Stone carbon was a rare commodity brought in by men dispatched from the Northwest Protectorate. It was black as ink and could give off heat.
Supplies were still limited and prices rather high, but it was nevertheless far cheaper than charcoal, which cost a hundred copper coins per catty.
As a member of the royal family, Bi Gan had always lived comfortably. He was also getting on in years and dreaded the winter cold, so the moment stone carbon appeared on the market, he sent someone to buy some.
As luck would have it, a servant dropped a piece of stone carbon onto some freshly made paper, leaving marks all over it.
The incident gave Bi Gan an idea.
Words could be recorded on tortoise shells, bamboo slips, or paper.
Then did the tool used to write those words necessarily have to be a writing brush?
Did they necessarily have to be written by hand?
Jizi noticed the faint marks the stone carbon had left on the white paper. He could vaguely make out the character for "Shang."
"Royal brother, this is..."
Bi Gan replied, "If we carve reversed characters into stone carbon, we can print them onto paper. With multiple pieces, we could print an entire composition. By rearranging the stone carbon over and over, couldn't we print thousands upon thousands of books?"
"Stone carbon isn't suitable for practical use yet, but if we keep experimenting, we're bound to find an appropriate material."
Jizi was struck dumb. If things really were as Bi Gan said, with cheap paper and a method that could easily print hundreds or thousands of characters, what sort of world would this become?!
Jizi began to envy Bi Gan, then suddenly had a flash of inspiration. "Royal brother, I oversee the ancestral temple sacrifices. Most