Chapter 1 Aftermath

After Ye Tao finished explaining his thoughts and received unanimous support and anticipation from the bigwigs present, he realized that he had to return to Yunzhou as soon as possible. Yunzhou could indeed operate smoothly for several months without Ye Tao, but it couldn't continue like this indefinitely. In any case, Ye Tao was the soul of the Yunzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office, which now governed the entire Yunzhou.

After staying in Danyang for another two days, meeting and chatting with Crown Prince Tan Weiming, and gathering with the Dai family members living in Danyang, Ye Tao embarked on the road back to Yunzhou. This finally relieved the officials up and down in the Yunzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office, especially Liu Qing, who was so busy that he finally saw the beautiful prospect of a significant reduction in his workload after Feng Zi resumed his work. As for the war plan that Ye Tao mentioned, no one around Ye Tao could provide any reference opinions at present, but this was an opportunity to comprehensively test Yunzhou's recovery. Once such a complex and precise plan could be operated smoothly, those who participated in the planning of this matter would be honored. In order to make Yunzhou operate more smoothly during the war, Tan Xiaopei also provided very practical assistance: a battalion of troops.

This wasn't just any force of more than three thousand men, but a brand-new heavy ordnance battalion that had been successively recruited, reorganized, and pieced together from retired officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers from the Blood Kirin Army (Xue Qilin Jun), and even the Blood Kirin Army's heavy ordnance camp. These more than three thousand people had always been placed in the Jiangshan Fort sequence and were under the expense of the Tan family's private soldiers. As for the expensive equipment, especially the various aiming tools with limited production, a lot of thought was put into them. In fact, if Ye Tao really wanted to know about the existence of this unit, he would definitely be able to, although the production of heavy equipment such as trebuchets and divine arm crossbows (shenbi gong) from the Ye family's workshop had decreased and was gradually distributed to the workshops of other aristocratic families in the country, those aiming tools used to observe and calculate trajectories were not taken over by any workshop, and were all produced by the original Ye family's workshop. And the sales of an extra battalion's worth of equipment, this number was not small. But Ye Tao was obviously too busy.

When conducting continuous offensive operations, the role that a heavy ordnance battalion could play was immeasurable. Although Yunzhou's own heavy ordnance battalion was well-equipped and trained in a decent manner, the problem was that it always lacked that certain something. In this heavy ordnance battalion, which was entirely composed of veterans, more than one-third had participated in the Yunzhou Campaign and knew about the Battle of Suiyuan, where they relied on heavy infantry to withstand the attacks, relying almost entirely on the heavy ordnance battalion and the longbow battalion to inflict casualties, pushing the battle line forward layer by layer, almost leaving a scorched and bloody mark on the earth. After having that kind of experience, their views on the positioning of the heavy ordnance battalion, their confidence and boldness in combat, were completely different.

After entering Yunzhou and continuing north, Ye Tao felt a sense of renewal, even though he had only been away from Yunzhou for a few months.

Because the weather in Yunzhou was generally colder than in the south, Ye Tao returned at least in mid-autumn. In most other places, this was a slightly desolate time of year, but in Yunzhou, one could see travelers coming and going, endless streams of merchants, and the most heartwarming sight of people working hard to build Yunzhou.

Yunzhou's forward-looking and incomprehensible afforestation policy was being firmly implemented. Planting trees on both sides of the main roads, planting trees on both sides of the main thoroughfares in the city, replanting trees at a ratio of two for every one cut down, and in some places, after evaluation by experts from the Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, if it was determined that it was not suitable for planting food or other crops, they would consider returning farmland to forest... Although many policies were explained by officials from the Bureau of Civil Affairs, they were not mandatory except for a few measures, but instead, these tasks were assigned to the many Veteran Farms and Veteran Ranches in Yunzhou. And two months ago, the first Veteran Forest Farm was also established.

The energy that an organized state-run production system could unleash under Tan Weixin's personal supervision was amazing, but Tan Weixin had already planted the seeds for future collectivization reforms in these industries. And these state-run farms, ranches, forest farms, and related workshops, due to the large number of veterans, especially disabled veterans, who needed to be supported, had no cost advantage compared to private businesses. Accepting tasks from the Pacification Commissioner's Office in terms of afforestation even required allocating manpower that was already not very abundant. But this part of the quasi-state-run industry not only had to compete with many businesses on the same level, but also showed very strong characteristics: quality.

The various agricultural products produced by Veteran Farms, whether raw materials, food, or processed products, were meticulous in every aspect and could absolutely withstand scrutiny. The leather goods and other items produced by the workshops under the Veteran Ranches also started quality control layer by layer from the raw material stage. Even in these few months, the specialized tendency of farms and ranches had emerged, and these state-run workshops actually had a brand effect. For example, the saddles with Arabic numeral 51 stamped on the decorative copper nails on both sides were from the leather workshop of the 51st Veteran Ranch, and they were now 30% more expensive than other saddles, but the craftsmanship was indeed meticulous, fully considering the various needs of the riders.

When traveling on those busy streets and passing through some markets, one could often see oat cakes from the 19th Farm, shortbread cookies from the 22nd Farm, smoked horse jerky from the 17th Ranch, and so on... Ye Tao immediately thought that Tan Weixin must have tampered with the Veteran Farm and Ranch system during these days. Sometimes, a few small ideas, suggestions, plus some well-placed encouragement, can have an amazing effect.

The concept of branding was first played by Ye Tao's Ye Family Workshop, forming mutually independent product lines, and now, due to the example of the Ye Family Workshop, it had formed a brand community in this time and space. Although most brands were still just operating by word of mouth, without any concept of brand culture and brand management, it couldn't be achieved overnight. But in a data analysis conducted privately by Tan Weixin, it showed that commodities and businesses with brands or preliminary brand awareness already accounted for more than one-third of the commercial tax contribution in the entire Yunzhou.

The prosperity of business naturally brought in a large amount of commercial tax revenue. Although the commercial tax rate in Yunzhou was very low, flipping through the reports of these months, the income numbers and growth rates were very gratifying. With the frequency of transactions, the Yunzhou Development Fund, which was undergoing banking trials, had actually begun to try some banking-type businesses. For example, many merchants now went to the Yunzhou Development Fund's offices in the city to transfer money when trading, avoiding frequent transactions of gold and silver. And in this case, the anti-counterfeiting effect of the Yunzhou Development Fund's documents and contracts was directly catching up with the banknotes of the era in Ye Tao's memory. Especially the small checks that the Yunzhou Development Fund had just created, had complex anti-counterfeiting patterns, watermarks, color-changing inks, and other anti-counterfeiting measures... Especially that color-changing ink, as far as Ye Tao knew, the experimental costs of using natural materials to make this ink alone were quite considerable. It wasn't that everyone liked natural materials, but the refining of petroleum seemed to be an impossible task at present.

However, the most puzzling thing was that Yunzhou actually started various sports in the autumn and winter slack season. Many of these programs made Ye Tao feel a little at a loss.

The most confusing thing was the mutated polo sport. Speaking of which, Yunzhou had extremely rich animal husbandry resources, and it should be very suitable to develop polo, but the fact was not like this. Because polo required running back and forth on the grassland, requiring extremely high control and flexibility of the horses, the Yunzhou tribes, who were originally enthusiastically preparing to play polo, found that it seemed that smaller ponies with lighter mouths were more suitable for this sport. This time, it poked a hornet's nest. Foals could indeed perform well in polo, but they would also suffer extremely serious damage, and perhaps the horse's life would be ruined. Several horse-loving tribal heroes took the lead in expressing their dissatisfaction with polo, and the chain reaction was that the entire Yunzhou tribes began to gradually abandon the sport.

But polo didn't die out in Yunzhou, but instead spread among the people in the south who mainly engaged in planting. Although using good colts was a bit extravagant, and using adult horses was a bit dangerous, the clever and kind people quickly found a substitute - donkeys. Although donkeys weren't fast enough, they had good endurance, which greatly reduced the competitiveness of polo, but also greatly increased the sustainability of the game. And polo turning into donkey polo also brought new fun. Due to the unpredictable personality of donkeys, these undisciplined creatures often made some troubles in the game, making everyone laugh.

There was also a sport that was directly derived from the assessment project that Ye Tao used to select soldiers for the special operations camp. The officers and soldiers of the Yunzhou armies found that after removing the intense and cruel parts of this competition, it was still a very interesting game. This game, mixed with hide-and-seek and orienteering, quickly became popular in the Yunzhou armies. Now, it had even developed a three-person team gameplay, and there were more formal sports rules, and some troops had begun to compete with each other. Although, the original intention of promoting this game may be because many troops had completed training, but the production of new equipment hadn't been able to fully keep up, but in any case, this sport was of great benefit to improving the individual quality of the Yunzhou armies.