Regardless of whether Tan Weixin was preparing to launch her anti-piracy campaign with great fanfare, or use her far-reaching influence and power to torment her opponents with small actions until they were half-dead, or even launch an initiative to promote intellectual property legislation in this era of underdeveloped communication, she would definitely enjoy the process with a cat-and-mouse mentality.

Tan Weixin also told Ye Tao about several heavyweight works that Baowentang Bookstore was currently typesetting: "Mathematics," "Economics," "Sociology," "Design and Technology," and "Architecture and Structure." These books would all be textbooks circulating in a relatively small circle. The first two were adapted by Tan Weixin from her own knowledge according to the characteristics of this era, and some of the content had already been disseminated on a small scale. "Sociology" was a compilation of "Group Psychology," "Management Psychology," and other content that Ye Tao had lectured on in the Yizhanlou commentary hall and supplemented in several lectures, along with some case studies. "Design and Technology" and "Architecture and Structure" were two textbooks that ordinary people could not understand. The content on design had been roughly grasped by the brothers in the Ye Family Workshop and the old technicians who had served in the Ye Family for many years, and Ye Tao had also taught it in conjunction with practice, but for others, the "design" with many abstract concepts was really difficult to describe. The last book, "Architecture and Structure," was a collection of cases based on architectural design drawings, with written annotations to explain the series of relationships between architecture and structure. The main cases included in this book were the buildings that Ye Tao had participated in constructing in the past few years: Zhanyuan Garden, Xunfeng Pavilion, Qingquan Village, the Danyang New City renovation project, and the Seven Seas Pagoda. In terms of the content and organizational form of this book, even in the era that Ye Tao and Tan Weixin came from, it would be a work of extremely high quality, and for this era, it would appear even more profound and classic.

These voluminous works were not only the crystallization of Ye Tao and Tan Weixin's hard work over the years, but also became a demonstration of skills for the art and printing workshop, the pigment and dyeing workshop, and the fine engraving printing workshop of the Ye Family Workshop. The thickened, clean, and delicate paper had an excellent feel, and it was the first batch of watermarked paper in this era.

The watermarked paper had to go through a background printing process before it could become the material on the repeatedly improved printing press. The fine engraving printing workshop prepared a total of five patterns: Yunshui (cloud and water) pattern, Lei (thunder) pattern, Xiangshou (auspicious beast) pattern, flower and grass pattern, and bird pattern. The engraving technicians were all old craftsmen who had followed Ye Tao in the workshop since Yicheng. They all inherited Ye Tao's bad habit—leaving their signatures in the works in an inconspicuous way.

After the background printing, the printing of the main text content was also done with metal movable type and special ink. The charts, drawings, and pictures used in the book were all in the form of metal etching prints. In the era that Ye Tao and Tan Weixin came from, this form of metal etching prints was still frequently used until the 21st century, even if the production and typesetting were only done through computers. And in this era, presenting this technical means and craftsmanship was itself an innovation.

Even the binding of the books was not the thread binding that was popular in this era, but hot glue binding. Each book had a hard cardboard cover with sheepskin protection, and a thicker cloud-patterned paper cover on the outside. The sheepskin cover and the cloud-patterned paper cover were all printed with the title, author, and publisher in gold foil... Except for the absence of a copyright page and the Chinese book reprinting number that did not become widespread until the mid-1990s, these books carried a completely modern atmosphere... Except that all of these things were in "Traditional Chinese."

Printing books with such meticulous care was extremely costly. According to Ye Tao, it was basically printing books on banknotes. In terms of the technical difficulty of paper, printing, and ink, this statement was a fact, not an exaggeration. Each of the five sets of books was printed in only three hundred copies. Of these three hundred copies, after deducting the sample books to be kept by the author, compilers, and publishers, and the books to be kept for archiving by the royal palace, the inner court, the Imperial College, and the Taixue, at most one hundred copies were left. After reserving twenty sets of books as rewards for the most outstanding students of the Taixue and the Imperial College in the next four years, the rest were given to the current ministers, retired old ministers, and powerful aristocratic families who had a great impact on the national economy and the people's livelihood, on the one hand to solicit everyone's opinions, and on the other hand to recognize the auxiliary decision-making role of these five sets of books in national policy. When this set of books was officially promulgated, an extremely deterrent decree would be issued along with it: those who spread these five sets of books or their contents to other countries would be punished for treason.

And these five sets of books also allowed Tan Xiaopei and others, and many ministers in Dongping, to see the importance of theory. These things were not highly targeted and highly operable strategies such as "Strategies for Pacifying Liao," "Memorials on Sea Tax Commercial Law," and "Twenty Years of Consultation on Pacifying the West," but works that extracted abstract concepts from countless histories and realities, from concrete events and data, and organized them. They did not analyze specific events and target specific enemies, but were a universal summary. And for Dongping, a country with extremely strong comprehension, the value of these things was at least no lower than those specific strategies.

The advanced economic ideas, thoughts on national regulation, the development of economic entities, and discussions on the monetary economic system circulated in "Economics" could allow people who were extremely sensitive to economic affairs to see a completely new picture of development. However, no matter how regretful everyone was, everyone understood one thing: when they initially tried to prevent Tan Weixin's long-term plan for monetary reform from being passed, they had already closed the door to allowing Tan Weixin to preside over the economic development of Dongping.

Whether it was Tan Weixin's intelligence, talent, unruliness, or stubbornness, they all absolutely proved Tan Xiaopei's initial evaluation of her: if she were a man, and if she had a good body, then he would be a generation of great rulers who could make the world tremble.

Tan Weixin, who had no interest in becoming a great ruler, seemed very satisfied with her life in Ninghe Town. Because she had just started taking Shengji San (Life Generating Powder), Feng Henian required Tan Weixin to stay in Ninghe Town for a month, and then leave when she took the second dose of Shengji San. And he would also stay by Tan Weixin's side to study medications to assist Shengji San based on Tan Weixin's constitution, to accelerate the process of Tan Weixin's physical recovery, and even put forward some other health advice.

In this way, both Ye Tao and Tan Weixin were stuck in the small place of Ninghe Town. Han Dong was certainly delighted that he had the opportunity to show his face frequently in front of the governor and the princess, and the total of two thousand officers and soldiers now stationed in Ninghe Town and its vicinity also indirectly promoted the economic development of Ninghe Town.

Tan Weishi was a little stuffy. She couldn't always wander around in front of Ye Tao. After all, she was a princess, nominally here to accompany her sister. So, she had no choice but to drag Dai Qiuyan around Ninghe Town. Although Dai Qiuyan was attached to Ye Tao, she also cherished a friend like Tan Weishi, so she took her painting tools and played with Tan Weishi, preserving the beautiful scenery on the scrolls one after another.

Speaking of Dai Qiuyan's painting tools, there were no other adjectives besides luxury. All kinds of brushes, paints, and auxiliary supplies filled a carriage. The mainstream of painting in Dongping and even the entire continent was still ink painting, one of the reasons may be that pigments were not easy to find, and it was impossible to form a production scale at all. Dai Qiuyan had several sets of things such as gouache, watercolors, oil paints, water-based traditional Chinese painting pigments, and lacquer decorative pigments. Most of these pigments were almost as expensive as the same weight of gold.

Painting was definitely a physical activity, very patient, and Dai Qiuyan, who was increasingly in love with painting, also had constant learning opportunities. Cassandra, a girl from the Aegean region, although she had not received systematic painting training when she was a child, the artistic style of her hometown still left a very deep impression on her mind. The batch of Persian craftsmen who came recently and hung out at the Ye Family Workshop and the Dai Construction Company to learn architectural technology brought another completely different art style. As the only daughter of the boss of Dai Construction Company, as the young mistress of Ye Family Workshop, and as the fiancée of Ye Tao, who paid attention to technology but was indeed technically proficient in art, these guys who had mastered different art styles did not dare and would not offend her, and helped her with all their strength with her curiosity and eagerness to learn. At a young age, Dai Qiuyan was already somewhat in the posture of integrating different art styles and using them flexibly. Even Ye Tao, whenever he saw Dai Qiuyan's portraits of characters, landscapes, and city scenes painted on rice paper, had a feeling of being in a chaotic time and space. Ye Tao had only seen such paintings before at some Chinese painter's auction specials... that kind of style that integrated Western perspective and techniques, and skillfully used the traditional medium of Chinese painting.

In Danyang, many noble ladies and celebrities were proud to have Dai Qiuyan agree to paint a portrait for themselves. But in Dai Qiuyan's heart, who only focused on "Ye Tao, painting, in no particular order," those were all troublesome things. Only this enthusiastic good friend, Tan Weishi, always dragged her to paint again and again. And those portraits of various styles of the monarch Tan Xiaopei, the queen Zhuo Xiu, the general Zhuo Mang, plus the two princes and two princesses, almost the entire royal family, that had been seen by others, made Dai Qiuyan's reputation even greater.

Dai Qiuyan's ideas were simple and innocent, but she often made a judgment on a person inadvertently, sometimes only when choosing the form of the portrait. Her portrait of Tan Xiaopei, painted in heavy ink, fully showed the extremely unified temperament of the successive monarchs of Dongping: more like a general than a king. And the portrait of Queen Zhuo Xiu was presented on canvas with oil paints and extremely delicate brushstrokes, fully expressing Zhuo Xiu's dignified elegance, thoroughness, and richness.

However, only a few people such as Tan Weishi knew that Dai Qiuyan's favorite and best form of painting was sketching. Just like her now, she was leisurely sitting under a tree on a hill, overlooking the canal at the foot of the mountain, trying to incorporate the scene of labor into the paper with her pen.

What Tan Weishi admired most was Dai Qiuyan's method of organizing and enriching seemingly messy lines. Ye Tao had not yet made the legendary thing called a pencil, so Dai Qiuyan's sketching tools were still those fragile graphite sticks. Dai Qiuyan gently pinched the paper roll that was wrapped around the graphite stick to make it less likely to break with her right thumb and forefinger, and just let the tip of the pen slide across the rough paper surface. After a simple line arrangement, the winding river appeared, the hills and giant rocks appeared, and the work sheds on the river bank appeared. Following Dai Qiuyan's pen, simple figures jumped onto the paper, but they all had distinct characteristics: some were porters carrying soil and rocks, some were strong men stretching their muscles and bones to continue digging earth, some were foremen shouting to everyone to work harder, some were officials standing in a slightly higher place looking at the construction drawings to see the progress of the project, some were women and old people boiling water and cooking on the side of the river construction site, and even children curiously watching the lively scene.

No less than hundreds of figures in the huge scene appeared vividly in the painting one by one. What was even more admirable was that Dai Qiuyan seemed to casually smear a few strokes in the empty space of the picture, and then smeared the traces left by the graphite stick with her fingers. Suddenly, it seemed that the dust flying everywhere in the air with labor could be seen in the picture, which was simply miraculous.

"Qi Qiu, why don't you want to draw a portrait for me with sketches? You draw so well." Tan Weishi sighed. Sometimes she also wanted to be able to draw such paintings, but she had seen those Dai Qiuyan's practice accumulations for many years from the beginning of learning until now in Dai Qiuyan's studio, and the weight of those drawing papers alone could sweep away all her courage to learn painting.

Dai Qiuyan scratched her face and unconsciously put a little graphite mark on her face. "I'm the same as you, my face is a bit flat, and it may not look good when drawn. Besides, I've drawn so many for you. It's not bad for this one. Sketch portraits are not easy to preserve."

Tan Weishi said helplessly: "Yes, oh. But, Sophie's sketch portrait is really beautiful."

Dai Qiuyan said somewhat proudly: "Of course, Sophie is so beautiful, so Brother Ye likes her so much."

Tan Weishi snorted and said, "You girl are not jealous at all."

Dai Qiuyan's face blushed a little and said: "Everyone likes Brother Ye, why care so much. But, when will your sister marry over?"

Tan Weishi was stunned for a moment, and spat: "Bah, bah, what do you mean marry over, you must enter the door after my sister.... It will be after Brother Weiming's marriage this autumn, right. There are a lot of things to arrange in the inner government, and the honor guards and the like are indispensable, it must be next year. Actually, our Tan family is already very irregular. Especially these generations. In the past, the sooner boys got married, the better, hurry up and have children to leave offspring, and girls had to marry those with higher military positions who were not so easy to die. Therefore, many women in our Tan family married older men who were much older than themselves. However, my sister and brother-in-law are the same age. If my sister hadn't had a difficult birth, their birthdays should have been on the same day."

Dai Qiuyan tilted her head, the pen in her hand did not stop, but asked a very lethal question: "Then what about you? Have you taken a fancy to any young man?"

Chapter 4 The Fourth Update

The fourth update, finally didn't make it before 12 o'clock, everyone, please forgive me for the sake of the sufficient number of words.