After Ye Tao and Tan Weixin married, the guard forces that originally belonged to them merged into one. Adding their entourage, scribes, assistants, and the financial team that they never left behind, as well as a small group of Inner Court "students" who had always followed Ye Tao, their entire team returning to Danyang exceeded fifteen hundred people, which could be considered a sizable force. Not to mention that this force also included ultra-first-class experts like Liu Yong, first-class experts like Guan Huan and Bi Xiaoqing, as well as several quasi-first-class experts like "Qingxin Sword" Gu Xi, Zhou Rui, and Wu Ping'an... In terms of their guard strength, they were no weaker than the people around Tan Xiaopei himself. But Tan Xiaopei seemed to feel that this strength was not enough. All along their journey, he had instructed the Ministry of War to arrange for local garrisons and city defense forces to escort them in relays. Along the way, they often greeted transport teams heading in the same direction and had them follow along behind.

Among these transport teams, of course, there were companies like Federal Express, the most first-class logistics enterprise of this era, but there was also the addition of another logistics enterprise with a unique flavor. This new logistics enterprise was called "DHL Global Express." Basically, this was a logistics enterprise mainly composed of young people from Yunzhou, especially the Yunzhou tribes. Originally, they did not have such ideas. Several hundred young people from the Yunzhou tribes entered Dongping, mainly to ensure the transportation of salt needed by Yunzhou. Later, when some familiar merchants asked them to transport some light items, some of them thought of Federal Express... transporting things and people could also make money. Then, with the strong assistance of Tan Weixin and Ye Tao, this carriage company, with red and bright yellow as its symbolic colors, began to operate.

DHL Global Express's style was completely different from that of Federal Express. Although Federal Express's network did not cover the entire country, it at least covered most of Dongping. They were already very familiar with point-to-point transportation, and had a set of effective methods for managing logistics, reducing costs, improving the speed of delivery, and improving the comfort of passenger travel. But DHL Global Express was different. They only focused on operating one route, that was from Yicheng, to Danyang, then passing through Dongjiaji to Thunder Cliff, and then to Ningyuan City. Only around the above nodes, they were responsible for delivering goods to customers' doors. And passenger transport was limited to the places along this route. However, an unintentional act by those tribal youths greatly improved DHL Global Express's image in the minds of merchants doing business in Yunzhou. A merchant's wife entrusted DHL Global Express to send some local products to her husband, so that her husband could have a good holiday in a foreign land... a small local festival. When DHL Global Express delivered the goods to Ningyuan City, they found that the merchant had already gone west to Dalun Mountain, to attend a market with the Northern Liao. So several tribal youths changed horses but not people, with one person alternating between four horses, and finally delivered the goods the day before the festival. At that time, they were even in the Northern Liao controlled area.

This considerate service of DHL Global Express, far away from the service area, spread widely among the small and medium-sized merchant communities, and their business volume also increased sharply. And one advantage that Federal Express could not compare with was horses... Federal Express's horses were all purchased. Although the purchase cost of horses had greatly decreased with the incorporation of Yunzhou into Dongping, it was completely different from those tribal youths who could bring back several horses from Benlang Plain in one trip. It should be known that those who were sent to Dongping to do things were not poor households from those tribes in Yunzhou. Some of them themselves had herds of horses, or even were among the wealthiest in the tribe. DHL Global Express was just a pastime for these people in addition to ensuring the supply of salt to Yunzhou... When DHL Global Express was engaged in passenger transport, they even often tempted the passengers to ride horses to speed up, and were responsible for teaching those who didn't know how. This measure actually became a unique advantage of DHL Global Express's passenger transport business, attracting a large number of young travelers. Some people even ran back and forth several times in several passenger transport sections just to learn horsemanship from these guys who were born on horseback. And when they became familiar with those tribal youths, they could even buy horses relatively cheaply.

Under this competitive pressure, without the instigation of Ye Tao and Tan Weixin, Federal Express spontaneously shouted the service slogan of "Must Deliver," and focused on the delivery rate and delivery speed of packages. When this matter reached Ye Tao and Tan Weixin's ears, they couldn't help but laugh. They hid in the room for almost a whole day. However, in this era, which lacked advertising media and advertising awareness, it seemed that there would be no classic print advertisements such as putting DHL packages in Federal Express boxes.

If the establishment of DHL Global Express was also regarded as an action of private capital entering the traditional postal station-type business operated by the state, then the aspect of providing accommodation and other services to travelers by the original postal station seemed to be moving in another direction.

Du Fengchi wanted to "contract" the inn-type business of the post stations under the Yunzhou Road and Bridge Department at a considerable price, but he was not successful. However, he gained a new identity: Commissioner of the Yunzhou Strategic Pacification Office Road and Bridge Department. He finally obtained the qualification to operate this business, but it was entirely invested by the Dongping Inner Court, and he was fully responsible for management. He only needed to report the operating situation to the person in charge of the Inner Court. After a one-year buffer period, 20% of the net profit of the entire Yunzhou post station accommodation business each year would belong to Du Fengchi. Du Fengchi enjoyed complete personnel rights and financial management rights in the entire business. The expenses incurred by Dongping court messengers and officials at the post stations were calculated at 60% of the standard price. Naturally, the travel expense system for officials and messengers also had corresponding changes, and began to refer to the graded travel expense standard system that Ye Tao had originally implemented and improved in the Grand Canal Governor's Office. Naturally, this change was only temporarily implemented in Yunzhou. Whether it would be used throughout Dongping in the future would depend on the performance of this system in Yunzhou.

State-owned and privately operated... I don't know how Tan Xiaopei came up with this trick. And this happened entirely when Tan Weixin was not present, without any instructions from this genius princess. Ye Tao mentioned to Tan Weixin that he had suggested that Du Fengchi try to operate a chain of inns, and even provided two names for Du Fengchi to refer to: "Home Inn" and "Jinjiang Inn"... However, when Tan Weixin received a letter from her father, asking if it was possible to have the Inner Court invest, and let Du Fengchi manage it and then share the profits to improve the post stations' losses, everyone was silent. It turned out that when there were various conditions and various environments, people's wisdom and imagination were thus stimulated.

Du Fengchi finally decided to use the name "Home Inn" and rebuilt several of the post stations with the largest passenger flow along Yunzhou's busiest roads. In this space-time, there was no such thing as using existing buildings for renovation and decoration to make the style consistent. Du Fengchi had a simpler solution: build completely identical houses and courtyards. In this space-time, room numbers such as "303" were not popular. And all rooms in the same position, whether in Ningyuan, Thunder Cliff, or Dongjiaji, had completely the same number—and completely the same room layout. In fact, before the second year, the entire Home Inn chain began to make a profit. This was partly due to Ye Tao's having turned the Road and Bridge Department into a powerful publicity agency, attracting merchants and tourists from all over to Yunzhou, and also due to Du Fengchi—this young but experienced "professional manager" who had been in charge of this type of business since childhood—'s superb skills in cost management. Du Fengchi's agreement with the Inner Court did not change... And that meant that in the first year, the Inner Court made a lot of money for nothing.

Of course, running this kind of seemingly critical business privately was not a big deal in Dongping at all. Dongping, a country known for its powerful army and sharp weapons, had begun to try to hand over the design and manufacture of a large part of its military equipment to private workshops very early on. This was long before Ye Tao and Tan Weixin came to this world. The primitive, not entirely complete bidding system ensured Dongping's rapid development in the technical field. Although there would be problems with the flow of some military equipment, overall, it was more beneficial than harmful to Dongping.

When Dongping's manufacturing, commerce, and even service industries began to flourish and develop in various conventional or unconventional ways, Dongping did not diminish its ambition due to prosperity and wealth. On the contrary, it became even more ambitious due to its increasingly sharp weapons, increasingly strong and light armor, increasingly sufficient war horses, and increasingly well-trained and strict soldiers. Tan Xiaopei was no longer satisfied with unifying the world in a tragic way. He needed to plan, he needed to lay out his plans, he needed to accumulate strength, he needed to make the entire war and the subsequent peace come as smoothly as possible... And in this process, he needed to constantly examine his ideas about the country, the entire court, and politics and military affairs themselves. And in this examination, he recognized the power and role of Tan Weixin and Ye Tao, and increasingly wanted to know what kind of power the two of them combined had...

And it was not only Tan Xiaopei who increasingly realized the energy of this most intelligent couple in the world. Twenty miles away from Danyang, in the welcoming team for Ye Tao and Tan Weixin, there were people like this. And the most unexpected of them might be Nie Rui, the director of the increasingly popular Intelligence Bureau in Dongping, who had never had any interaction with Ye Tao and Tan Weixin outside the Council Hall.

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It seems that this chapter is a bit short, tomorrow's will be longer