“Sister…” Tan Weishi nestled her head into Tan Weixin’s embrace, acting spoiled. Due to their drastically different constitutions, their current figures seemed to reverse their ages. Over the years, Tan Weishi had become increasingly graceful, while Tan Weixin, due to her poor health, appeared younger. Fortunately, after years of continuous care, her constitution was gradually improving, but she had already missed the best time for development, and it was likely that further changes in her height and figure would be limited.

“It’s just that Ye Tao is marrying Dai Yun,” Tan Weixin said nonchalantly, “Your situation is different from Dai Yun's, so there's no need to feel discouraged.”

Tan Weishi smiled slyly and said, “I'm not discouraged. I'm worried about my sister. Sister Dai Yun is also a very assertive person. How will you get along in the future? Will you be in charge of the family, or will she?”

“Naughty!” Tan Weixin lovingly stroked Tan Weishi’s nose and said with a smile, “Won’t I still have you in the future? You can help your sister. Besides, Dai Yun is a very opinionated person and won’t care about such trivial matters.”

Tan Weishi was a little apprehensive: “Sister, are your arrangements really useful?”

“A play and two poems easily got Father to kick you out of Danyang and sent that fellow Lu Dan to such a faraway place as Yicheng. What do you think?” Tan Weixin chuckled.

Speaking of these things, Tan Weishi had an expression of admiration and said, “Whether it's that verse play or those two poems, they are all excellent works. Sister, did you really write them? Your poetic talent is too amazing. There are hardly a few people in Dongping who possess such skill. But why do you hide this ability? Everyone would only praise and admire you, not be jealous. Our Tan family doesn’t have those kinds of royal family scandals like other countries… But, sister, if you're talking about idle sorrow, I do think you genuinely feel it, but that lovesickness… doesn't seem to fit your mood, does it?”

“Your discernment has improved over the years,” Tan Weixin praised with a smile, “Don’t worry about how I wrote it. But your brother-in-law already knows that I caused the trouble.”

“Mm,” Tan Weishi made a face and said, “Brother-in-law has already reminded me. He said that I should at least have some discernment when it comes to poetry, and not take anything from you that I don’t understand and create trouble.”

“Mm?” Tan Weixin was hearing about this for the first time today. “He didn’t say anything else? Didn’t ask you any other strange questions?”

“No, he doesn’t really think I have someone in my heart, hee hee,” Tan Weishi said with a light laugh.

Tan Weixin nodded, this was the effect she needed. It was precisely because Ye Tao was very clear that these poems were copied by her that he would be careless. It was too common for time-travelers to become famous by copying books. No matter how much Ye Tao detested those vulgar plots, he had to admit that it was indeed a good method. Some people copy one poem, some copy a hundred, some slowly accumulate a collection of poems, and some wholesale them at a single banquet… Only time-travelers would ignore the various possibilities contained in these poems.

Tan Weixin sighed: “We’ll be arriving in Yunzhou soon, and things will get busy. You must not give yourself away. I will try my best to arrange your affairs. Speaking of which, it's not really that much of a troublesome matter. On the contrary, Yunzhou has a thousand and one things that need to be done, and I don't know what to do. After all, I can't conjure up money.”

What should be done about Yunzhou? Ye Tao was also thinking about this question, and in the end, he reached an agreement with Tan Weixin: to tap into Yunzhou's unique economic advantages, develop unique technological products based on Yunzhou's various natural resources, develop products that can quickly form productivity, quickly occupy the mid-to-high-end market, win generous profits, but have relatively low production costs, and fully tap into the profitability of Yunzhou's original economic resources, taking measures such as branding, deep processing, and expanding product lines to achieve this.

And in the final analysis, apart from the commercial matters that required the magical Tan Weixin to handle, Ye Tao had even greater pressure. Because all the measures pointed to a relatively simple task, which was to let him develop a technology tree.

Yunzhou actually had very good conditions and a lot of potential to be tapped. The fact that the population was not too dense meant that semi-mechanized production would not cause mass unemployment, but would instead allow limited manpower to play a greater role. The first industry they thought of was the wool industry, jointly operated with the Yunzhou tribes. In this era, the utilization rate of wool was still very low. Tanning sheepskin and directly making sheepskin coats was the most common method used by grassland tribes. Shearing wool and knitting yarn was almost entirely manual labor, and could only be done by the women on the grasslands to occasionally make clothes and clothing accessories for their families, such as the woolen hats that were already becoming popular in the tribes. But if the wool industry were to develop on a large scale, Ye Tao would have a headache. After all, he didn't understand every technology. He only knew the names of most of the professional equipment in the wool textile industry. He, a senior industrial designer who understood how to analyze and optimize processes, had to find a balance between traditional craftsmanship and his own remaining memories to develop a complete set of equipment. For example, carding and combing wool was an extremely complicated task. Only by solving this link could all subsequent production and development be discussed, and only then would they be able to develop various fabrics with wool as the core in the future. Thinking of being able to let the soldiers wear double-breasted woolen overcoats and dog-skin hats with ear flaps, Ye Tao's mind would conjure up Red Square, the Russian-style onion domes, and a group of Red Army soldiers stepping in formation, turning their heads, and saluting… and then Stalin would be there, smiling and waving. It was a very interesting scene.

Even in today's highly internationalized industrial society, each region can still maintain some very special outputs. These outputs are all determined by the unique climate of the region. For example, Scotch whiskey… Following this line of thought, they found that the climate in Yunzhou could also be classified as a temperate continental climate, which was actually very suitable for growing barley, wheat, and malt for brewing whiskey. And how could two petty bourgeois from the modern era not know how to brew wine? You must know that for middle and high-level white-collar workers like them, who are staunch consumers of luxury goods and mid-to-high-end wines, they receive various wine advertisements almost every week and are occasionally invited to attend wine tasting events and similar lectures that introduce wine culture… In addition, there is the contribution of documentary productions such as the BBC, Discovery, and National Geographic Channel. Those documentary filmmakers have presented almost every detail of winemaking to everyone, and those are also very good public relations activities for wine manufacturers. Because they were sure that it was precisely because of their unique climate and geographical advantages that they were so unique. This part of the discussion quickly turned to a topic: what brand name should this new wine have? After comprehensively considering the language environment and other factors, they finally reached a consensus: Ballantine's. There was no way around it, Chivas Regal was too much of a transliteration; Royal Salute? Please forgive Ye Tao for not having built a cannon yet, and even gunpowder was only in its embryonic stage; and Johnnie Walker? Translating it into Zun Ni Huo Jia was a bit too nonsensical…

There was some good news on hand. For example, the enamel process that Ye Tao had started to study several years ago had finally yielded results. In the scope of the Ye Family Workshop, whether a category of products has results does not simply refer to whether it can be produced, but whether it can be produced efficiently and at a reasonable cost. Now the Ye Family Workshop has been able to come up with a complete set of technological equipment to produce enamel. The entire process can initially achieve assembly line operations. In the Jingdezhen porcelain research workshop, the enamel has initially reached a yield rate of more than 80%, and it can enter the actual production stage. What is lacking now is a series of product design plans and funds to expand production, as well as the scale of mining and development of corresponding minerals. And Yunzhou happens to have these.

What was slightly troubling was that they seemed to have to spend a considerable amount of energy to increase the profit margin of Yunzhou’s original pillar industry: military horses. When he was in Danyang, Ye Tao raised this issue with Tan Xiaopei. Tan Xiaopei also agreed to standardize the production of their military horses and agreed that they could directly export military horses to Chunnan. In their envisioned plan, they would talk to those horse farm owners and the Yunzhou tribes about a very complex operation plan—the grading of warhorses. With the abundance of military horse sources and the decrease in prices, the Dongping military also had more requirements for warhorses. The requirements for heavy cavalry, light cavalry, and scout cavalry were slightly different, and the horses that pulled carts had to be suitable for harnesses and have better endurance. Yunzhou was able to meet these needs, and some horses that were smuggled from Northern Liao or obtained through normal trade were even better supplements. For example, the two armies under Chi Lei had formally submitted an application requesting to replace them with a light, fast, calm, and quiet horse breed from Northern Liao. Comprehensively calculating the various outputs, Yunzhou had a considerable number of surplus warhorse outputs every year. On the one hand, Ye Tao and Tan Weixin were preparing to classify and grade the various horses with different properties in Yunzhou, so that the quality and price of the horses were linked. On the other hand, they would also use this method to extract a large sum of money from Chunnan, who urgently needed to obtain a large number of warhorses to form a strong cavalry force. However, this plan involved too many aspects. In addition to being able to try it out in the current veteran pastures, they could only let the Dai family cooperate and let the pastures under the Dai family's name and those they could convince enter the plan as much as possible. However, this "win-win" plan, which would inevitably bring benefits to all parties, required a considerable amount of time to discuss, brew, rectify, and promote. The specific implementation of this plan could only be carried out in full by Ye Tao's Yunzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office.

And there was another problem, which was the one that Old General Xu Jingtian mentioned about building a magnificent and solid city. Ye Tao was no stranger to cities, and the construction of this city, which would inevitably become the seat of the Yunzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office in the future, was indeed very necessary, as the old general Yun said. However, where would the money come from? Cities are built with money. And now, that was precisely what they lacked.

————————————

…Dai Yun's popularity is really high