Chapter 221 Cold Treatment

After his wedding with Dai Yun, Ye Tao had been trying his best to avoid seeing Tan Weishi alone. It wasn't until Tan Xiaopei's extremely stern secret letter arrived, and Tan Weishi packed her bags to return to Danyang, that he finally had a proper talk with her. He didn't dare to have too much contact with Tan Weishi. Even during their not-so-long conversation, Tan Weishi's sorrowful expression and the thin mist in her eyes almost made him waver, almost making him decide to take complete control of the situation. He had always treated Tan Weishi as a lovable little sister, and switching from one kind of affection to another, especially when the object of affection was such a beautiful and touching girl, was really very simple.

Universal love is the passport of the universal lover; universal love is the epitaph of the universal lover. In the end, Ye Tao could only mock himself like this, attributing everything to this era that allowed universal love.

At least on the surface, things had temporarily subsided like this. Everything had to wait until Tan Weishi returned to Danyang, was confined, and until Tan Xiaopei finally decided what to do about it, before there was any possibility of further changes. At least on the surface, everyone was giving this matter the cold shoulder.

And among the very few people who knew about this, the most surprised was none other than Dai Qiuyan. In those days, Dai Qiuyan accompanied Tan Weishi almost every day. She didn't resent Tan Weishi for coveting her husband, or think that Tan Weishi was hypocritical or anything like that. Living in purity, Dai Qiuyan seemed to be able to easily sense the purity of others, and she seemed to be able to feel Tan Weishi's simple and stubborn feelings. Sometimes, Dai Qiuyan was slightly annoyed by her own clumsiness, unable to think of any words to comfort Tan Weishi. However, in these days, it seemed that no one could think of such words—the difficulty was really quite high.

And after Tan Weishi left in the latest model carriage, Dai Qiuyan spent several days in her studio. Here, she had just created a new version of the family portrait. Dai Yun, wearing armor, appeared in the picture, his hand on the back of the chair. That heroic smile made the whole picture more lively and vivid, greatly diluting the original atmosphere of the whole picture, which was too similar to everyone's personality and too cold and quiet. The new version of the family portrait was now temporarily hanging in the hall on the ground floor of the small building where they lived. After a while, when the more comfortable new building of the manor was completed, it should be moved to the living room on the second floor of the new building. This small building without a public activity space was really uncomfortable to live in. ...Will there be more people added? Dai Qiuyan subconsciously prepared the canvas and only asked herself this after opening the paint box. Although this question had no answer yet, Dai Qiuyan still began to create a new family portrait. The first thing she completed was Tan Weishi... Except for this her best friend, for the time being everyone else in the whole picture only had faint outlines. In the picture, Tan Weishi was pure and sincere, but with a hint of perseverance and stubbornness in her expression. Tan Weishi was her best friend, she could almost draw her with her eyes closed...

It was after seeing the scene of the wedding with Dai Yun that Ye Tao suddenly remembered to ask how much the whole wedding cost. Ye Laogeng had to rush back to Yicheng the day after the wedding. There were really too many things to do, so he had to ask his fourth martial brother, Qian Shun, who had also participated in the preparations, for the list of expenses. On Dai's side, because there were really too many items to spend money on, Dai Shikui, Dai Shiheng, Dai Shining, and Dai Yun's steward, Dai Shizong, racked their brains for a long time but couldn't come up with an approximate figure. In the end, the two sides had no choice but to agree to let PricewaterhouseCoopers intervene and audit the entire wedding project... This might be the first time in history that a wedding was audited.

Unlike when he married Tan Weixin, there were standards for a princess's marriage, from the specifications of the ceremony to the groom's betrothal gifts, the princess's dowry, etc. There were very strict standards, and Ye Laogeng couldn't spend more money even if he wanted to. And when he married Dai Qiuyan, even Dai Qiuyan's father, Dai Yuege, was not interested in making a big deal out of it. The ceremony was very simple, and the guests invited were limited to those with the closest relationships. When it came to marrying Dai Yun, Ye Laogeng felt the most comfortable spending money. Ye Laogeng himself was not very particular about ostentation. Now he was the father of the Jinglue Shi (Pacification Commissioner), but he still went to the workshop every day to work and manage all kinds of big and small affairs. At most, considering his different status now and the fact that he was in charge of many technologies that had a significant impact on the country, he would take a carriage wherever he went, with four guards following him, for safety reasons. But for his enviable son, Ye Laogeng had always felt that there was no chance to show off and brag, but now he had finally found an opportunity. And the Dai family, from top to bottom, had always attached great importance to and cared about Dai Yun, and they were even less willing to be negligent. In addition, given Dai Yun's profound influence throughout Yunzhou, the Yunzhou tribes, and even the northern tribes, Dai Yun's wedding naturally had to be of a high standard. The Ye family and the Dai family combined, the money thrown at the wedding finally added up to a staggering 1,592,711 taels... And facing this terrifying number, everyone actually felt: it was only right and proper.

What could 1.5 million taels do? As it stands, it could arm three and a half battalions, including a heavy infantry battalion. It could allow the Road and Bridge Department to pave anywhere from three hundred to five hundred li of ordinary roads. It could raze a quarter of Ningyuan City and rebuild it... However, could this still only be considered right and proper? However, this money was all private property, and even if Ye Tao wanted to throw it to the Jinglue Fu (Pacification Commissioner's Office) for use, it was not allowed according to the court's regulations. And Ye Tao could only smile wryly. You must know that the start-up funds for the special forces battalion that he was eager to build was only a basic budget of 150,000 taels that the Jinglue Fu had scraped together after who knows how much shuffling. It would not be until the special forces personnel were in place that they would start considering the expenses for horses, weapons, armor, and those odds and ends of special equipment, and the trial production costs of the equipment would likely have to be charged to Ye's Workshop for a long time first...

After marrying Dai Yun, after staying in the manor for about half a month, Ye Tao and Dai Yun left the manor together and came to the edge of a remote mountain forest northwest of Ningyuan, about two days away from Ningyuan. Because Yunzhou was vast and sparsely populated, there were quite a few places that had not been properly developed, so the existence of such an area was not unusual. And the reason why he took a fancy to this place was because in this small area, there were various terrains such as gravel river beaches, small pieces of tidal wetlands, shrub forests, forests, grasslands, hills, cliffs, and precipices. All kinds of geological landforms that might appear in Yunzhou and surrounding areas seemed to be able to find samples here, which was very suitable for terrain-related training. This area was first mentioned by General Xu when he was Jinglue Shi (Pacification Commissioner), who said that he wanted to train soldiers' terrain adaptability and needed to find a more distinctive place. Because General Xu was the Jinglue Shi (Pacification Commissioner) during the transition period, the pressure to rectify the defense was far greater than the pressure to train elite soldiers, and he did not really put this area into use. But now, at the beginning of the establishment of the special forces battalion, Ye Tao used this place to select soldiers for the special forces battalion.

The special forces battalion was not used to engage in close combat with the enemy, but for unconventional military missions such as raids, ambushes, harassment behind enemy lines, destruction of supply lines, assassinations, and reconnaissance. After Ye Tao, Dai Yun, Dai Rong, and Zhou Rui jointly determined the operational functions of the special forces battalion, it was still unknown where the special forces personnel would come from, how they would be trained in the future, and how to determine the equipment of the special forces battalion. The personnel of the special forces battalion were mainly composed of two parts: one part was martial arts practitioners who were willing to serve Dongping and Yunzhou, and the other part was elite soldiers from the army. Due to the short preparation time for the martial arts practitioners, the number was still quite small. There were also hundreds of friends who came to help out for the sake of Guan Huan, Liu Yong, Gu Xi, Zhou Rui, and others, but in terms of their martial arts level and experience in the martial world, there was really no need to conduct an assessment, or rather, putting them together with the elite soldiers in the army for assessment, at least for the assessment items currently formulated, was really not fair to the soldiers in the army.

Putting it anywhere, selecting elites from the army to form a new unit was a very annoying thing. No officer would want to see the combat effectiveness of his troops decline due to the loss of some key personnel, even if these officers knew that these key personnel were definitely not people they could keep. In particular, the special forces battalion needed not only brave warriors who could fight and kill, but also soldiers who could use their brains, had strong learning abilities, had a certain degree of command ability and adaptability, and preferably had some other special skills. Soldiers who met these requirements were the core figures of small groups in the army, and many of them were already non-commissioned officers or officers themselves. Once these people entered the special forces battalion in large numbers, some units would need a longer time to restore their original structure and combat effectiveness.

Fortunately, on the one hand, everyone had a relatively in-depth communication on this matter at the previous military meeting. After the battalion-level officers understood the benefits of forming a special forces battalion, they expressed their full support for this matter. Moreover, in Yunzhou, at least for now, everyone resolutely implemented Dai Yun's orders, which allowed this request for each unit to recommend elite soldiers to participate in the selection to be implemented without any obstacles. This trust in Dai Yun was not only due to the influence of the Yunzhou Dai family on their own territory, but also because Dai Yun had long proven himself to be a good commander and good officer worthy of everyone's unconditional trust through repeated victories.

A total of more than 1,400 people were recommended by various units to participate in this selection, and only about 500 people, slightly more than one-third, would be selected into the special forces battalion this time. Like the extremely rich and professional arms of service in Yunzhou now, this special forces battalion also needed time to integrate and explore. Given the complexity of the tasks that the special forces battalion would need to undertake in the future, this time might be longer than that of any other unit.

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