Chapter 205: The Scissors in the Shadows

The construction of the telegraph system in the Royal Capital was in full swing.

With the full support of King Augustus, Alistair’s Telegraph Bureau received ample funding and resources.

A large number of workers were hired, and new telegraph poles sprang up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, extending from the center of the Royal Capital in all directions.

The first batch of lines connected the most important military and administrative departments.

The Royal Palace, the City Guard Headquarters, the Magic Association, the Royal Academy of Sciences…

The efficiency improvement brought by the telegraph was astonishing.

Orders and intelligence that previously took hours or even days to transmit now only took a few minutes.

King Augustus, sitting in his own study, could easily “converse” directly with the generals on the border, without worrying about consuming the precious magic crystals in the national treasury.

This feeling of having something once so precious now readily available was incredibly intoxicating for him.

The commercial sector also quickly sensed the winds of change.

Some quick-witted merchants, such as a certain merchant whose name started with ‘M’, began to use the telegraph to transmit commodity prices and market information, making a fortune.

However, behind the light, shadows always breed.

Royal Capital, headquarters of the Galloping Horse Courier Guild.

The president, Bartlett, a middle-aged man with a fleshy face, was pacing back and forth anxiously.

In front of him stood a dozen dejected couriers.

“President, this month, we’ve lost another thirty percent of our business,” a courier said mournfully. “Those noble lords and merchants are all using that damn thing called the ‘telegraph’ now.”

“Yeah, even the City Guard no longer needs us to deliver urgent military intelligence.”

“If this continues, we’re all going to be out of a job!”

Bartlett slammed his fist on the table, making a loud bang.

“Enough!” he roared. “Of course I know that!”

The Galloping Horse Courier Guild was once the hegemon of information transmission in the Royal Capital.

They had the fastest horses, the best couriers, and their business covered the entire kingdom.

Bartlett had also accumulated enormous wealth because of this, and even had a certain degree of influence in noble circles.

But now, that new thing called the “telegraph” was cutting off the very foundation of their livelihood.

“That Alistair, I’ve looked into him. He’s just a lucky Fourth-Circle Mage,” a fierce glint flashed in Bartlett’s eyes. “The truly terrifying one is the woman behind him, Lia Farrien.”

“It’s her again!” someone in the crowd exclaimed.

“That’s right, it’s her again,” Bartlett sneered. “From the electric motor to this telegraph, she’s like a demon, always coming up with these newfangled gadgets to smash the rice bowls of us ordinary merchants.”

A tall, thin man stepped forward. He was Bartlett’s deputy and the guild’s strategist.

“President, a head-on confrontation won’t work,” he said in a low voice. “Alistair is the king’s favorite right now. We can’t touch him.”

“Then what do you suggest we do? Just wait to starve to death?” Bartlett said angrily.

“Of course not,” a sinister light flashed in the deputy’s eyes. “We can’t touch him, but we can touch his ‘lines’,” he made a cutting gesture.

“I’ve observed them. Those so-called telegraph lines are just some copper wires on wooden poles. At night, we can find a few agile brothers with pliers. We can cut as many as we want.”

“No matter how fast they repair them, they can’t keep up with how fast we destroy them!”

“As long as the telegraph has problems every few days, those nobles and merchants will naturally find it unreliable and come back to us.”

Bartlett’s eyes lit up.

“Good idea!” he patted his deputy’s shoulder. “I’ll leave this to you. Find some reliable people, be clean about it, and don’t leave any evidence.”

“Don’t worry, President,” the deputy retreated with a grin.

That night.

In the darkness of the Royal Capital, several black shadows moved like ghosts through the alleys and rooftops.

They were holding specially made long-handled insulated shears, specifically for dealing with those high and mighty telegraph lines.

Snip.

The crisp sound was barely audible in the night wind.

One by one, the lines connecting the Ministry of Finance and the Royal Bank were ruthlessly cut.

“Next target, the City Guard Headquarters,” the leader of the black shadows said in a low voice.

The same thing was happening simultaneously in various corners of the Royal Capital.

The next morning.

Alistair’s Telegraph Bureau was in chaos.

“Report to the Chief Engineer! The Ministry of Finance line is down!”

“Report! Signal lost on City Guard line one!”

“Royal Academy of Sciences line three is also down!”

Bad news came one after another.

Alistair’s face was ashen as he looked at the constantly extinguishing light spots on the map.

They immediately organized a team to carry out emergency repairs.

When the workers found the damaged lines, they were all furious.

The cuts were neat, clearly made with a tool.

“This is deliberate sabotage!” a worker shouted.

Alistair rushed to the scene. Looking at the severed wire hanging in mid-air, his fists clenched so tightly they cracked.

The war had begun.

This was not a war of technology, but a despicable counterattack from the vested interests of the old era.

In the following days, the sabotage escalated.

Alistair’s repair teams were run ragged.

The lines they had just repaired during the day would be cut again at night.

The other party was like a hyena hiding in the dark, constantly harassing and biting, making them utterly miserable.

The reliability of the telegraph was seriously questioned.

Some merchants who had originally planned to connect to the telegraph network began to hesitate and wait and see.

When King Augustus learned of this, he was furious and ordered the City Guard to investigate thoroughly.

But the saboteurs were secretive and knew the terrain of the Royal Capital well. The City Guard’s patrols couldn’t even catch their shadows.

They were even equipped with high-level anti-detection items; not even reconnaissance magic could detect any traces.

Alistair was exhausted by this.

He locked himself in his office, looking at the paper he revered as a divine oracle, and for the first time, he felt a great sense of powerlessness.

The theory was perfect, the technology was feasible.

But he was powerless against the scissors from the shadows.

Just as he was on the verge of despair, there was a knock on his office door.

His assistant rushed in excitedly.

“Chief Engineer! Someone from the mage tower is here!”

“The mage tower?” Alistair was stunned for a moment.

“It’s someone sent by Professor Lia! She… she brought you a new technical plan!”

Alistair rushed out of his office and saw an attendant in the uniform of the Magic Association standing quietly in the hall.

In the attendant’s hands was a sealed magic scroll.

“Chief Engineer Alistair,” the attendant bowed slightly. “Professor Lia asked me to deliver this to you.”

With trembling hands, Alistair took the scroll.

He impatiently broke the seal and unrolled it.

It was not a paper, but a more direct technical plan.

A blueprint.

The title of the blueprint read: A Line Security Protection Plan Based on Electromagnetic Redundancy Backup and Fault Location.

Alistair’s gaze quickly swept over the blueprint, his breathing becoming more and more rapid.

Professor Lia’s plan was both simple and ingenious.

The core of the plan had two parts.

First, redundancy backup.

She suggested that while laying the main line, one or more backup lines should be laid in parallel.

These lines would be in a standby state under normal circumstances. Once the main line failed, the system would automatically switch to a backup line to ensure uninterrupted communication.

It was like building multiple backup roads when constructing a main road.

Second, fault location.

This was the most brilliant part of the entire plan.

Lia had designed a simple circuit detection device.

It would continuously send a weak detection current into the line and measure the time it took for the circuit to complete.

Once the line was cut somewhere, the detection current could not form a circuit, and the device would immediately sound an alarm.

Furthermore, by accurately calculating the time the current had traveled before it disappeared, the system could instantly locate the approximate position of the fault point, with an error of no more than fifty meters.

This meant that repair personnel no longer needed to search for the break point inch by inch along the long line like headless flies.

They could go directly to the fault location for a quick repair.

Even more brilliantly, Lia had also attached a small design at the end of the blueprint.

A portable fault locator based on the same principle, small enough to be carried around.

“Heavens… this is a method only a god could have thought of…” Alistair murmured to himself as he looked at the blueprint.

He had thought he was facing an unsolvable dead end.

He never expected that Professor Lia, without even showing up, would so easily hand him a sword sharp enough to cut through all conspiracies.

This was no longer just guiding him.

This was dressing him in a suit of impenetrable armor.

“Thank you for your guidance, Professor,” Alistair bowed deeply in the direction of the mage tower.

He immediately summoned all the engineers and worked through the night to modify the entire telegraph system according to the new plan.

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