"Before you begin dealing with anything else," Gwen interjected as our meeting wound down, "you should visit the town's lodestone and upgrade the town to a city. With the influx of so many people, we have reached the requirement for the lodestone to upgrade and the repelling field the town generates to keep monsters and beasts out to expand.

"As a capital city, the lodestone should allow you to check on the other towns in your Fief, and if they meet the requirements to upgrade, you can initiate those changes from here as well."

The ability to affect changes throughout the territory via the lodestone was a real boon. The lodestones were an exciting creation. They gave me access to a town building menu, an overview created using the ambient Qi, and the connection I had to everything in my Fief once I'd injected my Qi signature into the stone and toggled it as a capital lodestone.

It didn't allow me to place buildings and expand, but it allowed me to track populations, taxes, and resources. It was the closest to something approximating the Internet currently available in this world and gave me hope that I might recreate similar features for the populace at large.

The town's lodestone had been placed on the Keep's lowest level. I could have moved it when I established my barony, but it was well placed. The protections were enhanced with a powerful array, once the town lodestone had been upgraded to a capital lodestone—part of the protections issued to each new Baron.

The room the stone was hidden in could only be accessed if my Qi signature was injected. My Qi signature was impossible to duplicate, even if the person trying could pierce the veil of defensive illusions that hid the door and the array plate glowed steadily, waiting for my Qi input.

There had to be workarounds. If I died or had gone missing inside the Mystic Realm, there had to be a way to circumvent the array and allow a new Baron to claim the territory. How that was done wasn't something I'd bothered to ask about.

Gwen and Zui left me to myself, getting on with their work after briefing me on events. There was no reason for them to follow me. The protections wouldn't let them pass anyway. It was an added feature that had become necessary for those with a capital lodestone.

There had been incidents where a group of cultivators had entered with the person keyed to the stone, only to kill him and usurp the capital stone for themselves. It was a less bloody way for an individual to institute a change in leadership without war.

The only exception was when an heir was designated and recognized. Even then, that person couldn't enter until an identifier was provided. That identifier required the heir to sacrifice skin, blood, and bone, each infused with the person's Qi signature, to be imbued with the capital stone so they could be keyed to the device.

An entire finger was often used to ensure enough genetic and Qi essence was collected. The amputation was easy enough to reverse. A healing pill or healer able to restore what had been lost.

I hadn't designated an heir yet. I was waiting to see if my brother and sister had any talent for cultivation first. It would be a few years before their awakening ceremony, so in the meantime, I would have to trust in my luck and fate.

As a new Baroness without a Clan or House when I ascended, I didn't have a heritage or depth of family I could lean on to establish my Fief. There was no extended family I could rely on or choose from to designate an heir.

If I were to die without a designated heir, the only option to gain control of the territory would be to place another capital stone and fuel it with enough Qi to overwhelm and absorb the one I had set. It was a time-intensive process, but the Empire had decided that it was needed to protect against sabotage, war, and territory disputes.

The process of upgrading from a town stone to a city stone was straightforward. An injection of Qi focused and with intent, and the town defenses expanded, and the barrier grew. I was pleasantly surprised to find I could direct the direction of growth. Xiwang was located near the ocean, there was no reason to expand the city's barrier further into the water.

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That allowed me to take advantage of some of Chon's ill-advised decisions. The former Lord had the citizenry clear-cut trees, deforesting a significant amount of land. That decision caused problems with local weather. Nothing important, and the land would evolve to accept his changes as it healed. But it gave me a direction to aim toward, areas to claim that would allow the newly upgraded city to expand.

I would have to consider what to do about the eight trigrams array. Reworking to cover a growing city would be problematic. It would probably be safest to create a new array that worked in tandem with the eight trigrams, one that could be placed with controls that focused on offense over defense.

Upgrading the lodestone to a capital city did give me an expanded view of my Fief. Xiwang wasn't the only town that now had enough citizens to grow. The territory over-map the lodestone projected showed that three other towns met the requirements.

It had taken many of the beast cores I farmed from the Golden Lodoicea to purchase settlement stones for every town and village within my territory. But the expense had been necessary. It had allowed my capital stone to link with each town and village as the settlement stones had been placed, allowing me to have a way to monitor and oversee how my territory would develop now that the requirements had been met.

Of the other cities that had prospered, I understood why Kamakura had increased; it was centrally located. An ideal location to serve as a trading hub between my towns and villages. Sato-osa Haru, the town's Lord, had expended much of the town's wealth in transforming the harbor. Harbors were made deep enough and dredged, removing obstructions to allow even the largest ship to dock.

Even Anshan's growth could be explained. The town was run by Sato-osa Mikan Liaoning and had been built near the mountains where jade, gems, and metals were mined. The creation of communication devices had been a boon to his town. Once languishing with no market for the mined jade, the town was booming as the jade I needed for the devices increased.

Sato-osa Mikan would have to monitor mines, searching and opening other locations to make sure each mine had the time to rest and restore the resources we were removing. The ability to replenish resources was not a function limited to spirit stones. The ambient Qi of this world meant that with careful husbandry, no mine would be stripped bare.

What didn't make sense were the dozens of villages that were now able to be upgraded to towns, and the town of Nha Trang was now able to be expanded to a city.

I exited the territory menu to find Gwen and see if she had some idea of what was going on before I made any changes. "Gwen, do you know why so many villages and Nha Trang have had such a large population growth?"

"Your council tried to be strategic about where we sent the immigrants and refugees we received. We moved people to areas that would have the most to gain locally and across the territory when their lodestones upgraded," Gwen replied as she looked up from whatever paperwork she was busy with.

"Why Nha Trang?" I asked. "And how did you get people moved so quickly?"

"Nha Trang is the largest of the towns deeper into the territory. Where Kamakura serves well as a trading hub on the ocean, Nha Trang connects the various villages and towns within the interior.

"It is located in a pocket of highly concentrated Qi and has successfully grown spirit plants without using arrays to consolidate and refine the Qi. If you decide to expand their spirit plant production and add elemental arrays for elementally aspected plants, the income from those plants should be significant.

"As to how we moved so many people so quickly, I have to say we didn't. It took us over five weeks to get people settled where we needed them. Remember, the influx of new people was arriving weekly, and none of the towns and villages were so far away from a major town that it would take more than a few days and a host of caravans to move them where they could be the most useful," Gwen explained.

An explanation that left me grateful that I had left her and Zui in charge during my absence. I returned to the lodestone and approved each of the towns and villages' upgrades, watching in anticipation to see what changes those upgrades might have on the capital lodestone.

The most obvious difference was the sphere of influence each population center experienced. The cities grew so much that they intersected with some closer villages.

More importantly, the Qi rivers serving as leylines that coursed across the territory shifted slightly. The rivers were widened and redirected to take advantage of the expanded settlements. These currents of Qi were how cultivators navigated; I needed to remember that.

I took the time to synchronize the map the lodestone was projecting and copied it onto the map that Storm had first created. I would make a copy of the updated changes and have the original commissioned and available for sale.

It was easy enough to make them available to interested cultivators. It would allow them to make travel more manageable. A map of the expansion and changes to the Qi rivers would serve caravan drivers, merchants, and travelers safer. Even those without perception would have at least some idea of the direction and distance needed to travel.