Chapter 402 Denim

Slowly returning to the manor, Ye Tao couldn't help but smile wryly as he looked at the manor and surrounding buildings, which had expanded in scale again after a year. Especially the road leading directly from Ningyuan to the manor, where a tall and magnificent manor gate had been erected, almost a small city gate. And although the plaque hanging above the manor gate was simple in form, the three huge characters on it were a bit of a headache: Ye Family Fortress. Judging by the calligraphy, it should have been written by Tan Xiaopei. It seemed that the construction of this gate and the naming of the entire manor were also Tan Xiaopei's work. The Ye family had stepped into the threshold of a prominent clan. Apart from the small number of family members and the lack of serious recruitment of retainers, and despite the enormous wealth, they had never seriously managed their land. Regardless of their influence in and out of the court, or the status of their personnel, they could be completely regarded as a first-class aristocratic family.

After passing through the gate, the situation inside hadn't changed much. Everything was proceeding according to Ye Tao's original plan. The new building for material transfer and management, as well as the branch office of the Communication Bureau, which handled various letters, military documents, and intelligence, and incorporated the telegraph function, had all been completed and put into use in the most convenient location for transportation. The various staff members coming and going straightened up and saluted uniformly when they saw Ye Tao's motorcade entering the manor. After Ye Tao's motorcade passed, they resumed their work as if time had frozen for a moment.

It was precisely because Ye Tao was not in Yunzhou that all kinds of matters from the Northern Frontier Pacification Commissioner's Office had to be transferred to Ningyuan for processing, which allowed plenty of time and space for many renovations and upgrades. Not only the logistics center and the Communication Bureau branch office, but also the changes in various other facilities were quite significant. Originally, airships were only moored in the central area of the manor, but now airships were developing rapidly. The airships had become larger, and everyone's reliance on them was also greater than before. The airships that were constantly transporting samples produced by the laboratory to the current Ye Family Fortress were getting bigger and bigger. For any other place in the world, air transport was a very extravagant thing, requiring the coordination of countless departments. But in Ye's Workshop, especially the research institute, if they wanted to send something, be it batteries or motors that had just been produced as samples, Ye Tao's specially customized set of new electrified precision tool set, or a few documents, the most common thing to do was to run to the airship workshop and ask if there were any test flights before departure. With so many airships coming and going, everyone finally realized that it wasn't a good idea to always let the airships fly around in front of the most distinguished family in the entire Yunzhou, especially when things didn't seem that important now. Finally, a special airship mooring field was opened at the foot of the mountain, which was the second mooring field to use electric lights for lighting and night guidance, besides the Yunzhou branch of Ye's Workshop. Since the wind turbine array outside Ye Family Fortress had not been completed, the entire Ye Family Fortress was still in an unbalanced state of power supply. It was unrealistic to keep these lighting fixtures on at night. Most of them were turned on for a quarter of an hour every hour, and during this quarter of an hour, other parts of the semi-electrified manor would restrict some electricity use. When the construction of the wind turbine array was completed, according to the current lack of electrical appliances and everyone's diligent and thrifty habits, and the general opinion that electric lights were too bright and dazzling, at least half of the electric energy generated by the wind turbine array would be wasted. Now, local power transmission and distribution was already a super high-tech skill, let alone long-distance power transmission and distribution. In order to alleviate the problem of power generation waste, Ye Tao finally secretly made a few things that were technically simple for him: immersion heaters, and indoor electric heating devices with overheat protection devices that would definitely be used in Yunzhou, ranging from simple electric stoves to very advanced layered electric heaters.

After spending a day or two listening to Dai Qiuyan talk about the things she had dealt with inside and outside the family over the past year, and installing the set of electrical precision tools, Ye Tao had already discovered that although Dai Qiuyan was not initially enthusiastic about engaging in business-related work, she later defined herself as listening to the opinions of those experienced business people, choosing plans according to her own temperament, and actively participating in product packaging and content design, she was a bit happy to be involved. Dai Qiuyan liked to paint, but she was never confined to any particular genre. Now, many famous artists had emerged in Caimek or even the Central Earth Continent in both color ink and sketches, prints. From a purely technical point of view, some of them were better than Dai Qiuyan, who also studied several disciplines. However, Dai Qiuyan excelled in her solid foundation and broad vision. She always did things according to her own temperament, thinking about what might be better. She had experience in creating large-scale architectural interior oil paintings, and had experience in creating paintings whose content and form had to be in line with the architecture and the content of the colored glass in the exterior walls. She not only did not feel bored with this kind of restricted creation, but instead discovered endless fun in it. After a year of constantly participating in design projects and constantly being challenged in cost control and complexity, Dai Qiuyan now had a strong desire to paint meticulous brushwork paintings on the one hand, but on the other hand, she became more and more familiar with and handy with those concise and lively styles. After finishing talking about work, she actually asked herself to continue to participate in those fun projects in the future. Naturally, Ye Tao would not refuse this.

During the time that Ye Tao and Tan Weixin were away, Tan Xiaopei tried many tricks to prevent Yunzhou's government and military affairs from stagnating. Although Tan Weiran was outstanding in all aspects, he was still young. Especially in many interpersonal affairs, he might not have much experience. Tan Xiaopei rotated two vice-ministers to help him handle government and military affairs during this year. Even so, Tan Weiran complained endlessly. Whether it was Ye Tao or Tan Weixin, they seemed lazy at ordinary times, but their efficiency and seriousness when doing things, as well as their level of specialization in their respective fields, were unmatched by others. Since Ye Tao's departure, the Ye Family Fortress had begun its reconstruction and expansion project, so Tan Weiran was unable to stay at the Ye Family Fortress, which everyone recognized as the most suitable place to work. Instead, he ran between Ningyuan City and the garrisons of the Jingyun Cavalry, which was extremely hard. During this year, Tan Weiming, Chi Xianping, and Zhuo Mang came to Ningyuan one after another to assist Tan Weiran. On the one hand, it was to share the work of Tan Weiran, who was not yet proficient enough in government affairs, and on the other hand, it was to gain a deeper understanding of Yunzhou's various systems. Although Ye Tao let Danyang see and pass any ordinances before executing them, the Eastern Peace senior officials far away in Danyang could not know what kind of role these ordinances were playing, what kind of effects they were generating in the execution, and where the advantages and disadvantages were.

During the year, so many people had come into contact with and handled various government and military affairs in Yunzhou. It would take Ye Tao a long time just to sort out how many of them were in line with the general direction of Yunzhou's development. Piles of records were placed in his office in the manor. Not only official business, but also many family matters. Although Dai Qiuyan had been handling family matters very seriously, there were too many workshops under Ye's Workshop. Now it was difficult to think of anything that Ye's Workshop did not or could not do. In order to study whether the silk suitable for making linings should have a special weaving method, Ye's Workshop even thoughtfully set up a silkworm farm. It was conceivable. A lot of internal records had already been compiled and had been piled up in the manor. In addition, there were various accounts submitted by the Bureau of Commerce and the Pacification Commissioner's Office and the Zhenzhou Governor's Office for Tan Weixin to review, which filled two rooms.

As he looked at it, Ye Tao suddenly felt that something was wrong. The dyeing and finishing workshop under Ye's Workshop was mainly an institution that provided services such as internal packaging, uniforms, and identification mark production. The annual internal capital flow was at most roughly offset by the expenses for researching new dyes and new processes, with a slight surplus. Since all internal accounting and settlement within Ye's Workshop was done internally, nothing like cash was ever seen in the dyeing and finishing workshop's flat accounts. However, many things related to the dyeing and finishing workshop had emerged this year. The dyeing and finishing workshop was actually in debt... In the internal accounts, the dyeing and finishing workshop was prominently listed as applying to the production management department to completely replace tools and equipment, expand production, and establish a garment department. Although that was not a large sum of money, it seemed that even if a garment department was to be established, it should be a department in charge of employee uniform production and manufacturing. How could the dyeing and finishing department have overstepped its boundaries? After Ye Tao inquired a little, he learned that the uniform department was almost dead from being busy and had no time to pay attention to the dyeing and finishing workshop at all. The Yunzhou branch of Ye's Workshop had thousands of employees at all levels, and now it also had to manage the clothing problems of the numerous laborers in the construction of Gondor City. It was pitiful that this department had only a hundred or so people. Now, in addition to those clerical personnel who needed to apply for and replace internal employee uniforms, other veteran craftsmen who had a little technical knowledge and knew the quality of clothes had been sent out to supervise the quality of outsourced clothes. They couldn't even find anyone who could recruit and interview people. Moreover, there was no human resources department in Ye's Workshop to help them solve the problem.

It seemed that the dyeing and finishing workshop had come up with some good fabrics, and someone had placed an order. When no one could take it, the dyeing and finishing workshop, which was at least a place where semi-professionals gathered, finally had to go into the water and set up a production department itself. However, the internal cooperation within Ye's Workshop was much better in the production of tools and equipment. Seeing such an abnormal thing, Ye Tao couldn't help but have a headache. But what was even more of a headache was that he opened the work report of the dyeing and finishing workshop, and the fabric they had developed was clearly blue denim dyed twill canvas. Ye Tao couldn't help but wonder if he had suffered retribution for pirating too much and was actually produced by someone else? Was the era of jeans about to arrive?