It seemed, lately, that I spent more time in meetings than doing anything else. I suppose that was to be expected since I’d been gone so long and needed to organize a government structure for the vassal state I had agreed to administer. A headache, one that was exacerbated because I still hadn’t dealt with the large influx of new immigrants.

I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I could use people willing to work hard and learn a profession if they didn’t have one, but that didn’t seem to be what I had gotten. Gwen’s census had proven my worst fear, and the Empire had sent whom they considered the dredges of society.

But I'd looked forward to the meeting that was about to begin.

It was with the Heads of each profession heading my Dojo. I hadn’t gotten into the specifics of how Clan Frost would incorporate the Dojo yet. That would have to be addressed at some point, probably once the Clan Hall was completed; until then, I would use the structure already in place with the Dojo.

The Dojo would have to change and become more independent now that I had a Clan to deal with. I could retain the Dojo and treat it like a separate entity under my control, but I wanted more diversity within my Fief. If I controlled everything, there would be no dissenting opinions and no reason for competition and diversification.

This meeting was to discuss ideas and concepts, innovations, and discoveries that members of the Dojo had come up with while I had been exploring the Mystic Realm. I had left the Head of each profession broad authority to research and explore new ideas, technologies, or solutions to some of the more pressing problems facing the Fief.

I had no idea what they had come up with, or for that matter, what they had focused their time on. But Zui had promised me when scheduling this meeting that I would be pleased.

“We’re going to start with something from House Cultivator Pa,” Zui said, opening the meeting and introducing the first person to speak.

Pa had just broken through to the Qi Gathering Realm, one of the dozens I had recruited from the Sect that had found the Dojo less restrictive and more supportive than the Sect had been. He had quickly agreed to join House Myche and had sworn a Cultivator’s Oath, tying his fortune with the House.

It was from these adopted members of House Myche that I would build Clan Frost. I hadn’t gotten into the mechanics of how and when it would happen, but these Cultivators had put their faith in me. Those that had agreed to join my House would be given priority consideration when I decided whom to allow to set up minor Houses within the Clan.

Bowing House member to Head of House, Pa explained the device she placed before the group. “I was working with the communication tokens when I wondered if they could be used in a wider application, even if that application was not as robust as the original token.

“What precipitated my interest was a matter that seems to occur with some degree of frequency. We had an issue with a boat from the fishing fleet that went missing for a few days. We would never have found it if the Hindel hadn’t offered to help. They found the boat floundering and stuck on coral that hadn’t been added to the ship’s navigator’s map.

“I thought it might be possible to embed each ship with a signal beacon, a simple device that would send out a pulse periodically that could be monitored by someone trained to organize and interpret where a ship was located on a map,” Pa said, explaining the thought process that went into her interest and development of the device sitting on the table.

“The beacons we came up with have the same range as the communication tokens, effectively no limits, and because they are powered by ambient Qi, non-cultivators can use them effectively. They are also equipped with an emergency setting that, if selected, sends out a sequence of pulses the person monitoring will notice.”

“Has a cost analysis been done, and any thought of combining this idea with the next generation of communication tokens so that this method of tracking can be used on land as well?” I asked. “And is there a reason we don’t ensure every ship under our flag doesn’t have a communication device?”

“The problem with the communication devices was the need to know whom to select to initiate communication. Our devices would allow ships to ‘talk’ with each other even when the captains of ships were unknown.

“Additionally, the communications would be effective if you know your location, and if you were in trouble, you could effectively relay that location. The beacon would send a pulse that we could locate using principles of triangulation. And because they are automatic, it would allow us to locate the beacon even if the worse happened and all crew had died.

I liked the idea and knew I would approve it going forward. I would have to suggest Morse code be developed to use with them.

“The cost for production and installation is minimal, and with the new process House Head found to initialize and use quartz as easily as jade as an information storage device, those costs should be even lower. The only stumbling block is that the coral needed to establish a connection to similar devices might be in short supply. And we would need to train the people to monitor and understand the information the beacons would be transmitting.

“I believe we will have no problem, certainly nothing to worry about if we only install the devices on our own ships. But if you want to upgrade the communication devices and offer them for sale to other shipping consortiums, there might be a problem.

“I have no idea what our stocks of coral material are and how much is used weekly.”

“I may have a solution for that,” Jade offered.

Jade had also come from the Sect. Her interest in alchemy, as well as her strong water affinity, had made her an effective mentor and was often in demand when dealing with the water needs of spirit plants.

“After the fight that almost destroyed the town’s coral reef, I began wondering if there might be a way to encourage growth artificially. The Hindel’s aid to heal the reef only cemented that idea.

“I commissioned Ming to construct a spatial device that would be devoted to an ocean landscape.

“I started by taking ‘clippings’ from some of the healthy coral and seeded them in the artificial ocean. It took some experimenting to figure out how to get the coral to grow, but by generating ocean currents to constantly flow over each seed and releasing a mixture of nutrients in those currents, I was able to increase the growth rate.

“A coral seed can be established from micro samples, and as long as there is enough food, both liquid and solid, growth can be accelerated with time dilation to grow an entire coral reef farm in two months.

“The coral has been tested and works exactly the same as the host sample. If we use this method of coral farming, there should never be a bottleneck because of supply.”

“We’ve done a preliminary test with a few ships,” Zui informed the group. “They work as intended, but we noticed an interesting phenomenon. If we linked the devices to an illusion array, we discovered that the devices returned enough information to map the area, including ocean depths and underwater obstructions.

“These navigation charts are leagues better than anything we have and can be used to create defenses and escape vectors when dealing with pirates. This device will improve safety substantially, and when rescue is needed, Cultivators with flight abilities can be informed and dispatched to offer help quickly.”

“Get them installed in every ship,” I said. “Have the Beast Tamer Cultivators doing trade and passenger runs start carrying them too. I want to see how effective they are at mapping land features.”

“Another option these beacons could be used for is creating trade routes across lands that non-cultivators can use,” Mao suggested. “I or another Cultivator that has a connection with earth Qi could place these in designated areas so that caravan masters could use them to navigate a path from beacon to beacon.

“Non-cultivators’ main problem with travel and trade on the island has as much to do with finding their way as it does with dealing with beasts or monsters. If we can set a system of waypoints that broadcast a signal, we could create the infrastructure to navigate throughout the forest. There would still be dangers, but getting lost wouldn’t be one of them.”

“That would solve the major problem we have with finding Beast Tamers willing to spend time delivering goods and people from town to town,” Zui pointed out. “If we require people to use caravans or ships to travel, then with the use of spatial devices, one flight between cities each week would be enough to keep any vital trade goods flowing.”

“Non-vital goods can be transported via ship or caravan,” I agreed, pleased that this first invention was so useful. A Qi equivalent of a GPS system and a way to work around the restriction Qi created within the electromagnetic spectrum.

This world might never have radio or television, or if it did, it would be nothing like what was available on Earth, but a GPS system might be feasible. At least we might manage something close.

Perhaps this method could be used to install the Internet. Computer code was fundamentally a series of 1’s and 0’s. It should be possible to mimic that code with more advanced beacons. I smiled to myself when I considered the idea of online courses for cultivation. Wouldn’t that be a poke in the eye for some of the Clans and Sects that refused to share techniques and manuals?