Chapter 1 The Princess's Re-education

Princess Zhaohua's re-education of Princess Bailian is now the most popular topic of discussion in Danyang City. Tan Weixin's strength can also be seen from this. Both are princesses, both from families that no one dares to disobey, but one has no other skills besides eating, drinking, having fun, and throwing her weight around. Of course, Princess Bailian's accomplishments in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting are indeed no weaker than Tan Weixin's, but what about other aspects? They are almost completely on different levels. Princess Zhaohua, Tan Weixin, is able to circulate tens of millions of taels of silver in her hands, constantly generating various benefits with ease, so that the previously tight-fisted inner treasury is now so full that even the Ministry of Revenue is a little envious. And she did this without delaying her much time, she still has plenty of leisure to engage in various activities she enjoys.

After being warned by Tan Weixin in this way, Princess Bailian, Chang Ling, did restrain herself a lot. Letting the more than ten days before the wedding pass by uneventfully and quickly. As for what she was thinking in her heart, whether she was reflecting on herself or resenting others, no one knows. Anyway, Tan Weixin has never been afraid of others' resentment, and she knows that even if Princess Bailian marries into the Dongping royal family and wants to use pillow talk or something to harm her, it will definitely backfire.

Although they did not approve of the marriage between the two countries, the Dongping upper echelons still spared no effort in organizing the wedding, trying to make it as perfect as possible, so that this wedding would become an unforgettable grand ceremony for many people.

The royal wedding is different from ordinary people's weddings, or even those of official families, in terms of formality. Because there are very few intermarriages between countries, there are actually no precedents. However, after all, it represents the beginning of friendly relations between two countries with considerable strength, so the agenda had to be reached through repeated consultations, resulting in a somewhat strange procedure that was higher in specification than welcoming a royal concubine, but lower than that of a queen.

Early in the morning, Tan Xiaopei ran to the Tan Clan Ancestral Hall in the suburbs to offer sacrifices. Then he returned to the palace around noon. After lunch, Princess Bailian's carriage departed from Jingu Garden, while in the Dongping Palace, the head of the envoy group, Chang Hongquan, presented the credentials in the Hall of Political Affairs, and Chang Hongquan and Tan Xiaopei had a series of designed conversations... The time was about an hour. Engaging in this kind of unnutritious conversation can be regarded as a compulsory course for people like them.

For most ordinary people in Danyang, the most profound feeling was still the section of road from Jingu Garden to the palace where Princess Bailian's carriage passed. The section of road from Jingu Garden to Zhuque Avenue, which runs through Danyang, was unremarkable, but the entire Zhuque Avenue was different. The orderly arrangement of 10,000 imperial guards on both sides was the expected grandeur, but behind these helmeted and armored soldiers were two-zhang-high flagpoles hanging various colored flags. These flags had nothing to do with the armies to which these soldiers belonged, or the orders in the army. This time, the flags were completely thematic.

The flags on the entire Zhuque Avenue were divided into three themes with different colors: founding, development, and prosperity. Different patterns were drawn on each flag, all designed in the style of woodcuts, and then different patterns were presented using color separation printing. Basically, every three to five flags, a flag would appear with a drawing of a relatively famous figure in Dongping's history, including generals, officials, poets, writers, etc., and the positions where these images appeared were also chosen just right, with their achievements and the places they came from all scattered as different elements in the surrounding flags.

Red backgrounds and black patterns were used to represent the brave battles in the founding stage, green backgrounds and white patterns were used to depict the peace and prosperity of the booming development period, and blue backgrounds and silver patterns were used to express the wealth and magnificence of Dongping today, while also implying Dongping's spirit of inclusiveness and active progress... The entire Zhuque Avenue became a long scroll showing the development of Dongping through the ages. In fact, from the beginning of setting up the flags in the morning, all kinds of people who began to discover this excitedly watched the flags being hung up, and those who were quite proficient in painting even got large stacks of paper to record the general patterns.

In this era, at least until now, woodcut painting is only a stopgap measure used by the common people to draw simple New Year pictures and some commonly used patterns. It is more of a handicraft than an art form. It is similar to the Jinshan peasant paintings of later generations. However, everyone suddenly discovered that it turns out that prints can be made like this, and that the hard brushstrokes of the knife and axe can be used to present such content.

Such creativity is naturally something that people of this era cannot imagine. In fact, this arrangement was created by Tan Weixin and jointly realized by the Ye Clan Workshop and several workshops belonging to the Dongping royal family. The most difficult thing was not the content above. Although the number of 5,000 flags was indeed astonishing, there were still quite a few old workers who could directly draw qualified base plates with skilled brushstrokes for the printing and dyeing process. Dongping has never lacked this kind of craftsman with solid skills and some understanding of art. What was more difficult was the color separation printing technology. Ye Tao, who already had a deep understanding of paint and lacquer and had even begun to develop the first generation of interior wall latex paint, was not worried about the paint, but he did not have so many solutions in terms of printing and dyeing. After racking his brains and working hard for a long time, he finally came up with this first generation of color separation printing process. The process is not complicated, it is just that the economics of the materials used are relatively poor. However, this set of procedures still attracted the attention of many people. Especially the silver and blue color separation, the silver granular texture is full but light and does not affect the thermal dyeing process of the flag fluttering in the wind, may be used in the future when customizing uniforms specifically for ceremonial occasions for some imperial guards.

Chang Ling opened a very small crack in the car window, looked outside, at the neat and majestic queues on both sides of the street, and the flags behind each soldier. These well-planned, creatively exquisite, and powerfully painted print styles silently narrated that the Dongping Kingdom undoubtedly has a different kind of cultural ecology from the so-called civilization that other countries are complacent and self-admiring about.

While this magnificent flag attracted the attention of many insightful people in the Chunnan Kingdom's delegation, its greater effect was to dilute everyone's attention to Princess Bailian's carriage. And indeed, although the princess's carriage was surrounded by a large entourage and the formation looked very magnificent and luxurious, in this occasion where the princess would definitely not show her face, everyone's interest in the carriage itself was not very high.