It was rather late in the evening by the time we had finished our meeting. I had selected Saturday as the day I would work as his assistant, not that it made a difference. Only needing to help train Sect members one day a week was certainly not onerous by any means, but I thought that donating one of the weekend days for the task, I would be free and available to work in the fief I was about to establish the rest of the week.

Elder Shadow escorted me to Commission Hall once we had finished our discussion, I thought it a waste of his time but accepted his company graciously. The Empire established bureaucratic offices in every Commission Hall, in every Sect that was established within the Empire's borders. It was here that matters concerning the law, taxes, and petitions were dealt with.

I had assumed the process would be much more entailed than it was. I was being entrusted with the lives of everyone in the territory that I was claiming, but the process was rather straightforward and efficient.

Name, age, and House or Clan affiliation was required, Elder Shadow informing the clerk to document and register the creation of House Myche and my affiliation with Clan Kage. We hadn't discussed making it known that our Houses were affiliated, and I wondered if my concept of nondescript and Elder Shadows were the same.

"It only makes sense," Elder Shadow explained when the clerk waited for me to agree to his suggestion. "Establishing a House now will make it easier for your family when they arrive, and allying with Clan Kage, can only allow your prestige as a new Baron to be enhanced."

"Who is Clan Kage?" I asked, not opposed to the idea in general, but wanting to make sure the Clan was who I thought they were.

"Clan Kage is the main branch for House Penumbra. Patriarch Umbra and I are both House members of this Clan," he explained, confirming my guess.

I soon realized why Elder Shadow came with me, instead of giving directions when the clerk asked him if he had stood witness as I had faced my tribulation and attained the Qi Gathering Realm. I didn't understand the need to verify my accomplishment. The clerk was powerful enough he had to be able to use his perception to gauge my strength.

But the Empire required documentary evidence, either testing or witnessing to satisfy the requirement that a person had reached Qi Gathering. Elder Shadow, as a witness, was able to testify to my success, which came in helpful because the equipment required for testing hadn't been installed at Four Elements yet.

The instruments themselves required detailed enchantments and precision array to work properly. Each new device commissioned taking as much as five years to complete.

Once Elder Shadow had stood as a witness, verifying he had stood guard during Heaven's tribulation, he left. The trivial matters of oath and duty left for the clerk to explain. As a Baroness claiming new territory, I was required to swear a cultivator's oath. There were a few that I could choose from.

The most common Oath came close to requiring you to swear personal fealty to the Emperor. It came with significant perks, offers of assistance, resources, and military aid in the event of beast-tide attacks. That version, at first glance, seemed like an amazing offer until you realized that you could never refuse an order from the Empire, not without risking your cultivation.

If the Emperor were venal, you would have to support him, no matter how corrupt. A slave to the Empire or face the consequence as an Oathbreaker. Qi deviation was real. The Ruby matrix that I had formed had all but removed that issue for the most part, but swearing an Oath on your cultivation and then breaking that oath ignored whatever crystal matrix you had created and destroyed your Dantian, meridians, and inner sea.

Very few cultivators survived long, and the Empire made sure to teach the ramifications of breaking that type of Oath to children long before they reached their majority and began walking the path of enlightenment.

I didn't care how attractive the perks; I was more concerned with free will, so I went for a less restrictive Oath. One that was more partnership than ownership. I could be called upon and call upon the Emperor to defend lands, but those calls for aid were limited. Each side could only lay claim to that call for aid twice. There was an additional cost, for choosing a less restrictive relationship, I would be required to pay a minimum tax no matter how prosperous my Fief, and I would need to protect my holdings from beast without the Empire's assistance.

The clerk required me to register my Qi signature to finalize the process, explaining that any official documents that I wished to submit required that signature as proof that I swore to the truthfulness of what was being submitted. It was mostly used when submitting tax information and payment.

The clerk handed me a territory token that he created once I'd shown him the area I planned on claiming. That along with a document bearing the Emperor's seal was all that I needed to serve as proof and activate an array binding the land, I was claiming to my Qi signature. I would have to place the token and activate it in the lands I had claimed to take possession of them.

That done, I finally spent some time touring the Sect. The land, my new title, the responsibilities that went with it didn't seem real yet. Maybe once I could touch, smell, and taste what was now mine to protect, I would feel differently.

The upper level of the Sect, the building that had been built on the side of the mountain, was almost exclusively designated for housing. The apartment I had been assigned and that Elder Dill was attempting to evict me from was on that level. Elevators and stairs led to caverns and mine shafts that had been dug out and into the mountain proper.

The map that the Sect had provided was vital to navigate, the systems of warrens and caves already established an extensive maze of confusion. The excavation of earth and metal was substantial. It needed to be, in order to allow for Halls and buildings to be built throughout the cave system. The amount of excavation that had taken place would have taken hundreds of years if done by hand. But this was all so new, that the only way it could have been accomplished in the year or so since inception was with the aid of an Immortal Venerable cultivator strong with earth elemental Qi.

I wondered what favors Emperor Halycon or Patriarch Umbra had to call in to get one of those venerable cultivators to help. There were less than fifty men and women on the entire planet that could be considered that powerful. They seldom got involved in mortal affairs, even if those affairs were at the direction of powerful cultivators such as the Emperor.

They were steeped in cultivation, their thoughts focused inward on what came next. Their cultivation so powerful that they had to find areas of Qi dense enough that someone at my level would have been destroyed, my body unable to filter the intense amount of world energy that only those who had ascended to the highest Realms could withstand.

Luckily or unluckily, those areas were rare. Their rarity explained why there were so few Immortal Venerable. The planet simply couldn't support more than a few dozen cultivators at the same time. Those pockets of intense world energy shifted, like the ebb and flow of the ocean's tide, making it harder to claim an area for closed-door cultivation.

The more I explored, the more impressed I was with the work that had been accomplished so far. The finishing work had been left in the Sect's hand, but the rough excavation had been done with intent and Dharmic control of the earth element. Attention to detail that only confirmed my belief that all of this had been done by one person.

My hunger had grown as I'd walked the halls that hadn't existed a year ago, the energy that I had gained from the tribulation slowly fading. I decided against one of the cafeteria-type eateries that were earmarked on the map when my nose identified a smell that had me ignoring everything else.

Pizza existed, and I would not be denied as I followed my nose.

The small bistro-type restaurant was exactly what I expected based on the scent that filled the hallway, a fire kiln had been created allowing the proprietor to churn out the best pizza I had ever tasted in my life.

I sent a private thanks as I dived into my fully loaded slice. I groaned in gastronomical delight, convinced that no people could be considered truly civilized if they hadn't created pizza.