I relied on a system to prolong my life in ancient times.

Chapter 151 Xiao Sizhe Discovers Movable Type Printing

The next day, Xiao Siyue took Xiao Sizhe to the cement workshop and explained the cement manufacturing process to him.

Xiao Sizhe was very interested and even thought about staying in the workshop to work for a few days and experience it properly. Xiao Siyue quickly took him away. She couldn't imagine what it would be like for her second brother, such a refined person, to roll up his sleeves and swing a hammer.

After leaving the workshop, Xiao Siyue and Xiao Sizhe toured Qianyuan County again and took a look at their own sugar workshop.

Xiao Sizhe admired his younger sister immensely. In his heart, Xiao Siyue was no longer just his beloved little sister, but a teacher. He wanted to learn from his sister about things he had never encountered before.

So in the following days, Xiao Sizhe would frequently come to see Xiao Siyue.

In the past few days, Xiao Siyue has finished all the movable type templates and plans to give them a try.

After arranging the characters neatly, brush ink onto them, but make sure the ink is even, otherwise the printed book will have problems such as not being printed or the ink forming clumps.

"Miss, it's done! Look, it's really printed!" Chun Tao exclaimed in surprise as she looked at the printed words. She had never seen such a magical scene before. She had always thought that books were written by people stroke by stroke.

Xiao Siyue was also very happy, she didn't expect to succeed on the first try. Just as she was about to print out the rest, she heard a sound from outside the door.

"Little sister, what are you doing here?" Xiao Sizhe originally wanted to ask Xiao Siyue about the white sugar, but when he came in, he saw Xiao Siyue and two maids huddled together, excitedly discussing something.

Xiao Siyue looked up and saw Xiao Sizhe come in: "Second brother, come quickly, we are printing books."

"Printing?" Xiao Sizhe murmured, then strode forward and saw many small squares with words engraved on them on the table.

“Yes, yes, second brother, look, this is one we just printed.” Xiao Siyue handed a newly printed sheet of paper to Xiao Sizhe.

"Heaven and earth were dark and yellow, the universe was vast and boundless, the sun and moon waxed and waned, the stars and constellations were arrayed... This is the Thousand Character Classic." Xiao Sizhe was not attracted by the content on the paper, but by the printing method.

Although the paper wasn't very clean and occasionally got stained with ink, the writing was clear and neatly arranged, so it didn't affect reading or use at all.

"Yue'er, what's wrong?" Xiao Sizhe's hands were trembling slightly. He could be considered a student from a farming family, so he naturally understood the difficulty of studying and the rarity of books.

But now that my younger sister can print her own books, does that mean that the lack of books will no longer be an obstacle for many people who want to read?

Xiao Siyue knew her second brother was very excited, so she didn't delay and explained directly: "Second brother, this is the template we use for printing. As long as we put each character into the grid in order and arrange them neatly, and then press them flat, we can print."

"When you're not using it, take the characters out and put them away. When you need them again, just pick out the characters you need according to the book and rearrange them."

After listening to Xiao Siyue's explanation, Xiao Sizhe immediately understood the printing method.

Seeing Xiao Sizhe's bright eyes, Xiao Siyue smiled and said, "Second Brother, this printing method is called movable type printing."

“Modular type printing! Modular type?” Xiao Sizhe murmured. The name was indeed very fitting; wasn’t it just movable type? Each character could move.

Xiao Sizhe naturally understood the advantages of this method. In the past, printing books required craftsmen to carve out the entire book according to its contents before printing. This method was not only time-consuming, but also required the entire carving to be discarded and recarved if an error occurred.

But now that we have movable type, we no longer need to carve the entire book. We can simply make each character individually, and then select the individual character when we want to use it.

Moreover, these characters can be reused, which greatly reduces production costs.

"Little sister, your method is excellent," Xiao Sizhe once again praised his sister.

"Second Brother, would you like to give it a try?" Xiao Siyue invited. They had just printed one page, and it would take many pages to print them all.

This printing was not like modern printing, where the text was very small and many words could be printed on each sheet.

Because they are hand-carved, even though each character is made as small as possible, only a few can be printed per page.

"Of course." Xiao Sizhe immediately rolled up his sleeves and began printing. After each print, he had Lan Yi take it outside to air dry.

After the entire Thousand Character Classic was printed, the previous printing had basically dried.

The group collected all the papers. They didn't need to rearrange them according to the book's order, because Xiao Siyue had printed the page numbers on them during the reprinting process.

They only need to look at the page numbers.

"Little sister, this is very convenient. Anyone who can read numbers can organize it." Xiao Sizhe greatly appreciated Xiao Siyue's method.

Xiao Siyue smiled sweetly. Many modern books have page numbers, which she was used to, so she added page numbers when making the book.

"Second brother, now all we need to do is cut the paper neatly and then bind it."

Xiao Siyue asked Chuntao to bring a knife, and Xiao Sizhe neatly arranged the papers and cut them into neat pieces. Then he put on the cover and bound them.

And so a Thousand Character Classic was completed.

Xiao Siyue felt a great sense of accomplishment. Holding the Thousand Character Classic she had just finished, she looked at it page by page. She was now one step closer to her goal.

Xiao Sizhe was equally excited. This way, he could have many books in the future. Those people he had met before who loved reading but were too poor to afford books might also be able to have them.

But before he could be happy for long, Xiao Sizhe suddenly thought of a problem, and his excited and enthusiastic heart cooled down again.

Xiao Siyue was puzzled when she saw this. She was just happy a moment ago, so why did she suddenly change like this?

"Second brother, what's wrong? Are you unhappy?"

"I'm happy, but paper is a very precious commodity these days. Now that we have movable type printing, we can't mass-produce it, which is a bit of a regret," Xiao Sizhe sighed.

Upon hearing this, Xiao Siyue realized that the concern was about the lack of paper. She had already thought of this; when she was making the paper-making tools, she had given the papermaking method to her people for them to study.

And it's already underway, so I believe it won't be long before it's ready to be produced.

"Second brother, don't worry, I'll give you a surprise in a couple of days," Xiao Siyue whispered mysteriously to Xiao Sizhe.

Although Xiao Sizhe didn't know what the surprise Xiao Siyue was talking about was, he unconditionally trusted Xiao Siyue, knowing that she had a solution, and put aside his regrets.

I got up and started working on my second book.