Great Wei Overlord

Chapter 104 Competing for the Flower Ranking
Chapter 109

Ran Ming took the book and stroked it with his hands. This book is about like a sixteen-page magazine in later generations. The cover is very hard and bright red, with the words "Thousand Characters" written in block script on it. Ran Ming looked at the book The cover of the book is actually made of silk and satin, which is framed like a painting and calligraphy, and bound into a book with thread, which is both simple and beautiful!
Ran Ming was very excited, this is actually a printed book, not a handwritten book.On the first side was written by Ran Ming.

Ran Ming flipped through the pages below. Because the engraving printing technology in this era is not yet mature enough, ordinary ink cannot be used at all, and the printing surface is pitch black, so the printing at this time is actually using very expensive ink pads.

Use ink pad as ink, the price is self-evident.

Ran Ming said: "Sir, what is the price of this book?"

Yan Yue said: "Mr. Luo Pu admires His Majesty's talent, this book does not require money!"

Although Ran Ming has not been involved in the printing industry, he also knows that the high-quality rice paper used in this book and the top-quality inkpad must be expensive.Ran Ming saw that someone was willing to take advantage of him, so he said: "Xueer Academy plans to recruit at least [-] students, and there is also a martial arts lecture hall, so at least [-] volumes are barely enough, why don't you ask them to print two more copies?" A thousand volumes will come out."

Yan Yue said with some embarrassment: "Your Highness doesn't know, the cost of this book is about [-] yuan per book."

Eight thousand yuan can buy a cow in Ye, but few people can afford to buy a cow for the price of a book.

Eight thousand coins, two thousand volumes, even gold would need sixteen hundred gold, not to mention Ran Ming, even ordinary aristocratic families can afford not much.

Ran Ming exclaimed in surprise, "Why is it so expensive?"

Yan Yue said: "Not counting the paper and ink, the engraving of a set of thousand-character script alone is almost two thousand gold. If Mr. Luo Pu hadn't been virtuous and honest, I'm afraid we Xueer College would have no money to buy textbooks!"

It was only then that Ran Ming realized how naive he was in wanting to break the aristocratic family's monopoly on cultural knowledge. One book is so expensive, but those aristocratic clans have no collection of tens of thousands of books, and they are embarrassed To see people.That's not to mention, although printed books are expensive enough, aren't those books written on bamboo slips and silk brocade even more expensive? No matter how expensive paper is, it is actually far inferior to silk brocade.Publishing a book is not easy in this day and age!
The ancients wrote books to make a statement, in fact, they only wanted to make a name for themselves, and almost none of them sold books for money.

Seeing Ran Ming's embarrassment, Yan Yue said: "Your Highness, don't worry, Mr. Luo Pu knows that His Highness still has a book, and Mr. Luo Pu has already printed the book.

Saying that, Yan Yue took out another book. "

It turned out to be "36 Strategies".

The 36 volumes of "Thousand Characters" Mr. Luo Pu spent almost 500 gold, and the [-] volumes of "[-] Strategies" were almost [-] gold, for such a cultural person who assisted himself free of charge.Ran Ming is very respectful in his heart.Ran Ming thought in his heart: "It's cheap for you!"

Ran Ming thought for a while and said, "I want to see Mr. Luo Pu, may I introduce you?"

Yan Yue nodded.

After Ran Mingdang separated from Liu Mo on the street, he directly sent someone to follow Yan Yue to Luopu Academy!

Literati like to chat with each other when they meet, and this chat takes half an hour, and they all talk nonsense, but Ran Ming likes to be straightforward.Faced with Mr. Luo Pu's words of admiration like a surging river, Ran Ming dared not accept it.

Ran Ming said, "I want to print two thousand copies of "Thousand Characters" and five hundred copies of "36 Strategies."

Mr. Luo Pu shook his head and said: "Your Highness is willing to publish this lifelong knowledge to the public. I admire His Highness's selflessness. But at this time, it is easy to say but too difficult to do. It is too slow to hire people to copy books, and Because of the font problem, I can’t read clearly. Although there is now sunblock printing, there are too few people who know this craft, and the engraving takes too long. There is no opportunity to learn knowledge!"

Ran Ming didn't speak, he took out his own seal, stuck ink pads on it, and pressed it on the paper in front of Mr. Luo Pu, only to see the six-character seal of King Wei and Chu appeared on the paper.

Mr. Luo Pu was very puzzled, what did Ran Ming mean by this, what kind of seal did he show for no reason?
Then Ran Ming took out the private seal again, and Ran Ming covered the "seal" printed by the King of Wei and Chu with paper, and pressed the words of the King of Wei and Chu on the paper, and then Ran Ming pressed the private seals side by side, It became "Ran Mingyin, King of Wei and Chu".

Mr. Luo Pu seemed to have realized something but was confused. Ran Ming asked Yan Yue for his seal, and Mr. Luo Pu also asked for his seal. In this way, Ran Ming put more than a dozen seals together and pressed them down.

Ran Ming stood up and said, "Mr. Luo Pu, do you understand?"

Mr. Luo Pu said: "Your Highness thinks this method is feasible?"

Yan Yue was rather depressed, he still didn't understand why the two of them were playing charades.

Ran Ming said: "block printing can only print one book. After printing, the block is useless. It is extremely difficult to store the block. It is easy to be eaten by insects and decay. Once a little bit is missing, the entire block will be scrapped. The same is true in production, if there is a mistake in one of the characters during engraving, the entire engraving block will be scrapped.”

Mr. Luo Pu nodded, "What Your Highness said is very true. It is the thousand characters in this book of thousand characters. It took 28 skilled craftsmen half a month to carve it. There were still two mistakes, which ruined it." There are two engraving blocks. Now it’s good, you don’t need to engrave the whole board, you only need to carve out the characters you need, and arrange them together when you use them, you can print any book you want!”

Ran Mingdao: "Shuowen Jiezi only has more than 700 characters, and our commonly used characters are only more than [-]. There are also some characters, such as zhi, hu, zhe, ye, yi, etc., which are the most common. We can use them at once Carve hundreds of them."

Mr. Luopu was so excited that his eyebrows jumped up, and he hurried to the backyard to find a craftsman.

One of the artisans of the academy, Qiu Ning, said to Mr. Luo Pu: "We have a lot of discarded type models in the warehouse, and they are useless after all. Why don't we separate them and use them as individual characters, so there is no need to carve them separately!"

Mr. Luopu was overjoyed when he heard the words, and directly ordered them to start making. There are more than 30 engraving craftsmen in Luopu Academy, and more than 30 people work together. This is much easier than engraving single characters alone. , Chisel them out neatly with a chisel.

After waiting for about half an hour, Mr. Luo Pu sorted out about tens of thousands of characters.

However, these typefaces are made from multiple discarded engraving blocks, some are running script, some are regular script, some are cursive script, there are Mrs. Wei's fonts, and there are also Cui Yue and Wang Xizhi's characters, so it is a bit nondescript.But since it was an experiment, I didn't care too much about it!

The following problem arises. These engraving blocks are thick and thin, and the fonts are different, but they may be barely used. The thickness is different, and the fonts are not on the same plane at all. How to print, you can’t just cover each character with a stamp. .

Seeing this situation, Ran Ming said: "You can make a flat wooden frame, put soft mud on the bottom, and put the font inside. If the thickness of the font is not enough, fill it with soft mud, and wait for the soft mud to lose water and harden. , and then print!"

Mr. Luo Pu was as happy as a child when he heard the words, he shook his hands and said, "Okay, this method is wonderful!"

As he said that, he personally directed the craftsmen to make the wooden frame, and then put the wooden frame on the table, and asked the next hand to put the reconciled soft clay on the bottom, and arranged the fonts according to the layout of 36 counts.Then, the inspectors proofread them one by one. After finishing all this, Mr. Luo Pu impatiently painted ink pads on the typefaces!By the time the slime hardens, the sun has already set!
Things are easier than imagined, one plate is printed, and the paper is peeled off, it really has the same effect as woodblock printing!
Mr. Luo Pu took the printed paper and said almost crazily: "Your Highness is a great talent, unmatched! Chen Yin thanked His Highness for his great virtue on behalf of the world."

Only then did Yan Yue and Ran Ming realize that Mr. Luo Pu's original surname was Chen Mingyin!

Chen Yindao: "Not counting the cost of engraving, if we print thousand-character characters, each volume can be reduced to about four thousand yuan."

Four thousand yuan is almost the price of two hundred catties of rice. When converted into the value of future generations, it would also cost five or six hundred yuan. This price is still higher than what Ran Ming expected.

Ran Ming thought about it, and now the cost is mainly due to paper and ink pads.

Ran Ming said: "Wouldn't the price be lower if it was printed with ordinary ink?"

Chen Yindao: "Your Highness does not know, Yin also planned to use pine ink to print before, but the ink does not stick to the font at all, and once the paper is printed with ink, it will be black and blurred."

"If the ink is not suitable, find a suitable one. Using ink pad is still not the solution. If you can use ink to print, the cost will be reduced to less than [-] yuan. If you improve the paper, it can be reduced to less than [-] yuan." Ran Ming said: " Only in this way can people in the world, rich or poor, read books!"

Originally, Ran Ming planned to improve the papermaking process, but when he was in Qingzhou, he had to stop due to time constraints.Now he wants to do it too, but the oiran contest is about to start, and Ran Ming has no energy at all.

Helpless, Ran Ming bid farewell and left!
In the anticipation of much-anticipated, Ran Mingju's first Oiran Contest finally started!!
In front of the Mulan Pavilion hangs the twelve prostitutes who participated in the competition today. Each of them is a brief introduction, and the number of flowers they got is below.At this time, everyone's flowers are zero.

"Brother! What does this flower list mean?" A curious guest asked a fat man standing in front of the flower list and commenting in confusion.

Chen Ying waved his hand and said, "I don't even know the flower list. You can tell that you are from another place at a glance. The flower list ultimately determines the final results of the contestants!"

The foreign businessman asked: "Contestant? What do you mean by contestant?"

Chen Ying actually didn't understand much, but he pretended to be serious and said: "It means that she chose to be the opponent. Anyway, that's how it is. Any girl who gets more flowers and finds more people who support her will have the best grades." it is good!"

(End of this chapter)