Traveling through Du He, Li Chengqian's rebellion begins

After a severe beating.

Fang Xuanling pointed a stick at the tip of Fang Yiai's nose and scolded him breathlessly.

"Rebellious son, send that dishonest person away immediately, before he harms our Fang family!"

"If I find out tomorrow that she is still in the house, I will kick you out of the house too!"

Fang Xuanling said some harsh words, then dropped the broken stick and walked away angrily with his hands behind his back.

The rebellious son wanted to take a woman from the Western Regions whose origins were unknown as his concubine. This request was so absurd, how could he possibly agree to it?

Not to mention the mismatch in social status, the mere fact that the second son married a princess meant that he was destined not to be able to take a concubine at will.

As a prince consort of the royal family, although he could enjoy the benefits of rapid promotion, he also had to endure the humiliation of being a slave to the princess.

"You won't let me take a concubine, but I want to take Gunali as my concubine!"

Although Fang Yiai was in pain all over, he was still very dissatisfied with his father.

He stayed there for a moment, suddenly laughed at himself, then shook his head helplessly and muttered to himself.

"Dad, you don't know anything..."

Princess Chengyang's Mansion.

In Li Yi's boudoir.

Du He had no idea about the tragic experience Fang Yiai had experienced.

He followed Princess Changle's orders and was hiding in bed with Li Yi, busy making a little man.

...

The next day.

Du He, wearing a new dark crimson official robe, went to court happily.

He walked to his original seat and sat down, and the eunuch serving in the hall hurried forward and spoke.

"Master Du, your seat is in the front."

Following the direction of his father-in-law's finger, Du He discovered that his new seat was two rows ahead of his current one.

Du He bowed to his father-in-law and said, "Thank you for the reminder."

Then he took big strides and walked to the front and sat down at his new seat.

A group of fifth-rank officials behind him stared at Du He, who was sitting in front of him, with envy on their faces, and all kinds of fantasies in their minds.

If Du He can make great contributions, there is no reason why this group of people cannot make great contributions.

There was nothing important to discuss at today's court meeting, so Li Shimin, in a good mood, ended the meeting early.

The prince has done well and brought honor to his old father.

After the court meeting, Secretary General Yan Shigu approached Du He and said with a kind look on his face.

"Secretary-General, please accompany me to the Secretariat. In addition to explaining government affairs to you, we also need to discuss the printing of pinyin and dictionaries."

As the chief and deputy chief of the Secretariat, they need to work together in order to get things done.

Yan Shigu also knew that Du He had a bad reputation and was afraid that he would mess up the Secretariat by causing trouble, so he spoke to Du He in a very nice tone and attitude.

"Okay, Lord Yan, please go in first." Du He said respectfully.

The Secretary-General was a position of real power and was required to assist Yan Shigu in managing the Secretariat.

Even the daily operation and management was handled by Du Helai, and Yan Shigu was only in charge of the overall situation.

Since his boss is giving him so much face, Du He is no longer the playboy he used to be, so naturally he has to cooperate well.

The Secretariat is located inside the Imperial Palace, between Hanguangmen Street and Chengtianmen Street, quite far from the Taiji Hall.

How to distinguish which department is better among the three provinces and six ministries and the nine temples and five academies can be seen from the location of their offices.

Those who are close to the Taiji Hall, such as the three provinces and six ministries, are just opposite the Taiji Hall, and they have great power and status.

Departments like the Imperial Household Department, the Imperial Observatory, and the Imperial Household Department were all located in marginal locations and were departments that did hard labor and had no status.

"Greetings, Master Yan and Master Du."

Du He followed Yan Shigu into the Secretariat, and all the subordinates greeted them one after another.

Judging from the atmosphere, the people in the secretarial department are pretty good, at least they have some vision.

This is much better than the attitude of the censors in the Menxia Province.

"Secretary Supervisor, this is your personal office, take a look and see if you are satisfied."

Yan Shigu took Du He into an independent office room and asked with a smile.

In order to welcome Du He, he arranged for people from the Secretariat to clean and redecorate the room yesterday.

Du He looked around the room, nodded with great satisfaction and said, "I am very satisfied. Lord Yan, thank you for your trouble."

The room is spacious and tidy. There are hundreds of volumes of books and classics placed on the wooden shelves, as well as many potted plants, calligraphy and paintings, and porcelain ornaments, which add an antique flavor to the room.

And on the right side of the desk, you can see the garden outside through the window.

Yan Shigu nodded slightly and said, "Secretary, please come to my office. I will make tea while I introduce government affairs to you."

Having a kind and amiable old boss, Du He was in a very good mood.

The two chatted for nearly an hour, and Du He also had a clear understanding of what he was going to do.

It’s not difficult to say. The Secretariat is mainly responsible for book collection and proofreading ancient books, and a group of subordinates are already very skilled in doing it.

If new ancient books are collected or new books are compiled, they only need to be responsible for translating and collecting them.

After discussing government affairs, Yan Shigu brought up the difficult issue of pinyin and dictionary printing for discussion again.

"Secretary, His Majesty has asked us to print a total of 100 million copies of Pinyin and dictionary books before the end of the year."

"This task is so daunting that I'm afraid it can't be accomplished."

Yan Shigu's wrinkled face was filled with bitterness.

Although His Majesty said that there would be a huge reward for completing the task, he knew very well that this was an impossible task.

Du He's face tensed up, and he quickly asked, "Master Yan, how do you usually print books? How efficient is it?"

I almost forgot about printing.

Without an efficient printing method, the task of printing these one million books would be in jeopardy.

Yan Shigu introduced to Du He with a serious expression: "Books are mainly printed by woodblock printing. If the printing staff put aside other things and only print the "Hanyu Pinyin" with a small number of pages, they can print more than 4000 copies a day."

"If we print a thick Chinese dictionary, we probably won't be able to print even 200 copies a day."

In fact, the most difficult part of woodblock printing is carving the character plate. In addition to the extremely high craftsmanship required, there must be no mistakes during carving.

If you carve even one wrong stroke, the entire board will be scrapped and you will have to start over.

Therefore, sometimes not even one board can be carved in a month.

Du He nodded, but did not answer immediately. Instead, he thought about it silently in his mind.

It is now the end of May, and it will be June in two days, leaving only seven months until the end of the year.

If we only print "Hanyu Pinyin" in 7 months, we can barely complete it on time if there are no other accidents.

If we only print the Chinese Dictionary, at best we could print 4 copies, which is far from the goal of 50 copies.

"Whoo~"

Du He let out a long breath and said with a frown.

"The printing efficiency is too low. Even if we expand the printing workshop tenfold, we still cannot complete this arduous task."

There are now more than a hundred people in the printing workshop under the Secretariat, and the monthly salary expenditure is a considerable expense.

If the scale is to be expanded tenfold, the court ministers will not agree.

Yan Shigu sighed and said, "Alas, this matter is really difficult to handle. If there is no other way, I can only go to the palace to meet His Majesty and explain the actual situation to him."

"We in the Secretariat will never have a chance to get this big reward."

The Secretariat often does obscurity work, so it is difficult to make achievements.

This time, we finally have an opportunity, but His Majesty has set his sights high, which clearly shows that he does not want the Secretariat to take the credit.

Du He was very clear about the current situation of the Secretariat. After careful consideration, he had some preliminary ideas in his mind.

The current difficulty is the low printing efficiency. Wouldn’t it be better if the printing process could be improved?

Du He said calmly, "Master Yan, we will print the simple Chinese Pinyin as usual. We will print as many as we can. I will figure out the rest."

"Don't worry, I'm 70% sure I can complete the printing task before the end of the year!"

...

[Yesterday, many handsome readers like Daniel Wu said that there were too few updates, so today I will update three times. The author solemnly promises that if three updates are possible, I will never update twice, unless I really can't update...]