It had taken longer to return to Xiwang than I'd planned. One of the cultivators sworn to my House had been seriously injured. That in itself wasn't a real problem. I had enough healing pills to offset any injury until we could get her to a healer. The problem was her bond had been killed.

The loss of her first and only bond had almost shattered her mind. It had left her destitute and grieving. The emotional toll was traumatic enough, but the gaping hole within her inner ocean was real. A physical wound that would require advanced healing to repair.

Without that healing, her cultivation was all but destroyed. She would never advance beyond the Body Refinement Realm. Any Qi she tried to condense would leak from her soul wound. She would never be able to form an ocean of liquid Qi, and I doubted the Heavenly Tribulation would allow her the opportunity to advance without repairing that gaping wound.

"Baroness," Gwen and Zui said in greeting when I finally arrived in Xiwang and entered the keep.

"My parents arrived with no issues?" I asked straight away. "How are they?"

"They seem to be doing better," Gwen replied.

"They were exhausted when they arrived, disappointed that you weren't here to greet them, especially your younger sister. The house and shop you purchased for them have kept them busy, and they rarely make a request.

"I've taken the time to visit them a few times to make sure they are coping. They are always welcoming and willing to show me what they have accomplished since their last visit but rarely mention needing help.

"Most of the requests they have made have had to do with the information about the area. Schools for the children, the requirements for joining the Trade Center, information about the tax system."

"I will go visit them this evening. Have they been issued CT devices?" I asked.

"They agreed to accept two, deciding the children were too young to need a device or the maturity to treat it as more than a toy. Your mother was insistent that if they were gifted with a method to contact you easily, they would hound you with calls incessantly," Zui replied.

"Your father would have been willing to store two devices for them, but when I informed him that if they weren't going to be used, it was better to wait. The next generation of the devices will be out by the time Serrah Sia might allow them devices of their own."

"Baroness, one point we need to bring up immediately," Gwen began reluctantly, "the number of immigrants we received was much higher than expected. The Empire has shipped over a hundred thousand people to your Fief.

I would have liked to spend more time talking about my family, but I will have the chance to speak with them this evening. I had been gone for six months, and there was too much work to do.

"Reports have trickled in that those same numbers across the island, regardless of the territory's status. A number have still been left unclaimed by a Cultivator, and the Sect has had to assign people to oversee people safely settled."

"When did we start getting an influx of new people, and what have we done to get them settled?" I asked, getting straight to the point of the most immediate concern.

"The first batch arrived five weeks ago," Gwen replied, handing me a folder containing information on how and where people had been settled. "A convoy of ships unloading between twenty and thirty thousand spread across the territory.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"The captain from the ship your parents arrived on carried a document informing you that your territory had received the quota of new immigrants we had been assigned. Anyone that arrives from that point on will have had nothing to do with the Empire's 'Great Resettlement' program."

I knew there would be constraints on my time once I returned. The need to deal with over a hundred thousand refugees divided between each of the towns in my Fief would be the most pressing. Xiwang, itself had been forced to absorb almost fifteen thousand people.

If not for the fact that the town had been dying and that most of the city had been abandoned when people died under Lord Chon's rule, the town would have had to resort to refugee camps. Camps the other towns in my territory had been forced to rely on.

"We had the Dojo prioritize building arrays," Zui added. "We decided to use the same linked building design you had used for the new business district. The linked buildings allow us to create the 'apartments' you'd mentioned to house more people with less land by extending the buildings up and below ground."

"The most significant stumbling block has been the lack of building material. The mines have been expanded, and stone and gravel have been collected. The Hindel have been helpful, providing shale and shells we combine with sand to make blocks. There have been logjams with transportation.

"At current production, we believe it will take another six months to have enough housing for everyone that has arrived."

"How are the other towns housing them for now? You mentioned camps?"

"Most have requisitioned empty warehouses and transformed them into barracks-type housing. Rows of bunkbeds with little privacy, but it keeps the people dry and warm," Gwen answered.

"Cultivator Mao has been tireless in visiting each town that needs help. She uses her earth affinity to create underground bunkers that Cultivator Ming's arrays are then positioned to protect from a cave-in."

"Siam and his Roc, Pluton, have provided the transportation we've needed to get Mao and Ming to the towns that need them.

"It is a stopgap measure, at best, but with the little warning for the number of people we would need to assimilate, it has worked.

"Sanitation has been easily solved with a few arrays, one for disposal and one for bathing.

"The hardest logistical issue has been feeding so many. Our food reserves are stretched thin, and we've had to encourage new hunters to join the more experienced people from the Fief to augment our diet."

"What about the ocean?" I asked. "Have our fishing fleets increased production? Any thought to harvesting seaweed and kelp?"

"Another place where the Hindel have proven their worth. They have traded enough kelp to see us through the next farming season," Gwen informed me. "Not everyone enjoys the taste, but our healers have informed us the product is nutritional enough to keep us healthy until we have ramped up food production."

"We have the farm arrays configured to the weather we need for each crop and expanded to increase yield?" I asked.

"Not yet," Zui admitted. "Ming has been too busy creating bunkers to work on the farms. She has it prioritized and has the Arrayists at the apprentice level working on what they can.

"Now that the housing crisis has been dealt with, she has started working on the changes to the spatial designs needed for each farm."

Most farming was done in spatial storage, like my torc, to hold expanded farmland. The spatial expansion devices were constructed by journeyman array professionals. The risk of beast tides and monster populations swarming made farming openly possible, but only in the most developed and protected areas.

It was only once our people had learned to create and control spatial constructs that we began to really increase our population. A farming array took up little space, a ten-by-ten plot of land used to anchor the array that opened into a farm that could be of any size.

We still needed people to farm, but much of it could be automated. There was no need for pest control or worry about soil depletion. The people tending the farms planted crops, harvested their bounty, or managed the food animals.

Ming would double the size of each farm, but we still needed people to do the work and time for the crops to grow and be harvested. The food animals would take the most work to solve. Their populations would need to be increased, creating an immediate shortage until that could be accomplished.

The call for more hunters would hopefully solve that problem—that, along with increased fishing.

The Beast Tamers could help to increase animal production. They had methods to speed up gestation and incubation methods that would allow them to quickly increase the size of the flock for any animal that laid eggs. The challenge would be ramping up production with the level of Cultivators tied to my Fief.