Royal Gold Magistrate

Various projects in Jianjiang Prefecture had begun to progress rapidly.

Fang Zheng, on the other hand, had nothing to do. Every day, he just ate and drank in the office, pointing and commenting.

Whenever he saw someone resting, he’d immediately start giving all sorts of assignments!

As a result, everyone else was busy to the point of exhaustion, especially Li Yuanzhao.

He was like a spinning top, constantly darting back and forth between various places inside and outside the city.

People who didn’t know better might think Fang Zheng was using the Crown Prince as a tool!

Fang Zheng himself, of course, felt no shame about this.

In his previous life, he had suffered from workplace PTSD, so in this life, he could only heal by psychologically manipulating others.

Regarding this, the great capitalist Fang had even come up with a new theory.

How can people become happy?

They must have value, feel a sense of existence to know what happiness is.

So what counts as having value? Being useful to others is having value!

Giving people work to do every day, isn’t that Fang Zheng spreading happiness?!

Especially for Li Yuanzhao, who grew up in the deep palace, waited on hand and foot since childhood.

Every day, apart from reciting books, he just read books, and the knowledge he gained couldn’t be put to use.

At his age of over ten, in ancient times, he should have been participating in hunting, becoming a strong warrior for the tribe.

In the countryside, he should have been farming, working, helping to maintain the family’s livelihood.

But he was the Crown Prince, with nothing to worry about, unable to be useful or take responsibility in the short term. For a youth full of ambition and overflowing hormones, this was undoubtedly a form of torture.

Fortunately, the happiness messenger Fang Zheng appeared, helping him relieve his anxiety and grow healthily in time!

……..

Fang Zheng hadn’t been completely idle during this time. Taking advantage of being alone, he was tinkering with something in the office.

Old Qi, with his exquisite Taoyuan craftsmanship, had become a hot commodity in Jianjiang city.

Countless wealthy merchants offered large sums of money to invite him to help make some small tools to improve efficiency.

Fang Zheng found this very frustrating. It was clearly borrowing his ideas, yet Old Qi was the one taking off!

As a time traveler, wouldn’t it be ridiculous if I couldn’t make inventions? If future generations found out, they might think I, Fang Zheng, had no talents at all!

At this moment, Fang Zheng was fiddling with something in the room when Li Yuanzhao came back in a hurry.

He was covered in dust but his eyes still looked spirited.

Seeing Fang Zheng messing with something on the wall, he loudly asked, “Old Fang, what are you doing?”

Fang Zheng turned around, saw Li Yuanzhao, and said, “Oh, Your Highness is back. How’s the arrangement for the second batch of workers?”

“It’s almost done, the reporters are helping. Eh? Why did you hang a cup on the wall?”

Fang Zheng said with a mysterious face, “This is a good thing!”

“Come, let me show Your Highness.”

Saying this, he pulled Li Yuanzhao’s sleeve and walked to another room, pointing at the wall, “Look!”

“Huh? Another cup hanging here, connected with a string? What are you trying to do?”

Fang Zheng coughed twice and said solemnly, “This is called a telephone!”

“Your Highness, hold this cup, speak into it, and I can hear you from the other side!”

“Isn’t it amazing?”

Li Yuanzhao looked dumbfounded, “If it’s real, it’s quite amazing, but is it necessary at such a close distance?”

“I can hear you anyway.”

Tsk! Why isn’t this Crown Prince getting it?

Fang Zheng frowned, “It’s not elegant to speak loudly! You stand here with the cup to your ear, I’ll go over there and speak.”

“Oh.” Li Yuanzhao put the wooden cup to his ear, saw Fang Zheng walk away, and said loudly, “You can speak now, I’m listening!”

Fang Zheng picked up the wooden cup and started speaking, “Hello, hello? Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you! I don’t need this thing to hear you!”

Damn!

“Don’t mess around! Pull the string tight! Listen to me again!”

Li Yuanzhao, looking exasperated, tightened the string and put the cup to his ear again.

This time he heard it!

Then Fang Zheng came over and asked, “How was it?”

Li Yuanzhao fiddled with the cup in his hand and said with surprise, “It’s interesting, but not very useful!”

“If the string could stretch out a hundred zhang and still be heard, that would be impressive.”

“That’s not possible.”

“………..”

Li Yuanzhao was getting a bit impatient. He took a deep breath, “Old Fang, what exactly are you trying to do? This thing is useless!”

Fang Zheng chuckled, then his old face turned red, and he coughed awkwardly twice.

“Ahem, well… Your Highness, this is called a telephone! I invented it!”

“Ah, right, right, right! So what?”

“You… when you return to the palace, tell the court historian that the telephone was invented by me, Fang Zheng, and have him record it!”

“???”

Li Yuanzhao was inexplicably shocked, feeling like he had been tricked by Fang Zheng.

“This… this is completely meaningless! Besides, why call this weird thing a telephone? It should be called a sound tube.”

“What does telephone even mean? Where’s the electricity? Isn’t lightning in the sky?”

Fang Zheng’s face turned serious, “This subject insists on calling it this! Consider it a request from this subject! Please tell the court historian exactly this, and have him record it!”

Useless!?

In future historical records, I, Fang Zheng, will be recorded as the first inventor of the telephone in history. That won’t tarnish the reputation of a time traveler!

If my future descendants fall on hard times, can’t they live off this name?

Crown Prince, ah, your vision is too narrow, you lack experience! Tsk!

“Ah! Alright! Stop it, Your Highness must remember this! I’ve written this matter on a bank note, you must remember it well and not forget!”

Saying this, Fang Zheng took out a bank note from his sleeve, covered in small characters written in charcoal.

It introduced the invention of the telephone, its working principle, and even had a sketch of a rotary dial telephone…

Li Yuanzhao frowned as he took the bank note.

Looking at the messy drawings on it that didn’t match the two cups connected by a string on the wall at all, an uneasy feeling surged in his heart again.

But he couldn’t be bothered to delve deeper, so he sighed and put away the bank note.

“Alright, I’ll remember it.”

“I came to tell you something this time. The disaster victims aren’t eating very well, and they’re doing a lot of work. They’re called to work before dawn and only finish when it’s completely dark.”

“If this continues, I’m afraid those people will have problems! Should we gather all those merchants and force them to increase rest time?”

Hearing this, Fang Zheng’s face also turned grim.

There had indeed been an oversight. Those merchants weren’t treating the disaster victims as humans, working them to death. It was time to change this.

“Good, I understand this matter.”

“Today I will call those people over and make them change! We’ll set fixed work hours every day, and one day of rest every week.”

“Please trouble Your Highness to make a trip and help this subject inquire about the workers’ opinions.”

Li Yuanzhao smacked his lips, “One day of rest every week is so luxurious. Our reporters only rest once every half month.”

“They have mattresses and Ruyun, and egg soup.”

“Oh, I see. Then I’ll take my leave.”

Li Yuanzhao turned to leave, but Fang Zheng immediately grabbed his sleeve.

“Your Highness, please wait! This subject hasn’t finished speaking. Now that many projects have begun.”

“We should send those reporters out to promote our Jianjiang model in the other two prefectures.”

“Otherwise, if only our prefecture succeeds in disaster relief, won’t the disaster victims from the other two prefectures flood to ours when they hear about it?”

“Jianjiang city is only so big, we can’t accommodate more disaster victims.”

“So please, Your Highness, while you’re at it, arrange for those reporters!”