Morning.

Inside the factory’s large, empty building.

A group of children stood before Lu Yuan, with several private tutors beside them.

Lu Yuan was personally teaching them a jingle.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G~

It was catchy, and they could basically memorize the whole thing in a short while.

He wanted them to learn as much as they could.

After he finished teaching, Lu Yuan led his people away. By now, the machine was finally ready.

To be precise, this thing was a Spirit Stone photocopier.

In truth, the movable type printing technology of the Ming Dynasty was the absolute pinnacle of any feudal dynasty.

It was like the old saying goes: if not for this, three of the Four Great Classical Novels would not have been published during the Ming Dynasty.

But this technology had a big problem.

First, it was currently the late Yuan and early Ming period, so the technology wasn’t yet at its peak.

The true peak would come in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty.

Second, movable type printing was actually still very cumbersome.

This was especially true for what Lu Yuan wanted to do: a daily newspaper.

A daily newspaper. What does "daily" mean?

It meant compiling a day’s worth of news, finalizing the copy in the evening, and then getting all the papers printed overnight.

They would go on sale the next morning.

Movable type printing couldn’t keep up with that kind of speed.

Fortunately, this world wasn’t the ordinary Great Ming. It had things like Spirit Stones.

Coupled with Lu Yuan’s [Craftsmanship], he was able to create this Spirit-Stone-powered printing press.

It looked more or less the same as one from Earth.

Of course, that was just its appearance. The principle behind it lay mainly in the ink.

This wasn’t ordinary ink, but ink made from Spirit Stone Residue.

When irradiated by the Spirit Stones in the press, the ink made from Spirit Stone Residue would create a penetrative reaction.

A stack of paper as tall as a person could be printed through directly.

It’s a bit difficult to describe in detail, but that was basically how the thing worked.

Its speed was even faster than a proper printing press from Earth.

A stack of tens of thousands of sheets of paper took barely ten-odd seconds.

It could produce tens of thousands of copies from a single master copy on top, which used the special Spirit Stone ink.

This machine had almost no running cost. If you had to name one, it would be the paper.

During the Ming Dynasty, papermaking technology was already very advanced.

What was once exclusive to the nobility had now found its way into the homes of ordinary people.

But paper was still valuable, after all.

A single sheet of paper cost at least one Wen.

So, how much would Lu Yuan sell his newspaper for?

Three Wen? Two Wen?

Absolutely not.

It could only be sold for one Wen.

If he wanted to reach a universal audience, the price had to be low enough.

After all, this was an era where people couldn’t even get enough to eat.

If you put out a sheet of paper and sold it for two or three Wen, who would buy it?

To put it bluntly, even at one Wen per copy, not everyone could afford it.

You could say that Lu Yuan was losing money on this newspaper venture.

Losing money every single day.

Of course, he wasn’t losing that much.

There were labor and material costs, and of course, most importantly, the cost of unsold stock.

For example, say he printed fifty thousand copies of the newspaper today.

But in reality, he only sold forty thousand.

The remaining ten thousand copies, even at the base cost of the paper, would amount to one hundred taels of silver—a loss Lu Yuan would have to absorb himself.

After all, once the news was outdated, the papers would be worthless.

He would lose at least several thousand taels of silver a month.

Of course, this was just the initial investment.

Later on, there were ten thousand ways to make the money back.

Advertising fees in the future?

No, no, no. How much money could advertising fees possibly bring in?

Besides, you couldn’t just fill your entire newspaper with ads.

Advertising fees were simply child’s play.

In business terms, this was a classic case of not being able to make money from side A or side B. So, what do you do?

You get the money from side S.

Let’s take a very, very, very common example.

You’ve all been to restaurants on Earth, right?

And you’ve all used QR codes to order food, right?

In recent years, this technology has developed at an extremely rapid pace.

Basically, any restaurant of a decent size has it.

But this QR code ordering system actually existed more than ten years ago. People were already working on it around 2010 with the rise of smartphones.

So why did no one use it before? Why couldn’t it be promoted successfully?

The reason was that the people developing the project couldn’t find a way to make money.

It was a great thing for businesses, saving them an untold amount of time and money, but they just wouldn’t use it back then.

Why not?

Because it cost money, obviously!

Who’s going to use something that costs money?

’My restaurant already has waiters; their job is to take orders and what not.’

’It might be a bit more complicated and troublesome, but that’s what they’re there for.’

’It just means the waiters have to run around a bit more. It’s not like I, the boss, have to do the running.’

So, the businesses wouldn’t pay.

Well, would the customers pay?

Let’s say you had to pay a dollar to place an order. Would you use it?

That’s beyond ridiculous.

A dollar?

I wouldn’t even pay a single cent!

’Buddy, I’m doing you a favor just by coming to eat at your restaurant.’

’And before I’ve even had a single bite of food, you’re asking me for a dollar?’

’I’d leave immediately and go eat somewhere else.’

So there was the problem: neither side A nor side B was willing to pay.

How could this thing possibly survive?

But why is it suddenly everywhere today, more than a decade later?

Because someone later figured out that it didn’t matter whether side A paid or side B paid.

What was important?

What was important was whether Alipay or WeChat popped up the moment you paid!

In China’s internet economy, one of the largest sectors of financial transactions is dining out!

Tens of trillions in transactions all go through online payment platforms.