Liu Yu'er heard Yunniang say that there was another noble guest coming to the house, so she got out of bed with spirit, dressed neatly and came to the main courtyard to wait on them. It happened that Xi Feihu had his attendants bring in the gifts, and although Liu Yu'er wasn't a greedy person, when she saw the sandalwood tray piled high with white flower-patterned official silver ingots, her heart skipped a beat.

  The Prince of Jin'an's mansion is indeed generous, with standard silver ingots, one weighing fifty taels, sixteen on a tray totaling eight hundred taels, and two trays making one thousand six hundred taels. In addition, there are four large white pearls the size of longans in a brocade box, which must be worth several hundred taels of silver as well.

  Lin Mou looked at the silver and pearls with a smile, saying: "Young Master Hou is really too polite, such a generous gift, how can Lin Mou dare to accept? If Lin Mou doesn't accept, it would be looking down on Young Master Hou, Young Madam, and Miss...". He instructed Lin Jingzhong who was standing beside him, "Jingzhong, you just reluctantly take Young Master Hou's generous gift for me first."

  At this time, there were not a few people in Jiangning who hated the Xue family, but there were also not a few people in the court who pinned their hopes on the Xue family. Lin Xie didn't need to pretend to be noble and not associate with the Xue family. When he decided to save the two women of the Xue family, he had such an idea. As for Xue Feihu's generous gift, he naturally couldn't refuse it.

  Lin Jingzhong was really afraid that Lin Xian would foolishly reject the generous gift from Xi Feihu, thinking in his heart that rescuing Xi's wife and sister-in-law a few days ago was truly worth it. The innocence of Xi's wife and sister-in-law was far more precious than these thousands of silver coins and four dragon-eye-sized pearls. He had no qualms about accepting this generous gift on behalf of Lin Xian.

  Xue Fei Hu thought Lin Xian would decline one or two times, his mind was thinking of ways to persuade Lin Xian to accept the gift. Who would have thought that Lin Xian accepted it so readily, as if waiting for them to deliver the gift to his doorstep? He was taken aback for a moment, then burst out laughing: "Lin Jiezi is indeed a straightforward person, Fei Hu likes making friends with straightforward people..."

  Song Jia was now more subdued, but she glanced at Lin Xie with the corner of her eye, thinking that this person had talent, courage, decisiveness, and a thick skin that ordinary Confucian scholars didn't have. If Flying Tiger could win him over, it would be a great help. However, looking at him like this, he wasn't someone who could be swayed by more silver or jewels. A heroic figure who was mired in material things couldn't be considered a true heroic figure after all. So how should she go about winning him over?

  Xiaoming Yue didn't want to come to Japan today, but was strongly persuaded by her brother and sister-in-law. She had several parts of discontent in her heart, and the smile on her face was also stiff. Seeing Lin Xuan accept the silver and pearls without any refusal, she thought that he was indeed a greedy little heart. At this time, she saw Liu Yue'er walk in and thought: Who is this woman? So beautiful.

  Song Jia was still thinking about how to win over Lin Lian, when she saw Liu Yue'er walking in with a sluggish expression and sleepiness still lingering. Seeing that Liu Yue'er's clothes were also good, Song Jia momentarily misunderstood her identity. She slightly raised her body and asked lightly: "Has Song Jia come to disturb you..."

  Liu Yu'er saw that the young master's wife referred to herself by her maiden name, and she knew that she too had misunderstood her identity. She hastily said: "I have come to await your instructions, Young Mistress and Miss..."

  Song Jia only then realized that the beauty in front of him was a beautiful maid from Lin's residence, and his heart felt slightly unhappy. He secretly thought: Lin Mou's family has a beautiful maid, but he also covets Su Mei's beauty. It seems that all men in the world are heroes, but being lustful is their common nature. Thinking that he had this flaw made it easier to deal with him, what was feared was that he was a hypocrite who couldn't be persuaded.

  Liu Yu'er stood by and waited, also peeking at the young master's wife and the Xi family's young lady. She thought that the Xi family's young lady was a bit naive, but the young madam was truly beautiful. In her days in Shiliang County and since coming to Jiangning, she hadn't seen any woman more beautiful than the young madam of the Jin'an Marquis' manor. She thought that perhaps when Xia Meng'er grew up, she would have such a radiant complexion, but didn't know what Su Mei looked like, thinking that she probably wouldn't be inferior to this young madam.

  Lin Tie didn't care what the women were thinking in their hearts, he entertained Xi Fei Hu and Xi's sister-in-law for a cup of tea in the side room before sending them off politely. He then returned to Lin Jing Zhong's house with Liu Yue Er and instructed him: "Just put the silver directly into account, those four South pearls I'll keep for myself, I have other uses for them..."

  "They say Nan Zhu is famous, but I'm seeing it for the first time today," Lin Jingzhong said. "These two trays of silver can actually buy a big ship. After the New Year's festival, buying land and ships will require a lot of silver." He burst out laughing again, "Now when I see silver, my eyes light up, it's really shameful for a scholar like me."

  "This silver is also what we got from our hard work," Lin Xuan said with a smile, taking the brocade box containing pearls and putting it in his bosom. He continued, "People all say that southern pearls are good, but no one asks about the hardships of the pearl divers. The ancestors of the She family also relied on these southern pearls to become rich, who would have thought that the She family would become a feudal lord today?"

  The New Year is approaching, and all the shops in the government office are preparing to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. Nothing can be done at the beginning or end of the year. Even if Lin Xie's appointment as a prison officer on Jiang Island has been settled, he will have to wait until after the New Year before taking up his post. Lin Xie put the pearl brocade box in his bosom and left Lin Jingzhong's house with Liu Yue'er, returning to the main house.

  Liu Yu'er was thinking about the four large pearls in her mind, thinking that Lin Xuan would take them to please Su Mei. She yawned and asked Lin Xuan if there was anything else she needed to attend to while cleaning up the leftover tea on the desk. Lin Xuan also felt a bit sleepy and said: "I'll take a short nap, and if Zhao Shuhan comes over in the evening, I still need to talk with him all night..."

  "You men are really something, fine during the day but always bringing it up at night, and sitting for a long time at night will harm your body." said Liu Yuemei.

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  Lin Xie has been staying with Zhao Shuhan for several days, discussing and revising the manuscript all night until the eve of the Lunar New Year's Eve. He finally settled on a refined title, "Ti Lao Yu Shu", and asked Qian Xiaowu and Chen Enze to help copy the manuscript into two copies.

  "Ah...... it's really exhausting," Zhao Shuhan's physical strength was ultimately not as good as Lin Lian, and although he didn't have to go to the government office to attend court sessions, he had been studying and revising his manuscript in his small room for days. Once he finished, he still felt soreness in his waist and back.

  "It's all worth it," Lin said, looking at the neatly arranged stacks of manuscripts in their brocade boxes. "I'll be sending them to Zhengyedang tomorrow and have them rush the job. In about a month, we should be able to smell the ink and paper."

  "Haha," Zhao Shuhan also laughed happily, who wouldn't want their years of hard work to finally come to fruition? Seeing Qian Xiaowu about to put the manuscript away, he said, "Wait a minute, there's one more thing I need to change."

  Qian Xiaowu / Didn't know what else needed to be revised, so he put down the box containing the manuscript.

  Zhao Shuhan picked up the brush and inked it, then wrote a "Lin" character after his own name on the cover page of the manuscript. Lin Xie hastily grabbed Zhao Shuhan's wrist and said: "Brother Zhao, you are harming me, Lin Xie dare not obtain this deceitful name..." He also ordered Qian Xiaowu to "Quickly remove this cover page and rewrite a new one."

  Zhao Shuhan said: "In the past few days, I have had several conversations with Lin brother, and I have benefited greatly. If the prison book can be finalized, doesn't Lin brother have any credit? If I don't write your name on it, then I am stealing your credit..." Zhao Shuhan stood there, flipping through the manuscript, listing out over a dozen points, "Take a look, if you hadn't reminded me, how would I have thought of these?"

  "A magnificent work of one hundred thousand words, I only have a few trivial words, how can I be qualified to be listed?" Lin Xuan said.

  "Brother Lin, you'd better decline, this manuscript can be put off," Zhao Shuhan also had a stubborn temper, picked up the three boxes of manuscripts and wanted to leave, "I'll return the silver to you in two days."

  "Brother Zhao, you're harming me." Lin Mou sighed helplessly.

  "What's the point of harming you?" Zhao Shuhan smiled and picked up his pen to write Lin Xie's name in small characters on the cover page of three book manuscripts. He continued, "Before and after the New Year, I will have some free time to stay at home and write a research method/theory on prison books based on your suggestions; if that book is completed, your credit will be even greater, and if I don't include your name, wouldn't it be even more embarrassing?"

  Lin You shook his head and smiled bitterly, he had never thought of becoming famous in the world in this way. Zhao Shuhan was so insistent that although he felt guilty in his heart, as long as he was human, there would always be some greedy thoughts, so he went along with it and no longer refused. He kept Zhao Shuhan in the mansion for dinner and had Zhao Hu take him back to the mansion after the meal.

  Before the New Year, Zhao Shuhan wanted to stay at home and focus on writing a book manuscript on prison book research methods. Lin Xie took a manuscript to Lin Jingzhong in Zhengyeting every other day to discuss the engraving and printing of the manuscript.

  In Jiangning, the owner of Zhengyedang, a paper and bookstore business, Ye Kai, was also from Dongyang Prefecture and was related to Lin Tingxun by marriage. He saw that Lin had arrived in Jiangning and set up the Jiyun Society business just a month ago, and already had a reputation for being impressive, and knew that young people should not be underestimated, especially with Gu Wuduan backing him up. Seeing that even Lin Mengde was polite to Lin, Lin came to seek his help on a matter, and Ye Kai was also very courteous, offering an 20% discount on the cost of engraving the books. Even so, the magnificent hundred-page book was considered a monumental work in its time, and printing one hundred copies would cost two hundred taels of silver.

  Carving a book draft, paper-based ink is one cost, and manual engraving is an even greater cost.

  Lin understood that although the world had already invented movable type printing technology, the materials of both clay and copper movable types were prone to deformation. Moreover, it was difficult to find suitable printing ink that could work well with either clay or copper movable types to produce fine prints. In general, bookstores preferred to engrave characters on whole blocks of mulberry wood boards.

  Lin Xie originally found it difficult to understand these things. In Zhengyeting, he took a copper movable type and tried it with ink, discovering that ordinary ink was very hard to stick to the copper-made character mold. Even if Zhengyeting experimented with special inks, the effect was not good. He thought to himself that even if he changed to using lead to make the character molds, the key problem was still finding suitable printing ink.

  Whether it's the material of the font or the material of the ink, Lin Xuan learned that the engravers in the book workshop have been studying for hundreds of years. It's just that the scale of ordinary book workshops is limited, and besides, there is a lack of sufficient exchange and communication between different book workshops, making it difficult to support large-scale material screening.

  Although movable type printing has a history of four or five hundred years, its practical effect is not good, and it has not been widely used.

  This is precisely the major drawback of miscellaneous learning, if there were a country to support systematic material screening, how could it not have allowed movable-type printing to be widely applied for four or five hundred years? If there had been sufficient exchange and communication, later generations would at least have been able to avoid taking many detours on the basis of their predecessors; if materials science itself had a systematic theoretical framework to guide it, the direction of screening would have been much clearer, and time would naturally have been shortened.

  The book has over 100,000 words, and just one set of engraved boards requires more than 300 sheets. The smaller the characters, the harder they are to engrave; the larger the characters, the more paper is wasted on printing. If a single character is mis-engraved on a page, it must be re-engraved from scratch; if an engraved board is damaged during the printing process, it must be supplemented with new engravings. Generally speaking, when there's no rush to meet a deadline and the print run isn't large, a printing house will only produce two sets of engraved boards for cross-printing; but when time is of the essence, they may produce three or four sets of engraved boards simultaneously, so that even if some boards are damaged, the printing work won't be interrupted.

  Two sets of carved boards, nearly seven hundred pieces, just the materials, labor and loss used in these need more than one hundred taels of silver. This is mainly due to the low cost of human capital. It's hard to imagine that after a thousand years, a master can carve the board like an art piece, but at that time, working on the board for six hours or more only earned less than thirty copper coins.

  Generally speaking, the more copies of a book are printed, the more the cost of manual engraving can be spread out. The works of famous writers like Pear Garden's Ci and Qu can sell thousands of copies in one edition, while books on Confucian classics and imperial examinations have even higher print runs. After all, these books are needed by scholars everywhere, so they can spread out the cost of engraving and make a profit.

  As a minor branch of miscellaneous studies, it is already beyond the imagination of ordinary people to sell 100 copies after printing. After printing, the high cost of each book naturally exceeds the imagination of ordinary people.

  "Adding up the hard work of these days, printing a hundred books, each book has to be sold for four taels of silver to break even," Printing the book would cost two hundred taels of silver. Lin Jingzhong was heartbroken for a while on the way back in the carriage and said to Lin Shu: "Zhengyeting is really greedy, Ye Kai's words are polite, if he didn't want to make money from us, this book could be printed for 145 taels of silver... This book is still a small matter, if you really want to print miscellaneous books on a large scale in the future, such waste will not do."

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