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Sui Xiong had the idea of ​​making paper in this world a long time ago.

The cultural dissemination in this world is very slow, and one of the important reasons is the lack of cheap cultural carrier - paper. Here, books are assembled into volumes with animal skin paper made of various animal skins, and the cost is simply abnormally high. A blank book with about 30 pages, even the cost price in the wholesale store is six gold coins, and the retail price is generally eight to ten gold coins.

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

A mage needs to learn at least "common languages" such as Common Language, Ancient Elven Language, Dragon Language, Dwarven Rune Language, Celestial Language, Abyssal Language, Infernal Language, Mystical Language, etc. A truly linguistically proficient mage often knows more languages. For example, Satan, the head of the mage group of the Void Mask Church, is a mage who has just entered the high-level level in the past two years. He knows a total of 33 languages ​​and is currently learning more languages. For example, this year he taught himself the language of a strange species called the Heart Eater. This species is basically not found in the main plane, but it is still quite distributed in the countless worlds of all sizes floating in the void. 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.

Mage has to learn more than just language, but culture is the biggest part. Astronomy, geography, customs, biology, history... Forget it, if all are listed, it is suspected of cheating the word count. In short, the reason why mages spend so much money is that the cost of "learning" accounts for the majority of it.

And the main part of learning expenses is the purchase of books.

Books will not fall from the sky, you have to buy them with your own money. Or buy blank books and copy them by yourself. A senior wizard often has several bookshelves of books, or even a whole library. What are these? They are all money!

Why are there relatively more wizards in the Secret Tower Federation? It is because they have a systematic training mechanism. Young people who are interested in the path of magic can borrow books here at a relatively low cost, which greatly saves expenses.

Not only that, in the process of learning spells, "copying scrolls" and "copying spell books" are inevitable, and failure is also common. Failure once, at least a page of animal skin paper is lost, and at most a book is directly ruined. Failure a hundred or eighty times - this number is really not much at all. In order to learn the intermediate spell "Ice Storm", poor Palin copied nearly two hundred scrolls, plus books, ink and healing potions... In the past few years, he basically spent all his salary in the stationery store.

Even if the expenses of the wizard are not considered, just to learn language and arithmetic - this is almost the minimum requirement to get rid of the title of illiteracy, at least thirty or fifty books are needed. If you learn some law or art, you have to add a zero to the end of that number. If you learn some history or something... Oh, let's not calculate so much.

In this world where poor people may not be able to save a gold coin a year, the cost of studying is really too huge for them to support.

So if there is papermaking, a lot of cheap paper and books, maybe the culture of this world can be spread more widely?

It is said that "knowledge changes destiny". If cultural knowledge can be popularized among the poor, maybe their destiny can be improved?

Sui Xiong didn't know if his guess was correct, but he thought he could give it a try.

So he built a small experimental workshop for himself by a river near the sea in the Ash Forest and tried to study papermaking.

"I want to think about what papermaking is like..." Sui Xiong sat next to a pile of newly cut trees, thinking with his head down, "I learned in history class that Cai Lun mashed up broken fishing nets and waste wood and boiled them into pulp, then spread them on cloth to dry, and it became paper - it seems quite simple..."

He waved his tentacles, and a big tree next to him flew up, was crushed by an invisible force, made a creaking sound, and quickly collapsed and shattered, and soon turned into a ball of sawdust.

Then Sui Xiong took river water, mixed it with sawdust, and then heated it with magic.

The river water and trees polluted by negative energy gave off thick black fog during the boiling process. These black fogs were not chemical gases in paper mills on Earth, but dissipated negative energy. Ordinary people would die if they touched a little bit - in terms of danger, it was even more terrible.

After boiling for a long time, the mass of unknown things had turned into a turbid slurry, and no negative energy was scattered on it. Sui Xiong tried to take some, spread it on the linen he had bought in advance, and then dried it with magic.

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

"It seems that something is wrong..." he said to himself, "If Cai Lun had made something like this, the emperor would have been kind if he didn't beat him to death. How could he be remembered in history?"

He thought for a while, and took some more from the ball of pulp and spread it on the linen. But this time he paid special attention to spreading it thinner, and found that there were many small pieces, and it was impossible to spread it thinner.

"It's not crushed enough!" He understood immediately, and used magic to crush the pulp again. This time he greatly increased the crushing force, and he felt that not only wood, but even steel would turn into iron powder.

So, this time the pulp was indeed spread very thinly and evenly, and after drying, it was indeed flat paper.

Gray-green, wrinkled, and seemed to be soft paper that could be used to wipe the butt.

"This is toilet paper... I want to make paper that can be written on!"

He pondered again, thinking about what he had done wrong.

First, the color must be removed, because he needs white paper.

How to remove the color? Filter?

He tried to filter it, and filtered out a lot of gray-green dirty water, but the color of the pulp did not improve significantly.

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

He used magic to create some clean water, washed and filtered a small ball of pulp used for experiments several times, and the color of the pulp was slightly lighter this time. If the requirements are lowered, it may be used for writing - provided that a brush is used.

The popular thing in this world is the feather pen, which is to write with the long feathers of birds dipped in ink. This kind of pen obviously cannot write on the soft and rough paper, at least the paper invented by Sui Xiong certainly cannot.

"So... I have to invent ink and brushes?"

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

However, as the saying goes, "You will regret not having enough knowledge when you need it." At this time, his knowledge has been used up, and he doesn't know how to further purify the paper pulp and make it whiter.

After thinking for a long time, he decided to develop a spell, a spell to purify the paper pulp.

The essence of this spell is to absorb the pigment in the paper pulp, which is not particularly advanced. Sui Xiong only took a few hours to design it, and then spent a few more hours experimenting and perfecting it, and finally came up with his first spell in this world that can really be spread and used to leave a name.

Sui Xiong's paper pulp purification spell, an entry-level spell, consists of spells and runes, and the casting material is a small piece of charcoal. This spell can extract the pigment from the pulp and turn it into a sticky colored colloid, and the originally colorful pulp will turn white.

After completing this spell, Sui Xiong finally got the white pulp he wanted. Using this pulp as raw material, he got white paper.

However, it was still soft and wrinkled paper, which didn't look like it could be written on with a feather pen.

What's more troublesome is that this kind of paper is obviously not conducive to packaging and preservation. Judging from its appearance, it is definitely not something sturdy and durable.

Sui Xiong thought about it carefully and tried to press the paper flat.

It was smoother, but not enough.

He thought about it again and tried to spread a little more pulp on the linen, then pressed it flat and dried it.

This time, he finally got smooth white paper.

Of course, it seems to be a big gap compared to the white paper on Earth, but Sui has really run out of ideas and can't think of any improvement methods.

He tried it with a feather pen and ink, and found that this kind of paper would make the ink on it spread, and it was impossible to write delicate small characters.

"Okay, next is the brush."

The brush is simple in theory. Just use animal hair of suitable length to tie it up, stuff it into a thin bamboo tube, and tie it tightly.

"It's not difficult at all!"

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

However, it was not very effective in absorbing ink. After absorbing ink, it was not continuous at all when writing. The effect was so bad that it made people want to curse.

This brush was obviously a failure.

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

To remove the grease, you need to use soap to wash it. This is not difficult for him. Someone in this world has invented soap a long time ago-but the quality is not as good as that on Earth, and the price is also slightly more expensive.

The animal hair after washing is indeed much better. Although it is still a little bit difficult to use, at least it can be written smoothly.

That's enough. Let the users overcome the remaining problems by themselves!

Sui Xiong set his sights on ink again.

The price of ink in this world is very expensive. A small bottle of about 50 grams requires about 20 gold coins. This is fine for feather pens that consume less ink, but brushes consume a lot of ink. If used in this way, poor people probably can't afford it.

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

This time he failed shamefully, but he found an alternative method.

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

The biggest problem with this method is that you have to temporarily mix the ink every time you use it, which is not convenient at all. But "inconvenient" is better than "nothing", isn't it?

Sui Xiong was determined 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, but found that this kind of ink block can only be cut and crushed for use.

Well, this works...

A few days later, at a high-level meeting of the Church of the Void Mask, Sui Xiong proudly showed his invention.

"Look!" he said to everyone, "This is something that will change the whole world!"

I recommended the new book "The Blue Oath" at noon, and someone asked why they couldn't find it? So I looked for it and found the starting point...