The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

In the twentieth year of Yonghe, there was a Grain Rain.

Half a year has passed in the blink of an eye.

The osmanthus flowers in the Imperial Garden bloomed and faded, faded and bloomed again; the moss on the palace walls turned green and then yellow, then yellow and then green again.

For this 300-year-old Great Zhou Palace, half a year is nothing more than a few drops of water dripping from a copper water clock, but for some people, half a year is enough for a sapling to grow into a tree that no one can ignore.

Zhao Gao is that tree.

He held the position of procurement inspector for more than half a year.

To outsiders, this time is not long. Which of the old men in the Imperial Household Department didn't wait for eight or ten years to get a position as a manager?

But Zhao Gao did more in the past six months than some people did in ten years in that position.

His decades of experience in political maneuvering in the Qin Palace in his previous life, coupled with the protection of his status as Chen Ju's adopted son in this life, allowed him to thrive in the power struggles of the inner court.

Purchasing audit, to put it bluntly, is about managing money.

The Imperial Household Department handles at least tens of thousands of taels of silver for procurement every year. From ingredients for the meals of the palace to cosmetics for the ladies, from fireworks and firecrackers for the New Year and festivals to carriages and ceremonial regalia for the emperor's travels, everything has to go through the Procurement Department.

How lucrative this is, not to mention the old eunuchs in the palace, even the vegetable vendors outside the palace could guess with a high degree of accuracy.

In Zhao Gao's eyes, every single detail—which link took kickbacks, which inflated prices, which used inferior goods, and which manager was backing him up—was crystal clear.

He only did two things after taking office.

The first thing is to check the accounts.

Over the course of more than half a year, he thoroughly examined the purchasing department's accounts from the past five years and compiled a list of problems that was a hundred pages long.

He never showed this list to anyone; it was locked in the innermost metal cabinet of his duty room, and he always kept the key on his body, even when he slept.

The second thing is to establish rules.

He didn't implement sweeping reforms; that's something a fool would do, and it would offend too many people.

He quietly placed people in several key areas, firmly controlling the most problematic nodes in the procurement process: supplier qualification verification, warehousing and acceptance, and payment settlement.

Those seasoned veterans who had been taking kickbacks in the procurement process for years initially tried to sideline him, thinking that a fourteen-year-old boy couldn't possibly be that capable.

But they soon realized something was wrong. Zhao Gao never confronted them directly; he would only ask a few questions seemingly casually when reviewing the documents.

These questions were extremely tricky, each hitting the most vulnerable spot in the accounts, making it impossible to deceive anyone.

A few fools tried to mess with him, but within a few days they were found to have serious problems. At best, they lost their jobs; at worst, they were sent to the Imperial Household Department's Department of Punishments.

The people in the palace quickly realized that this young man surnamed Zhao was not a spoiled brat who relied on his adoptive father's connections to make a living, but a truly ruthless, shrewd, and skillful man.

He was able to unravel the deep-seated problems of the purchasing department over the decades without making a sound, transforming a disorganized mess into a solid foundation.

Even Chen Ju began to realize that he was becoming increasingly inseparable from his adopted son. Since Zhao was promoted to the purchasing department, the days of being overwhelmed with reconciliation at the end of each month were gone forever.

Now, all it takes is to summon Zhao Gao every few days and ask him a few key questions, and he will have a clear understanding of the situation.

On an ordinary morning in March, Chen Ju announced a decision at the routine morning meeting: Zhao Gao would no longer serve as the purchasing inspector, but would be promoted to assistant to the chief steward of the Imperial Household Department, assisting Chen Ju in managing all affairs of the six departments and twenty-four offices of the Imperial Household Department.

Zhao Gao's duty room was moved from the cramped little room in the Purchasing Department to a separate wing room on the east side of the main hall of the Imperial Household Department, right next to Chen Ju's. Just a few steps away was the council hall of the Imperial Household Department's chief steward.

Before reporting to Chen Ju, all the housekeepers had to go through Zhao Gao's duty room, even though Zhao Gao was nominally just an "assistant".

But sitting in that side room, he held the power to coordinate and manage affairs in all departments, making him, in effect, the second most important figure in the Imperial Household Department.

When the news spread, the entire inner court was shaken.

A fourteen-year-old assistant to the chief steward—this was unprecedented in the three hundred years of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

But no one dared to say a word against it openly. Everyone had seen Zhao Gao's performance over the past six months. He didn't climb up the ladder through connections; he did it through real ability.

Moreover, Chen Ju's trust in him had reached the point of near-total indulgence. Some people said that Chen Ju once said to someone in private: "After I die, it would be ten times better to hand over the Imperial Household Department to Zhao Gao than to my two good-for-nothing adopted sons."

At the same time, Wei Zhongxian also moved to a different place.

He spent more than half a year in the servants' quarters, managing the twenty or so servants with great obedience and establishing a highly efficient personnel scheduling system.

After the system had been running for more than half a year, the results were obvious. The efficiency of the servants' quarters had improved by more than one level. The stewards of each palace gave a thumbs up when they mentioned the servants' quarters, saying, "The servants are much more efficient than before."

This word of mouth reached Chen Ju's ears. Coincidentally, the Personnel Department of the Imperial Household Department was short of a manager. The original manager was dismissed because of a case of embezzling palace staff salaries, and the position had been vacant for more than a month without anyone being able to fill it.

The Personnel Department was in charge of the files, transfers, assessments, and rewards and punishments of all palace staff, making it one of the most crucial departments of the Imperial Household Department.

Chen Ju originally wanted to transfer someone from outside, but he was not satisfied with several candidates. In the end, Zhao Gao casually suggested, "Wei Zhongxian from the servants' quarters is good at management and has good interpersonal relationships. Why not let him give it a try?"

Chen Ju thought about it and felt it made sense, so he called Wei Zhongxian over for a face-to-face talk.

Wei Zhongxian neither fawned nor fawned over Chen Ju, explaining his experience in managing the servants' quarters in detail. He also offered several suggestions on the existing problems in the personnel department, each of which hit the nail on the head.

Chen Ju immediately made the decision to transfer Wei Zhongxian to the position of Director of the Personnel Department, a rank of eighth grade, in charge of the archives and transfers of palace personnel.

On the day Wei Zhongxian moved out of the shared dormitory, the servants lined up in two rows to see him off, and some of them even had tears in their eyes.

Wei Zhongxian smiled and patted everyone on the shoulder, saying, "If you need anything in the future, feel free to come to me," but in his heart he was already calculating the palace staff files that had been piling up for many years in the personnel department's filing cabinet.

The Personnel Department manages the archives, which means that the origin, background, entry time, transfer records, and rewards and punishments of every palace servant in the entire inner court are all under his control.

Knowing whose background is clean and whose is not, who is from the same hometown as whom, and who is whose spy—this information is more valuable than money.

Gao Lishi's transfer came even more naturally.

For the past six months, he has been working diligently in the kitchen. Chef Sun has been full of praise for him, and several times when he was drinking with others, he would slap the table and say, "Xiao Gao is a meticulous and discreet young man. He is someone you can rely on."

The head of the Imperial Kitchen had been secretly observing Gao Lishi for some time, and sent people to inquire about his background several times, but Gao Lishi dealt with them calmly and without flinching.

Two months ago, a deputy chief steward position became available in the Imperial Kitchen. The chief steward personally selected Gao Lishi and transferred him from the kitchen to the Imperial Kitchen, where he was specifically responsible for the food preparation for the emperor and the empresses.

Although its rank was not high, only an eighth-rank official, the Imperial Kitchen was the department that directly served the emperor's meals, and it was closer to the center of power than the Imperial Household Department.

The dietary preferences, meal times, and recent changes in taste of the various imperial concubines—these seemingly trivial details actually hold hidden secrets. Just as many eyes are fixed on the Imperial Kitchen, hoping to glean information from it, so too do the people in that position know its significance.

Zheng He's mobilization was the most interesting.

After chopping firewood for more than half a year, he successfully caught the attention of a key figure.