After walking a few steps, Zhao Hanzhang turned back to see Ting He and two personal guards following behind her. She waved her hand, “You don’t need to follow.”

The two personal guards agreed, saluted, and withdrew. Ting He, however, didn’t leave. “Milady, I still need to attend to you.”

“Fine, you can follow.” Zhao Hanzhang didn’t want the personal guards to know she was going to the palace, but she wasn’t worried about Ting He knowing.

Ting He happily agreed and followed behind her with great interest. After walking a short distance, a group of riders came down a side path. Zhao Hanzhang stopped and looked up to see Fu Tinghan and Zhao Erlang riding side by side. Upon seeing her, the horse under Zhao Erlang even excitedly jumped forward, surpassing Fu Tinghan and charging toward her.

Zhao Erlang reined in his horse before Zhao Hanzhang, his eyes crinkling with his smile. “Elder Sister, where are you going?”

Zhao Hanzhang reached out to stroke the horse’s neck and mouth, soothingly rubbing its fur before looking up. “Just walking around. Why are you here again? There’s no meat at home today.”

“I have some,” Zhao Erlang pulled out a plump rabbit with its limbs spread out from a cloth bag hanging on the side of his horse, saying, “I led people to cut bean plants today and saw a rabbit. I caught it in one grab. Elder Sister, do you want to eat rabbit meat?”

Zhao Hanzhang immediately smiled, looking at him with approval. “Erlang’s skills are getting better and better. Give the rabbit to the cook and have him divide it into two portions—stir-fry one portion, and stew the other with vegetables.”

Fu Tinghan saw the smile on her face and couldn’t help but smile as well. He dismounted and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Just walking around casually.”

Fu Tinghan handed his horse to the personal guard behind him. “Then let’s go together.”

Zhao Erlang’s eyes darted around. He also dismounted and shoved both the horse and the rabbit to Lu Hu, saying, “Take the rabbit back to the cook.”

He ran to Zhao Hanzhang’s side, looking at them eagerly, also wanting to tag along.

Zhao Hanzhang laughed and waved her hand at the personal guards behind them.

The people and horses all left cleanly, with only Fu An remaining.

Zhao Hanzhang looked at the three of them and said straightforwardly, “Alright then, let’s go.”

Walking forward, only half the buildings were intact. The other half were all blackened ruins and broken walls, all destroyed by the great fire previously.

Apart from the people living in the Imperial Academy who occasionally walked this path, few others came here anymore. In any case, since the Emperor left, Zhao Erlang hadn’t been here much.

He looked around curiously, seeing that many of the walls and courtyards were overgrown with wild grass. Spring and summer were when vegetation flourished. These houses had no occupants and had been burned by fire. The remaining grass and wood ash seemed to easily promote the growth of grass and plants. Looking around, there were clusters of grass here and there on the walls, and the courtyards were completely filled with grass.

“Elder Sister, will the buildings here always be like this?”

“No, when we have money, we’ll rebuild the houses.”

Zhao Erlang was already quite mature. He asked, “How much money would that require?”

He said, “We’re just building a military camp, and Teacher Xie says it costs a lot of money.”

“Isn’t building the house done by the soldiers under your command personally? You don’t need labor costs, so where’s the expense?”

“Lumber, stone, and bricks require a lot of money.”

Zhao Hanzhang sighed. “So you already know that firewood, rice, oil, and salt are expensive.”

Zhao Erlang turned to request from Fu Tinghan, “Brother-in-law, please have someone also build a brick workshop outside Xin’an City.”

Fu Tinghan replied, “Doesn’t Xin’an County already have a brick workshop?”

“Their bricks are so expensive that I didn’t order any blue or red bricks—I only took mud bricks.”

The so-called mud bricks were bricks made from grass, wood, and mud. The cost was much lower. Houses nowadays were mostly plastered with mud anyway. Making them into brick blocks just made them thicker, easier to build with, and more windproof.

Not only in Xin’an, but also in Gucheng and Luoyang—houses being built outside the cities now mostly used this type of mud brick as the primary material. The cost was low and the efficiency high.

Better quality blue and red bricks were used by relatively wealthy families.

Compared to the earthy yellow mud bricks, Zhao Erlang preferred blue bricks. If not, red bricks would do too. So he suggested to Fu Tinghan, “Brother-in-law, just open another brick workshop in Xin’an. Then you can give me a discount.”

Fu Tinghan shook his head. “The workshops have limited manpower, and their brick prices are all within a reasonable range. We shouldn’t compete with the common people for profit.”

Zhao Hanzhang asked, “How much more expensive?”

Fu Tinghan smiled. “Each brick only costs half a wen more, but unlike us, they have to pay the local county office a portion of money to lease the land.”

That indeed wasn’t expensive.

Fu Tinghan said, “I’ve recently been planning to also raise the brick prices at our workshops to avoid competing with the common people for profit.”

Zhao Hanzhang was very pleased and patted Zhao Erlang’s shoulder. “Not bad, you know how to save money now. Don’t be so wasteful in the future.”

She added, “It’s not easy for common people to do business. For something like making bricks that’s purely hard-earned money, you shouldn’t complain. Don’t you dare default on paying them for the bricks.”

Zhao Erlang agreed, saying, “Although Teacher Xie says it’s expensive, I still have this much money.”

Randomly pulling out a gemstone from the war spoils and exchanging it for copper coins would be about right. It was just that… “Elder Sister, we can’t sell our jewelry. Have you sold yours?”

Zhao Hanzhang was also depressed. “No.”

The siblings sighed together.

Fu Tinghan smiled and shook his head. When he looked up again, they had reached the base of the Imperial Palace. He asked in confusion, “What are we doing here?”

“Going inside to look around.”

The palace gates had soldiers guarding them—not many, just two. They were mainly to prevent petty thieves from slipping into the palace to steal things. There were also patrol units in the city. During this period, although things seemed quiet, people would still slip into the palace through various holes.

Whether they could actually steal anything was another matter.

When Zhao Hanzhang wanted to enter, although the gate guards were puzzled, they immediately pushed open the doors and let them in.

Theoretically speaking, she shouldn’t enter. In reality, there was nowhere in Luoyang that she couldn’t go. Even beggars could slip in—why not her?

Inside the gate was a spacious straight road with high walls on both sides. After walking about a hundred steps, there would be a branching path. Zhao Hanzhang introduced it to the curious Fu Tinghan and Zhao Erlang, “On both sides are the offices of court officials. The Department of State Affairs, the Imperial Secretariat, the Palace Attendants’ Office, and the Secretariat Supervisor all have their offices here.”

Zhao Hanzhang said to Fu Tinghan, “My great-uncle is the Director of the Department of State Affairs, which is the chief official of that department. The Ministry of Works—now divided into the Bureau of Waters, the Bureau of Fields, and others—all fall under the Department of State Affairs’ management. I’ve decided to subdivide the functions and create a prototype of the Six Ministries, with the Ministry of Works entrusted to you.”

Fu Tinghan asked, “What about the Ministry of Revenue?”

Although he didn’t really understand what the Bureau of Winter Officials or Bureau of Waters were, he knew about the Six Ministries from history class in middle school. Even though he rarely touched on such knowledge after middle school, he remembered it firmly.

Zhao Hanzhang said, “The Ministry of Revenue will be entrusted to Ji Yuan.”

“However, the Ministry of Revenue is of great importance. The court still exists, and everyone in the realm is watching me, so I won’t announce it for now. I’ll just assign this portion of work to him.”

Ji Yuan had always been doing such work anyway. Fu Tinghan nodded. After looking left and right, he asked, “Then why did we come to the Imperial Palace?”

Zhao Hanzhang walked to the wall and reached out to pat the solid and thick wall, sighing, “I feel unhappy inside. Too poor, so I came in to lift my spirits, to look at the buildings inside…”

Fantasizing about the day when she wouldn’t have to worry about office locations anymore and could work directly inside here.

Anyway, it was like giving herself a shot of encouragement, motivating herself a bit.

She sighed, “It’s probably similar to the principle of people working hard to save for a down payment who occasionally go look at their desired property to encourage themselves to work harder and save more money.”

Fu Tinghan couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

—