Chapter 1 Information Work

Information work isn't just about talent; Ye Tao understood that, and he believed that Tan Xiaopei understood it too. He wasn't worried that the appointment as Director of the Intelligence Bureau would really fall on his head. But since he had produced this somewhat terrifying plan, he was prepared to contribute to it. After all, it contained too many modern ideas. Integrated marketing communications, innovative organizational structures and management mechanisms, it was of course possible to execute step-by-step according to his plan, but that would mean losing the ability to flexibly respond to various changes. The system that Ye Tao created, after understanding the core ideas, should actually be very adaptable. At the very least, Ye Tao had to cultivate the first batch of executors for this Lei Yin Demon Sect. Naturally, the fundamental premise was that this plan would be approved and implemented.

Returning to Danyang, Ye Tao felt very comfortable, taking things as they came. The weather was a bit hot, so hot that a trace of laziness seemed to float in the air. Although Ye Tao also wanted to sleep until late morning every day like Tan Weixin, deal with a few things that had to be dealt with, and then lie in a quiet, cool room reading a book after lunch, or chat with some friends. Even if there were all sorts of things to deal with, Tan Weixin could still make the process of dealing with things peaceful and calm. There were soft-spoken explanations and rebuttals, but no arguments; there were profound and rational teachings and arrangements, but no rigid and unreasonable orders… Although Tan Weixin's health had improved, her long-standing temperament meant that she hadn't changed at all in how she handled things. And this calmness full of personal style, although many people in Danyang liked it and wanted to imitate it, was something that others simply couldn't learn.

Ye Tao didn't have such good fortune. After returning to Danyang, he was indeed able to go to the Princess Manor every day after his busy work to have dinner with Tan Weixin, or drink some very light wine in his own Zheng Garden while commenting on Dai Qiuyan's new paintings, but leisure seemed to be out of reach for him.

The most annoying thing wasn't any work that required brainpower, but how to tactfully return the excess funds from other members of the Seven Seas Trading Company, funds that were clearly meant to curry favor with him, on top of the profit share that Ye's Workshop should receive after solving various technical problems for other members.

The Seven Seas Trading Company was a purely commercial cooperative organization. Ye's Workshop, as one of the members, in addition to having its own specialized products like other members, also had to solve various technical problems for the company's members, from designing and improving existing production tools to make them easier to use, to optimizing the entire production process for certain products. Ye's Workshop, which was initially only expected to come up with ideas and make some useful tools, had unknowingly become a very influential and reputable consulting institution based on production technology and production process management in this era. And those cooperative merchants would also hand over a portion of the profits from certain products to Ye's Workshop according to the pre-arranged contract. But when Ye Tao unexpectedly became the Governor-General and was assigned to Yunzhou to be in charge of the Yunzhou war alongside the long-established veteran general Xu Jingtian, his status immediately became completely different. These positions with real power and prestige were valued more than the widely known status of Prince Consort. And these collaborations with Ye's Workshop, the profits to be given to the Ye family, seemed to have become a channel for openly bribing the Ye family.

Unexpectedly, although Ye Tao was not present when this profit was sent to the Ye family, and Ye Laogeng received the representatives of the various merchants on his behalf, Ye Laogeng immediately discovered that the amount was obviously wrong. He sealed up last year's profits and asked Liu Qing to return the excess. Helplessly, the shopkeepers and owners of those merchants just refused to admit it with smiles, saying that it should be this amount. Liu Qing had no choice but to exercise Ye Tao's duties as an executive of the Seven Seas Trading Company and review the accounts of these merchants. Although Deloitte Accounting Firm had been established and had a relatively strict accounting system, it was not fully adopted by the various merchants. It was fine that the various accounting methods were different, but many customary practices and special markings in the accounts tormented Liu Qing to death. And the names under which the Ye family received profit shares from the various merchants were also different. Some were directly investing in the merchants with technology, some were profit shares from certain types of products, some were profit shares from certain products… Perhaps even the shopkeepers of those merchants themselves didn't fully understand what was going on with some of the projects. But Liu Qing was, after all, a strong person from the Liu family. With the help of several veterans from Deloitte Accounting Firm, she clarified these accounts and calculated the profits that the Ye family should receive. And when Ye Tao returned, Liu Qing, after consulting Ye Tao, attached a personal letter from Ye Tao to each returned sum, explaining the basic attitude of doing business in business terms and sincerely returning this portion of the money.

With Liu Qing's shrewdness, after such an episode, she also understood the importance of establishing simple, reliable, and universally standardized accounting standards. And the main inspiration naturally came from Deloitte Accounting Firm, which was composed of the most powerful accountants of this era, who had more than ten years of bookkeeping and accounting experience in the various industries originally within the Inner Treasury and had been personally trained by Tan Weixin. It was the first time that Liu Qing had devoted so much enthusiasm and effort to Ye Tao's business affairs, and Ye Tao's response was also very positive. After negotiating with Tan Weixin, Ye Tao invited Deloitte Accounting Firm to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all of Ye's industries and provide consulting opinions on financial processes, management norms, and a series of related matters. With the relationship between Ye Tao and Tan Weixin, there was actually no need to make this matter so commercialized and so public, but they were actually brewing the first audit by an external accounting firm in this space-time, and it brought Deloitte Accounting Firm its first consulting business in history.

Modern accounting standards had been tempered and refined countless times, and Tan Weixin used to have the nickname of "Queen of Fake Accounts." The accounting standards implemented in Deloitte were infused with many of Tan Weixin's idealized ideas and extremely forward-looking economic thinking. How forward-looking were the accounting standards formulated by Tan Weixin? Basically, in this space-time, with the continuous improvement of technology, with the continuous enrichment of economic and financial means, and with the continuous improvement of management science, the power of this complete accounting system would only continue to be discovered and realized. And when technological development made this era information-based… when a large number of basic calculations could be carried out in a simpler way, such as by computers and the like, this set of accounting preparations would become especially powerful. Basically, this was a set of accounting standards that could face the economic and financial development of the next few hundred years. Even if most of the content of this set of accounting standards seemed unusable and inefficient now.

In addition to these money issues, another more troublesome matter was that Du Fengchi, who was very close to Ye Tao, actually bought a mountain with three springs in the east of Danyang City under someone's suggestion, and then built the first comprehensive bathing service institution of this era at the foot of the mountain: "Da Lang Tao Sha" (Great Waves Wash the Sand). There was no need to ask who came up with the name. Tan Weixin would definitely not allow herself to have any connection with a place that would inevitably have some kind of erotic service, although it was bound to be someone under her command or someone in Du Fengchi's circle who had a good relationship with him. With the Princess's great ability, it was too easy to do this kind of imperceptible guidance perfectly.

However, this "Da Lang Tao Sha" was really an interesting project. In terms of architectural style, since Eastern wooden structures were not suitable for bathhouses, which were heavily eroded by water vapor, Du Fengchi didn't consider using traditional palace-style architecture too much when planning this Da Lang Tao Sha from the beginning. However, simple flat buildings couldn't meet the needs of concentrated pipe layout, and the quirks of many dignitaries who wanted to embody the honor of their status in the location of their enjoyment of services. Fortunately, there was a large group of architects from the Samir family in Ye's Workshop who had come to study technology and were relatively comprehensive, and who could almost be considered graduates. Their familiarity with stone structures and their understanding of design capabilities were far superior to Ye Tao's eldest brother Guan Haishan and Dai Yuege, who was now the most famous construction contractor in Dongping. And such a group of architects brought a foreign flavor to the design of this large bathhouse, which was even more fascinating.

If it was just architecture, Ye Tao might not have been very interested. Although the current Dai's Construction Company and Ye's Workshop were still inclined towards traditional Eastern palace-style architecture in terms of capabilities, the skills accumulated in another architectural system during the construction of the two clock towers could not be underestimated. Dai Yuege and Guan Haishan easily formulated the use of stone beams embedded with iron bars to build the main load-bearing structure to build a three-story main building in response to the serious water vapor problem in the bathhouse. Even for Ye's Workshop and Dai's Construction Company, which were already very familiar with frame structures, they had not designed and constructed such a complex structure. After all, a large number of pools on the second and third floors needed to have load-bearing beams underneath them. The pools were not light, and among those well-nourished customers, there were no shortage of those with considerable weight. Moreover, considering the type of bathhouse, primitive and complex human activities might take place in the pool. The two-layer load-bearing floor slabs on each floor provided ample structural margin for internal layout and also left ample space for pipe layout, but waterproofing between floors, how to effectively allocate pipeline resources, how to configure lighting and ensure ventilation in this heavy, privacy-conscious building with few windows, how to fully integrate functional design with those internal decoration elements… A large number of topics emerged.

Regarding the technology of the building itself, neither Guan Haishan nor Dai Yuege would bother Ye Tao anymore, but a large number of new supporting problems needed Ye Tao to solve one by one. After all, although it was done first and reported later, Ye's Workshop also held 10% of the shares in Da Lang Tao Sha, Dai's Construction Company also held 10%, and the Inner Treasury held 25%… Dai Yuege only had one daughter, Dai Qiuyan, and the person in charge of the Inner Treasury was Tan Weixin. When these two marriages were settled, Ye Tao, as the representative of the Ye family, would have the right to speak for 45% of the shares, surpassing the 40% owned by the Du family… Du Fengchi naturally knew that Ye Tao didn't have the time to manage this mess, but it was indeed a good opportunity to drag him into the water.

The original draft decoration plan was immediately overturned. Ye Tao divided the first floor into four areas with four completely different decoration styles in the astonished eyes of a large group of Persian craftsmen: Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Indian. The second floor was mainly composed of small bathing rooms with highly variable styles, and the third floor was divided into six distinctive units. Bathing was only the most candid of a series of social activities that could be carried out in these units… Ye Tao's skilled mastery of art elements, especially his deep understanding of Middle Eastern and more Western art styles, made these Persian craftsmen, who could be regarded as having seen a lot of the world, dumbfounded. And even more powerful was that Ye Tao had already integrated many elements that would attract customers in the design. For example, in the Egyptian hall, he asked a craftsman who knew some Egyptian hieroglyphs and demotic writing to design a whole set of blessing words. On the floor of the large bath in the Persian hall, instead of paving it with gorgeous marble like the other halls, he paved it with clay slabs engraved with cuneiform characters that blessed health and luck. On the one hand, there were cultural elements, and on the other hand… it was also a foot massage… And outside the themed building, the outdoor swimming pool might be a bit avant-garde, but the grape trellis, the holly maze in the garden, the gorgeous sculpted fountain, the obelisk, the ground mosaic without colored stones… Ye Tao threw out various decoration methods one after another, making everyone overwhelmed. And in solving the lighting problem, Ye Tao used the air duct design, the reflection lighting of internal copper mirrors and other techniques with great proficiency. And when reprimanding those guys who wanted to make every place as bright as each other at all costs, Ye Tao said a problem that even in his original era, some designers would not recognize until much later: Lighting engineering is designing darkness at the same time as it is designing light…

Although Ye Tao clarified many methods for everyone in a very short time, he really didn't have time to perfect these technologies. Even the detailed design drawings were handed over to Guan Haishan, Sophie, and others. Ye Tao only spent some time modifying the renderings drawn by Dai Qiuyan based on Ye Tao's sketches for the eldest brother's reference.

It wasn't that Ye Tao disliked that Da Lang Tao Sha would inevitably be a well-known erotic service institution in the future and wanted to keep his distance, but that he really didn't have time to worry about the implementation of all these specific technologies. Tan Xiaopei, the Lord of Dongping, formally sent a document to Ye Tao on the ninth day of his return to Danyang, requesting a consultation on the Yunzhou issue in the Qin Zheng Hall in three days, mainly to discuss the issue of Yunzhou and the northern tribes of Yunzhou. And Ye Tao, as the proposer of those policy clauses, would inevitably become a respondent in this consultation, and he would have to explain the meaning and importance of these clauses. Ye Tao had too much to prepare.