Ye Tao wasn't short of money, and Tan Weixin wouldn't take the money that the inner treasury had earned for itself too seriously.

Injecting this money into Yunzhou was originally a relatively gentle way to strengthen the royal family's control over Yunzhou. It was also an attempt to gain control of a region and a piece of land through capital and investment. These ideas had been discussed among Tan Xiaopei, Ye Tao, Tan Weixin, Tan Weiming, and even several important ministers long before a large sum of silver was invested in Yunzhou. What Ye Tao and the inner treasury invested in Yunzhou was more than just the more than ten million taels of silver directly invested in the Jinglue Manor.

Many commercial firms under the inner treasury entered Yunzhou. The Ye Family Workshop built the largest and most complete workshop in Yunzhou. Even the research institute was established in Yunzhou, and various products were developed around Yunzhou's various unique products. Furthermore, Ye Tao had decided to concentrate glass production in Yunzhou, just to meet the needs of the entire Central Earth Continent. Compared with the Ye Family Workshop, which Ye Tao relied on to start his business and has continued to develop to this day, with its strong technical capabilities and the strong symbolic meaning associated with Ye Tao as a person, the Gray Goose Winery, in which Ye Tao also spent a lot of money and has already begun to make profits, was simply a toy.

These direct commercial activities were not counted. In the Yunzhou Development Fund organized by Tan Weixin, the funds directly invested or organized by the inner treasury and Ye Tao in various names accounted for more than one-third of the total principal. If a total number were to be calculated, the total value of various businesses, investments, and industries that Ye Tao and Tan Weixin could operate was no less than 50 million taels of silver, at least half of which Ye Tao and Tan Weixin had complete control over.

Many members of the Dai family had long discovered that Dongping had greatly strengthened its ties with Yunzhou in this way, and that this connection could continue to generate benefits. However, the Dai family not only did not prevent Dongping's funds from entering Yunzhou in this highly functional manner, but also participated in it themselves. At the beginning, Dai Yun, who was focused on military construction, didn't realize it until after she married Ye Tao, when she gradually saw Tan Weixin's methods of operating funds and commercial projects, and after listening to Tan Weixin's undisguised explanations, she began to realize that silver could play such and such a role. However, she didn't think there was anything wrong with it. If she were the ruler of Dongping, she probably wouldn't have treated Yunzhou as an experimental field and let Ye Tao and Tan Weixin operate it freely like Tan Xiaopei did. She admitted that she didn't have that kind of confidence, ambition, and courage. She would probably try to control all of Yunzhou's military power in her own hands, and then slowly change the situation of Yunzhou's strong military and weak government. Using economic means to strengthen control was too gentle and too indulgent.

And after knowing these measures, Dai Yun didn't have the slightest intention of resisting. Perhaps she had gained an understanding of Tan Weixin's methods of making the flow of funds evolve into a gorgeous dance. She just talked to several elders once, and then continued to draw funds from the Dai family's gold deposits in various places, and sent capable Dai family members to integrate into the Tan Weixin and Ye Tao's operating system. As a result, the joint political, military, and economic ruling system of the Tan, Dai, and Ye families was completely stabilized in Yunzhou.

In Yunzhou, the combination of these three forces not only made Yunzhou's rule different from the original ruling methods of the four countries of the Central Earth Continent, but also integrated many local factors of Yunzhou, making it almost unshakable. Except for Ye Tao, I'm afraid no one else could command the entire military, political, and economic power under the control of the Jinglue Manor in Yunzhou.

And although Tan Xiaopei was constantly reminded and warned, Tan Xiaopei also saw very clearly that this was a situation he had created with his own hands, and this was the result he wanted to see. He trusted his daughter and his son, and he also trusted Ye Tao.

As for Ye Tao, after returning to Danyang, he spent a few days looking at all the documents brought by Liu Qing, and then devoted himself to fighting against the ingenious design and precise craftsmanship of the Canglong Box. As a world-renowned craftsman, and as a craftsman who had been distracted by many political affairs, for Ye Tao, breaking the Canglong Box was like an extremely interesting intellectual game, which made people excited.

Since the Canglong Box came to Danyang, it had been placed in the newly built, unused drill hall in the Capital Garrison Command, which was connected to the royal palace. This drill hall was learned from the Blood Kirin Army, and was used to conduct war game simulations and cultivate the officers' ability to conceive campaigns and strategies. However, the construction of the hall was simple, but it took more time to equip this hall, which was more than twice the size of the hall used by the Blood Kirin Army for simulations, with a complete set of sand tables of appropriate size. As a result, the hall was left idle and could not be put into use for a long time.

The Canglong Box had been placed on the workbench in the middle of the hall. There was no safer place to hide the Canglong Box than this place, which was under the constant surveillance of the Capital Garrison soldiers day and night. There were several toolboxes on and around the workbench. Ye Tao could tell at a glance that some of them had been moved from his studio in Danyang. Around the workbench, there were long tables connected in an arc on both sides, piled with various documents and materials. This hall was now clearly a center for multi-faceted research on the Canglong Box.

"Has the structure of the Canglong Box been figured out now?" Ye Tao asked Suo Yong while carefully looking at the Canglong Box, comparing it with the diagrams drawn by others, and comparing it with the structural diagrams that had been sorted out and imagined according to various data.

In these days, Suo Yong had come here a lot to study this thing. As the second senior brother of the Ye Family Workshop, his skills and various ingenious ideas in his mind were beyond doubt. However, what he showed the most was not his technical expertise, but his outstanding management ability. This time, Suo Yong regarded the Canglong Box as an opportunity to verify his ability, and he put in a lot of effort.

"...How is that possible? At most, we only understand the mechanisms that prevent others from forcibly opening the box. The most headache-inducing thing is the double-layered box shell, with an unknown liquid hidden in the interlayer. If we forcibly open the box and touch this, we don't know what will happen." Suo Yong shrugged. His expression didn't show how worried he was.

"Senior Brother, this...if it was just this, you would have already taken action, right?" Ye Tao said with a smile.

"Hehe, the simplest method is to directly work on the outer shell, drill holes, and then extract the liquid inside. Then gradually peel off the two layers of the outer shell. Although it's a bit cumbersome to do so, it's the safest method. Although similar things to the Canglong Box have put a lot of effort into the lock cylinder, the material itself is not too strong. Although it looks neither gold nor stone, and is quite special, it's just a material quenched from meteorite fragments. These days, the royal palace has also taken out some things to compare. Although the hardness of the material is high, it's nothing compared to our current diamond tungsten steel drill bits. At most, the progress is slower. It's just that I'm worried that if we do this, the box will be opened, and the things inside should be mostly unharmed, but the prestigious Canglong Box will inevitably be broken into seventeen or eighteen pieces. Whether it shows off the means of our Ye Family Workshop is not to be said first, but this Canglong Box is a bit of a pity." Suo Yong said in detail, and added, "A few days ago, I reported to His Majesty. His Majesty did not object to dismantling the box, but his regret was overflowing. He said to wait for you to come back and then decide. If it can be done without dismantling the box, that would be the best."

After thinking carefully, Ye Tao said, "Senior Brother, do you have a way?"

Suo Yong nodded, picked up a blueprint, and slid his finger on the surface of the blueprint, saying, "Look...this is the structure of the Canglong Box that has been summarized so far based on various situations. In the workshop, I even had the technicians under my command imitate some based on this structural diagram. It's mainly used to test various cracking methods. If you use the direct cracking method just now, although you don't know the specific structure of the Canglong Box, there are still ways to crack similar things. At least I did it in the workshop. And the Canglong Box may have been unbreakable back then, but it's not now. At least, after so many years, some parts of the Canglong Box's mechanism are not very reliable."

Suo Yong tapped on the drawing, letting Ye Tao pay attention to it. "Look here, this should be the position of the key's tumbler. I've tried it with a probe, and there's only a small lever inside. This lever is connected to a small timing device. After the key starts the first round, this timing device starts to work. If the second lock of the inner core is not opened within a certain period of time, it will seal the second keyhole, and then generate a small thrust, just enough to push the key out." Suo Yong's tone was a little excited: "If it's really being unlocked, the setting of this small mechanism alone is a headache. However, this small mechanism is now working intermittently. I was thinking of directly pouring glue or grease into it to completely cover up this mechanism and prevent it from working. This way, no matter how it's cracked, at least the time will not be limited."