Chapter 450 — The Prelude to the Age of Print

Technological development tends to take the shape of a branching tree: once a critical technical barrier is breached, the many products lying behind that barrier will, as a matter of course, develop one after another. In Gao Yang's view, the "arcane transfer cylinder" that Rebecca and Nikoxi Egg had built was precisely such a critical barrier — it looked like nothing more than a core component of a printing press, but what it had solved behind that appearance was the crucial step of transforming traditional illusory magic into an industrial printing product.

Once that crucial step was taken, all manner of printing technologies based on the principle of "arcane transfer" would develop naturally and in due course.

The only thing that caught Gao Yang off guard was Rebecca's keen ability to sniff out "the new," and her wildly unconstrained way of thinking.

He had told Rebecca about the concepts of facsimile transmission and networked printing, and the girl had been absolutely delighted. She rattled off a great torrent of her own ideas and plans for further improvements, and by the end she had dashed over to Gaosong's desk, seized paper and pen, and begun sketching out a whole pile of drafts — blueprints for the Magic Web facsimile workflow she envisioned, along with the matching miniaturized printing devices equipped with communication functions. In fact, Gao Yang felt such devices ought to be called "printers"... but faced with the arcane transfer apparatus's bizarre operating principle, he decided not to quibble over a matter of terminology.

"Ancestor, Ancestor, do you think this could work?" Rebecca came running up to Gao Yang clutching the sketches she had just drawn, overjoyed — she had been in such a hurry that ink smeared her face and hands. "I think that besides machines that can mass-print newspapers, places like the government hall will also need small printing machines, for printing documents and that sort of thing — and all these machines could be linked together..."

Gao Yang looked at Rebecca, at the ink she had accidentally smudged on her face, at her elated, gesticulating manner, and could not help recalling something Hetty had once said —

Although the Cecil family did not associate closely with the other nobles, the habit of comparing themselves among the nobility had always prevailed, and in the circles where the young ladies of the Southern Frontier were ranked, Rebecca had long been notorious for her "clumsiness." Her fumbling in etiquette lessons was taken as the very model of "natural dullness," while her passion for "exploring" the castle and tinkering with machinery meant she was forever appearing before everyone covered in dirt, which only deepened others' negative impression of her as "the last descendant of the Cecil family"...

The corner of Gao Yang's mouth curled upward — how could those noble young ladies, who could do nothing but slowly sip tea and tend flowers in their castles, and who needed eight separate steps just to touch a pair of scissors, possibly be smarter than his little doe?

"What are you smiling at, Ancestor?" Rebecca asked curiously. "Is there a problem with the process I designed?"

"No problem at all. I'm sure this system will play a great role in the operation of the government hall," Gao Rong said, waving his hand. "But we still have to take it one step at a time. First, build a prototype of the large printing press and resolve the bottleneck in printing newspapers and books."

The territory had been promoting general education for more than a year now, and the results were of course obvious. But with the rapid growth of population and the swift expansion of territory, the existing model of general education would inevitably face challenges, and one of the most important of those challenges was textbooks.

Gao Yang needed large quantities of cheap, uniformly standardized textbooks. Only by letting those textbooks spread general education across the whole of the Southern Frontier could he successfully sweep away the haze of ignorance hanging over the people's heads.

The textbooks currently used at the Cecil General Academy were still "emergency stopgaps" printed in small batches by traditional methods; they were already stretched thin just meeting the present scale of instruction, let alone printing enough textbooks to meet the literacy needs of the entire Southern Frontier — millions of people, perhaps even tens of millions. Without an industrial printing press, that would be an impossible task.

That was why Gao Yang placed such importance on the printing press project under Rebecca's leadership.

He turned to Nikoxi Egg. "Nikoxi, how long will it take to build a prototype?"

The silvery-white sphere floating nearby answered in a confident voice: "A day and a half at most — including the time for debugging and drafting the breakdown diagrams for the assembly line. I'm ninety-nine percent certain it will succeed on the first try — because the most critical part, the arcane transfer cylinder, is already done, and the remaining structure is no harder for me than pinching out a few gears."

"Excellent. Build a prototype first, as fast as you can."

The silvery-white sphere bobbed slightly up and down. "You'll be seeing it very soon."

Afterwards they discussed a little more of the work at the Magical Technology Research Institute, and once the reward scheme for the research team members who had made outstanding contributions was settled, Rebecca left Gaosong's study, satisfied, hugging the sketches she had just drawn.

Humming a tuneless little melody and walking with a light, brisk step, the heir of the Cecil family passed through the corridor — neither the humming as she walked nor a gait utterly devoid of dignity was behavior befitting a proper noble young lady, and yet everyone in this mansion had long grown used to this particular flavor of the young miss; even the ever-strict Hetty had by now given up trying to correct Rebecca's manners.

As she rounded the corner of the corridor, Rebecca suddenly stopped — she saw that the door of a room not far ahead was slightly ajar, and light was spilling out from within.

She recognized it as Betty's room, and walked over lightly, curious to see what Betty was doing.

When the door swung open, she saw the little maid who had muddle-headedly followed everyone out of the old territory and stayed with her ever since, sitting at the small desk beside her bed, head bowed, utterly absorbed in something.

The furnishings in the room were very plain: apart from the necessary bed, table, and chairs, there was only a small wardrobe and two little chests in the corner.

An old-looking flat-bottomed pan hung on the wall beside the bed, and it looked rather odd there, but it was Betty's treasure — Betty was no longer the lowest-ranked kitchen maid, and so she had hung the pan she cherished most in her room, and would let no one touch it.

Rebecca rapped lightly on the doorframe, and the sudden sound gave the little maid a start. The latter looked up, and upon seeing Rebecca hurried to her feet, but before she could bow Rebecca cut her off: "It's nothing — I just came to see what you were up to."

Betty, wearing her signature dazed expression, raised a hand and pointed at the small desk beside her: "...Reading."

Rebecca leaned in curiously for a look, and saw a copy of *The Wizard and the Potion Bottle* lying open on the desk. It was a very easy-to-understand book; despite the word "wizard" in the title, its contents were basically just one simple little story after another. She remembered having a copy herself as a child — it was one of the first primers that the children of this era's well-off classes came into contact with.