Inside the eastern study of the main residence.
A massive map of the Northern Frontier hung on the wall. On one side, a huge sand table was densely covered with small red and blue flags, while military reports sent from the various prefectures were piled high on the desk.
There was no outsider in the room. Everyone seated here was part of the absolute core of power in the Northern Frontier.
Xiao Yuan sat upright at the head; Xia Lanshi sat at the desk; Su Muchen sat to one side, curiously looking around the room; Xiao quietly lowered his eyes as he drank his tea; and Chi Banyue was here today not only as the commander of the Secret Guard Camp, but also in her capacity as the Pavilion Master of Listening Snow Pavilion, “Liu Tingxue.”
Xiao Yuan had secretly summoned these people here for only one matter—the complete implementation of the “Light Network Project.”
Xia Lanshi brought out a thick stack of booklets and placed them in the center of the long table.
They were divided and bound into five volumes: military, medical, administrative, engineering, and commerce, with an additional emergency communications code table.
This was something he had spent several nights painstakingly writing.
“This is the first edition of the Regulations of Light Communications.”
Xia Lanshi introduced it methodically. “Mr. Liuchu has reviewed and revised it line by line. Today, I respectfully submit it to His Highness for a decision on whether it should be formally promulgated and implemented.”
This was no draft. It was a finalized version that could be put into use at any time.
Everyone picked up the booklet in front of them, but their points of focus were completely different, and each person’s area of expertise was revealed at once.
Xiao Yuan said nothing about the complicated coding theories. He directly flipped to the final practical exercises and looked up, asking coldly, “How long will frontline soldiers need to learn this?”
“Those with good aptitude can learn it in half a day. The average soldier will need no more than three days,” Xia Lanshi answered.
“Do they need to be literate?”
“No. They only need to memorize the patterns of the lights flashing on and off.”
Xiao Yuan gave a slight nod before immediately posing the most severe battlefield scenario.
“If an observation post is destroyed by the enemy, and communications along the defense line are cut off, what do we do?”
Xiao calmly answered from the side, “Switch to a backup station. All signal codes support relay transmission across stations. One broken point will not destroy the entire network.”
“What if the enemy deciphers our signals?”
“Replace the codebook.”
There was not the slightest fluctuation in Xiao’s voice.
“Once an order is given to replace the cipherbook, all previous copies become invalid. What the enemy has learned will only be false signals.”
Xiao Yuan asked no further questions.
He had never cared about how beautiful the words on paper were. What he looked at was the system’s ability to withstand pressure and survive on a brutal battlefield.
Compared with Xiao Yuan’s grim scrutiny, Su Muchen quickly flipped through several pages before suddenly smiling.
“This doesn’t look much like Morse code anymore.”
“Morse code?”
Xia Lanshi paused, somewhat curious about this foreign term from another world.
“Mm. This is more like the ‘tactical preset codes’ used by modern militaries.” Su Muchen smiled and nodded.
He had some familiarity with ancient history and modern warfare. He was not particularly specialized in either; it was simply a matter of personal interest.
At a glance, he could tell that this system had not mechanically copied modern knowledge. Instead, it had truly been transformed into a “Dasheng version.”
On the front line, soldiers did not need to laboriously send a long message saying, “We have encountered enemy forces.”
They only needed to flash the designated “four lights,” and the entire line would know that the enemy was attacking.
That was the kind of military communication ancient soldiers could absorb quickly.
Su Muchen then flipped to the medical volume, the section he cared about most.
“Disease outbreak signals, medicine shortage signals, isolation warnings—they’ve all been added?”
Xia Lanshi answered, “They are all listed in Section Three of the medical volume, and have been divided according to severity and urgency.”
Satisfied, Su Muchen closed the booklet and felt even more admiration for Xia Lanshi’s ability to coordinate everything.
Beside him, Chi Banyue finished reading through the coding logic, and a glint flashed through her eyes.
She was already calculating in her mind that once she returned, she would have the Secret Guard Camp develop its own dedicated cipher based on this underlying logic, for highly confidential communications between secret guards.
After a round of questioning and testing based on extreme scenarios, Xiao Yuan fell silent for a moment.
Finally, he shut the booklet with a heavy thud.
After a brief pause, his gaze swept across everyone, and his voice was as steady as a mountain.
“The Regulations of Light Communications will provisionally be designated the highest military and administrative secret of the Northern Frontier, as well as a common law.”
This was not merely a book.
It was the unshakable law of the Northern Frontier’s future.
“The system has been established, but there is still one difficult problem before us.”
Xia Lanshi patted the thick booklet, his brows slightly furrowed.
“If we want to ensure that every observation post and every commanding officer has at least one copy, that means several hundred copies. If we rely entirely on clerks to copy them by hand day and night, I’m afraid it will take several months.”
One book could be copied. Ten books could be copied.
But… five hundred?
And whenever the contents were revised, they would have to be copied all over again.
Just thinking about the enormous undertaking made Xia Lanshi’s temples ache.
Su Muchen pondered for a moment before asking, “How do people in Dasheng print books right now?”
“Mostly woodblock printing. One block per page.”
Xia Lanshi answered, then seemed to remember something.
“I once heard that craftsmen in the south tried carving individual characters onto separate wooden blocks, calling them ‘movable type.’ But it has never become widespread.”
“Why?”
Xia Lanshi shook his head.
“Casting and carving the characters consumes too much labor, and typesetting is also slow. When printing a book, most printing houses still find woodblocks more convenient.”
After hearing this, Su Muchen suddenly smiled.
“That’s because you’ve been treating it as a tool for printing books.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Su Muchen casually grabbed several black and white Go pieces from a nearby game box and lined them up on the table.
“The people who truly need movable type printing aren’t the ones printing ten thousand copies of Buddhist scriptures or the Analects whose contents will never change. For printing things like that, woodblocks are naturally faster.”
With a flick of his finger, he pulled out one of the Go pieces and disrupted the original arrangement.
“The real battlefield where movable type should demonstrate its power is in ‘documents that need to be constantly revised and updated.’”
Su Muchen raised his head and swept his gaze across everyone.
“Military orders, laws, textbooks, medical manuals, and this Regulations of Light Communications. Change the cipher today, change the regulations tomorrow, add another clause the day after that. If you’re using woodblocks, changing a single character means the entire wooden block is useless. But with movable type, you only need to replace that one piece of type.”
“What truly needs movable type is the system of governance. Movable type doesn’t print books. It prints the governance of the realm.”
Those words were like a thunderclap, instantly illuminating everyone.
This was not merely the invention of a new technology.
It was finding the perfect application for a technology that had been buried and overlooked.
Xia Lanshi was stunned for a moment, but then his brows furrowed again.
“But Dasheng has an enormous number of Chinese characters. To meet military and administrative needs, there would be at least tens of thousands of characters. If all of them have to be carved into movable type, the initial workload would still be unimaginably enormous.”
“We don’t need to carve them all.”
Xiao, who had been quietly drinking tea all this time, suddenly changed in presence.
His thoughts moved with astonishing speed. Almost the instant Xia Lanshi finished speaking, he had already taken paper and brush and begun drawing.
He opened the Regulations of Light Communications, glanced through it twice, and quickly wrote several characters on another sheet:
Enemy. Reinforcements. Army. Light. Post. Order. Station. Soldier.
“Start with a frequency estimate.”
Xiao’s tone was calm and decisive.
“The truly high-frequency vocabulary used in military and administrative documents consists of only a few hundred characters. Stock large quantities of those. For the remaining uncommon characters, have the carvers make them as needed. This is called ‘hybrid typesetting.’”
Chi Banyue looked at the character blocks Xiao had drawn and immediately switched into the mindset of the merchant “Liu Tingxue.”
Her merchant’s instincts immediately made her question their durability.
“Military records will need to be printed every day. Wooden type will wear down too quickly, and the printed characters will easily become blurred. Why not cast copper type directly?”
“Too expensive.”
Xiao rejected it without hesitation.
“Copper and iron must be prioritized for weapons and military equipment. Creating a set of pure copper type covering several thousand characters would cost more than all five hundred books combined.”
His brush paused as he proposed a plan that precisely balanced cost and effectiveness.
“Start by making trial pieces from hard jujube or pear wood. Once the workshop is operating smoothly, take the several dozen high-frequency characters used in military reports every day—‘army,’ ‘enemy,’ ‘reinforcements,’ ‘kill,’ and so on—and cast those individually in copper using sand casting. The rest can remain wooden. Use a mixture of wood and copper. Lowest cost, highest efficiency.”
Xia Lanshi looked at the tiny character blocks, still doubtful.
“What about arranging the type? Wouldn’t it take an enormous amount of time for craftsmen to search through thousands of character blocks one by one?”
“Mm. It will be very slow.”
Xiao nodded and admitted it without hesitation.
Everyone fell silent.
Xiao then added calmly, “But it is still much faster than carving an entire wooden block from scratch. And once the type has been arranged, the same page can easily print hundreds of copies. The time cost will be completely spread out across the quantity. It will absolutely be worth it.”
Then Xiao pushed the drawing he had just made toward everyone.
It was not a diagram of the printing process.
It was a massive wooden grid wall.
It was covered with countless drawer-like compartments, resembling a traditional medicine cabinet.
“This is the ‘type library.’”
Pointing at the drawing, Xiao began establishing his system of organization.
“Every character must have a fixed position according to its radical and frequency of use. Retrieving the type, typesetting, and returning it to its place must all follow a strict procedure. There can be no mistakes. The typesetting assembly line must never become disorganized. Any misplacement will result in collective punishment.”
Xia Lanshi’s eyes lit up completely.
Because he understood.
This was not merely a craftsman’s skill.
It was a rigorous management system.
Su Muchen couldn’t help laughing as he looked at Xiao.
“Your brain really works too fast. You even thought of type-library management and high-frequency character statistics?”
Xiao’s expression remained calm. He lifted his teacup and took a small sip.
“What Gatekeepers learn has never been limited to how to fight. We also learn how to allocate resources.”
Su Muchen had provided the key concept of “applying movable type to institutional documents.”
And in the blink of an eye, Xiao had filled in type-library management, statistical principles, material cost control, and workshop assembly lines, turning an abstract concept into a massive industry that could actually be implemented in this era.
“In that case, the implementation of administrative affairs will no longer be restricted by the tediousness of woodblock printing.”
Xia Lanshi took a deep breath, instantly imagining countless possibilities for government affairs.
“From now on, laws, textbooks, official documents—all of them can be rapidly distributed through the printing house.”
“Exactly.” Su Muchen smiled and nodded. “What you really need to carve isn’t a book, but a set of characters. Make the characters needed urgently first. You can slowly fill in the rest in the future.”
The abacus in Liu Tingxue’s mind was already clicking rapidly.
“Not just the government. Standard contracts for merchants, account books for workshops, books for ordinary people, even genealogies for great clans… Once this printing house gets running, we’ll make a fortune!”
Her eyes sparkled, as though she could already see silver pouring endlessly into the coffers.
Everyone was still immersed in the excitement of the technological revolution when Xiao Yuan’s calm voice cut in with perfect precision.
“How long until it can be done?”
The room fell silent for a moment as Xia Lanshi and Xiao rapidly calculated the construction period.
“If the Prince’s Residence fully supports the deployment of craftsmen, one month.”
Xiao Yuan immediately stood up and made the decision without hesitation.
“Establish an officially operated printing house immediately. Print the Regulations of Light Communications first. From now on, all military orders, official documents, medical manuals, and engineering manuals in the Northern Frontier will be uniformly printed by the printing house.”
Everyone accepted the order, their expressions solemn.
Those words from Xiao Yuan meant that the Northern Frontier would, for the first time, possess a true “administrative command hub” of its own.
From now on, important laws and military intelligence in the Northern Frontier would no longer depend on brush after brush copying them day and night.
They could be transmitted rapidly and precisely, in absolutely identical wording, into the hands of every commander and official.
What this printing house was about to print was no longer merely a booklet.
It was the Northern Frontier’s entirely new order.
However, after the excitement faded, the most practical problem came crashing down like a bucket of cold water.
“In that case, once the observation posts are established, the Light Network can begin operating.”
Xia Lanshi put down the final page.
Xiao Yuan did not answer immediately. His gaze fell heavily upon another thick volume of the budget ledger on the table.
The clock towers and five basic workshops: woodworking, blacksmithing, copperworking, masonry, and mathematics.
Then there were the newly added glassmaking, lamp-making, mirror-making, printing, movable type, and papermaking.
Every single one represented mountains of silver behind it.
“The clock towers need to be built, the Light Network needs to be implemented, the city walls need repairs, the troops need to be maintained, and the displaced civilians need to be settled.”
Xiao Yuan slowly spoke, with a rare heaviness in his tone.
“We don’t have enough silver.”
The room instantly fell into deathly silence.
Xiao Yuan gave a self-deprecating smile.
“Right now, our greatest enemy isn’t the Northern Di or the imperial court. It’s an empty treasury.”
Everyone could only smile bitterly at the words.
Xia Lanshi also smiled wryly.
“I understand. I’ve been checking the accounts recently. City repairs, grain reserves, medical care, workshops… The Prince’s Residence’s silver is flowing out like water.”
“Flowing like water” was already an understated description.
In reality, it was more like a flood breaking through a dam.
Su Muchen silently began calculating in his mind.
Should he simply move some of the gold in Guichen Studio—the gold Xiao Yuan hadn’t used up yet—over here for an emergency?
At that moment, Liu Tingxue directly opened the ledger. The more she calculated, the more tightly her brows knitted.
“The clock towers require copper, iron, and precious timber. The Light Network requires large quantities of glass and highly skilled craftsmen. The movable-type workshop, mirrors, telescopes…”
She calculated rapidly all the way down, then snapped the ledger shut with a loud smack.
“Your Highness, if all these expenses are borne entirely by Listening Snow Pavilion, within a year, Listening Snow Pavilion will be the first thing to collapse under the burden.”
The secret income of Listening Snow Pavilion was the true financial pillar supporting Prince Su.
The court’s allocations and the taxes from his fief were barely enough to scrape by, to say nothing of the fact that the court often found excuses to delay military pay.
Just as everyone was drowning in worry, Xiao, who had been quietly drinking tea all this time, slowly set down his teacup with a crisp clink.
“Who said we necessarily have to pay for it ourselves?”
Everyone froze and turned toward him.
“If we don’t have the money, then let someone else pay.”
Xiao Yuan’s brows drew together slightly. As a commander, his first reaction was naturally the protection of military secrets.
“Weapons, the clock towers, the Light Network—they are all the lifeblood of the Northern Frontier, as well as our trump cards on the battlefield. This prince will never hand them over to merchants who care only about profit.”
“There is no need to let them know what they’re for.”
Xiao picked up a sheet of paper from the table and casually drew a large circle, then several smaller circles around it.
“Break a massive project into separate components and establish information barriers.”
His long fingers pointed at the first small circle.
“The merchants at the glass workshop only need to know that they’re making glass. The blacksmiths only need to know that they’re forging metal tools. The carpenters only need to know that they’re making wooden frames. The craftsmen carving the characters only need to know that they’re carving characters. Only the core personnel responsible for final assembly need to know that all these things combined are called the ‘Light Network.’”
“That is how things have always been kept secret on the other side of the Gate.”
Xia Lanshi immediately understood.
When they had previously prepared the clock towers, the five workshops had also adopted a similar division of labor. The only difference was that at the time, all the funding had been shouldered by the Prince Su’s Residence.
Liu Tingxue raised her brows slightly, a trace of scrutiny appearing in her eyes.
“I wonder what Mr. Nangong’s thoughts are?”
The words were not provocative.
Xia Lanshi had previously told her that Xiao had volunteered to become a business adviser to Listening Snow Pavilion under the alias “Nangong Heng.”
But Listening Snow Pavilion was not a place just anyone could enter. She knew that Xiao was extraordinarily capable when it came to strategy and intelligence.
Yet the marketplace was a battlefield of its own.
She had to personally weigh exactly how much this “Mr. Nangong” was worth in the ways of commerce.