Clan Rise: Starting as a Grandfather-Chapter 354 - 342: The 34th Year of Chengping

In late June, Yang Zhenshan received a reply to his memorial.

The reply from the old Emperor was very simple, containing only eight words: "Noted, trade may proceed."

It seems the old Emperor had long been aware of the situation with the Li Sheng Dynasty; otherwise, the response wouldn’t be so nonchalant.

After receiving the old Emperor’s reply, Yang Zhenshan felt reassured to trade with the Li Sheng Dynasty.

He once again met with Cui Hongtao, after which he informed him of the outcome and sent him on his way.

Cui Hongtao actually wanted to chat more, but Yang Zhenshan didn’t care to have too much contact with him.

Although the Kim clan of Silla now controlled the Li Sheng Dynasty, without the old Emperor’s investiture, Jin Shangjun was not the King of the Li Sheng Dynasty, and Cui Hongtao was not an Left Assistant.

Three days after Cui Hongtao sailed away, Yu Tonghai and Sun Cheng returned. Their trip to the Desheng Dynasty had gone smoothly, encountering no misfortune. Using Sun Cheng’s previous connections, they managed to engage several powerful families of the Desheng Dynasty and reached an intent of cooperation.

Actually, the smoothness of their journey was due to a reason: those more than twenty warships were not just for show; at the very least, they could demonstrate their military force and prevent the Desheng Dynasty from harboring thoughts of plunder.

With all three trade routes open, the Tenglong Guard’s maritime trade entered a stage of rapid development.

By the end of July, the Tenglong Guard had formed the third fleet, with all three fleets heading to Jiangnan, the Li Sheng Dynasty, and the Desheng Dynasty, respectively.

In early August, the fleet from the Hengdao Sect arrived at Tenglong Guard Pier for the first time.

By the end of September, the Luo family’s fleet was organized, making its first journey to Jiangnan.

In the following months, more fleets docked at Tenglong Guard Pier, resulting in so much traffic that Yang Zhenshan had to once again expand the docks and also build numerous warehouses and camps nearby.

The cold winter did not deter the enthusiasm of the merchants for maritime trade; a multitude of merchant ships docked at the pier, with copious goods being transported from Tenglong Guard throughout Liaodong and even to Chongshan Town.

The prosperity at Tenglong Guard Pier attracted even more merchants and fleets, and for a while, the Tenglong Guard Pier had the potential to become the largest pier in Liaodong.

As more merchants and fleets came to Tenglong Guard, the once desolate coast gradually became a thriving town.

April 20th in the 34th year of the Chengping Era.

Three years had flown by, and Tenglong Guard was now a picture of prosperity.

Within the bustling little Guard City, the clamor of people was ceaseless, and the streets were incredibly lively. Outside the city, on all the roads in every direction, there was a constant stream of carriages and horses, and long processions seemed endless, almost out of sight.

Yang Zhenshan rode his horse through the middle of the road and many cart drivers looked at him with reverence.

"Salute to the General!"

"Salute to the General!"

Many people greeted Yang Zhenshan with a fist-and-palm salute, and Yang Zhenshan, wearing a friendly smile, nodded slightly in return.

The eyes of the people are clear—they understand whether they are military households of Tenglong Guard or laborers who came from afar to make a living, they know who brought the prosperity to Tenglong Guard.

Yang Zhenshan walked the full length of the road and reached the western gate of Guard City, then crossed the noisy streets to arrive at the government office.

Back at the government office, Yang Zhenshan let out a long sigh.

"This won’t do; our Guard City must expand!"

He walked into the main hall of the government office, speaking to Xie Yuan at his side.

"Yes, the city is indeed too crowded now, especially whenever the Navy fleets return, there is hardly a spot for them in the city!" Xie Yuan said, somewhat helplessly.

The Tenglong Guard’s development was too rapid, leaving many plans of the Guardian Department unable to keep up with its pace.

Even Yang Zhenshan hadn’t expected Tenglong Guard to thrive to such an extent; he had underestimated the benefits and prosperity brought by maritime trade.

Guard City was originally quite small. When Yang Zhenshan first built it, he hadn’t anticipated it would one day become so crowded that there’d be no place to stand. At the time, he had even limited the number of residences allowed to be built within the city. Only now did he realize that he should have directly expanded Guard City back then.

Entering the main hall, a servant immediately served tea to both men. Yang Zhenshan picked up the tea, took a sip, and said, "Have the Engineering Department make a plan. The city’s walls should expand southward to connect with the southern barracks."

The Five Army Camps were located to the south of the city, not far from Guard City, about two miles away.

In the three years since, the camp had been renovated several times and had almost become a garrison, which could be readily incorporated into the city if connected.

Xie Yuan nodded gently in agreement, replying, "Alright."

Yang Zhenshan turned and entered his study, which was divided into an inner and an outer chamber. The inner chamber was his own study, while the outer chamber was where Lu Wenhua and Zhou Ren worked.

He had just sat down when Lu Wenhua came in with a wooden box, saying, "My lord, this is a batch of telescopes newly made by the glass workshop!"

Lu Wenhua opened the box and handed a brass single-tube telescope to Yang Zhenshan.

Yang Zhenshan was interested and took it for examination.

The glass workshop had been established for three and a half years, yet until now it had not produced a telescope to his satisfaction.

It wasn’t for a lack of effort on the artisans’ part; it was simply that this device was too difficult to perfect.

The most difficult aspect was the high transparency of the glass, which the craftsmen had experimented with countless times, but still could not meet Yang Zhenshan’s standards.

Yang Zhenshan picked up the telescope and went to the window, gazing towards the distant city wall.

The transparency of the glass was already quite good, not like before where it always felt foggy, and there were no air bubbles inside the lens either.

The magnification appeared to be six times larger, and although the manufacturing craftsmanship was not yet exquisite, it already had practical value.

Yang Zhenshan was more and more satisfied as he watched, "Very good, how much does it cost to make one?"

"It’s about thirty taels of silver for one," Lu Wenhua said somewhat awkwardly.

Yang Zhenshan nodded without finding it expensive.

Over the past three-plus years, he had invested tens of thousands of taels of silver into the glass workshop, and the number of craftsmen had grown from a dozen to now over two hundred, with the daily cost of labor and materials being no small number.

As for why each single-barrel telescope cost thirty taels of silver, it was likely due to the very low pass rate of the lenses.

At the current level of craftsmanship, producing high transparency, bubble-free lenses was completely a matter of luck.

In fact, the glass workshop could be profitable. Glass products should be very popular in Da Rong, and selling ornaments, tea bowls, wine cups, and other such items made of glass could certainly turn a profit.

But Yang Zhenshan had never exposed the existence of glass to the outside, for he feared that the profits from glass could be too substantial.

Indeed, he feared that the glass would bring in too much profit.

It was a situation he couldn’t help.

Nowadays, Tenglong Guard had salt pans, a pier, and sea trade, and behind the prosperity were tied large amounts of interests, many of which had been snatched from other places.

The salt pans of Tenglong Guard were taking food out of the Liaodong Salt Transportation Department’s mouth, and Tenglong Guard Pier was digging at the foundations of the Jizhou Market Shipping Department, while also competing with Jiangnan Market Shipping Department for profits.

Just these two things had caused Yang Zhenshan to be impeached countless times in the court over the past few years.

Not just him, Zheng Xiao was also implicated due to the issue of the Tenglong Guard salt pans, and many high-level officials in the Central Army Commander’s Mansion had been repeatedly impeached over Tenglong Guard Pier.

Although Zheng Xiao and Duke Ning were suppressing issues on both fronts, the Liaodong Salt Transportation Department and the Central Army Commander’s Mansion internally both had significant complaints about Tenglong Guard.

Interests move people’s hearts indeed!

Seeing Tenglong Guard raking in huge sums of silver from the salt pans and the pier, everybody wanted to get a piece of the action.

Fortunately, the old Emperor still supported Yang Zhenshan to some extent, otherwise he might have been transferred out of Tenglong Guard long ago.

Political struggles do not involve fighting and killing, nor is there a need for it. Outsiders have many ways to snatch the position of Commander of Tenglong Guard, and the simplest one would be to transfer Yang Zhenshan away from Tenglong Guard and let their own people come and pick the fruit.

Thus, a strange phenomenon has appeared in the past two years: Yang Zhenshan faced many impeachments from officials, while at the same time, they tried every means to promote him, making him leave Tenglong Guard.

Under such circumstances, how could Yang Zhenshan dare to sell glass openly?

"Tell the glass workshop to hurry and produce a batch to send to the Navy first!"

Yang Zhenshan said.

Telescopes are highly useful to the Navy, not only for observing the enemy’s situation but also for facilitating internal command transmission.

"Yes!" Lu Wenhua responded and then went to the glass workshop.

No sooner had he left than Wang Yunqiao came in.

"Master!" Wang Yunqiao, dressed in a black cotton armor, her hair tied into a simple bun, now appeared not as petite as before, taller and straight in stature, with a more mature charm of a married woman, but her demeanor was still spirited and lively.

Now, Wang Yunqiao was the mother of two children, with two births in four years, a pace that could only be deemed satisfactory.

However, she was still the leader of the women’s training camp.

Indeed, this leader title was conferred by Yang Zhenshan, and in reality, Wang Yunqiao had no official position.

"Is there something you need?" Yang Zhenshan casually asked.

"Master, please allocate another two hundred warhorses to my training camp," Wang Yunqiao said gently, tying back a strand of hair on her forehead.

"Didn’t I give you two hundred last year?" Yang Zhenshan was somewhat surprised.

The women’s training camp was not part of the organization of Tenglong Guard and was originally just something Yang Zhenshan established to give the women of Tenglong Guard a chance to stand out.

He hadn’t intended to train a women’s army; rather, he wanted to improve the women’s physical fitness and abilities.

In fact, the development of the women’s training camp has not been rapid over the past two years, and although it has always maintained the scale of training a thousand people, only two hundred actually joined the training camp.

Entering the training camp for training and joining the training camp are two different concepts, just as ordinary soldiers all receive basic training. The training camp has a two-month period per session, and after the training ends, most of the women go home, with only a few choosing to stay in the camp, becoming similar to camp soldiers.

Most of these women who stay in the camp come from the official families of Tenglong Guard. Song Dashan, Xie Yuan, Wu Chongzhe, Yu Tonghai, and others have sent their eligible daughters to the training camp, even the Yang family brought over a dozen young girls.

This is how they managed to assemble two hundred permanent camp female soldiers.

For two hundred people, having two hundred warhorses was already enough, and the others only needed to receive basic training; there was no need to learn riding skills.