The interests of Tan Xiaopei and the others were immediately piqued. In the past, when the Dongping army fought, especially during the most difficult times, all available forces were on the front lines. Where would they find the luxury of a logistics corps? Sometimes, even the newly recruited laborers were thrown directly into battle. How could they even consider a logistics corps with specialized training, equipment, and an operational system? Even the Dongping army, once hailed as the strongest on the continent before the Blood Kirin Army, had extremely rudimentary logistics management. This situation only began to change when Tan Weixin and Ye Tao injected digital management into ordnance production, and when Suo Zheng, a half-baked data stream artisan and master of military chess, subtly altered the Blood Kirin Army's supply methods after familiarizing himself with the army's logistics system. Starting with the establishment of a logistics corps primarily composed of auxiliary soldiers and retired veterans, Dongping truly began to change in this regard. The army's logistics management became increasingly professionalized. Of course, this was also because the complexity of the ordnance and supplies for each Dongping army was unparalleled in the world. Without a professional management team, it would be impossible to handle the task.

Through precise management, Dongping's senior officials and generals knew the scale of delivery required to maintain a certain size army and activities. As the Dongping army's mobility increased with the rise of cavalry, riding training for infantry, and technological innovations in military transport, the process of procuring, transporting, and storing supplies at the front became even more challenging. Suo Zheng was no longer fighting alone; he had to rely on an increasingly large logistics management team. Suo Zheng's authority now extended beyond the Northern Frontier Pacification Office. He also served as Vice Minister of the Ministry of War and assistant to Chi Xianping, assisting in coordinating the production, transportation, storage, and construction of ordnance and materials for the national defense as well as the training of logistics units. At this stage, the emergence of a tool that could solve the problem of long-distance mass transportation of materials would undoubtedly be of immense significance.

It wasn't convenient to discuss this further at the banquet, but fortunately, the Ye Family Workshop was not far away, and they could see the significant invention Ye Tao mentioned at any time. After chatting for a few words, they tacitly changed the subject, discussing the various changes that Yunzhou and the entire Northern Frontier would experience with the acquisition of Gondor. Even those who had seen the world had a refreshing feeling when they arrived in Gondor. It was only natural that those crude men from the grasslands would regard Gondor as a paradise, a sanctuary, and treat electrical technologies, sewers, and pneumatic mail systems as miracles. In fact, in this timeline, only those important figures familiar with Ye Tao understood the trajectory of technological development, or at least knew that it had nothing to do with miracles.

Unlike the splendid and dazzling ceremony of Gondor, the banquet was rather unremarkable, apart from the wonderful speeches at the dinner table. If there was a highlight, it might have been Tan Xiaopei's audience with Gao Senqi. There was obviously no question of Tan Xiaopei and Gao Senqi, representing Dongping and Northern Liao respectively, having a pleasant time as host and guest. But no conflict broke out either. Tan Xiaopei, even now, could still be considered a soldier with a lot of grace. Dongping's relatively simple political atmosphere allowed his perseverance and courage to be preserved, although some sophistication would inevitably be mixed in, which was even more conducive to governing Dongping. The conversation between the two was nothing more than Tan Xiaopei further expressing his recruitment and probing of the Western Route Army. Unexpectedly, Gao Senqi did not deny what Tan Xiaopei said: that a full-scale war between Dongping and Northern Liao would inevitably be a brutal war, inevitably devastating, and that in any case, the final outcome could not be reversed. After acknowledging this, the Northern Liao Western Route Army still firmly wanted to fight a great battle with Dongping. This courage and stubbornness were beyond everyone's imagination. However, Gao Senqi's reason was equally irrefutable: Dongping, as a military state, as a country with a strong military spirit, would indeed not have much respect for an opponent who surrendered without a valiant fight.

"We all have to be careful... It seems that dealing with Northern Liao won't be easy." After the brief meeting with Gao Senqi, Tan Xiaopei said to Ye Tao with a lot of emotion.

"I never thought it would be easy. Gao Senqi and I have been friends for a long time. He probably has iron juice flowing in his veins. If we conquer Northern Liao and Gao Senqi is still alive, we can let him lead our army to fight against Chunnan and Xiling... What do you think, Your Majesty?" Ye Tao's suggestion made Tan Xiaopei and Zhuo Mang and others dizzy for a while. However, in terms of command qualifications, vision, command art, character, and so on, it was indeed as Ye Tao said. A guy like Gao Senqi was almost born to be a general who fought great and arduous battles. In the entire Dongping, in the younger generation, probably only Chi Yun could be compared with him. Although Ye Tao, Dai Yun, and Tan Weiran could all lead battles, it did not seem so appropriate to use their talents on the battlefield now.

Of course, this matter could be discussed further, and there was still time to consider it. From Ye Tao's suggestion, Ye Tao's boldness in employing people probably far exceeded the imagination of others. They naturally could not understand the extremes of Ye Tao and Tan Weixin in this regard. In Ye Tao and Tan Weixin's view, although the army was a special structure, in some cases, equating the appointment of a talented military commander with the appointment of a senior manager did not seem wrong.

After the ceremony, the ministers who came purely to observe the ceremony returned to Danyang to continue to handle the heavy government affairs, while Tan Xiaopei stayed behind. He planned to stay in Yunzhou for about half a month. On the one hand, he wanted to take this opportunity to meet various important figures, especially those from the Northern Grasslands, whom he still needed to appease. On the other hand, he wanted to understand the progress of Yunzhou's war preparations under Ye Tao's leadership. Since Ye Tao had already formulated a plan himself, he must have been quite confident and made sufficient preparations. However, even so, when he saw the five-li-long experimental railway and the complete set of switch, loading and unloading, and signal guidance equipment, as well as the somewhat tasteful platforms and waiting rooms, outside the Ye Family Workshop's vast test site, and that the train not only had carriages suitable for transporting materials and soldiers, but also carriages divided into compartments, dining cars, and luxuriously decorated special carriages, and saw the craftsmen in the workshop even manufacturing armored carriages loaded with rotating iron cannons, and flight preparation carriages with an internal storage for a small airship that could carry three people...

According to Ye Tao, building railways was too much of a commotion, and it was almost impossible not to attract attention. Therefore, he felt it was better to make full preparations in advance. The Ye Family Workshop, including the garrison and their families, and the rotating troops who were always undergoing refitting and training nearby, could be regarded as a small city. The large inflow and outflow of materials determined that the Ye Family Workshop would inevitably have a station with sufficient throughput in the future. Ye Tao was just advancing the construction that would be carried out in the future. The current platform, waiting room, etc., would be about a quarter of the entire workshop's train station in the future.

On the five-li-long railway, the train had to decelerate before its speed could even pick up. After exerting about one-third of its power, the train's speed reached about sixty li per shichen… that is, fifteen kilometers per hour, which was intolerably slow in Ye Tao's impression. However, since the train's locomotive and carriages were designed with shock absorption and other effects in mind, and even optimized to suppress noise from the beginning, the train was still very comfortable. The train created at the beginning of this timeline already had the comfort of the green trains in Ye Tao's memory, but that was just the comfort. Tan Xiaopei and others once again despised Ye Tao's insatiable greed. In their view, if this railway could form a network, even if it was uncomfortable, the speed of transporting troops would make everyone shudder. If there were two railways running from south to north and from east to west, crisscrossing the entire Dongping in a cross shape, it would mean that Dongping had the terrible ability to gather more than 300,000 regular troops in any direction within a month, or to mobilize any heavy troop group to the battlefield within ten days. For a country, these railways would inevitably become the lifeblood of the economy, the country's steel-cast blood vessels...

"No matter what the cost, you have to start building the railway for me. I don't care how much money it costs. Give me a plan within a month. I require that the domestic cross-shaped railway framework be built within at most... three years." Tan Xiaopei said fiercely, "How much money do you want? Just name it."

The railway was not a place for dalliance. However, Ye Tao also understood Tan Xiaopei's temperament. This king was very prone to impulsiveness. Just a while ago, when refitting the Snow Owl airships, Tan Xiaopei blurted out an order for 500 airships, which was definitely an impossible task. However, Ye Tao knew that for Dongping, this cross-shaped railway framework was absolutely necessary. It's just that it shouldn't be done in three years, but spread out over ten years or even longer. Ye Tao would not explicitly persuade Tan Xiaopei. He shrugged and said, "Your Majesty... If you take out 80 million taels of silver, or the equivalent, I will build and operate the cross-shaped railway framework you want within three years."

Tan Xiaopei was stunned. He thought the railway would be very expensive, but he didn't expect it to be so expensive. Eighty million taels of silver... This was more than two years of Dongping's total fiscal revenue. Even if Tan Xiaopei had great魄力 (poqi - boldness), and could sacrifice other aspects of spending to strengthen the construction of the railway, he could only squeeze out about 12 million taels of silver in cash, and formulate a related fiscal expenditure plan to ensure follow-up investment... But even if it was spread over three years, 80 million taels of silver was an unbearable, even unimaginable, number.