Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Winters abruptly stood up, walked to the desk, and unraveled the white silk cloth.

Inside was something that looked like a small notebook?

The notebook's front and back covers were yellow, with a texture that felt like some kind of leather, possibly cowhide?

There was a clasp on the side.

Winters opened the clasp, filled with anticipation, and opened the notebook...

...

...

What??

It's blank?

He flipped through the notebook back and forth, only finding a tiny letter 'L' at the lower-left corner of the last page.

'L'?

What the hell is 'L'?

Winters tossed the notebook back onto the desk with self-mockery, thinking, "Lieutenant Montagne, what were you expecting? A treasure map? A huge secret? Some unspeakable novel? That female thief probably can't even recognize letters."

He sighed and collapsed back onto the bed.

He hadn't had a good rest for two days.

As his mind relaxed, fatigue came knocking at his door.

On this familiar bed, all his physical pains were soothed away.

Sleepiness overtook him.

He drifted off to sleep.

——I am the dividing line for the notebook with nothing written in it——

Although marrying one's cousin was quite normal in this era, I assure you there will be no orthopedic content in this story. I hope to depict independent, intelligent, self-respecting, and admirable female characters, but essentially this is still a man's story, about steel, gunpowder, and Magic.

(Although up until now I have yet to let Winters "discover the ultimate secret of Magic," Orz, I promise, it's coming soon.)

Elizabeth Serviati is Winters Montagne's sister, and although they're cousins, they grew up together and are as close as siblings from the same mother. Their relationship is purely familial, with absolutely no romantic affection involved.

——I am the orthopedic-free dividing line——

Moreover, before the invention of papermaking and book printing, books were astoundingly expensive, and ordinary people hardly had any need to read, with most books being copied and consumed by clerics. The early papermaking technique was subpar in quality, so scribes continued to copy texts on parchment, for after all, copying was a tough job, and certainly one would want to write on the best paper available.

According to the paper "Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages" by Christopher Dyer, published by Cambridge University Press in 1989

In England of 1397, the University of Oxford spent 113 pounds to purchase 126 books of an average 77 pages each, with 'pound' referring to a pound of 92.5% pure silver. The average cost per book was about 0.830 pounds of silver, and the definition of 'pound' in terms of weight has not changed much over time, approximately 376.482 grams of silver by today's standards.

Converted into today's silver price, one book is nearly 1500 RMB.

But considering the purchasing power of precious metals at the time, it was a fortune.

This was because the outflow of precious metals in 14th century England led to a currency shortage, inflating the purchasing power of precious metals;

At the same time, today's low silver prices are due to mass mining, which has nearly turned silver into an industrial material, losing its monetary properties.

Even after movable-type printing was introduced in Europe, book prices remained high due to the limited audience. Like I mentioned before, many swordsmanship masters in the 15th and 16th centuries went bankrupt trying to print manuals and even resorted to embezzlement to fund their printing, only to end up hanged...

Thus, movable-type printing was mainly used to print religious books because only this genre had a broad enough audience to worry not about sales and to spread the cost. During the Protestant Reformation, Protestants were fervent in printing pamphlets and vernacular versions of the scriptures.

Furthermore, Selika's widespread use of woodblock printing technology was an impressive achievement in reducing book prices. Yet it might be precisely because of a barely adequate technology that there was less motivation to improve, which is lamentable. In the tenth year of the Daoguang era, when Li Yao printed "Southern Border Chronicles" in Hangzhou using movable-type, it actually cost more than woodblock-printed books. Woodblock printing technology suppressed the development of movable-type, eliciting a sigh.

——I am the 'blessing in disguise' dividing line——

Thanks to the social justice advocate Old Wang and book friend 20181013204343295 for their recommendation tickets

Thank you so much, bowing in gratitude. To claim that this story is purely written for oneself would be disingenuous; thank you for the recognition.