I thought back to the conversation I had yesterday as the Crystal Vortex flew to my planned grinding spot.

There was a knock on my door to my office. I would be leaving tomorrow, but there was one more thing I needed to handle before I left. “Enter,” I called out. Captain Francis escorted a Chinese teenager into my room. Qi Ji Long was around 16 years old.

“You can leave Captain,” I told him. He nodded and closed the door behind him. It didn’t escape my notice that Qi Ji Long hadn’t bowed in the slightest, even while standing in front of me. I had considered not having this conversation for a long time, but I felt it was necessary to clear the air and nip any issues in the bud.

The silence stretched on for a minute before he finally gave into the pressure. “Emperor Michael,” he replied and bowed his head.

“Qi Ji Long. Sit,” I gestured at a chair in front of my desk. He took a seat, his face impassive, but I knew there was resentment there. No matter how much I had tried to deal with it, he harbored a grudge. I had survivors of his mother’s horrors come and explain what she did. I had counselors speak to him. But even with all that, I was the one who had killed his mother.

“Do you know why you are here?” I asked.

“Probably because you are planning something for me, or want to keep me under your thumb,” he replied. I rubbed the sides of head this statement.

“You make it hard to keep you alive sometimes. Do you know that?” I asked him.

“Then kill me,” he challenged me. “I know you are only keeping me alive for some nefarious purpose, or something.”

“As surprising as it may sound, I don’t like killing children. But you are no longer a child, and haven’t been for some time. You have been working with Jacob Copper for a while? You enjoy that?” I asked him.

“No. I would prefer to fight and gain strength. Not be tucked away in some lab,” he challenged me.

“And if I granted that?” I asked him. For the first time he seemed hesitant on what to say, before responding.

“I would become strong.” What he didn’t say was that he would become the strongest.

“You are like me. Not wanting other people to decide your life or your death. Very well, I will let you go with a promise,” I told him.

“What promise?” he asked, clearly interested.

“That when you come back, you call me out. I swear that I will face you alone. Just as I killed your mother in combat, if you think you are strong enough, then come for me,” I told him.

“You would publicly confirm this?” he asked me.

“In front of the Council of Governors and the Imperial Directors. But you will have enemies, who will seek to gain favor with me by killing you. I won’t order them to, but you have been under my protection so far. If we promise each other in turn, then you will be free to decide your own fate.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “There is a trap, or something,” he replied.

“The simple fact is that I don’t believe you will ever be a threat to me.”

“Deal,” he quickly said. I didn’t smile or gloat, I just felt sad. I had a way to kill him at any time. A resonance based attack. A secret clone of his had been grown. Tied to all the blood samples we had taken over the years.

The connection was there to the clone and would allow me to kill him from anywhere. There was also a second failsafe mechanism implanted into his body. This was something that only Doctor Katz and myself knew about. A tumor of my flesh and energy, put next to his heart.

One thought and I could activate it. Jacob Copper didn’t know about it. This was a failsafe only I trusted myself and Doctor Katz to know. I was going to give Qi Ji Long enough rope to hang himself and then finish him off. There was no use trying to manage him anymore. Jacob Copper was already a huge risk. While Qi Ji Long didn’t know he was the Master Fleshcrafter, I didn’t want those two interacting a lot.

That was asking for trouble. So, I was going to give Jacob his research and let Qi Ji Long go, with the hope a monster would kill him, or he would trip and break his neck. It wouldn’t happen, I knew that much. But I was going to let him go.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Clarissa offered one of her super spies to watch, him but I declined. If I was going to let him go, I would really do so. I didn’t want things to come to a head unnecessarily. We agreed in principle, and I would make the declaration at the next Council of Governors, if he showed up. From the moment he left my office, he would be escorted out of the Imperial Palace, and his room would be closed down in ten days.

If he wanted to be independent, then he could figure it out himself.

I kept thinking back to that conversation and the following events with concern. It was a big move, but I felt it was better to get rid of him. I had considered using brainwashing techniques, but I was going to leave him alone. I had tried to give him a good life and his resentment was unwarranted in my opinion, but such was the nature of things.

Not every problem could be easily solved unfortunately. And I couldn’t risk killing him out of pettiness if the Almighty System truly favored him. I suspected it did, since the Avatar insisted on saving him and the Divine Empress had tortured her quite a bit. There would be no reason she would want him to live. She hadn’t responded when I had asked her again, but that was also an answer.

That gave me the confidence to chuck him out. I would make no move against him, and if he came for me that was his choice to die. If someone else killed him, they would be punished or disappeared, but I would be grateful that the problem resolved itself.

It was a frustrating compromise I had arrived at. But the possibility of Jacob doing something with him, or creating trouble was just too high. A complicated situation all around and I still didn’t understand why Qi Ji Long disliked me. I understood it, but he should have let go of his hatred. I guess the hatred was buried deep or something.

One had to learn with people that annoyed them. As the wind rushed by me, I was glad I hadn’t melted Doctor Katz no matter how annoying he could be.

While my government was filled with amoral people keen on murdering their way through any opposition for their own power, it was nice to have someone who was focused on building. The military solution was the easy solution and had become the only real solution after the city upgrade.

Turning the zones into a free for all bloodbath would just weaken my Empire in the long term and create warlords controlling the zones. That was unacceptable. Growing food would create jobs while feeding people. They would be shit jobs and there wouldn’t be many, but crystals invested into allowing people to grow food would in turn keep people busy.

We were subsidizing charity in a way that I found acceptable. The good doctor knew my red lines. We were not about to become a welfare state and waste taxpayer funds on charity. If we were going to waste taxpayer funds, it would be on trillion-point purchases or buying me a very tall tower.

He had come up with a solution. It was a meh solution in my opinion, but it was still a solution. Overall there would be short term loss in crystals getting all the enchanted pots we would need to grow food, but long term it would provide stability.

I knew Clarissa and her people were discussing a subsidy scheme for personal purchases. There were a lot of other ideas thrown around, but in the end the plan was going to go forward, and more testing would be done. This would include professional chefs to test out the taste and texture of grown food. It was slightly off according to Doctor Katz, but it had no adverse effects.

That meant a wider implementation and monitoring system would need to be put in place beyond the team doing the research. He had spent years looking into growing food, but it was something that took time to find the best way. Enchanted growing pots, with life infused water would work. They only needed to be level 2 enchantments as well, so nothing too onerous.

With the lights from buildings that kept going without cost, the plants could be stacked up in buildings as grow houses. The same with water. The life energy would allow the seeds to grow and not have to worry about the soil content.

The amount of life infused water wasn’t going to be that high, and the sheet Doctor Katz had shown was the tip of the sum of his research. Growing food was a very, very slight positive in the long term. So things would break even, or be cost neutral in terms of investment to return. At least for the first 300 days. After that the pots would turn a slight profit, even with the energy infused water.

We could now produce something, and there was controlled testing being done on the eggs now. Doctor Katz had kept this low key for so long, since he wasn’t sure if it would actually work and be safe. But with the threat of mobilization, he decided to act and spill the beans.

He got his wish. Once we could move things to scale, it would become an entirely new market, growing food. There was a concern about growing other plants, but that would be handled as it came up. There were plant monsters out there, which was why I was a bit concerned, but monsters weren’t plants even if they looked like them. Doctor Katz had assured me of this.

We were not about to start growing monsters or some other disaster all over the cities. In a couple hundred days, a lot of buildings might be much greener as people would grow food all over the place. While government buildings wouldn’t do so, shopkeepers would be happy for anything to bring them extra income on the side.

The biggest issue was what to do with the extra people in terms of work. I had no doubt that many households would start hiring servants in the near future. Workers’ rights would have to be protected even more, but it would be done. The food would support them.

There would be middle class people that would laze about after retiring from grinding, or create households for them to return to. It was hard to say, and Clarissa was keeping an eye on things. We didn’t want slothful or lazy people. But some Governors were billing their cities as retirement locations. Grind up a lot of wealth and then retire.

When those people ran out of points, they would be in for a rude surprise and have to work again if they didn’t invest properly. But those were Clarissa type headaches to deal with, and not something I cared to manage.