Chapter 359 — The Research Project

When Rebecca came home grimy and bedraggled, she was still a little nervous—because, in truth, she had not noticed the smears of grease on her hands and face at all. She had walked the whole way back from the Magical Technology Research Institute with that oil still on her, and only discovered she had not washed her face after stepping inside and being reminded by a servant. In the past, behavior like that usually earned her a rap on the skull...

But the moment she saw what lay on Gao Yang's desk, all her nerves and all her fears of a throbbing head vanished into thin air.

"A new machine design!" The girl leapt up in excitement the instant she saw the drawings on the desk, reaching out to snatch them. "Let me see..."

Gao Cen slapped the girl's dirty paws right back. "Look at your hands!"

"Oh, oh!" Rebecca hurriedly pulled her hands back and rubbed them against her clothes (a motion that, in front of Hetty, would have earned her at least five consecutive knocks to the head), then cautiously leaned over the desk to study the strange-looking machine. "What's this for... hey, does it mean you put paper under this roller? Printing things?"

Rebecca had, after all, spent her days dealing with all manner of machines and equipment, and she had some understanding of Gao Song's habits of thought. The moment she saw the printing press, she roughly guessed its purpose—which saved Gao Yang a great deal of explanation. The latter nodded. "This is a printing press."

"Printing, I know that," Rebecca said, nodding. "The textbooks used in schools, the ruled and patterned paper used in offices, and the labels used in alchemy factories are all printed... Did you improve the printing equipment? But this thing... it looks completely different from what's being used in the territory."

Rebecca knew what printing technology the territory currently used—it was, in fact, a technique long established in Anzu. A wax plate was carved with characters and patterns to form intaglio text; then a mud slurry mixed with bitterroot vine powder was poured evenly over the wax plate, and the whole thing heated. Upon heating, the bitterroot vine slurry hardened into a solid clay plate while the wax melted away, yielding a relief engraving that could be used for printing.

But this method of plate-making had serious limitations. First, no mistakes could be made during carving—one slip and the entire wax plate was ruined. Second, after the bitterroot slurry was spread over the wax plate, it had to sit for several hours to eliminate bubbles and partially cure before it could be heated and hardened. Finally, the hardened relief plate was brittle and fragile, requiring great care in use.

Even so, this printing technique was considered quite advanced. Nobles used it to mass-produce letter paper and official documents bearing their family crests—that was its primary application.

It was Cecil who set the precedent of adapting this printing technique to book production. The reason was simple: only here was there a large population of literate people, a large population that needed to read...

In fact, Cecil Territory's practice of using printing to mass-produce cheap books—printing text on inexpensive paper, with covers free of any metal or gemstone ornamentation, and without leather sleeves or clasps to bind the spine—was regarded by traditional scholars of this world as "an insult to sacred knowledge."

Many scholars, upon arriving in Cecil Territory and seeing those low-cost, "shoddily made" books, voiced considerable criticism. In their traditional view, books had to be made from fine parchment, or at the very least frost-paper, transcribed by hand or by shorthand magic, signed by a renowned scholar, and finally adorned with a heap of ornate, intricate, and expensive decorations.

But Gao Cen ignored these pedantic voices entirely. As a founding patriarch, his word carried more prestige than anyone's; on the matter of "the right to speak," he feared no challenge.

Rebecca studied Gao Song's design with boundless curiosity. At first she assumed it was merely an "improvement" on the territory's existing printing technology, but she quickly realized that this machine's working principle and efficiency far surpassed anything traditional printing could match.

The basic concept of "plate-making—transfer" remained, but this machine's mode of operation was simply too far ahead of its time. "Continuous printing"—those four words appeared in the girl's mind for the first time.

Sometimes, what a technician lacks is merely a direction.

"What needs solving now is 'plate-making'—or rather, how to convert text swiftly and conveniently onto this printing roller," Gao Yang said, pointing at the machine's core component and describing the problems he currently faced. "I have three requirements. First, speed and convenience: the process of converting text into impressions on the roller must be faster than current plate-making techniques. Second, ease of editing: it can't be like traditional engraving, where one mistake ruins the whole plate. So this requires that the process of transferring text onto the roller be reversible, or that the text be modifiable and resettable before transfer. Third—and this is connected to the second—the roller must be reusable; its impressions must be erasable. This is not only to reduce costs but also to improve the efficiency of the whole apparatus."

"Whoa..." Rebecca drew the sound out. "That sounds... pretty challenging."

"Yes, quite a challenge indeed," Gao Cen said, his expression stern as he looked at Rebecca. "Which is why I'm entrusting it to you—or rather, to your Magical Technology Research Institute—to solve this problem."

Rebecca half-understood: "The Magical Technology Research Institute..."

"The Magical Technology Research Institute exists precisely to solve these applied-technology problems, and the working methods of a large comprehensive laboratory are designed precisely to tackle such challenges," Gao Yi said with a smile and a nod. "Artisans, mechanists, rune-crafters, and mages of every kind of creative talent gather in a single laboratory under the title of 'magical technicians,' using their individual minds to generate idea after idea—discussing together, helping one another, realizing and verifying together, putting every resource to its fullest use on a single project. That is the purpose of those laboratories."

He paused, and seeing Rebecca's thoughtful expression, continued: "An individual's creativity is ultimately limited, but many people together can generate creative power far exceeding the sum of their numbers. I give you a direction, and then you take your team and let them run with it—bring every person's ideas out for discussion, don't fear mistakes, and you will discover what an incredible force a large laboratory can be."

Rebecca's eyes grew wider and wider, until at last they seemed to sparkle. She suddenly seized Gao Song's arm in delight, shaking it vigorously back and forth: "I get it, I get it! So that's how it is... That's the proper way to use a large laboratory!"

"Stop shaking, stop shaking... You're a mage, and your grip is still this strong," Gao Yun said, lightly tapping Rebecca on the head and easily breaking free. "Before you take the project to the laboratory, tell me your thoughts first—do you have any approach to solving this?"

"E..." Rebecca pressed a finger against her lower lip, thinking hard. After a moment she spoke, somewhat uncertainly: "Actually, I have a bit of an idea... I thought of a mage's shorthand magic."

Just as Gao Yang had expected, when faced with a problem that seemingly could not be solved by mechanical means, Rebecca's first thought was still magic—the most natural line of thinking for a mage. Although Rebecca's talent for spells was somewhat...微妙, the otherworlder's instinct of "solve it with magic" clearly still held true in her.