Li Daoxuan set up his small stool, picked up the dry pot chicken offal delivered by a takeaway rider, and started eating while watching the craftsmen print books.

They first prepared a wooden frame as large as a “book page,” then fitted small wooden blocks carved with reversed characters one by one into the frame, assembling them together until the entire frame was full.

Next, they smeared ink onto these wooden blocks, spreading it evenly.

Finally, they took out a piece of paper and slapped it down onto the blocks with a “whack.”

When the paper was lifted off, a printed page appeared before them.

Scholar Wang darted over, grabbed that single page with both hands, and laughed out loud despite the ink not yet being dry: “Printed! Finally printed! The first page of Hanyu Pinyin! Amazing! Print quickly, quickly! Get the whole divine book printed out soon.”

The two printers recently recruited from the county town looked utterly confused. Their new Dong Weng seemed a bit crazy. But oh well, the pay was too good to refuse. They just needed to work their hardest for him.

Onward with the printing!

“Dong Weng, how many copies should we make of this page?”

The number of copies determined how many books could be published.

Mr. Wang began, “First, let’s print fifty copies…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Gao Yiye beside him spoke up: “The Deity has ordered. Print one thousand copies in the first batch.”

“Huh?” Mr. Wang startled and quickly bowed toward the sky: “Deity, the Study Well has fewer than twenty students right now. Fifty copies are more than enough. One thousand might be a bit too…”

Li Daoxuan asked: “After movable type finishes printing one page, you have to dismantle it and then reset the type for the second page’s layout, right?”

After Gao Yiye relayed this question, the two printers quickly answered: “Yes. We have limited character blocks, so we have to reuse them. Once we finish printing the first page, we must dismantle the movable type and rearrange it for the second page’s layout.”

Li Daoxuan declared: “Once the layout is dismantled, reprinting the first page would mean reassembling everything all over again. What a hassle. So print many copies the first time. Make all one thousand now. That way, if we run low later, we won’t need to reassemble the type again.”

The two printers didn’t know who the Deity was, nor did they understand His penchant for large-scale approaches. Hearing Gao Yiye’s relay, they couldn’t help murmuring quietly: “Printing one thousand copies we can’t use would waste so much paper and ink. Dong Weng could lose money.”

Mr. Wang overheard their muttering and chuckled: “You two are actually worried about saving us money? Rest easy. The Deity never considers thriftiness. When He instructs, forget one thousand copies; even one hundred thousand should be printed without hesitation.”

The two exchanged confused glances: “???”

Still baffled, they heard Gao Yiye speak again: “The Deity orders: Assign ten additional labor offenders to assist the paper makers. As for ink, the Deity shall bestow divine ink.”

Everyone bowed reverently except the two new printers, who stood frozen, unsure what to do.

The woodcarver rushed into the courtyard and placed a large wooden basin on the ground, bigger than a bathtub. Then, a giant blob of black liquid suddenly dropped from the sky – duang duang duang – filling the basin to the brim.

The rich scent of ink immediately spread through the air.

Gao Yiye commanded: “Alright, start printing. One thousand copies!”

The two printers resigned: “…”

So they printed!

The two printers, receiving generous “craftsman’s basic wages,” set to working.

The first page was printed one thousand times. Then the movable type was dismantled. They searched for the right character blocks again, reset them to form the second page, and slapped down ink one thousand times to print that. They repeated this process tirelessly. Finally, after several days, all one thousand copies of the inner pages were printed.

They then dyed heavy paper blue to create book covers and stitched them together with cotton thread.

Jing jing – one thousand copies of Hanyu Pinyin were completed.

Holding a brand-new “divine book,” Mr. Wang felt triumphant and couldn’t help composing a poem:

“A village elder spoke of divine books descending from above,

Once clouds of crimson held aloft a jade tower from the Heavens.”

This poem, of course, was not written by him; it was a recitation of a poem written by someone else.

“Hahaha, let the children all come to get a copy, each one gets a copy, hahaha.”

Li Daoxuan found it amusing and couldn’t help but reach his hand into the box, holding it suspended in front of Gao Yiye: “Yiye, put a book on my hand.”

Gao Yiye promptly obeyed, took a copy of “Hanyu Pinyin”, stood on tiptoe, and carefully placed it on the tip of Li Daoxuan’s finger; when she set the book down, her small hand accidentally touched Li Daoxuan’s giant hand again, and she couldn’t help thinking to herself: Ah, I touched the Deity’s hand once more.

Recalling how she had once pretended to be “Madam Li”, her little face flushed red, and she silently scolded herself for being too disrespectful.

Li Daoxuan pulled his hand out and saw a tiny book on the tip of his finger.

It was just a few millimeters in size!

He didn’t dare pick it up with his fingers, fearing he might crumple the paper if he pinched it.

He could only handle it carefully, laid his finger flat on the table, tilted it, and the book slid off the fingertip onto his computer desk; with his left hand, he picked up a magnifying glass, with his right hand, he grabbed the finest small tweezers, and he gently lifted the book cover with the tweezers and opened it…

Under the magnifying glass, the lines of Hanyu Pinyin annotations were utterly hilarious.

“This thing is too goofy,” Li Daoxuan also laughed. “Alright, let’s try selling it.”

He took photos of himself using tweezers to turn pages and a magnifying glass to read the book, took several ultra-close-up high-definition macro shots of the small book, touched up the photos, uploaded them to an online shopping site, and wrote the caption: “The ultimate miniature craftsmanship, a 1:200 scale ‘Hanyu Pinyin’ primer, a micro-book that overturns your perception, with pages that can actually be turned…”

As for the price, he casually set it at 888888! He just loved the number eight a lot more.

After the gag, his attention turned back to the box.

At that moment, Thirty-Two was handing out hefty rewards to several artisans; he knew the Deity’s temperament—whenever artisans completed some task, heavy rewards were always given, the really lavish kind, like right now.

Thirty-Two shook his head and declared aloud: “Paper maker Luo Leg Hair, for contributing to book printing, is rewarded fifty jin of pork, ten jin of sugar, and two jin of salt.”

Luo Leg Hair was overjoyed: “Thank you, Deity.”

“Woodcarver and printer, you are equally rewarded fifty jin of pork, ten jin of sugar, and two jin of salt.”

The two new printers heard such an astonishing reward for the first time; fifty jin of pork alone nearly made them faint with shock, and the next two items were even more terrifying—that was sugar and salt, rewards of ten jin and two jin? Oh my goodness.

“For the first time, I feel it’s truly great to be an artisan household.”

“With this, I can pay the artisan registration fee for several years now.”

“Working as an artisan here seems to have quite a bright future.”

“Ah, I really hope the Deity gives us something else to do soon.”

Li Daoxuan thought to himself: Wanting work isn’t complicated? I just worry you aren’t willing to work.

He smiled and opened his phone; on it were prepared various primary school textbooks, especially mathematics which was crucial, and now they could get started on it.