, it was still the soft crumpled paper, not like anything that could be written on with a feather brush.

The more troublesome part was that the paper was not beneficial for packaging and preserving. He could be tell by the looks, it was definitely not anything st.u.r.dy and durable.

Sui Xiong thought carefully and wanted to press the paper flat.

It was smoother, but not smooth enough.

He thought again, tried to put more paper paste onto the linen, pressed it flat, and oven-dried it.

He finally got a piece of smooth white paper.

Of course, compared to the white paper on earth, it was vastly different. But Sui Xiong had already tried his best and couldn’t figure any other way to improve it.

He tried it with feather brush and ink. As expected, he realized ink would smudge on the piece of paper and it couldn’t be used for delicate small writings.

“Alright, the next is the writing brush.”

Theoretically, it should be quite easy. He just needed to pick beast hairs that had suitable length and tied it together. Then, stuff them into the bamboo tube and tie it tightly.

“Not difficult at all!”

Within a short period of time, Sui Xiong made possibly the very first writing brush in the world.

But, its efficiency in absorbing ink was bad. After absorbing ink, it was inconsistent when it was used for writing. The performance of the writing brush p.i.s.sed people off.

The brush was obviously a failure.

Sui Xiong thought and pondered, Was it because of the oil content on the hair?

To remove the oil content, it required was.h.i.+ng with soap. This wouldn’t be difficult as someone had already invented a soap bar in the world long ago, although its quality was not as good as the ones on Earth and the pricing was on a higher side.

After was.h.i.+ng, the beast hair was better. Although it wasn’t as smooth and natural when used, it could at least be used for writing.

Then, it’s done. The rest of the problem, the users can overcome themselves!

Sui Xiong then focused his attention on the ink again.

In the world, the price of ink was very expensive; a small bottle that was about fifty grams would cost over 20 gold coins. For feather brushes that required lesser ink, it was alright. But a writing brush was an ink sucker. If it was used as such, he reckoned the poor would not be able to afford it.

Hence, Sui Xiong started to research and make ink.

He failed miserably but found an alternative.

Mixing water with a small amount of glue, blended with ashes, could be used for writing. Although the writing effect wasn’t as good, it could at least be used.

The biggest problem about this solution was that every time when someone wanted to use it, they have to make mix the ink on the go, which was inconvenient. But inconvenience would still be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?

Sui Xiong had the intention to make an ink block like the one that was used by his ancestors for many years. He tried to combine glue and ashes into blocks but in the end, he realised that the ink block could only be cut and crushed for usage.

Mm, this will do too…

After a few days, during the meeting of higher ups in Void Mask Church, Sui Xiong showed off his invention proudly.

“Look!” He told everyone. “This thing is going to change the world!”