Even in Ye Tao's family, Ye Tao's love, even indulgence, towards Dai Qiuyan was quite conspicuous. Whenever Dai Qiuyan encountered problems while painting, or after finishing a painting, she would show it off, boasting about her improved skills. Ye Tao would more than once stop the work he was doing or even interrupt a meeting to chat, drink tea, discuss, and evaluate with Dai Qiuyan... Or, at the very least, he would take a considerable amount of time to carefully examine Dai Qiuyan's paintings or listen to her explanations, then offer thoughtful ideas before apologetically returning to his work.

This didn't happen often with others. Although Su Fei no longer took care of Ye Tao's daily life but managed his studio, study, and archives, she was skilled at those tasks and accustomed to saving all her questions for the day she spent with Ye Tao. Tan Weixin and Dai Yun were too used to solving their own problems, and when Ye Tao was working, they would usually have someone check if he was free before deciding whether to carve out a piece of time from his increasingly tight schedule. Neither of them was prone to acting like a spoiled daughter. However, since Dai Yun had a child, especially after Ye Tao revealed her pregnancy before the expedition, Dai Yun's firm and resolute style had gradually changed. Becoming a mother had a significant impact. As for Tan Weishi, whenever she had worries, she would first think of asking her sister for help. She always saved her best and brightest moments for Ye Tao. Thus, only Dai Qiuyan, who had grown up with Ye Tao, didn't care about her already distinguished status, or perhaps didn't even realize it, living seemingly forever in artistic innocence, was special.

However, hearing that Dai Qiuyan was actually creating murals on top of a cliff in Ganduo, completely unaware of the ambush and assassination attempt on Ye Tao, as well as the series of earth-shattering events that followed in Yunzhou, and the visit of the national leader, Tan Xiaopei, was indeed astonishing.

"Painting?" Tan Xiaopei asked incredulously, "She's still painting? Your family is full of talented people, why not let that little girl do something interesting too?"

Ye Tao shook his head and said, "Only painting is what she likes, what she cares about." Then, Tan Xiaopei chuckled and added, "That is, besides you."

Both being sentimental and unconventional, this purely domestic exchange between Ye Tao and Tan Xiaopei was incomprehensible to the newly emerging officials in attendance. Many felt that people of Tan Xiaopei and Ye Tao's stature had no private lives and no need to express their emotions. Their every move was tied to national affairs, and this kind of pointless emotional exchange was a luxury. However, this rule, which applied everywhere else, whether in Xiling, Beiliao, or Chunnan, was invalid in Dongping. The officials could only repeatedly consider whether the national leader's emotional style of governance and management was wrong, or whether they should adjust their own perceptions.

"Hehe," Ye Tao smiled and said, "Your Majesty, you're right about that. But your two daughters, and Dai Yun, and even Su Fei, are all perfectly capable of controlling their emotions. Qiuyan is not, and I'm afraid she'll worry."

"Are they really able to control their emotions?" Tan Xiaopei chuckled and shook his head. "Xin'er wasn't like that when she asked me for the Neifu Secret Guard. Of course, I always believe that whatever you want to do, you'll definitely do it beautifully, and anything that can cause significant losses to Xiling and the Dao Ming Sect is something I'd love to do. Lending you the Neifu Secret Guard for a while is nothing. And things did turn out as I expected, this time, Xiling was completely terrified. What I want to ask is, don't you think it's a bit too early to expose the airship squadron's terrifying combat power like this?"

"No," Ye Tao said confidently, "Since we're going to attack, to react, we must use the strongest power and the best weapons we have. Although I don't like fighting and I'm not good at fighting, I dislike even more giving others an opportunity and increasing my own losses because I held back. The airship squadron was indeed exposed very early, but when I launch the strongest strike against Xiling in the future, when I mobilize all the power in my hands, I'll definitely have something better, a stronger weapon."

"Flying?" Tan Xiaopei asked with a smile.

"Flying," Ye Tao nodded... The Ye Family Workshop had already created gliders capable of stable flight, and the Alchemy Workshop was racking its brains to find new processes to refine the "inert gas" Ye Tao had mentioned, trying to enable the workshop's airship workshop to build true airships that met Ye Tao's requirements, rather than the current hot air balloons disguised as airships. The precise fractional distillation of petroleum could already be done in the workshop's laboratory, and it could now be separated not only into light oil and heavy oil but also into gasoline, diesel, and asphalt. Asphalt, in particular, was already being used to pave the internal roads of the workshop. In this situation, Ye Tao also began to experiment with gasoline engines and diesel engines. Ye Tao only understood the basic principles, but he was, after all, a member of the car owner ranks and had read various introductions in car magazines for years, hearing many terms and seeing many explanations of principles. Although the high-tech engine technology was definitely impossible to create given the current technological conditions, at least in this regard, Ye Tao's thinking was very open. If he couldn't make it in a year or two, what about ten or eight years? Ye Tao wasn't worried about not having money to invest or the promotion of the technical system. With electricity and all kinds of derived novelties, everyone was less limited in technical research and development.

"Take me to see the telegram you mentioned. ... Can this message really travel a thousand miles in an instant?" Tan Xiaopei asked.

"It can, but it requires setting up lines in advance. I still haven't been able to figure out a way to transmit signals without wires," Ye Tao said without much regret. He never expected to get everything right in one step.

Whenever various technologies were discussed, Ye Tao became excited. Although Tan Xiaopei didn't understand them very well, Ye Tao's explanations were always so appealing. In particular, these technologies could all be used in the military. Tan Xiaopei's personal visit to Yunzhou this time was, of course, to see her grandson and see how her daughter was living in Yunzhou, but she had to deal with some matters after all. And first and foremost was the direct request from the military. Zhuo Mang said bluntly that Yunzhou and Zhenzhou needed to maintain an effective air strike force due to their vast territories and couldn't transfer the airship squadron to Danyang, but Danyang should also have its own airship squadron, with a scale... of no less than one hundred airships. And Yunzhou had greatly increased the range of ballistae with gliding bombs, and this improvement needed to be popularized in many ballista camps throughout Dongping. The technical problem was secondary. Yunzhou already had a complete training system from testing wind direction to adjusting specific parameters. How to popularize this training throughout Dongping was the real problem. Moreover, the current problem was that as long as Ye Tao was around, the popularization and updating of technology was generational, especially in places like the heavy machinery camp and the airship squadron. It was very likely that someone who went out to train others for two months would have to receive training from others upon returning. This feeling wasn't very good.

Tan Xiaopei first went directly to the Ye Family Workshop with Ye Tao. In addition to airships, he also gave Tan Xiaopei a detailed introduction to the development of electricity. The Ye Family Workshop in Yunzhou had been fully equipped with electric lighting, with a dedicated wind power generation array. Although for the time being, it was still using the traditional windmill for modification, a special windmill specifically for power generation was under research. In this regard, Ye Tao had done something good for this space-time: protecting the environment. Now, everyone thought that wind power generation was a very normal and mainstream thing, and the vast lands of Yunzhou and Zhenzhou, as well as the not-so-high population density of this era, and the large amount of available open space and wasteland, all provided conditions for wind power generation to become the mainstream of power supply.

The Ye Family Workshop had many things that attracted Tan Xiaopei, but gliders and such things were definitely not something Tan Xiaopei would try. After staying in the Ye Family Workshop for two days, Tan Xiaopei came to the Ganduo construction site with Ye Tao. At this time, Dai Qiuyan had completed the mural and was sleeping soundly, having already slept for two days. The attendants that Ye Tao had assigned to Dai Qiuyan wouldn't disturb Dai Qiuyan, but they would prepare for any needs she might have once she woke up.

The outer facade of the Lingyan Pavilion had now been replaced with stained glass. It was a very solemn glass painting depicting several warriors standing on a high hill, looking at the sky. Although the colors weren't flamboyant, without those highly pure reds and greens, the exciting and upward spirit was palpable. The rear corridors of the Lingyan Pavilion, which could provide living space, were temporarily occupied by Dai Qiuyan and her assistants and attendants. In the main hall of the Lingyan Pavilion, the statue of the God of War that Ye Tao had completed was placed in the middle of the floor, but it was currently covered entirely with white cloth. A circle of scaffolding had been erected in the hall, and the layers of activity space were very ample, allowing Dai Qiuyan and her assistants to work without spatial limitations. There were also lifting frames on the scaffolding for transporting paint, water, and other items up and down. In the hall, where many long chairs would be placed in the future, there were now long tables connected together, each filled with uniformly shaped paint palettes. They were all made of pure white bone china, with a completely uniform base color. Moreover, to facilitate grinding, mixing, and other processes, the areas in the palettes where the paint was placed were all hand-ground. Currently, there were as many as three hundred different kinds of pre-mixed paints in the entire hall, ready to be used as long as oil was added. Now, looking up at the entire dome, the underdrawing had been completed, and it was almost time to start large-scale coloring and detailed finishing...