As long as the process is sorted out and technological innovation is deployed in place, cost management can be ensured.

The following are all physical work, simple and repetitive work, and there is nothing to go into detail.

From October to December, for three months, Chen Shuren kept replicating his work model and transported batches of military rations raised from Susong and the two prefectures to Hefei at a historically low logistics cost.

He personally escorted the grain on the first two trips. At the beginning of the third batch, he became familiar with the relevant operations and felt that he would not learn anything new if he was entrusted. He completely transferred to civil service and handed over the escort work to his subordinates and family.

In the past few months, Chen Shuren has made a huge profit in Susong and hundreds of thousands of taels of taels by promoting cotton mulberry picking and spool looming machines and mulberry fish ponds.

After all, there are many super factory owners in Suzhou with thousands of looms and tens of thousands of local looms. Due to the power and status of the Shen family and Xu Ge family, the downstream supply chain is boring, many people have to give in to the technical authorization of Shen Shuren. Each machine earns a net authorization fee of several taels, and the total amount is no more than hundreds of thousands of taels.

At the beginning, Chen Tingyang only took 100,000 taels of cash to support his son as an official and invested in supporting facilities. Although all this money was spent on the construction of mulberry fish ponds in various docks, the subsequent money earned was continuously filled, and in the end, the money that Chen Shu people could directly control was several times more.

By the time the last batch of Shen Shuren's reserved military rations were transported to Hefei, Yang Sichang had already left Hefei and headed to Wuchang to deploy encirclement and defense.

The subsequent responsible for the defense and reception work in Hefei were Shi Kefa and General Huang Degong.

In the past three months, the troops under Shi and Huang also fought several battles with the Fifth Battalion of the G-Zuo and won some small victories, but unfortunately they failed to achieve any siege and annihilation results.

Every time the Fifth Camp of Gezuo left Yinghuo Mountain Area (Dabie Mountain Area), the motor depth of the Hefei Plain was not too far away, and they just took it and left.

Even if the Ming army defeated the robbers, the bandits could quickly flee. When they returned to Yinghuo Mountain District, the Ming army was unable to enter the complex terrain to pursue, so they had to give up. The war in the Anlu War Zone was dragged into a stalemate stage.

Chen Shuren's cousin Zhang Huangyan also made a little hard work while helping Shi Kefa with logistics.

Mainly, corvee workers were organized along the way to build some port facilities, dock machinery, and some auxiliary facilities were provided.

In addition, when taking the strong men from Tongcheng to transport grain, they cooperated with Zuo Zixiong, the grain guards of Qianhu Zuo Zixiong of the Feishui Sanitation Institute, and repelled several grain-grained troops under Lin Yangcheng and Liu Xiyao.

The organizational form of the thieves was very loose. The five thieves in the Left left had a much less strict control over their generals than the official army, and they were more like guerrillas fighting on their own.

Those combat operations that tried to grab food did not come from the unified command of Lin Yangcheng and others. They were completely the mountain kings in each defense zone. Based on the information found, they shot their foreheads and adapted to the situation by themselves.

They often use less troops and do not have friendly forces to cooperate, which gave Zhang Huangyan the opportunity to make contributions.

Before leaving, Yang Sichang took care of Shi Kefa and wanted to stare at the Shen Shuren and Zhang Huangyan to see if he was a talent worthy of promotion.

Shi Kefa also remembered it in his heart, and recorded the merits of both of them in a high-level manner and submitted a memorial in a timely manner, especially before the Ministry of Personnel's inspection at the end of the year, try to make a few more beautiful words to help Mr. Yang return favors.

Although Shi Kefa has so far, he still doesn't know what Chen Shuren did to help Mr. Yang in the beginning, and got such a big favor.

But Shi Kefa is very sensible, and he is determined not to be curious about what the leader does not ask, just execute it. Chen Shuren and Zhang Huangyan are indeed talented in practical work, and they are worthy of his cultivation.

At the end of the twelfth lunar month, Shi Kefa himself also calculated that the merits Chen Shuren made in the past few months should be enough for him to upgrade from the eighth grade to the seventh grade.

If you continue to work in Susong River Dock Office, you will be promoted to the Seventh-rank warehouse.

Zhang Huangyan's contribution is not as conspicuous as Shen Shuren. At most, he has to spend a little money to manage. It would be great to be promoted from the county's dictionary to the county magistrate.

After Shi Kefa reported the merits, he also wrote a letter to Chen Shuren in private, asking the Shen family to transport grain to Hefei to bring it back.

The letter was nothing more than words of encouragement, implying that he worked hard to continue to serve the country.

...

Chen Shuren, who was in Suzhou, received a reply from Shi Kefa, it was already halfway through the twelfth lunar month, and the Chinese New Year was about to be celebrated soon.

The Shen family knew that the eldest young master had outstanding performance as an official, and he would be promoted after the Beijing inspection at the end of the year. He was also very happy and everyone in the family felt that his face was shining.

Even Chen Shuren's new friends Fang Yizhi and Xu Xilie learned about the news when they visited and sincerely expressed their congratulations.

"My brother Chen is really lucky and has a prosperous official career. He can be promoted in just three or four months after entering the officialdom. It's not a half-level and a half-level promotion. Even if Brother Yu's spring exam is in high school after the New Year, he will be at most at the same level as his brother. It seems that this is not that valuable to take the Jinshi exam or not." Fang Yizhi teased himself.

Xu Xilie, who was standing by, felt it was natural: "Hey, you can't say that. Brother Chen's contributions can really convince the public. His improved method of transport and loading and unloading has now been fully promoted to Susong and the two prefectures.

If it is promoted to the entire Nanzhili and the entire Jiangnan in the future, how much labor can the imperial court save? The grains in our Nanzhili can be transported to Huai'an as long as they are added to the Jiangxi and Huguang? They also need to be extended to the Huying, because of the changes in the water conditions of the waterway, the number of ships of all sizes will be replaced more often.

If it is promoted in Huai'an, Linqing, Shandong, and Tongzhou, northern Zhili, and it is easy to save hundreds of thousands of laborers. What a huge expense. If I had such a great contribution, it would be no exaggeration to directly reach the sixth rank. The seventh rank is the court's stingy!"

Among the three, the one who felt the most unexpected and unacceptable was Shen Shuren himself. He did not expect that when he returned to the late Ming Dynasty, the promotion of officials could be so fast, which seemed a bit unreasonable, as if he was writing a novel.

But after calming down, he calculated and accepted this setting - most of the time in the Ming Dynasty, officials were promoted slowly, but it was an exception in the late Ming Dynasty, especially in the last few years of Chongzhen.

The thieves and Tartars were too rampant, and too many officials and generals were killed in various places.

Take Wei Zaode, who would win the top scorer in the spring exam after the New Year, as an example. He was the top scorer in the 13th year of Chongzhen, and was the best match to the sixth rank and the Hanlin Academy system. In just three years later, by the end of Chongzhen, this man had already been appointed as the Secretary of the Shang Dynasty and entered the cabinet!

Turning back to the last month before Chongzhen hangs himself, as the previous prime minister was dismissed for his poor organization of combat, Wei Zaode became the prime minister directly!

From a newcomer to a prime minister, it has only been four years since he was a newcomer. Who dares to believe it in normal times?

Moreover, after Chongzhen's death, the official positions of the Southern Ming court were actually randomly distributed. As long as many people were willing to continue to be loyal to the Southern Ming Dynasty, Hongguang or Yongli, they were crazy about giving official positions, because the official positions of the Ming Dynasty were no longer valuable, and only the main points of the Dayi were left.

The actual power is to be taken back from the hands of the Tartars and the thieves by relying on their true skills and hard power.

From this perspective, it was actually very cost-effective to enter the last few years of the late Ming Dynasty, take the officialdom route and quickly advance to gain capital, and cooperate with the wealth and strength to exchange the power of a virtual official.

The only thing to note is that no matter how you promote this promotion, you cannot eventually be promoted to the central officer of the capital. That would be over, and like Wei Zaode, he became Chongzhen's burial.

The most cost-effective way to upgrade is to become a local chief official, a general soldier, a vassal state, but never enter the center.

Of course, this trick is limited to wealthy families like Chen Shuren who are rich and powerful.

If his family did not have three or four million taels of silver as a base, hundreds of sea ships and tens of thousands of sailors and servants, he would have obtained the title of official position and would not be able to grasp actual power.

Both are indispensable.

...

After further clarifying the path he was going to take during his discussions with his friends, Chen Shuren also saw more clearly the layout of the next step.

He suddenly felt that he could consider adding another fire to increase his promotion speed.

In the middle of winter, because the northern canals are frozen, the coastal areas of the Bohai Sea are also frozen. The government offices responsible for the transportation of canals and rivers were originally idle and had no official duties to worry about.

Chen Shuren realized that he might be idle in the next two months, and it would be fine to leave Suzhou for two months. A bold idea came to his mind.

Since according to the "History of Ming Dynasty", the weight of eight-legged articles in the last two imperial examinations in the Ming Dynasty was unprecedentedly reduced, and the weight of policy theory was increased, which led to Wei Zaode who talked wildly and could also be the top scholar.

I have read the biographies of Wei Zaode in the history of the Ming Dynasty and directly know the general idea of ​​the annual examination. With preparations in advance, maybe I can really make a vote?

Of course, my eight-legged essay is not very good, and I am just a scholar. I have never trained eight-legged essays since I was a student of the Imperial College.

So even if he knew most of the questions in advance, he would not dare to expect first-class and second-class, but he would take a little bit of a chance to cater to the political views of the above paper reviewers. It would be hopeless to be in the third-class.

The most important thing is that during the three months when he made friends with Fang Yizhi, he made some subtle progress in his speech. Fang Yizhi was Jieyuan of Nanzhili after all, and even if he only talked about culture and philosophy and technology with him every day, his progress was very comprehensive.

Anyway, for the next two months when the canal was frozen, a civil servant like him was idle, and he would not lose money when he tried it, and at most he would return without success.

So, after the three of them were drinking and chatting about promotion, Chen Shuren turned the topic back to Fang Yizhi: "Brother Fang, the year is approaching, do you want to go back to Tongcheng to reunite with your family for the New Year? Or go north as soon as possible to prepare for the spring examination at the end of February?"

Fang Yizhi heard his family mention him, and was also depressed. He drank a large glass of wine and sighed: "When the fifth camp of the Greshu was raging in summer, many of the surrounding areas of Tongcheng were destroyed. Some of our relatives were separated, and some of them were killed by Lin Yangcheng Liu Xiyao's thieves.

To be ashamed, my family is not as brave and courageous as the virtuous brother of Cangshui. My virtuous brother of Cangshui dares to take the risk of becoming an official in Tongcheng. However, two-thirds of my relatives left home and fled to Nanjing to live in.

Even if I want to go back to celebrate the New Year, I will just go back to Nanjing. Tongcheng can't go back to it - so I'm not in a hurry. Five or six days will be enough to go back to Nanjing from here.

And I don’t really want to go back. Now the war is in chaos and the road is not stable. I may not be able to go from Nanjing to Beijing for a month and a half. It is even more dangerous to encounter some thieves on the road. I wonder if I should go north in advance and leave more allowance. If the situation is wrong, I have to find another way to Beijing."

Chen Shuren and Xu Xilie also fully understood Fang Yizhi's words.

The ancients had inconvenient transportation, and it was normal for wanderers to travel far away and not go home during the Chinese New Year, and this was even more so in troubled times.

Chen Shuren's eyes turned, and suddenly thought of a way to have the best of both worlds and suggested: "Since Brother Fang doesn't have to go home for the New Year, he is just worried that the journey north to Beijing is unstable, I have a way--

It is better to take the sea route and follow my father's first batch of grain ships after the Bohai Sea thawed tomorrow spring. After the grain is unloaded, you can go ashore in Tianjin and go directly to the capital. My father has been traveling to the Yellow Sea for more than ten years and is very familiar with the sea conditions. Even if there is no good wind, he will arrive in just over ten days."

"Traveling from Tianjin to Beijing?" Fang Yizhi, a man from Huidi, has never been out of the sea in his life, and he is a little scared after hearing this.

However, he heard that Chen Tingyang had been away for more than ten years, so he felt a little relieved and felt that he could really consider it.
Chapter completed!