Chapter 1379 Ye Mingsheng’s ambition!

Facing her sister's question, Murong Qingwu did not answer directly but smiled and asked:
"Xinyun, who do you think she is?

Murong Xinyun hesitated when he heard this, but still gave his answer hesitantly.

"Sister, could she be the rumored Concubine Pei?"

Under her sister's inquiring gaze, Murong Qingwu nodded and said with some emotion:
"That's right! She is Pei Zhixiu, His Majesty's favorite woman!"

After getting a positive answer from her sister, Murong Xinyun nodded slightly, looking a little surprised.

Seeing this, Murong Qingwu also smiled and asked:

"Xinyun, weren't you curious about Pei Zhixiu before? Now that you have seen her in person, what do you think?"

Murong Xinyun hesitated for a moment and said:
“She is very beautiful and has a good temperament, but...she is not as beautiful as I imagined!”

After hearing this, Murong Qingwu just smiled but said nothing. Since Murong Xinyun had already said it, he did not hide it and continued:
"People say that His Majesty has three thousand beauties in his harem, and all of them are favored by him, so I thought she should be at least as pretty as An Miaoyi!"

Murong Qingwu shook her head and said:

"Xinyun, your majesty is a man who cherishes the past. Concubine Pei has been serving your majesty since you were a nobody. Your majesty has a deep relationship with her, so naturally she will be favored more than others!"

Murong Qingwu paused for a moment before speaking earnestly:
"Since ancient times, the harem has been a place of intrigue and deception. Few good people can survive here. And now in this harem, if there is only one good person, it is most likely Concubine Pei!"

"Xinyun! You can have more contact with Concubine Pei!"

Hearing her sister say this, Murong Xinyun became even more curious about that eccentric woman, and immediately nodded and said:

"Sister, is there anything I should be careful about when I come into contact with her?"

"Although Concubine Pei has a cold personality, she is very approachable and doesn't put on airs. When you interact with her, you just need to be sincere and don't need to be too cautious!"

Murong Xinyun nodded silently, keeping her sister's advice in mind. The two sisters chatted for a while, and then Murong Xinyun said goodbye and left. After she left, Ying'er whispered:
"Your Majesty! Zhang Hu, the guard beside His Majesty, said that His Majesty seems to be very interested in Miss Xinyun..."

Hearing this, Murong Qingwu said calmly:
"Your Majesty has met Xinyun twice. If he was really interested, he would have asked Xinyun to sleep with him long ago! That Zhao Rouer only slept with him once, but now she has become a concubine, and the Chen family also seems to be proud of it!"

Seeing Murong Qingwu say this, Ying'er didn't dare to say anything more and shut up. After Murong Qingwu pondered for a moment, he seemed to realize something and asked Ying'er:

"Do you have anything you want to say?"

Ying Er hesitated for a moment and said:
"Your Majesty, I heard that on the night when Zhao Rouer slept with you, His Majesty first looked for Shen Yutong. Shen Yutong refused due to her menstruation, so His Majesty randomly chose Zhao Rouer. I heard that His Majesty showed no pity that night, and Zhao Rouer was carried down by someone during the day. I think His Majesty promoted Zhao Rouer to a concubine out of pity!"

"After Zhao Rouer became a concubine, His Majesty never visited her again. Poor Zhao Rouer thought she was going to be promoted overnight and was so complacent about it, but she has ended up staying alone in an empty room until now!"

"My lady, in my opinion, Zhao Rou'er is just a common woman with rouge and makeup, and she is not worthy of being compared with Miss Xinyun at all!"

"Miss Xinyun will be your important magic weapon to replace An Miaoyi!"

“Although Pei Zhixiu is still favored, youth is fleeting and beauty fades. The unbearable things in the world are nothing more than generals turning gray and beauties aging. Miss Xinyun is more than a generation younger than Pei Zhixiu…”

Listening to Ying'er's analysis, Murong Qingwu glanced at her and said with a smile:

"Ying'er, the ancients said that one should look at a scholar with new eyes when seeing him again. I didn't expect you to have made such great progress in such a short time. Youth is fleeting and beauty fades easily. It's great that you have made great progress!"

Ying Er blushed when she heard this and said:

"Ma'am, please don't laugh at me. I learned all this from the Youth Diary serialized in the newspaper. The Youth Diary is so well written!"

Murong Qingwu hesitated for a moment, then asked Ying'er:
"How's Ada doing?"

Ying Er answered without hesitation:

"Ada's injuries have basically healed, but San's death was a huge blow to him!"

Murong Qingwu also looked heavy-hearted when she heard this. When it came to cultivating the family's armed forces, their Murong family had always believed that quality of soldiers was more important than quantity. This resulted in their Murong family's assassins being highly skilled in martial arts, proficient in assassination, and loyal to the family, but their numbers were always small.

It is no exaggeration to say that every assassin of the Murong family is a rare and precious asset of the Murong family, and every casualty is heartbreaking.

After learning that An Miaoyi had also sent people to participate, Murong Qingwu knew that this matter would be difficult to resolve peacefully. When she asked Ah San to go to support Ah Da, she was also prepared for casualties. However, Murong Qingwu did not expect that there would be such a large number of casualties this time. A total of three people died, and the most heartbreaking thing was that even Ah San, who had the most potential, was involved...

Fortunately, we successfully killed Wang Shun and blocked the news, otherwise this operation would have been too costly!
Thinking of this, Murong Qingwu also ordered:
"Give Ah Da an extra 1,000 taels of silver. There shouldn't be anything happening recently, so let him have a good rest! I know Ah Da and Ah San have the best relationship, but he can't be so depressed now. If he wants, he can go back to his hometown in Guanzhong!"

Ying Er heard this and said directly:

"I thank the Empress on behalf of Ah Da!"

After saying this, Ying Er paused for a moment before continuing:
"My lady, I don't think Ah Da is interested in resting now. His mind is full of revenge!"

"revenge?"

"The reason why there were so many casualties in this operation was because we were ambushed by Zhang Xinjian. Asan was also killed by Zhang Xinjian, so Ada also targeted Zhang Xinjian and wanted to kill him to avenge Asan. During this period of time, Ada has been collecting various information related to Zhang Xinjian!"

Murong Qingwu was somewhat surprised when these words came out, but she immediately ordered:

"Tell Ah Da not to act rashly without my order!"

"Yes!"

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Yijing, Imperial Study
Ye Mingsheng looked at the memorial in his hand, with impatience gradually emerging on his face. Ever since he announced in the last cabinet meeting that he would cut 10,000 T jobs before the end of the year, the memorials submitted by the six ministries, the Yijing Yamen, and the Youyan Provincial Government have all indicated, either explicitly or implicitly, that this task is extremely arduous and may be difficult to complete.

Judging from the current situation, this may only be the beginning. Now only the six ministries, Yijing Yamen, and Youyan Censorate have expressed their stance because the provincial governors and censors in other places have not received the news. In a few days, after receiving the news, other provincial governors in the north are likely to submit memorials to express their stance, and after a while, the provincial governors in the south are likely to join this ranks.

In fact, Ye Mingsheng himself knew that with only four months left, it was very difficult to lay off 10,000 T jobs. The task was extremely arduous, and there was even a high probability that it would not be completed by the end of the year.

The reason why Ye Mingsheng set this goal even though he knew that the task would most likely not be completed was that he wanted everyone to have a sense of urgency. If he couldn't complete the task of laying off 10,000 people, it would be no problem to complete 7,000 or 8,000 people. Even 5,000 or 6,000 people would be acceptable to Ye Mingsheng.

But now the mission has just been issued, and you are already complaining and want to quit before you even start taking action. What is your attitude?

In this regard, Ye Mingsheng believes that it is necessary to reiterate the importance of the layoff task, or even to make an example of someone to scare the monkey so that everyone can focus more on completing the task, rather than bargaining with himself here...

So far, only 6,000 to 7,000 people have been laid off, but Ye Mingsheng's plan is to eventually lay off 70,000 people. Now it's barely 10%. If he is lenient at this time, then his plan to lay off T's iron rice bowl will be a long way off!

Thinking of this, Ye Mingsheng made up his mind and called Ye Cheng in and told him:

"Remove Zhang Xiong from his post as the Minister of Personnel and let him go home to reflect on his actions. Cui Hang will take over as the Minister of Personnel!"

"Yes!"

Feeling the anger in Ye Mingsheng's words, Ye Cheng did not dare to delay and immediately began to prepare the edict.

After dealing with Zhang Xiong, the one who got out of his way, Ye Mingsheng continued to look through the memorial, which was a joint memorial submitted by Chen Changgui, director of the First Manufacturing Bureau, and Su Junjie, director of the Second Manufacturing Bureau.

The content of this memorial was the two directors reporting the good news to Ye Mingsheng that their two companies had jointly developed a steam engine!

Although it is only the most basic steam engine and has not yet been applied to other fields such as textiles, Ye Mingsheng is still very happy about this good news.

Ye Mingsheng has always attached great importance to science and technology. Before the unification of the world, Ye Mingsheng's investment in science and technology was more inclined towards the production and research and development of military firearms, so as to increase the combat effectiveness of the Fengwu Army from the level of weapons and equipment, and help himself better unify the world.
However, with the unification of the country, the investment of the entire Daqian Dynasty in science and technology has become more comprehensive, and the investment in scientific and technological research and development in the economy and people's livelihood has gradually increased.

In fact, as early as three years ago, Ye Mingsheng ordered the First Manufacturing Bureau to concentrate its scientific research backbones to develop this steam engine. Under Ye Mingsheng's instructions, the First Manufacturing Bureau also established a steam engine research and development team, and assembled 30 technical backbones to prepare to overcome this difficulty...
But unfortunately, Ye Mingsheng only knew the principle of the steam engine, which was to convert the energy of water vapor into mechanical work, but he did not know the more specific structure of the steam engine.

Therefore, the specific structure could only be figured out by these technical backbones on their own, which resulted in these 30 technical backbones spending thousands of taels of silver and tinkering for half a year without being able to figure out anything.

At that time, the Fengwu Army was fighting. In order to provide enough military supplies to the front line, many departments in the rear were working around the clock. Among them, the First Manufacturing Bureau, which was responsible for the production of firearms, was under great pressure.

Therefore, seeing that they were so busy that they wanted to split one technician into two, while the thirty technical backbones over there were doing nothing, the First Manufacturing General Administration also requested Ye Mingsheng to temporarily stop the research and development of steam engines and let the thirty technical backbones in charge of steam engine research and development return to their original jobs to increase the production of firearms.

Although Ye Mingsheng wanted to develop the steam engine as soon as possible to increase production efficiency and promote the Fengwu Army's industrial GM, he saw that there was still no clue about the development of the steam engine. Continuing the development at this pace would only be a waste of manpower and money, so Ye Mingsheng reluctantly agreed to the request of the First Manufacturing Bureau.

So far, the process of developing steam engines by the Fengwu military regime led by Ye Mingsheng came to an end. However, as peace returned to the world, Ye Mingsheng also began to deploy his own overseas strategy...
Although the overseas strategy can achieve its goals through some diplomatic means of forming alliances, it ultimately requires the development of the navy and the establishment of overseas forces belonging to Daqian. This is the cornerstone of the overseas strategy. Without this cornerstone, the overseas strategy is nothing but a flower in the mirror and a moon in the water!
However, after a series of investigations and studies, Ye Mingsheng deeply realized that in the past, because Da Zhou did not pay attention to overseas, Da Zhou’s water force could only be called a navy rather than a navy!
The difference between the two is that the navy can only fight on inland rivers such as the Nanjiang River, while the navy can fight in the ocean to defend the court's overseas interests!
Although Ye Mingsheng also concentrated a lot of resources to develop the navy, such as recruiting instructors from Zhang Dapeng, training naval combat personnel, and building shipyards to build warships capable of fighting at sea.

But Ye Mingsheng still understood that relying solely on these was not enough to complete his overseas strategy!
Daqian's naval foundation is too weak and it owes too much debt. As the saying goes, it takes ten years to build an army and a hundred years to build a navy. If Daqian wants to build a strong navy that can complete Ye Mingsheng's overseas strategy, it will take ten years!

Although Ye Mingsheng is not an impatient person, he is now approaching the age of 40. Considering the average life expectancy in this world, Ye Mingsheng inevitably feels frustrated when he thinks that he may not be able to see the results of his lifetime...