Return to the Tang Dynasty to be a villain

Chapter 47 The date is set for April 1st
After saying goodbye to Lai Junchen, Qin Yi returned to his courtyard in Dunhuafang.

When Qin Zhong and others heard the door open, they hurried out of their rooms.

Seeing Qin Yi returning from his shift safely, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

You should know that Qin Yi worked in the notorious Yishiyuan in Chang'an City.

Qin Yi was an official in such a place, and from the moment he left the house in the morning, everyone's hearts were in their throats.

Hongwei and Luqi held the robe he wore at home in their hands and started helping him change without saying anything.

Gao Xianzhi turned around and ran to the kitchen to boil water for tea.

Among everyone, the one who was most worried about Qin Yi was naturally Qin Zhong.

He knew that his young master had a capricious personality, and having followed Qin Qiong and Qin Huaidao, he was also well aware of the intrigues in the officialdom.

Therefore, today was Qin Yi's first day on duty, and he was worried at home all day.

He walked up to Qin Yi and looked him over carefully. Seeing that Qin Yi was indeed standing in front of him safe and sound, he asked with concern.

"Da Lang, today is your first day on duty. Is everything going well?"

Qin Yi had already changed into his home clothes at this moment. He smiled and nodded, then handed him the inscription written by Wu Zetian that he had placed close to his body.

"Uncle Zhong, find a skilled carpenter tomorrow to make this into a plaque."

After Hongwei and Luqi changed Qin Yi's clothes, they took his official uniform into the room, folded it, and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

When Qin Zhong took the paper from Qin Yi and took a look at it, a huge wave of emotion suddenly rose in his heart.

Although the Qin family was a family of founding nobles of the Tang Dynasty, by the time of Qin Huaidao's generation, they had long lost the favor of the royal family.

Even though Qin Huaidao was serving as a guard in the palace as the General of the Thousand Oxen Guards, to put it bluntly, he was just the head of the guards. It was a pipe dream for him to want the Holy Emperor to bestow an inscription on him.

What Qin Zhong never expected was that Qin Yi could actually get Wu Zhao's handwritten inscription, which made him feel like a dream.

"Da Lang," Qin Zhong looked at Qin Yi with disbelief, "Is this really the inscription of His Majesty the Holy Emperor?"

Qin Yi nodded, pointed at the seal on the paper and said to Qin Zhong with a smile, "Uncle Zhong, isn't this the Phoenix Seal of His Majesty the Holy Emperor?"

"Besides, even if I had the courage of heaven, I would not dare to forge the Holy Emperor's handwriting!"

Hearing Qin Yi say this, Qin Zhong finally felt relieved. He held Wu Zhao's inscription in both hands and looked at Qin Yi with disbelief in his eyes.

Qin Yi walked to the stone table and sat down. He took the teacup brought by Gao Xianzhi and took a sip. Then he told Qin Zhong two things.

One was to ask him to find a carpenter and then go to the East Market to buy some well-made invitations.

The second is to wait until these things are done, and then let Qin Zhong go back to Caodianzi Village to get back some glass products and bring Li Siye back.

Now everything is basically going according to the script he designed, so he is ready to carry out the next plan. However, the shortage of manpower around him is a headache for Qin Yi.

Gao Sheji was originally a military general of Goguryeo, and his skills were pretty good, so he was more than capable of dealing with ordinary small thieves.

Therefore, after much consideration, Qin Yi decided that it would be a waste to keep Li Siye, the most powerful military officer under his command, in Caodianzi Village.

Qin Zhong naturally obeyed Qin Yi's orders. Hongwei and Luqi had also prepared dinner at this time. Qin Yi ate a few bites and went back to his room to rest.

Time flies, and another three days have passed.

In the past few days, Qin Yi can be said to be very busy.

On the one hand, he was busy preparing for the opening of Shiseido, and on the other hand, he was planning to let Zhang Jiuling be responsible for starting a newspaper.

Although Zhang Jiuling was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Qin Yi knew that he and his influence were still not enough.

After thinking about it, he really thought of a suitable candidate, that is Li Chongrun, who was personally picked up by Qin Yi outside the Suzaku Gate that day.

He named the newspaper "Chang'an Daily". According to Li Chongrun's idea, it should be published once a day. Only in this way can the people of Chang'an gradually form the habit of reading newspapers.

So Li Chongrun asked Li Chongrun to find the current crown prince Li Dan and ask him to write a title for the Chang'an Daily.

Although Li Dan's current situation is worrying, he is still the nominal crown prince of the Wu Zhou Dynasty. With his name Qin Yi, I believe that this newspaper will still have a certain appeal in the hearts of the people.

Lai Junchen now obeyed Qin Yi's every word and within a few days he helped Li Chongrun and Zhang Jiuling to get official positions in the Ministry of Personnel.

Like Niu Xianke, Li Chongrun served as the president of Chang'an Daily in the capacity of the ninth-rank chief clerk of the Registrar's Office.

Zhang Jiuling became a recorder of the ninth rank in the Recruiting and Censoring Department, and actually served as the editor-in-chief of the Chang'an Daily.

Qin Yi also asked Lai Junchen for a yard covering an area of ​​about five acres behind the Zhaojiansi, and used it as a factory for printing newspapers.

After receiving his official robes and seal, Zhang Jiuling was deeply grateful to Qin Yi and obeyed everything Qin Yi assigned him. Although Li Chongrun had been released from the palace, Li Xian and the others had not yet returned to Chang'an from Fangzhou. He spent the entire day alone in the newly built Luling Palace, feeling rather bored.

Now that Qin Yi has found him such a job, Li Chongrun is filled with gratitude.

After much deliberation, Qin Yi decided to publish the Chang'an Daily through woodblock printing.

The main reason was that when he was in college, he had worked as an editor for the school magazine and had some experience in engraving and mixing ink.

So, after intense preparations, Qin Yi finally decided to set the newspaper's founding date on the same day as Shiseido.

As for why Qin Yi chose this day, the answer is because April 1st is easy to remember.

The time finally came to the afternoon of March 30th.

Qin Zhong had already brought Li Siye back to Chang'an. Returning with him were ten strong men from Caodianzi Village and three hundred pieces of various glass products.

The Shiseido plaque has been hung at the door of the shop and is currently covered with a large red silk cloth.

When the brothers Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong saw that the plaque was actually written by His Majesty the Holy Emperor himself, their admiration for Qin Yi increased a lot.

After Hongwei and Luqi put the 'Lu Ningxiang', 'Xiningzhi' and 'Hua Xiangrong' into glass packaging, Li Siye brought four young men to deliver all the goods to Shiseido and arranged them.

Li Chongrun and Zhang Jiuling were proofreading the Chang'an Daily, which would be published tomorrow. They were both full of admiration for Qin Yi's brilliant ideas.

In Qin Yi's plan, Chang'an Daily was divided into four pages.

The first page is current affairs news, mainly including recent news about the court's personnel appointments, various policies and guidelines, and wars with Tubo, Turks, etc.

The second edition contains some poems and songs. Of course, Qin Yi's plagiarized "Going to the Frontier", "Why Don't Men Carry Wu Hook", "Liangzhou Ci" and Zhang Jiuling's "Ganyu" are all on this page.

The third version is a legendary story, the content of which was naturally plagiarized by Qin Yi. It is the first chapter of "The Romance of the Gods" written by Xu Zhonglin in the Ming Dynasty, in which King Zhou of Shang pays homage to Nuwa Palace.

The fourth edition was a form that Li Chongrun and Zhang Jiuling had never seen before: advertising.

Of course, since Chang'an Daily is not well-known nowadays, there are only three advertisements on this page.

In the most eye-catching position is naturally Qin Yi's advertisement for Shiseido. The slogan is only the two sentences he used to deceive Lai Junchen: nourishing the face and eternal life.

The other two advertisements are for investment promotion and manuscript solicitation in Chang'an Daily.

Investment promotion means recruiting advertisers for newspapers, which clearly specifies the advertising space and corresponding duration.

For external submissions, Qin Yi also set standards for Li Chongrun and Zhang Jiuling.

That is, every hundred words of news cost fifty cents, every poem cost one hundred cents, and every thousand words of story cost two hundred and fifty cents.

"Da Lang," Li Chongrun looked at Qin Yi in confusion, "So, isn't writing poetry the most profitable? With just twenty or thirty words, you can get paid a hundred coins?"

"Even if I write news, I earn more than double what I earn from stories?"

"Wouldn't that be a bit unfair to the people who told the story?"

It is no wonder that Li Chongrun would stand up for the storyteller. After reading "The Investiture of the Gods" written by Qin Yi, he became very interested in this story.

Although the Prince of Luling could read and write, he had been imprisoned in the Yunting since he was three years old, and his education basically came from the eunuchs.

In the early Tang Dynasty, eunuchs had not yet reached the era of monopolizing power, so truly educated people would not choose to become temple servants. Li Chongrun grew up under their education, so his cultural accomplishment can naturally be imagined.

Therefore, he did not have much feelings about the poems of Qin Yi and Zhang Jiuling. Instead, he seemed to enjoy the mythological "Investiture of the Gods".

Qin Yi smiled and shook his head, without giving Li Chongrun too much explanation.

He must have given careful consideration to setting this standard for remuneration.

The Tang Dynasty was a golden age for poetry, with many talented poets emerging, so the competition was extremely fierce.

Qin Yi raised the remuneration standard for poetry in the hope of inspiring poets to create more excellent works.

News was an important channel for him to understand the people and even a source of intelligence on the court's major policies.

Qin Yi remembered that before he traveled through time, he had learned about such a phenomenon, that is, the people who played a decisive role in many things in this world were often not high-ranking officials, but small people in key positions.

The minds of the dignitaries are actually occupied with fighting for power and profit all day long, while the formulation and implementation of policies are actually done by specific people.

That is why Qin Yi set up a relatively attractive remuneration standard so that people would be willing to pass on information to him in the form of news submissions.

As for the stories serialized in newspapers, Qin Yi knew that this was just a way to give ordinary people some pleasure. As long as the content was novel and the writing was decent, anyone could create it. In fact, it was not very important to him.

(End of this chapter)