Chapter 320- Black hearted Prefect
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Nora
As the Lord's Manor expanded, Cui Yingyu and Qing'er also obtained their individual courtyards. Ouyang Shuo even arranged for Bing’er to stay alone to develop her independence. Zisu would personally take care of her.
Although the Lord's Manor had expanded once again, they continued the dining tradition. No matter how busy Cui Yingyu and Qing'er were, they would rush to the main courtyard to eat with Ouyang Shuo.
Ouyang Shuo made such arrangements because he did not want distance to affect their relationship.
Compared to Cui Yingyu, who the rumors affected, Qing'er was doing well. Her garment workshop had expanded once more, and it had become the largest workshop in Shanhai City. At this stage, just the tailors alone reached hundreds of people.
The orders the workshop accepted was not limited to the Financial Department welfare packages, as they took orders from commoners, the various settlements, and even the Chamber of Commerces.
For the next step, Qing'er wanted to bring in some weaving machines to build a large scale weaving workshop to solve the problem of material supply. In addition to the large scale garment shop, they basically covered the entire industry process.
In the future, Qing'er was even prepared to rent a large area in the west to set up mulberry gardens and cotton gardens to solve the problem of source materials.
Qing'er was personally in charge of the tailor shop, the designs, and the high class customizations.
She had used the industry chain theory that Ouyang Shuo had taught her to perfection.
As the industry expanded, Qing'er's profits kept increasing. She had achieved her dream of being rich. Her personal assets had reached ten thousand gold, which made her one of the rich people in the territory.
Ouyang Shuo had never expected her to possess such a talent.
However, she was still lacking in a certain aspect. Due to her complete obsession with money, she had neglected her skills. Although she was the first talent to become a master, she was not the first to become a grandmaster.
Even if you did not mention the grandmaster blacksmith Wanghao, even the master level shipbuilder Zheng Dahai was on the verge of a breakthrough after building the Dragon Head.
Regarding this matter, Ouyang Shuo especially looked for Qing'er and described the problem to her. He really did not want to see her talent in tailoring wasted for nothing.
As for the effect of his words, only time would tell.
The progress of the garment workshop basically mirrored the expansion and growth of the shops in Shanhai City.
After privatization, the first batch of workshop and shop owners basically got rich if nothing special happened.
As the quantity of wealth increased, the amount of merchants also followed.
Firstly, they had higher requirements for living conditions. The merchants were not happy with the small courtyards built by the Construction Division. Instead, they wanted to buy land and build their own villas and mansions.
To say the least, they were envious of the official residence area.
Luckily, the Shanhai City planning was done, and the Construction Division worked together with the Shanhai House to choose a piece of land that wealthy merchants could loan. This would allow the merchants to build their houses.
In the plans of the Shanhai City region, the core area where the Lianzhou Lord's Manor was located was known as the imperial city. Outside of that was the inner city, which included the area inside of the city wall of Qiushui County and Friendship County.
The region outside the city walls were known as the outer city.
The outer city took up 600 square kilometers, the size of eight Chang An cities. Shanhai House could afford to use such a huge region freely.
Purely from renting land, Shanhai House earned 50 thousand gold, and this earning continued to increase.
Apart from the merchants, the commercial ability of the soldier's families could not be neglected.
As time went on, the generals and the people in the army all married. Their large salary ensured that their families could live a rich life.
For the families of the soldiers, the territory gave them preferential treatment.
Shanhai House similarly planned a bigger region in the outer city for the housing of the soldiers' families. Their living conditions were much higher than normal commoners and they had more complete facilities.
Of course, one needed to pay for it and the sales price was not cheap. Though this method, Shanhai House prefect Wei Ran had wiped away all the hard earned salary of the soldiers.
Because of that, the soldiers termed him as the black hearted prefect and some of them even made noises at the Military Affairs Department.
The military affairs director Du Ruhui felt helpless. After all, Wei Ran was making logical and correct decisions. Furthermore, the splitting of duties and power meant that although he was the military affairs director, he had no power over Wei Ran.
When Ouyang Shuo heard about this matter, he just laughed it off. He did not expect for Wei Ran to have such an economic mind and replicate the modern housing industry in Shanhai City.
Apart from lending out land to let the rich build their mansions, Wei Ran eagerly tried to persuade the various Chamber of Commerces to buy land and build various workshops.
The Cui Chamber of Commerce were the first. With a price of 20 thousand gold, they bought a piece of land along Friendship River. Hequanji was not far behind and with a price of 30 thousand gold, they bought an even bigger piece of land.
The closer it was to the river, the more popular the land was.
Of course, everything had a process. The Chamber of Commerce could not simply purchase any piece of land they wanted; they had to fit with the overall planning of the city. They could only buy land in certain areas, and the land they bought must be grouped up and could not be all over the place.
Only after the land in one region was sold would the next region start selling.
Not only that, Wei Ran also personally rushed to Xianyang to persuade the Chamber of Commerces there to invest in Shanhai City and build their branches.
His words were really effective, till date, two had already agreed.
The construction of Shanhai City also attracted the attention of Quanzhou.
Based on the good relationship between the two, Wei Ran advertised the plans and development of the city to attract the commoners from Quanzhou to move over. With his action, another wave of migrants from Quanzhou started.
In just Quanzhou, there were four Chamber of Commerce that were willing to settle in Shanhai City.
After he tasted success, Wei Ran's ambitions grew. He started to contact the various offices in the system imperial cities and promoted their development plans. He attracted the Chamber of Commerces there to settle down in Shanhai City.
After all that, Shanhai City grew really famous, and its name spread all around.
Wei Ran wanted to use the assets of the people and their strength to collectively build Shanhai City.
If one thought about it carefully, Wei Ran really was black hearted. Not only did Shanhai City not sell the land, it also acted as the developers of the land, one upping the people in real life.
With such a method, Shanhai City could gain large amounts of funds, enough to support its future building projects. The Financial Department was still worrying about funds for the city but Wei Ran had already solved this issue on his own.
One must know that the wall building project was just a portion of the plans for Shanhai City. After it was built, the inner roads and the public facilities all needed investments.
Solely based on the financial subsidies and handouts from the Financial Department, these projects were obviously not viable.
This was also the reason why Ouyang Shuo did not interfere; they lacked money! After this matter, Wei Ran also managed to gain a footing in Shanhai City, and he had established his prestige.
Of course, for the entire construction of the city to really reach completion, they would need at least need one to two more years.
Back to the topic.
During dinner, Ouyang Shuo raised up the matter about going to Yazhou.
For this long trip, Zisu definitely was going to follow him.
Bing'er had heard this news long ago. She knew that Yazhou was the beautiful Sanya, which made her delighted.
In reality, Ouyang Shuo had brought her there once, and this little brat remembered that scene vividly.
"I also want to go!" When Qing’er saw Bing'er so happy, as she incessantly described the beautiful scenes at Yazhou, Qing'er grew really curious and started to bug Ouyang Shuo.
"Sure!" Ouyang Shuo naturally wouldn't object.
"Yay! Brother is the best!"
Just as Ouyang Shuo had predicted, Qing'er and Bing'er, these two brats, were really close and had become like a pair of real siblings.
"Brother can I bring little white too?" Bing'er suddenly thought of her partner. Little white laid in her arms. When she heard her little master speak, she looked at Ouyang Shuo with its sparkling eyes. It totally did not look like the royalty of the wolf race.
"Of course!" Ouyang Shuo could not reject.
Little White was really smart, and she could understand their conversation. When she saw Ouyang Shuo agree, she smiled till her eyes had closed up.
"What about little black?"
Ouyang Shuo felt speechless, “As long as you want to, you can bring anyone."
"Great!"
Cui Yingyu, who was sitting at the side, had a face filled with sadness when she saw the two little sisters playing around. Cui Yingu had a tough life, as one of the four directors, she could not get away and could only envy them.