"Is it repairable?" I asked Cinder straight away. I had been waiting as patiently as I could for her to examine the entire eight trigrams formation, but today I had reached my limit.

She had spent a week studying the changes made to the power relay alone, her mutterings and exclamations of surprise or enlightenment each time she discovered something new, the only communication she had made the entire week. I'm not sure she even stopped long enough to eat or sleep. If she did, she did it while I was cultivating or sleeping.

Once she finally understood what had been done with the control array and had taken copious notes and sketches to share with Elder Tum, she was ready to examine the rest of the array. That had taken an additional week.

Time, I spent trying to learn what talents were available among my citizenry, clean up the keep, and begin repairs on the town. I had conducted exhaustive interviews for anyone interested in working for me. I had had to spend one day for the prisoners I had taken, too. They had been forthcoming enough, even pointing me to the dock where they loaded the contraband, but I still re-interviewed them.

They had been a mixed bag of talents among those willing to risk working for me. Only a few of them were Body Refinement cultivators, and of those, each of them just barely past the threshold of awakening, and none of them with a cultivation or fighting technique. But as cultivators, they could be trained and encouraged to learn the skills to support ordinary citizens. I would need to rely on non-cultivators to get things organized. I simply didn't have enough Body Refinement cultivators living in Xiwang to go around.

I hoped to change that, and soon. Here on the island of Delph, without access to awakening stones or cultivation manuals, people were only able to awaken their spirit roots naturally, if they could, the way Elves had had to before the invention of the awakening stones.

It meant anyone born on the island had never been tested, and there might be talented individuals languishing without any support or resources. For those over nineteen, it was too late to undergo the awakening process. The Heaven's allowed a year's grace for every individual once they reached their majority. A year past the age of maturity where they would have the time to awaken their spirit roots naturally or with the awakening stone. That meant a great many of the people living on the island that might have been talented were forced to live as non-cultivators.

I had Gwen inform the town's people that I would be holding an awakening ceremony for everyone that met the age requirements. Opening the world of cultivation to the people I now ruled was a priority, and an easy way to gain support from people that had lived under a despotic rule for so long. I needed those people to help me build viable trade routes between each of the towns within the territory, repair and expand the town, and begin exploring the land I had claimed.

I was planning on encouraging Beast Tamers for as many of the people who had at least silver quality spirit roots. I already had a small herd of Peryton living and growing in Storm's Aerie. I planned on breeding them and increasing that small herd as quickly as possible. I was planning to award one of them to any Beast Tamer as an inducement for working for me.

Awakening stones were easy to obtain, relatively cheap, and almost every House, Clan, Sect, and Barony had one. Most Barons made sure to supply each town and city with their own stone to make sure every child was tested and no one with real potential was missed needlessly. The Empire encouraged this largess, even going so far as to supply newly installed Barons with fifty of the stones for free.

I hadn't received my allotment yet, but I had one notwithstanding. The clerk that had processed my claim had been kind enough to gift me an awakening stone after we had settled the paperwork. There were other resources that I would be receiving, including a few of the most common and easiest cultivation techniques to practice.

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I would also be receiving common martial techniques for the most popular weapons. None of them very powerful, but if practiced diligently enough, a young cultivator could fight and kill beasts. The Empire's benevolence cost it nothing. The manuals and techniques were a start, the bare minimum a cultivator would need to progress. But for those diligent or talented enough, that start could be the impetus to better cultivating manuals and fighting techniques.

The Heavens provided opportunities, but for most, they would ignore the chance that luck or fate, might offer. They would rather play it safe, refusing to seek out those opportunities. This initial gift of resources by the Empire or their Baron was enough for them. They were satisfied with mediocrity, happy just to be able to cultivate and remain at the Body Refinement Realm their entire life.

I had had Gwen scheduled the awakening ceremony for the end of the month at the town hall. It would give me time for word to filter throughout the town, and the town hall to be repaired. I thought it might serve as a good start to my reign as Baron of Fief Myche, giving people a chance to become cultivators and improve their lives.

"Most of the formation is intact," Cinder informed me, gaining my attention. "Whoever made this formation knew what they were doing. They were technically proficient and talented at creating partitions that melded together almost flawlessly. Each section of the eight segments aligned perfectly to resonate with the aspect it had been assigned.

"The repairs should only take a few days," she promised.

"There are a few areas where buildings will need to be cleared, and the ground leveled, but that can be done by your workers as long as they are careful. It looks like storm or fire damage did enough damage that some of the buildings near the inscribed lines have collapsed, interfering with the array."

"Will the metal flux I have work?" I asked.

"It will after I make a few adjustments, and one addition to it," she said. "The person who created the formation used coral in the mix. I was surprised about that until I examined the properties of the coral. It shouldn't make a difference, but somehow it does. The coral acts to link sections of the formation together. It creates a bridge, working as both transceiver and relay material to create a modulation between each section.

"The coral balances the formation, creating a series of harmonics that blend together into a seamless whole. I've never seen anything like it. Or coral that works in this manner. It must be something unique to the coral reef your people harvest.

"You should probably submit a piece for testing to the Array Hall. If the coral works the way I think it does, it might allow the Sect to establish a series of relay stations. Stations that will link the towns on the island to the Sect giving them access to the information stations the Sect uses. The Sect's network could be expanded and connected even as far away as this town."

I would take her advice, of course. I wouldn't play games with the coral as I had with the pods. It wasn't worth it this time. Cinder would report her findings to Elder Tum, and he would make demands until I was forced to share samples of the coral, anyway.

Plus, the thought of having a working Internet again was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I also planned on experimenting with the coral myself. I had decided to concentrate on arrays as a secondary profession now that Elder Dill had made it harder for me to advance my Alchemy skills. I would continue with Alchemy, but my progress would be determined by what herbs I was able to harvest or grow myself.

Once my parents arrived, I would help my father establish our own spirit herb farm. It might not be as advanced as what the sect could create, but I had purchased all the teaching material for every profession up to journeyman rank. I may not ever reach Masterclass as an herbalist, but I should be able to create a garden using arrays that served my purposes.

I also intended to create an adventurer's guild for the people of my territory. I would model it on Contribution Hall and offer gathering and resource quests to people willing to risk the wider forest. I wasn't sure why this hadn't been already done by someone, but as far as I could tell only Sects and Clans managed Contribution Halls.

If I could set my people to gathering herbs and resources, it would free up my time to do other things. Maybe I could even find a few moments to practice my fighting forms and get in a few hours of cultivation.