Chapter 1 Ye Tao's Busyness

Ye Tao was swamped. The Ye Corporation encouraged technicians not in core research positions to start their own businesses. However, those who left were the most senior technicians, who knew their development within the Ye Corporation was limited and learning new things was increasingly difficult. Yet, they were comprehensive and solid in their respective fields. With the Ye Corporation's support, starting their own businesses wouldn't be worse, at least. With their departure, many middle-aged and younger technicians immediately filled the vacancies, proving themselves in their new roles. Many of the older technicians had joined the Ye Corporation as it expanded, already possessing business experience and unafraid of entrepreneurship. Among the middle-aged and younger technicians, a large number were among the first apprentices the Ye Corporation had recruited. As long as they could stay within the Ye Corporation's system, a comprehensive knowledge and technology training system broadened their thinking and sharpened their acumen, making them more suitable for research and process improvement. However, this was only part of the problem. Ye Tao had never worried about the Ye Corporation's technical talent pool, but the encouragement of entrepreneurship had a curious consequence: a large number of technicians requested技师 (jishi, technician) certification exams. Many didn't necessarily need the title in their new positions, but they held themselves to high standards and refused to compromise. Just dealing with the technician certification matters kept Ye Tao busy for a whole month.

Furthermore, the Internal Affairs Bureau, due to the Ye Corporation's downsizing, also began to realize it had become too enormous. Institutions like the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Ye Corporation, while operating fairly, inevitably received preferential treatment due to others' perceptions. The Ye Corporation was now the largest arms manufacturer in the country, with unrivaled arms manufacturing technology, so preferential treatment made no difference. But the Internal Affairs Bureau had always dealt in ordinary businesses related to daily life. The Internal Affairs Bureau also began to downsize, further diluting its royal status. After a dazzling series of spin-offs and collaborations, the Internal Affairs Bureau's capital permeated all industries, diluting its direct influence but gaining more detailed control over various niche markets. The royal warrant labels that had been attached for so long were all removed, and many products entered ordinary households. This was normal. In fact, the Tan family never touched many of the items labeled as royal warrant goods, such as paper and certain types of silk and porcelain. The many emerging new workshops, new processes, and new products had long entered the palace, but the Tan family's purchases were always very low-key; neither the merchants nor the royal family publicized them. In this situation, labeling goods as royal warrant goods inevitably raised suspicions of false advertising. Although Ye Tao didn't need to handle these matters, Tan Weixin had to come up with plans and execute them. In two years, Tan Weixin became a frequent flyer in this era, traveling back and forth to Danyang once a month, and even when she was at Yejiabao, the telegraph lines never stopped. Tan Weixin's busyness made the already busy Ye Tao even more depressed, as decisions he was good at and those he wasn't still piled up on his desk.

The construction of Gondor City was progressing steadily. After the underground pipelines were gradually completed and began to function, and the riverside docks relying on the Di River were fully completed and put into use, the city's construction advanced rapidly. The city wall's structure was soon fully completed and entered the decoration and consolidation phase. The city's main roads were connected almost every day, and the municipal facilities, the Northern Xinjiang Pacification Bureau building complex, the Gondor Governor's Office, and the independent office buildings of various Yuzhou departments entered the sprint stage one after another, with gratifying new progress every day. Facilities such as theaters, stadiums, large public bathhouses, markets, large public hospitals, military camps, and livestock quarantine stations were also completed one by one.

From the air or from the top of the cliff that Gondor relied on, the city's rough outline could already be seen. But this was when Gondor City faced its initial challenges. Ye Tao instructed everyone who had purchased land in Gondor, including the Ye Corporation, the Seven Seas Trading Company, the Jiuzhou Trading Company, and the Internal Affairs Bureau, to enter and plan the construction of their land.

Tens of thousands of construction workers poured into Gondor. Thanks to Ye Tao, as the Ye Corporation's Ye Construction Company raised construction technology to an unbelievable level, the technical content of construction became higher and higher, engineering management became more standardized, and the construction industry's requirements for the technical level of craftsmen also increased significantly. Although not like the technicians and skilled workers under Dai Yuege, the boss of Ye Construction Company, batch after batch, currently twelve of the twenty construction teams were involved in Gondor's public works, four were hired to participate in the construction work of other families and organizations, and only four construction teams were responsible for the construction of Ye's headquarters and Ye Tao's mansion in Gondor. In these twenty construction teams, there were a total of forty-nine technicians and three hundred and sixty-four skilled workers, and the combination of various types of work and the equipment and tools were so sophisticated that others couldn't understand it. The busyness of Ye Construction Company was just a microcosm of the entire Gondor City. While providing these people with basic food, lodging, drinking water, and public services, Gondor quietly started a series of public facilities such as aqueducts, public bathhouses, markets, and quarantine stations. On the one hand, it ensured the smooth progress of the project, and on the other hand, it had already begun various tests for the full commissioning of the city in the future. Gondor City was too large and too complex. No one was confident that it could operate perfectly, so these trial operations were essential.

Gondor condensed Ye Tao's unknown amount of effort. Ye Tao, with years of hard work, made this city more than twenty years ahead of the current time, and only the new Danyang would be able to compare with it when it was fully completed in the future. Power lines, pipeline mail, and other facilities, the wind power generation arrays outside the city, and the first large substation in this time, as well as ample margin left for the popularization of electricity to the people, pipeline modularization, and various pipelines and equipment that were very convenient for maintenance, all allowed this city to continue to lead. The extent to which Gondor could develop depended only on people's imagination. It was expected that Gondor would be officially put into use in another year. As ordinary houses and street markets began to take shape, the work of migrating people had already begun. In Yuzhou, there was no need to persuade anything. Many households had long been looking forward to Gondor. Leaving their hometown was nothing. In Yuzhou, the concept of homeland was not as strong as in other parts of Middle Earth, and as long as they were willing to work, willing to learn, and willing to endure hardships, there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't find a job in the entire Yuzhou. Everyone was snapping up manpower crazily. Even the outer projects of Gondor had construction teams from Northern Liao and construction companies from Chunnan working there.

When the various administrative institutions of Yuzhou began to move to Gondor, which was still a large construction site, and the Yuzhou Communications Bureau officially opened the Gondor headquarters building, this city, which had not yet officially entered the sequence, already had 70,000 residents and various taxes matching the number.

Because the pre-commissioning work of Gondor was so complicated, Ye Tao and Dai Yun were almost working on-site. Sophie and Dai Qiuyan, these two guys with professional skills, were even more immersed in Gondor day and night. Even Tan Weishi, who usually didn't care about government affairs, was asked by Ye Tao to help with anything sent from Danyang that could be handled easily. Tan Weishi's ability to handle documents was superb, but Tan Weishi was now the only hostess at Yejiabao. If she was also called over, God knows what would happen to the children at home.

From the day Ye Tao and Tan Weixin, wearing shirts and jeans, discussed the great plan for the spread of technology from the Ye Corporation to this day, it had been almost three years. In these three years, Dai Qiuyan had given Ye Tao a daughter, Sophie had given Ye Tao a pair of twin sons, and then Tan Weishi had given Ye Tao another son. The group of naughty boys at home made the only daughter born to Dai Qiuyan extremely precious and spoiled by everyone. These children were still young after all, and the more headache-inducing ones were Ye Wenxuan and Ye Wenji.

In general, these two little guys were very well-behaved, usually very reasonable and considerate. When the adults at home were all busy, they didn't act spoiled and played by themselves obediently. The things the two children liked were also very distinctive. Ye Wenxuan was particularly sensitive to numbers and spent all day in the accounting room of Yejiabao, listening to Wei Zhi, the chief accountant of the Ye Mansion, who rarely handled accounts himself, simplifying complex mathematical principles into simple explanations. Ye Wenxuan liked these things very much and had a high understanding. Although he had just started learning things like writing, he wrote numbers and calculated four mixed operations very fluently. Basically, for four mixed operations within four steps, he didn't need to calculate or write drafts after the calculation was completed. The answer appeared in his mind. Sometimes, when the accounting room was processing projects such as the internal payroll of Yejiabao that did not involve interest or exponential calculations, Ye Wenxuan was often allowed to stay by and help.

Ye Wenji was relatively less active than Ye Wenxuan and had a different temperament from his mother, Dai Yun, but Ye Wenxuan liked to stay in Ye Tao's studio. Because Ye Tao was often not in Yejiabao now, the studio was filled with a group of semi-retired old technicians who served mechanical equipment or promising young apprentices. Under the guidance of these guys, although it was difficult to saw wood or anything, playing with clay sculptures was already quite famous. He always first kneaded out the shape, asked the old masters to help him fire the things in the kiln until they were dry, and then took them out and glazed them before firing them to completion. When family members had birthdays, Ye Wenji, who was usually silent, could always take out lovely handmade toys.

And when the adults at home had been busy for too long and had almost forgotten their "big things," they couldn't bear it anymore and proposed to Tan Weishi that they wanted to go to Benlang Yuan (奔狼原, Wolf Run Plains) themselves.