The next two weeks were difficult. Events seemed to fluctuate between barely controlled chaos and some semblance of order as progress was made. Cinder completed repairs on the eight trigrams formation in the time frame she had promised, allowing me to activate it correctly using the spirit stones I had found in Chon's bedroom safe.

The formation, now keyed to my Qi signature, powered up without issue giving the town constant protection. It would hold the line against cultivators' intent on attacking until the triad of Spirits and I could respond.

I was flush with enough funds. The cores I confiscated from the warehouse were enough to allow me to rebuild every town in my territory with no issue. I had also gained a real windfall of cores and spirit stones when Guard Commander Belize had raided and searched the properties of Harbor Master Elis Mand and Council Member Lyle, enough to pay the guard's wages for a year.

I had used cores to hire Sect members to help with the repairs that the town needed, posting missions at Contribution Hall to help fill a myriad of tasks I needed to be completed. Sect Members had steadily arrived from the moment of the first posting to help in rebuilding the town, repairing the wall, and leveling a plateau outside the town where the river and ocean met.

They had done an admirable job, using their affinities with water, earth, and metal to do in days what could have taken non-cultivators a year. The area outside of town would eventually be annexed, but I had appropriated that location as the place to build the infrastructure for my House.

Cinder had agreed to act as overseer of some of the work being done, making sure that the formation she had just repaired wasn't damaged in the wake of the frenzied chaos of construction that enveloped the town. I had agreed to pay her an additional five cores for that oversight and repairs to some of the arrays that provided vital services to the town.

I had re-powered and restarted the sewage filtration array already, but Cinder went beyond simply activating the array and updated it, replacing the engraved plate that had been in use with one that would last centuries. She also sold me a filter array I could place in the ocean where the raw sewage had been dumped, one that would begin to slowly leach the impurities from the water and sand. It would gather the pollution over time into a central location, one I seeded with Golden Lodoicea seedpods.

I was hoping that the purifying characteristic of the plant would grow, but my attempt at cultivating them was an experiment, at best. Not only were they planted in polluted ocean waters, but they needed to be completely submerged to be effective. I was pleased when the first plant sprouted. They grew much faster than I had anticipated, putting out feelers and tendrils easily.

The changes to the Ocean Spirit were profound even within days of the seedpods sprouting. The Qi energy it had gained from killing the Nascent Soul cultivator, as well as the results from cleaning up and stopping the raw sewage from being dumped, had a noticeable effect. It was healing, regaining the vibrancy and power that had allowed it to perfect the harbor and town since they built the town.

I had another windfall from the ship I had claimed. I wasn't certain how often the people farming for the smuggling operation were harvesting the Golden Lodoicea, but the contents of the ship's hold suggested I may have obtained an entire season's worth of labor. The cargo from the ship that I had seized had doubled the cores I had claimed, enough that I could make real investments into my territory by expanding.

The question I had concerning the method of shipping for the cores and seedpods was answered by the surviving captain of the ship. It was a safeguard instituted to prevent theft. The boxes the cores and pods were stored in were enchanted to monitor what was placed inside, monitored in a way that spatial devices couldn't. Once each box was sealed, the enchantment that was embedded within the container would monitor and track any instances of the lid being opened.

The enchantment worked as both warning and surety. Any box that was found to have been opened would be examined, and if there was a discrepancy in the number of cores or seedpods it should have contained, they would execute the crew. There would be no second chance, no allowing for defense, and no one could hide behind position or rank.

The enchantments were not robust enough to survive if placed in spatial storage. Not only did the enchantment fail the fluctuation of space disrupting any attempt, but the boxes would also explode if an attempt was made to place it inside a spatial device. It was obvious that the group behind this could have developed a less lethal solution to the problem, but hadn't bothered. This method was effective, and no one would risk opening a box or trying to hide one in a spatial device if it meant death.

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I had found myself engaged in the same frenzied chaos that had enveloped the town. I tried for structure and control by dividing my day into four parts. The mornings were used to deal with bureaucracy and government, the afternoons I explored my fief with Storm or practiced my martial techniques, the evenings I began to learn, practice, and create arrays that I then distributed to individuals and business for free, and the nights I practiced my control over my Dharmic energies and learning how spells worked, and how they meshed with my Qi.

It meant I went without sleep most nights. That was fine. Except for the very rare instances when my body forced me to rest now that I was at the Qi Gathering Realm, the need for sleep had been drastically limited. If I got a couple of hours once a week, I was fully rested and alert the rest of the time.

I was happy with the progress the town was making. I was spending cores like water, and if I hadn't raided a warehouse and cargo-hold full of the items, I'd have never been able to accomplish as much as I had planned. Using them as rewards at Contribution Hall had allowed me to reach areas across my Fief, as I hired cultivators to visit each of the towns and villages, finding new towns and villages as they explored.

Those visits gained me the names of the Lords, Mayors, and Headsmen that now owed Fief Myche fealty. That list was vital in allowing me to set up a communication network using missives. Communicating using missives was tedious and slow, but the missives allowed me to begin to establish real and effective control of my territory. It also gave each town and village the opportunity to report any problems they were having, report what trade agreements they were operating under, and allowed me to begin to understand the circle of influence each area created or labored under by working together.

There were seven areas I designated as counties across the territory because of the inter-workings between the people who lived in each area. Xiwang's port and access made it well suited as my capital. The location gave it access to shipping and the ability to reach at least one town within each of the seven counties I'd created. I decided to designate each of those towns as that county's prefecture.

I would have liked to have used the ship I seized for official purposes and as the beginning of a trading fleet, but it wasn't an ocean vessel. It had been designed to operate in the river and did not have the keel or sails to navigate the ocean's waters. Xiwang was protected within the harbor by a coral reef. That protection was all that allowed the ship to brave the ocean's waters.

I did manage to work a trade with the fishing fleet. A swap, ship for ship, that gave me an ocean vessel that was well cared for, and large enough to visit the towns I had designated as prefectures. It would serve to carry cargo and passengers to each of the seven counties I had created. I was going to make use of spatial devices to allow an immense amount of cargo to be traded between each county.

The ship wasn't fast, but with a few arrays added across the bridge and keel, it could make a round trip circuit of the seven towns along the coast once every two weeks. Not perfect, but it would do until I managed to breed and create an avian fleet.

The ability to create that fleet would be dependent on the people that I was about to address. The young men and women that were about to be tested and have their spirit roots activated. Today was the first awakening ceremony to happen on the island, and I was hoping I would find myself with a host of young cultivators, people that would be interested in Beast Taming as they stepped upon the path of cultivation.

The Empire had released the manuals and techniques I'd requested. Nothing really esoteric or advanced, just simply common cultivation techniques that would see the start of something better for the residents of the island.

Four Element Sect had sent people to my town to participate in this awakening ceremony with promises that they would participate in every awakening ceremony conducted from this point on. Their actions weren't altruistic, they made it clear that they would be offering membership to any really talented individual that we came across, but the people sent would help expedite matters.

I couldn't blame them for hoping to discover new initiates. I was hoping to do the same. House Myche needed cultivators, badly. At the moment we were a House in name only. But if I could entice enough people into joining my House, I could create the kind of infrastructure my territory needed to really prosper.

Building House Myche was only the first step. I had plans to advance the House and become Clan Myche. I would need that kind of power and influence to really gain control of my territory and institute the kinds of changes I envisioned.

If I could have, I would have worked towards establishing a Sect, but that simply wasn't possible, not until the Empire abandoned the island and left Four Element Sect as the titular ruler. A Clan was the next best thing to a Sect. Some of the greater Clans of the Empire even rivaled a mid-tier Sect for power and influence. I planned to emulate that type of success.

The 197 young men and women waiting patiently to be tested would be the first step in my goal to create a Clan, the first group of people that would be accepted as members of House Myche.

Not all would awaken a Spirit Root.

Of those that did, not all would be invited.

And of those invited, not all would accept that invitation.

But this was just the first town. I had sent out missives to all towns and villages informing them that I would be visiting each area over the next month. I would hold this awakening ceremony in each prefecture and would do so every year from this point forward.

Today was the first step in finding the cultivators I needed to make real change possible.