To Keep Me in Line, My Father Handed Over the Throne Early

(I'm out of ideas, so I'm not writing this anymore. Please don't add it to your collections.)

Prince Liu Chang has been ambitious since childhood. He acts sweet and obedient to win over the emperor and empress, treats worthy men with respect to win the court officials' support, and gets along wonderfully with his brothers. He's known throughout the court as a gentleman.

But after a serious illness, his personality changes completely.

Marry Princess Huarong? No, thanks. Close relatives marrying can produce children with intellectual disabilities!

Attend court and do official work? I'll pass. Getting up early is bad for your health and shortens your life!

Brotherly harmony? Forget it. If a brat won't behave, give him a beating. And if that doesn't work, beat him again!

Liu Chang goes from being the perfect child everyone else's parents wish they had to a shameless layabout. He spends his days holed up in his estate, leveling the garden to make experimental fields and a school for miscellaneous studies. He also gathers a bunch of low-class folk to make soap, glass, pencils, steel, telescopes, steam engines, and more...

Everyone says the First Prince has gone mad. Then war breaks out in the north, and a device called a telescope appears out of nowhere. The senior officials who had long since given up on the First Prince change their tune one after another.

The Minister of War arrives with a fortune to beg for telescopes.

The Minister of Personnel swallows his pride and asks the First Prince to introduce Arabic numerals and spreadsheets to his ministry.

The head of the Imperial Academy brings students over to pester him for pencils and improved white paper.

Liu Chang has traveled from the modern era back to ancient times, and nothing feels right. Even the throne has lost its appeal. So what if he becomes emperor? He'd still have to pinch pennies when handing out lychees to his consorts.

All he wants is to take it easy, stay in his estate inventing things, make a fortune, and live as an idle prince.

But the looks his father and the court officials give him grow increasingly strange.

Word is that the First Prince has grown close to a group of blue-eyed, red-haired Westerners and built a great ship to search for some new continent.

The emperor and his officials can no longer sit still. Name him heir? No, abdicate and hand him the throne! Hurry up and keep the First Prince here, or he'll run off!

Theme: Rewrite your life and change the fate of the nation through invention