Chapter 342: Thirty-four Years of Peace
In late June, Yang Zhengshan's memorial received a reply.

The emperor's reply was simple, consisting of only eight words: 'It is known, and we can trade with them'.

It seems that the old emperor already knew about the situation of the Li Sheng Dynasty, otherwise his response would not have been so calm.

After receiving the reply from the old emperor, Yang Zhengshan felt relieved to trade with the Li Sheng Dynasty.

He met with Cui Hongtao again, told him the result, and sent him away.

Cui Hongtao wanted to talk to him more, but Yang Zhengshan didn't want to have too much interaction with him.

Although the Silla Kim family now controls the Lee Seong Dynasty, without the emperor's enthronement, Kim Sang-jun is not the king of the Lee Seong Dynasty, and Choi Hong-tao is not the left counselor.

On the third day after Cui Hongtao left by boat, Yu Tonghai and Sun Cheng returned. Their trip to the De Sheng Dynasty was very smooth without encountering any problems. Sun Cheng used the connections he had accumulated in the past to get in touch with several wealthy families in the De Sheng Dynasty and reached an intention of cooperation.

In fact, there was a reason why it went so smoothly. Those twenty-plus warships were not just for decoration. At the very least, they could demonstrate their military power and prevent the forces of the De Sheng Dynasty from wanting to snatch them away.

With all three shipping routes opened, Tenglongwei's maritime trade entered a stage of rapid development.

At the end of July, Tenglongwei formed the third fleet, and the three fleets went to Jiangnan, Li Sheng Dynasty and De Sheng Dynasty respectively.

In early August, the Hengdaomen fleet arrived at Tenglongwei Wharf for the first time.

At the end of September, the Luo family’s fleet was formed and headed to Jiangnan for the first time.

In the following months, more and more fleets docked at the Tenglongwei wharf. The large number of fleets forced Yang Zhengshan to expand the wharf again. He also built a large number of warehouses and camps near the wharf.

The arrival of the cold winter did not stop the merchants' enthusiasm for maritime trade. A large number of merchant ships docked at the wharf, and a large amount of goods were transported from Tenglongwei to various parts of Liaodong and even to Chongshan Town.

The prosperity of Tenglongwei Wharf also attracted more merchants and more fleets. For a time, Tenglongwei Wharf was on the verge of becoming the largest wharf in Liaodong.

As more and more merchants and fleets came to Tenglongwei, the originally barren coast gradually turned into a prosperous town.

April 20th, the 34th year of Chengping.

Three years passed in the blink of an eye, and Tenglongwei had become prosperous.

The small Acropolis was bustling with people and bustling with activity. Outside the Acropolis, the roads were crowded with cars and people, and long lines were connected end to end, with almost no end in sight.

Yang Zhengshan rode his horse through the middle of the road, and many coachmen on the road looked at him with expressions of admiration.

"Meet the General!"

"Meet the General!"

Many people saluted Yang Zhengshan with their fists, and Yang Zhengshan nodded in return with a friendly smile.

The people have sharp eyes. No matter they are the military households of Tenglong Guard or the guys coming here to make a living from foreign enemies, they all know who brought the current Tenglong Guard here.

Yang Zhengshan walked along a long road to the west gate of the Acropolis, and then crossed the crowded streets before arriving at the yamen.

After returning to the yamen, Yang Zhengshan let out a long sigh.

"We can't go on like this, our Acropolis needs to be expanded!"

As he walked into the main hall of the yamen, he spoke to Xie Yuan beside him.

"Yes, the city is too crowded now. Especially when the navy fleet returns, there is almost no place to stay in the city!" Xie Yuan said helplessly.

Tenglongwei developed too fast, which made many plans of the Weisi Yamen unable to keep up with the pace of development.

Even Yang Zhengshan did not expect that Tenglongwei would prosper to such an extent. He still underestimated the benefits and prosperity brought by maritime trade.

The Acropolis was not big to begin with. When Yang Zhengshan built the Acropolis, he never imagined that one day it would be so crowded that there would be nowhere to live. At that time, he also restricted the number of houses built in the city, but now he realizes that he should have expanded the Acropolis directly.

After entering the main hall, an attendant immediately served tea to the two of them. Yang Zhengshan took the tea and drank it, then said, "Let the engineering department make a plan to expand the city to the south and connect it to the barracks in the south."

The camp of the Five Army Camps was located in the south of the city, not far from the Acropolis, only two miles away.

During these three years, the camp had undergone several renovations and had almost become a garrison, which was connected to the fortress and allowed the entire camp to be incorporated into the city.

Xie Yuan nodded slightly and said, "Okay!"

Yang Zhengshan turned and walked into his study. His study was divided into an inner room and an outer room. The inner room was his own study, while the outer room was the office of Lu Wenhua and Zhou Ren.

As soon as he sat down, Lu Wenhua came in with a wooden box, "Sir, this is a batch of telescopes just made by the glass workshop!"

Opening the wooden box, Lu Wenhua handed a brass monocular telescope to Yang Zhengshan.

Yang Zhengshan became interested and picked it up to take a look.

The glass workshop has been established for three and a half years, but until now it has not produced a telescope that satisfies him.

It’s not because the craftsmen in the glass workshop don’t work hard, it’s just that this thing is too difficult to make.

The most difficult part was the highly transparent glass. The craftsmen experimented countless times but were never able to meet Yang Zhengshan's requirements.

Yang Zhengshan picked up the telescope, walked to the window and looked at the city wall in the distance. The transparency of the glass was very good, unlike the foggy feeling before, and there were no bubbles in the lens.

The magnification should be six times. The craftsmanship is not yet very sophisticated, but it already has practical value.

Yang Zhengshan was more and more satisfied as he looked at it. "Very good. How much did it cost to make it?"

"Probably thirty taels of silver each!" Lu Wenhua said with some embarrassment.

Yang Zhengshan nodded, but didn't think it was expensive.

In more than three years, he has invested tens of thousands of taels of silver in the glass workshop. The number of craftsmen in the workshop has increased from a dozen to more than two hundred. The daily labor and material costs are not a small number.

As for the fact that each monocular telescope costs thirty taels of silver, it is probably because the qualification rate of the lenses is too low.

The current technological level is still too low, and it is completely a matter of luck to burn out lenses with high transparency and no bubbles.

In fact, it is not impossible for a glass workshop to make a profit. Glass products should be very popular in Dayong. It is definitely profitable to make some ornaments, tea bowls, wine glasses and the like using glass and sell them.

However, Yang Zhengshan never revealed the existence of the glass to the outside world because he was afraid that the benefits it would bring would be too great.

That’s right, we are afraid that the benefits brought by glass will be too great.

There is nothing we can do about this.

Today, Tenglongwei has salt fields, docks, and maritime trade. Behind its prosperity are huge interests, and many of these interests were snatched from other places.

The Tenglongwei Salt Field was stealing food from the Liaodong Salt Transport Bureau, and the Tenglongwei Wharf was undermining the foundation of the Jizhou Maritime Customs, while also competing for profits with the Jiangnan Maritime Customs.

Because of these two things, Yang Zhengshan has been impeached many times in the court in recent years.

Not only him, Zheng Xiao was also implicated because of the Tenglongwei Salt Field incident. Many senior officials of the Central Military Governor's Office were also impeached many times because of the Tenglongwei Wharf incident.

Although there were pressures from Zheng Xiao and Duke Ningguo on both sides, in fact, both the Liaodong Salt Transport Bureau and the Central Military Governor's Office had strong opinions about the Tenglong Guard.

The benefits are so exciting!

Seeing that Tenglongwei is making a lot of money from the salt fields and docks, who wouldn't want to get involved?

Fortunately, the old emperor was still supportive of Yang Zhengshan, otherwise Yang Zhengshan might have been transferred from Tenglong Guard long ago.

Officialdom struggles are not about fighting and killing, and there is no need for it. There are many ways for outsiders to seize the position of commander of the Tenglong Guard. The simplest way is to transfer Yang Zhengshan from the Tenglong Guard and then let his own people come and reap the benefits.

So a strange phenomenon has emerged in the past two years. While Yang Zhengshan was impeached by many officials, at the same time, people were trying every means to promote him and make him leave Tenglongwei.

Under such circumstances, how could Yang Zhengshan dare to take the glass out to sell?

"Tell the glass workshop to make a batch as soon as possible and send it to the navy first!"

Yang Zhengshan said.

Telescopes are most useful to the navy. Not only can they help the navy observe the enemy situation, but they are also conducive to the transmission of commands within the navy.

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

As soon as he left, Wang Yunqiao came in.

"Master!" Wang Yunqiao was wearing a black cotton armor and her hair was tied into a simple bun. Her figure was no longer as petite as before. She was tall and straight, and her appearance had a bit more mature charm of a woman, but her temperament seemed heroic.

Wang Yunqiao is now a mother of two children. Giving birth to two children in four years can only be considered an acceptable speed.

But she is still the leader of the women's training camp.

Well, this commander was appointed by Yang Zhengshan, but in fact Wang Yunqiao did not hold any official position.

"Is there something?" Yang Zhengshan asked casually.

"Master, please allocate another 200 war horses to my training camp!" Wang Yunqiao tidied the hair on her forehead and said gently.

"Didn't I give you two hundred horses last year?" Yang Zhengshan was a little surprised.

The women's training camp was not part of the Tenglong Guard's organization. It was originally established by Yang Zhengshan to give the women of the Tenglong Guard a chance to succeed.

He had never thought of training an all-female army, he just wanted to improve women's physique and abilities.

In fact, the women's training camp has not developed rapidly in the past two years. Although it has always maintained a training scale of thousands of people, only two hundred people have actually joined the women's training camp.

Entering a training camp to receive training and joining a training camp are two different concepts. Just like ordinary soldiers will receive basic training, one training session in the women's training camp is two months. After the training, most of the women go home, and only a few will choose to stay in the camp and become something like camp soldiers.

Most of the women who stayed in the camp were wives of officials from the Tenglong Guard, including Song Dashan, Xie Yuan, Wu Chongzhe, Yu Tonghai, etc. They all sent their girls of appropriate age to the training camp. Even the Yang family sent more than a dozen girls.

Only then were there two hundred female soldiers stationed in the permanent camp.

Two hundred men and two hundred war horses are enough. The others only need to receive basic training and there is no need to practice riding skills.

(End of this chapter)