Chapter 820 – Jianzhou Prefecture, Establishing the Capital (Part 9)
“Have you all decided to establish the capital in Shangjing?”
Jiang Pengji thought her subordinates were quite ambitious, actually unifying their opinions to rebuild Shangjing. Were they all looking to stir up some trouble?
Not only was Jiang Pengji thinking this, but even the audience watching the live stream felt like these folks were up to something.
Under normal circumstances, she would go live every day from 7 AM to 7 PM. Many viewers expressed that in an era where the live streaming industry was so developed, there was only one dedicated and hardworking streamer like her who never exploited viewers for gifts.
The only annoying thing was that this live stream had a viewer limit, and every time someone tuned in, it was a race against both speed and luck.
With a viewer cap of 150,000, yet the number of people worldwide who knew about the stream was around five to six billion!
As a long-standing live stream, Jiang Pengji was truly famous all over the globe.
So, when she asked that question, countless bullet comments flooded in from the live stream screen.
【Farmer Spring Water a Bit Suspenseful】: Anchor, are you going big time! After watching yesterday’s highlight reel, I felt something was bound to happen. If the capital is established in Shangjing, wouldn’t that be known to all as Sima Zhao’s intentions?
【Shen Jia】: Haha, should change that; it’s obviously Liu Lanting’s intentions known to all!
【Fox Fairy Beauty】: What a pity, I really want to see how the little emperor and the Empress Dowager will react to the capital being set in Shangjing.
【Bubble’s Dream】: Tsk, what face could it be? It’ll probably look like they drank a huge vat of runny yellow poop.
【Eternal Fallacy】: Ugh—upstairs, your metaphor is too disgusting; I’m trying to eat lunch in the company cafeteria.
Most of the audience was cheering for Jiang Pengji and her team, giving them support.
With the royal family still intact, daring to establish the capital in the former imperial capital took quite a bit of guts.
What did this equate to?
One viewer’s comment was particularly vivid—
【Mushroom in Summer Outing】: The anchor is stirring up trouble! It’s like the male lead ran away with the younger sister-in-law and concubine, leaving the original wife asleep in bed. Before long, a pack of powerful bandits comes in, occupying the estate and sleeping with the original wife.
Even if the original wife was someone the male lead didn’t want, how could her face be any better if it was taken over by a stranger?
Aside from these joking comments, the corners of the live stream screen displayed several strange bullet comments that seemed totally unrelated.
【Learning Chinese is Hard】: I don’t care about anything else; I just want to know when the anchor will give up on racial language bias and start streaming in other languages.
【Foreigner Learning Chinese】: Just to keep up with the live stream, I stubbornly studied for three years to pass Chinese Level 10, yet there’s still so much I can’t understand.
To this, Jiang Pengji shrugged helplessly.
The system had been trapped by her; the live stream simply couldn’t be upgraded.
Speaking of this, an extra note— for some unknown reason, logging into the live stream must use China’s network, and even the bullet comments were limited to Chinese input. This made it so that many foreigners wanting to watch the stream had to travel all the way to China; otherwise, they could only watch recorded videos online with a VPN. Even upon arriving in China, to send bullet comments or understand what the anchor was saying, they had to learn Chinese on their own.
Talking about it just brings tears!
Jiang Pengji silently sympathized with those viewers, while her subordinates exchanged glances, selecting one person to speak on behalf of them.
Feng Jin elaborated on the benefits of establishing the capital in Shangjing, all from Jiang Pengji’s interests, without any selfish motives.
After his passionate speech, Feng Jin hesitated for a moment and added, “The capital city was hit by an earthquake, with ten out of ten houses collapsing. If we rebuild atop this ruined city, we must be exceptionally careful. During construction, we must ensure the materials are sufficient—there can be no corruption or cutting corners. I believe we should invite experienced craftsmen to oversee the design and construction, in order to reassure the common people who suffered greatly from the earthquake.”
A devastating earthquake had claimed thousands of lives, and even if they rebuilt, the populace would surely still be on edge.
If they wanted to attract refugees, they needed to let them know that the rebuilt structures would be solid and reliable, instilling confidence against trembles and quakes.
More importantly—
Jiang Pengji turned her gaze to Zhang Ping, “Can Xi Heng handle this?”
Zhang Ping was momentarily stunned, then he forced a wry smile, “If it’s just about fixing up a room, that’s not too difficult. But to build a city? That might be a bit beyond my capabilities.”
Jiang Pengji casually commented, “Building a city isn’t that complicated; you just need to know how to construct a room. Just copy and paste that room thousands or tens of thousands of times, and wouldn’t that make a city? Piling up walls and establishing boundaries—that’s the foundation, right? As for drainage systems, just go check out how Xiangyang County lays its pipes and channels; I’m sure you can learn a thing or two from that…”
Everyone was left speechless, thinking that building a city suddenly seemed incredibly simple.
They could guess what “copy” meant from the context, but what on earth was that “paste”?
Jiang Pengji realized that issue was a bit deep and thought about hiring the “Tang Qi” whom the live stream audience had been asking for to clarify.
Zhang Ping felt like he was thrown into a pit, his heart racing and pressure overwhelming.
Meanwhile, Wei Ci noticed his predicament and quietly said, “I have some ancient city blueprints collected; they might help you.”
Hearing this, Zhang Ping’s eyes lit up, feeling like he found a strong support.
He confidently stepped forward and without hesitation pulled his friend Wei Ci into the mess.
“Lord, I’d like to borrow someone from you.”
Jiang Pengji smiled, “Establishing the prefecture should be done sooner rather than later. Now is the time to recuperate; everything else can wait. Just tell me who you need to borrow, and I’ll try to meet your request as much as I can.”
Zhang Ping performed a bow, “Please, could I borrow Zixiao? He’s well-versed in various subjects, including the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams, as well as ancient techniques. He’s also skilled in calligraphy and painting. With him helping, I believe we can quickly sketch out the plans for the prefecture.”
Wei Ci: “…”
“I have something to say, but I don’t know if I should!”
He kindly offered to lend out precious blueprints to help his buddy, but this oaf had just recklessly pulled him into the fire.
This is beyond frustrating!
Did this guy think the blueprint for a city was that easy to draw?
Seeing Wei Ci’s hesitance, Jiang Pengji couldn’t help but smile and said, “As you said.”
Zhang Ping was overjoyed, thanking her hastily, “Thank you, Lord!”
Wei Ci just stood beside Zhang Ping, secretly chuckling, wishing he could throttle this silly guy!
The others who weren’t singled out breathed a sigh of relief; they had narrowly escaped!
They weren’t foolish; they all knew how tiring building a city could be—not to mention the overtime—fearful of spending an entire year living on a construction site.
Everyone dodged the disaster, except for one clueless individual who foolishly stepped forward, volunteering.
It was Shao Guang; after all, he was someone who studied the ways of the Mohist School, and there were plenty of commonalities with architecture.
What’s more, he was exceedingly curious about the drainage routes in Xiangyang County and wanted to take this opportunity to learn the core techniques involved.
However… for some reason, the new colleagues around him seemed to look at him with a hint of sympathy?
