“Oh, is it? Do we have the dungeons open? Tell the merchants that tax fraud is a punishable offense and will be punished with a year in the dungeon. That will scare them enough. Use a scapegoat if you should. Make a statement with him.”

“Yes your highness, I will arrange for it tomorrow. And regarding the city walls, they will be completed within the month Your Highness.”

“Good work Sir Nicholas. I hope you keep it up. Now it is time for our next venture, a proper transportation system. The town has expanded considerably, and I don’t want the town to smell like horse shit. Have the educated workers meet me tomorrow.”

“Definitely, Your Highness. It will be done. I will take my leave now.”, Nicholas bowed and left. Liu Feng dragged himself to the bed and slept peacefully.

The next morning,

Liu Feng went to the group of educated workers first thing in the morning.

“Greetings all. From now on, you will be forming a group that the lord will call engineers. You will be making sure that the constructions will be going as planned, and according to the blue prints that the lord has given. First, you will be constructing rails all over the city. This network will be like a road, but that no human should use. It should be placed such that they are far from the houses, and do not overlap with roads a lot. You will have two weeks to complete the project. Please do not disappoint the lord.”

The engineers were enthusiastic. They shouted, “Yes young lord. It will be done within schedule.”

They rushed to start working, and Liu Feng retreated back to the workshops. He had a master forgeman hired from the capital that was working on a custom project that Liu Feng wanted done. He had completed one copy of the object, and was working on the others. Liu Feng started assembling the different parts on his own. This was, after all, a top secret project that no one knew anything about. Even the forgeman was only making the parts separately and did not know how they worked.

Liu Feng started inscribing a few magical circles on the pieces, but left open places to put in magic stones. The object was so huge that the mana in the air alone was not enough to use it. Liu Feng spent the rest of the day working on the project. After that, he called on one of the managers that he had appointed.

“Hello manager. The lord has asked me to tell you that he needs ten carriages fitted with iron wheels instead of wooden wheels. He wants them delivered to the personal workshop of the lord by next week.”

The manager bowed, “It will be done, Young Lord.”. The manager left, and Liu Feng went back to the study. After a while, Nicholas came to meet him. “Your highness, apparently there have been a lot of changes that I have approved. What are they? I was confused on what to do so I retreated.”

“I forgot to tell you, Sir Nicholas. I made the group of educated workers call themselves the engineers, and had them work on a transportation project. And I asked the manager to deliver a few goods to my personal workshop. Don’t worry about any of it, it’s a surprise. This will be a revolution in the transportation sector!”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but how did you get these ideas? These are incredible ideas that haven’t been executed even in the capital!”