Chapter 50: Living Printing Technique
Everybody present raised their ears after Fang Xinghan finished his sentence as they were curious about what Hong Xiaobao had in mind.
“Ah, this is rather easy.” Hong Xiaobao treated it like no big deal, “Setting up a sect requires a lot of money. However, I have quite a lot of ideas to earn money. Regarding manpower, I’ll look for people slowly — I’m not in a rush.”
Lots of ideas to earn money? In this world, a lot of martial artists risked their lives just to hunt and earn money. Wouldn’t the materials of Demonic Beasts cost a lot less if hunting them were that easy?
“This…” Fang Xinghan previously received a poem ‘Ode to Gallantry’, that was easily worth more than ten thousand gold to him. He quickly asked, “Xiaobao ah, if you’re planning to hunt, I’ll ask Shixian to go with you. Based on his strength, he could easily take down high-level Demonic Beasts. You can sell them for a good amount of money after that.”
Actually, Fang Xinghan himself wanted to go with Hong Xiaobao. However, being a head teacher of a sect, working for an 18-year-old seemed quite embarra.s.sing.
Hong Xiaobao decisively declined his request once again, “No way, hunting only pays for a negligible amount of money. I have big plans up my sleeve!”
Everybody looked like this: （⊙o⊙）
One could sell a 6-star Demonic Beast’s material for at least ten thousand silver taels. This was considered as a negligible amount for him?!
En, in this world, the price of a medicine and its raw materials differed substantially. The main reason was because taking down Demonic Beasts only required a couple of fairly high-level martial artists. However, medicine-refining required a lot of raw materials since the success rate was extremely low, thus creating the huge price gap between raw materials and medicines. For instance, High Yellow Ranked Qi-concentrating elixir was normally sold at twenty thousand silver taels whereas a raw 6-star magical beast material only cost ten thousand silver taels. n.o.body could do anything about it, it was the reality. On Earth, the amount of money earned by building material suppliers and real estate agents always had a great disparity.
“Then… Xiaobao, can you share your plan with us?” Fang Xinghan asked.
“Hehe, it’s actually quite easy. I’m planning to publish something called where I write interesting stories in that had taken place in the Jiang Hu. Furthermore, I might write and publish my own novels as well.” Hong Xiaobao said as he clipped some vegetables with his chopsticks.
? Novels? What were novels?
“This… Xiaobao ah,” Hong Wenqing asked, “I can imagine what Jiang Hu Stories may turn out to be. However, I have no idea what a novel is. Why have I never heard of it before?” Everybody nodded, they had no clue at all.
“Oh, novels?” Hong Xiaobao explained, “Novels are made-up stories about the life of a character. The plot must be interesting and complicated to attract people into reading it. I already have a brief idea on what I’m going to write about and I should be able to get started soon.”
Everybody still did not quite get the idea since this was the first time they had ever heard of it. However, the knowledgeable Fang Xinghan quickly noticed a major issue that required a solution, “Xiaobao ah, this one understands the concept of Jiang Hu Stories as well as publishing novels. But the quant.i.ty… You will have to hire up to a thousand people to copy with hand to ma.s.s produce it. Wouldn’t it be a little too costly?”
(TL: Again, he referred himself as ‘this one’ to show respect.)
In this world, books were all copied by hand. One could only write up to three hundred words in an hour. The word count of the novel that Hong Xiaobao was talking about might be considerably high. Thus, the cost of manpower would be substantially high as well…
This question caught everybody’s attention. Of course, they knew that Hong Xiaobao was no ordinary man and they were curious about how he was going to solve this problem. Hong Xiaobao had always had funny tricks up his sleeve, maybe this time was no exception?
En, obviously their prediction was right.
Hong Xiaobao chuckled and said, “Oh, it’s simple. I was extremely bored two days ago and coincidentally, I have just invented a new technique! I call it the Living Printing Technique which is very simple and practical.”
Living Printing Technique! The name was already impressive!
Everybody’s eyes shined. Hong Wenqing knew that Hong Xiaobao liked to invent impractical stuff. However, some of them actually turned out to be rather useful. He then asked, “Xiaobao ah, how do you produce or use this Living Printing Technique?”
“En, this is actually quite simple.” Hong Xiaobao moistened his index finger and drew a cube on the wooden table. “This box is made of wood which will be carved with a word. I will have to carve every word on each wooden cube and carve some extras for the words that are often used. This way, after arranging the words in a specific order to form a sentence and putting ink on them, simply place a piece of paper on it. Done! I’ll just have to rearrange the characters after each sentence. Imagine how many copies I can print in a day!”
Living Printing Technique! Such a sharp idea!
“I’m… I’m impressed!” Fang Xinghan stood up and bowed at Hong Xiaobao, “This one represents every student in the world to thank Brother Xiaobao for this invention. Thanks a lot!”
The Head Teacher of Saint Academy went as far as bowing to Hong Xiaobao! Once this is spread out to the Jiang Hu, everyone would drop their jaws. Everybody there however, thought that this was the most sensible thing to do.
Every student had always had an issue — a couple of students had to share a single book. The only solution was to copy the entire book with hand and return it later, which was very inefficient and time-consuming.
Imagine that you wanted to read a book. However, you had only heard of its existence but had not seen it in person. Even if you had all the money in the world, you may not be able to find and buy it. One particular book may only have a couple hundred of hand copies. How long would it take for you to finally get your hands on the book?
However, the Living Printing Technique was invented — the issue would surely be solved. You only had to arrange the words and you could print whatever amount of copies as you like! Furthermore, the cost would not be too high, making the copies rather affordable.
This kind of invention was revolutionary. It was definitely a great technique! Yun Caixiao looked at Hong Xiaobao with her face filled with joy. After all, he is my Brother Xiaobao who never disappoints. He has always been so intelligent!