The fourteenth day of the first lunar month.

Early that morning, Li Mengxi got up and went to the city lord's palace. When he first entered the door, Li Mengxi saw that Guan Yu was not there, and Zhang Fei was sitting upright, spreading out a piece of paper and writing attentively.

Li Mengxi walked over and took a look. Zhang Fei raised his head and smiled.

Zhang Fei praised, "Xi'er, what you did is really good."

Li Mengxi took a look at the calligraphy written by Zhang Fei. Zhang Fei wrote beautiful small seals with straight muscles. Li Mengxi smiled and said, "Third General, your handwriting is also good."

As he said that, Li Mengxi saw that the words written by Zhang Fei on the paper were blurred out. In addition, the words written by Zhang Fei were small, and the words were blurred together.

Li Mengxi begged, "This paper won't work, it's too dizzy."

Zhang Fei stopped writing, looked up at Li Mengxi, and said with a smile, "What about paper? Can you not feel dizzy? If not, do you still call it paper?"

Li Mengxi retorted, "But if the paper is too dizzy, the book won't be printed."

From this, it is derived that a technology that is more valuable than the steel filling method, the saddle, the distilled wine, the steel-wrapped knife and the curved shaft plow is - printing.

Printing is further divided into movable type printing and block printing.

Li Mengxi talked about it, and he talked about a glorious scene where books were cheaper than swords and guns, books could be bought by the pound, and everyone had books to read.

Zhang Fei is not just a rough man, not just a martial artist. He has a good family background and has read books. His handwriting is very good and he can be considered a scholar.

Just like a scholar's vision, Zhang Fei's vision is also like that. Once he heard the grand scene of civilization that Li Mengxi talked about, Zhang Fei couldn't wait any longer.

"Let's go! Let's go! Hurry, let me see what kind of withering technique this is." Zhang Fei grabbed Li Mengxi and started to leave.

Li Mengxi refused, "I haven't eaten yet, let's have breakfast..."

Zhang Fei couldn't help but tell Li Mengxi, and insisted on dragging Li Mengxi away, "It's not too late to come back!"

Li Mengxi wanted to continue to refuse, but Zhang Fei became angry. He grabbed Li Mengxi's waist with both hands, lifted him on his shoulders, and carried him away like a child.

Li Mengxi screamed angrily and couldn't break free.

Zhang Fei was deliberately retaliating. Three or five days ago, when he was testing the stirrups, Guan Yu pulled Zhang Fei off his horse and carried him away. At that time, Li Mengxi laughed so happily.

As a result, this made Zhang Fei hold a grudge. If Zhang Fei could not seek revenge against Guan Yu, why not bully a child? So Zhang Fei picked up Li Mengxi and bullied him whenever he had the chance.

Poor Li Mengxi, who used to be so majestic, was now so embarrassed.

Li Mengxi complained to Guan Yu, and some seriously said that if a general loses his dignity, he cannot command others, that is, Zhang Fei's behavior is very serious and wrong.

As a result, Guan Yu smiled and didn't care.

This left Li Mengxi completely helpless. There was also a way to kill Zhang Fei. He would take a big yellow crossbow and string it, lie down on the side of the road, wait for Zhang Fei to pass by, and kill him with one crossbow.

Or, ask the military doctor Tian Bu to remove the poison and kill Zhang Fei.

Or, dig a trap and trap Zhang Fei in it.

However, there is no need to kill Zhang Fei.

But if Zhang Fei is not killed, there is no way to get rid of Zhang Fei's teasing. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the army, and there is no one to help.

Li Mengxi was so angry that he could only wait for Liu Bei to come back and complain to Liu Bei.

When they arrived at the craftsmen camp, a group of craftsmen saw Zhang Fei carrying Li Mengxi over, and the craftsmen burst into laughter.

When Zhang Fei grabbed Li Mengxi with one hand and put him down, Li Mengxi angrily punched Zhang Fei with his fists, and angrily kicked Zhang Fei's calf several times.

With Li Mengxi's strength, Zhang Fei's kick didn't hurt at all, and Zhang Fei actually laughed happily.

After getting angry, Li Mengxi went to the captain of the carpenters and asked, "Does any of us know how to engrave?"

The craftsman captain held back his laughter, "Yes..."

Li Mengxi saw him smiling and glared at him. The craftsman captain quickly stopped his smile.

Someone who knew how to make a seal arrived. Li Mengxi called him aside and whispered, "What I want to carve is not a seal. You can find a square wooden board with less texture, and then carve some words..."

"By the way," Li Mengxi suddenly looked at the ragged craftsman with thick fingers, "can you read?"

The craftsman smiled honestly, "I don't know."

At this time, Li Mengxi thought about how long the literacy classes in the military had been suspended and they had to be continued.

After writing this down, Li Mengxi looked at the craftsman in confusion and asked, "But you can't read, how can you carve a seal for someone else?"

The craftsman replied that when others were carving seals, they were given a pattern and they could be compared to it.

I understand, it turned out that the characters were carved as pictures.

No, block printing cannot be handed over to an illiterate person, because if he is illiterate, he will have to follow it every day and will not be able to do other things.

Li Mengxi asked the craftsman to go back, and then shouted to the busy craftsmen, "Who can read? Is anyone literate?"

Three or five people responded.

In front of three or five people, Li Mengxi told all the relevant techniques of carving wood.

"There are several keys to the withering technique.

First, the key to the wooden board is that the reverse characters should be engraved on the wooden board, so that when printed, it will be the orthographic characters.

Secondly, there are convex characters and concave characters on the wooden boards. I don’t know the pros and cons of these two types, and how difficult they are. I want you to try them out.

Thirdly, I don’t know what kind of wood is the best for making blocks. You can try the wood one by one.

The fourth is that if a worker wants to do his job well, he must first sharpen his tools. The art of carving wood is different from ordinary carpentry. Since it is a new thing, there are many things that can be done. I believe some of you know the rules in my camp.

Those who make many innovations will also receive many rewards and promotions. Isn’t this an opportunity to make achievements?

Therefore, you might as well put more thought into the tools you should use, the carving technique, the wood treatment, etc., so that the art of wood carving can become popular in your hands as soon as possible.

cannot."

In short, Li Mengxi only had the basic principles of wood carving. As for quality and efficiency, Li Mengxi had no idea what kind of wood should be used, what tools should be used, how to handle the wood, and what the carving technique should be.

Therefore, the withering technique needs to be completed step by step in the hands of craftsmen.

In addition to woodblock printing, there is also movable type printing. The principle of this movable type printing is different. It is to carve characters out of wood or burn them into clay, and then arrange and combine them. Compared with woodblock printing, movable type printing

The technology is more efficient, closer to modern printing presses, and has greater potential.

In addition to typefaces, another key to supporting movable type printing is the typesetting system, that is, a set of methods for quickly and effectively arranging large amounts of text into the required content.

This requires the establishment of a writing system so that the required fonts can be easily found. In addition, the small square fonts must be arranged in neat rows, which naturally requires specific framework tools.

It is very simple to print words with stencils, but it is not simple to use movable type printing with high efficiency and high quality.

The craftsmen were busy each other, preparing to start making the first batch of typefaces. At this time, Li Mengxi was thinking about one thing, the problem of fonts.

It has been decided to promote simplified characters on a large scale in the military, because it is much easier to recognize and learn simplified characters, which will help improve the efficiency of popularization of characters.

So now that it has been decided to popularize simplified fonts in the military, it is natural that the supporting printing technology and books should be simplified characters.

The problem is that not only are there a large number of illiterate people in the army, but as their power expands later, there are also many scholars.

So, if the literate people use traditional Chinese characters, but the rebels use simplified Chinese characters, can the two be integrated into one system, or will it cause large-scale communication and confusion in written government orders.

After thinking about it carefully, it seems that if you can only write traditional Chinese characters, you can also recognize simplified Chinese characters. In other words, there is actually no big barrier to communication.

Furthermore, whoever is more powerful is in the minority. If the rebels number hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands, and millions of illiterate people in the future learn simplified Chinese characters and use simplified Chinese characters, then on the contrary, the scholars who use traditional Chinese characters will be the most powerful ones.

A minority, but non-mainstream.

Simplified Chinese characters are not a problem.

In addition to fonts, there is another point. If a book is printed on paper, should it be printed vertically from top to bottom, right to left, or from top to bottom?

In response to this problem, Li Mengxi felt that it was necessary to innovate the way of writing.

The two different writing materials of paper and bamboo slips determine that they are incompatible.

In the bamboo slip era, why were characters written from top to bottom and read from right to left? This is determined by the characteristics of the bamboo slips themselves.

Each bamboo slip is long and vertical, so it can only be convenient for writing from top to bottom. According to the size of the bamboo slips and the posture of the writing hand, the bamboo slips are rolled up into a large bundle. Most people generally write with their right hand, and there are only two ways to open the bamboo slips.

To plant, either stretch it to the left, or stretch it to the right, or stretch it to the right. The rolled-up bamboo slips are on the left. In this way, from right to left, your hands are always placed on a flat place.

And if the bamboo slips are written from left to right, then the right hand has to be supported by the bamboo slips, and the bamboo slips are very long, so it doesn't matter if they are shorter and long enough, but if the place is not long enough, the hand will be carried, and writing will be awkward.

Therefore, from top to bottom, from left to right, this is the most comfortable and efficient way to write on bamboo slips.

What about paper? If you write vertically on a piece of paper from right to left, your right elbow has to be constantly raised to avoid contact with the ink, which makes writing very uncomfortable.

Excluding the left and right sides, when writing on paper, is it faster to write horizontally or vertically? There is no doubt that it is horizontally.

When writing horizontally, the elbow can be fixed at one point, and the hand and pen can be written downwards by just turning the elbow slightly, and the continuity is very strong.

And if you can't write two words from top to bottom, you have to move your elbows and stop.

There is only one difference in writing habits. Writing horizontally is several times faster than writing vertically.

If the whole world chooses to write horizontally, it means that the efficiency of all writing work will increase by several percent, which means that the efficiency of knowledge production will increase by several percent. This is of great importance.

Also, writing horizontally is naturally suitable for writing some long mathematical formulas and calculations, and is naturally suitable for science.

And if it is held vertically, a long line of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division is written, and it takes a long time to read and I can't understand it.

Therefore, when papermaking began to mature, when paper began to be mass-produced, and when printing began to become popular, from then on, the way of writing was directly changed.
To be continued...