Three Kingdoms: My Strategy Simulator

Within Wu County, as the officials of the government office arrived for duty in the early morning, two explosive pieces of news stunned them all.

County Magistrate Li Ji had returned late last night, and Supervising Secretary Zhang Fei had been thrown into prison and sentenced to be beheaded by Li Ji for violating the alcohol ban.

The latter news, in particular, caused the officials to look at each other in dismay.

Within the entire Liu Bei group, the positions of three individuals were clearly much higher than those of the other officials.

These were Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Li Ji, as evidenced by their official positions and powers.

Guan Yu held military power, stationed at Fuchun Mountain; Li Ji was in charge of political affairs, overseeing the overall situation in Wu County; as for Zhang Fei, as a Supervising Secretary, he was allowed to inspect the officials of Wu Commandery.

These three individuals respectively controlled military power, political power, and supervisory power, making them the true core of Liu Bei's subordinates.

Now, the fact that Zhang Fei, Liu Bei's sworn brother, was imprisoned and about to be executed undoubtedly shocked many officials, causing them to feel awe towards the various orders issued by Li Ji, while also sensing that a storm was brewing.

If a power struggle were to occur between Li Ji and Zhang Fei, the entire Wu Commandery might be split apart.

However, unlike the officials in the government office who knew about this matter and were filled with worries, Li Ji, who had rested in the government office overnight, was in high spirits. He summoned the officials of all ranks early in the morning for a short meeting, explained some issues, and then left as usual.

Gu Yong and Mi Zhu, seeing this, quickly chased after Li Ji in the direction he left.

Li Ji looked at the two who had hurriedly followed him and asked.

"Hmm? Zizhong, Yuantan, is there anything urgent?"

Mi Zhu grabbed Li Ji's wrist and said with concern, "Mr. Zikun, General Zhang must not be killed!"

"Indeed, I agree with what Zizhong said," Gu Yong also chimed in.

Li Ji heard this, glanced at Mi Zhu, and then looked at Gu Yong, who was clearly pretending to be confused.

Mi Zhu was perhaps genuinely worried that Li Ji would kill Zhang Fei, but Gu Yong was obviously pretending to be confused, taking the opportunity to curry favor with Zhang Fei.

"Without rules, there can be no order; without the five tones, it is difficult to correct the six musical pitches. If everyone violated the alcohol ban like the Supervising Secretary and went unpunished, wouldn't the various orders issued by the government office become a joke? The former Magistrate of Qian Tang County could be killed, and so can the Supervising Secretary!"

Li Ji said in a deep voice, and then, without waiting for Mi Zhu and Gu Yong to continue speaking, interrupted them.

"Zizhong, Yuantan, do not try to persuade me, my mind is made up…"

After a pause, Li Ji pointed his finger at Gu Yong and said, "When the time comes, Yuantan will be responsible for overseeing the execution!"

"Ah? Me?!"

Gu Yong was stunned, and subconsciously pointed his finger at himself.

"Naturally, the last time with the former Magistrate of Qian Tang County, didn't Yuantan handle it very well? This time, Yuantan will be responsible as well," Li Ji said with a smile, making Gu Yong's face almost turn green.

It's over!

This pretense of confusion has caused trouble!

Even if Gu Yong believed that Li Ji only intended to use Zhang Fei to establish authority and had no intention of truly executing Zhang Fei, the fact that Gu Yong was the execution supervisor meant that he was in deep trouble.

Given the relationship between Zhang Fei and Li Ji, Zhang Fei might not necessarily resent Li Ji, but Gu Yong, the execution supervisor, would definitely be given special attention by Zhang Fei.

Originally, Gu Yong wanted to take the opportunity to do Zhang Fei a favor, so that the Gu family could have a better time in Wu Commandery, but now, it seemed that he had completely offended Zhang Fei.

Li Ji glanced at Gu Yong, shaking his head in his heart with some helplessness.

Gu Yong's aristocratic ways were still a bit difficult to change. As a civil official, wanting to take the opportunity to win over a military general when vaguely guessing the inside story, what did he want to do?

Immediately, Li Ji didn't give Gu Yong and Mi Zhu any more chances to speak, and went straight out of the government office, preparing to ride quickly to the shipbuilding factory.

As the focus of Wu Commandery's subsequent series of developments, the shipbuilding factory was related to too much, and now there were more than a thousand craftsmen placed in the shipbuilding factory, accounting for nearly 90% of the craftsmen in the entire Wu Commandery.

Therefore, Li Ji also had a series of ideas that he needed to personally communicate with some craftsmen, guiding them to create some things according to his ideas.

Paper, curved plough, salt drying, and all kinds of fishing gear that Li Ji knew…

Communicating these things through text might not achieve consistency in meaning, so after thinking it over, Li Ji decided to rush to the shipbuilding factory to have in-depth face-to-face communication with the craftsmen, to avoid any major deviations.

In order to facilitate communication, Li Ji even specially drew several sketches based on his memory last night to take to the shipbuilding factory.

In addition, the pier to be used for fishing also needed to be located as soon as possible and started to be built little by little, so that the fishing boats wouldn't be built only to find that there was no suitable pier to dock.

Having had enough of carriages, Li Ji directly chose to ride a horse this time, heading straight to the location of the shipbuilding factory under Zhao Yun's protection.

Fortunately, the location of the shipbuilding factory was not too far from Wu County, only about two hundred miles away.

Setting off from Wu County early in the morning on a fast horse, with Li Ji's horsemanship, he could also arrive at the shipbuilding factory before dusk, and also get a meal of seafood that Sun Ce had caught from the sea.

Hmm?

Sun Ce went to the sea?!

Li Ji always felt that something about a fleeting thought seemed a bit off, but looking at Sun Ce's much darker skin, a hint of gratification flashed in his eyes.

According to the reports from the Embroidered Uniform Guard planted in the shipbuilding factory, Sun Ce was quite active in training every day.

Although he was still young, Sun Ce led the group of teenagers recruited from the nearby area, training them in a disciplined manner every day, and their swimming skills had also greatly improved.

Li Ji ate seafood while listening to Sun Ce excitedly telling about the interesting things that had happened during this period, and he also had some fun of raising him.

After a period of adaptation, Sun Ce had obviously fallen in love with the sea.

Immediately, Li Ji routinely encouraged Sun Ce a few words, and then took the selected craftsmen to the shipbuilding factory to communicate and discuss one by one.

However, Li Ji obviously didn't have any profound physics, chemistry, or mechanical knowledge. Apart from some drawings that he still remembered, most of what he could provide to the craftsmen were just general ideas.

After all, the former Li Ji was worried about not passing the art exam every day, so how could he have time to study the crafts and technologies suitable for time travel every day?

Even so, Li Ji discussed with a group of craftsmen until late at night, before finally making the craftsmen understand his thoughts and ideas clearly.

Li Ji rested in the shipbuilding factory for one night, and got up early to visit the experimental seagoing ship that was about to be completed under the guidance of the craftsmen.

Previously, the shipbuilding factory's technology for building seagoing ships came entirely from the shipbuilding technology exchanged from various aristocratic families in Yangzhou.

The craftsmen needed to build an experimental seagoing ship based on those drawings, in order to slowly transform the technology on the drawings into their own, and then accumulate the experience to transform the ship based on the experimental seagoing ship to meet Li Ji's requirements.

The most important ship modification next was undoubtedly to modify a batch of giant fishing boats suitable for fishing, develop Wu Commandery's marine fishing industry, provide enough meat for the large amount of labor in Wu Commandery, and further alleviate Wu Commandery's food pressure.

In addition, there were also seagoing ships suitable for transporting cattle and seagoing ships for finding grain seeds, which needed to be built later.

If the grain in Wu Commandery was mainly used to maintain "work-for-food" now, then most of the money in Wu Commandery was constantly invested in the shipbuilding factory, this gold-swallowing beast.

After Li Ji went around the shipbuilding factory, and secretly arranged Gan Ning, Jiang Zhi, and the three hundred Jinfan bandits nearby, he hurriedly left and began to return to Wu County.

Although the shipbuilding factory was important, Li Ji's usefulness here was not great.

With Li Ji providing the craftsmen with the ideas he could provide, Li Ji had nothing else to help with. Professional matters should only be left to professionals, which has always been Li Ji's thinking.

However, for an intellectual like Li Ji, the back-and-forth travel was making his body very uncomfortable.

When Wu County's city wall was vaguely visible, Li Ji simply dismounted and walked, easing his sore legs.

Without the "three treasures of horseback riding", Li Ji completely relied on his legs to clamp the horse's belly to stabilize his body on the horse's back, which was much more difficult than with stirrups.

It was precisely for this reason that people who often rode horses in this era had almost no fat on their legs.

However, just as Li Ji slowly walked to the city gate, a fast horse rushed out of the city and quickly passed by Li Ji.

Li Ji looked at the familiar figure on the horse's back and couldn't help but say in surprise.

"Jichang?"

Xiahou Bo also noticed Li Ji and Zhao Yun's group, then suddenly pulled the reins, dismounted, and the whole movement was extremely smooth.

This made Li Ji couldn't help but praise, saying.

"Jichang's horsemanship has greatly improved!"

It should be noted that although Xiahou Bo also knew horsemanship in the past, he was better at foot combat, and his horsemanship was far from being comparable to Guan Yu, Zhao Yun, and others.

The horsemanship that Xiahou Bo had just shown made Li Ji couldn't help but admire him.

At least, Li Ji couldn't do such an emergency stop, and still be able to dismount steadily at the same time.

However, Xiahou Bo ran towards Li Ji with a face full of anxiety, even ignoring Li Ji's praise, saying.

"Mr. Zikun, I was just about to leave the city to find you, come with me quickly."

Li Ji heard this, his face also became solemn, and he said urgently. "Hmm? Has something urgent happened in the city?"

"That's right!"

Xiahou Bo, his face full of anxiety, pulled Li Ji onto a horse and urgently said, "The Lord is currently flogging Inspector Zhang, and he's about to beat him to death! No one can stop him."

Liu Bei flogging an inspector?!

Li Ji found this sentence strangely familiar, but considering the reality of the situation, he couldn't quite grasp its full meaning. (End of Chapter)