The Rise of the Black Plain

After arriving at his office and beginning to analyze the day's affairs, Minos soon received a brief report from his secretary, Mia.

"Young master, I have an update on the ongoing construction of the city wall."

"Oh? How is it doing?" Minos asked curiously.

He had authorized the construction of a wall around Dry City shortly before leaving for the Cromwell Kingdom.

This wall served the vital purpose of protecting and concealing some secrets from unwanted visitors.

The wall had been designed to be about 15 meters high and 6 meters wide, encircling the entire city. It had also been planned to leave an internal area for the town, enough that it could accommodate up to 500 thousand people with ease.

So, with this work, Minos planned to safeguard his territory for the next few years, while the city was still in the way of getting strong enough.

And even though the influx of people arriving in Dry City was low, with less than 5,000 visitors each year, Minos still believed that it would be better to take certain precautions.

The rapid growth of the city could end up attracting the attention of even those who had no interest in venturing into these regions. With this, the wall served as a means to hide the current appearance of the city. After all, it was not odd for smaller towns to have walls like these!

That way, no one would find it unusual if Minos decided to make this decision. And since he had come to live here, it was not that someone was coming to manage the place for a while!

And as for the agricultural fields, unless someone got close enough to the city's perimeter, they wouldn't even be able to see it from afar.

Of course, unless someone came riding on a flying spiritual beast, as was the case with young Ruth and her great eagle. But under such circumstances, Minos couldn't do anything.

However, luckily for him, most of the spiritual beasts used did not belong to the flying type.

Anyway, Mia continued to talk about the progress of the construction of the wall. "The wall has already reached about 50% completion and should be completely constructed within the following two months."

Mia then continued while adjusting her specs, "We prioritized constructing the west and east sections of the wall first because the flow of people into and out of the Brown Kingdom is greater than the number of travelers passing through our city from other states."

"Hmm, that's better," Minos nodded in satisfaction. Although the work was taking longer than he had expected, it wasn't completely unforeseen. And given the size of the construction, the speed it had been going on so far was not bad.

"Okay, changing the subject, I want to arrange the construction of two public buildings in the central region of the city. One will be a cultivation tower and the other will be a large arena which should be able to accommodate at least 30,000 spectators to watch the fights."

"I want you to make arrangements for this by coordinating with the Nash family and the Cohen family store. They can assist us in finding the right professionals for designing the cultivation tower and arena."

Dry City could not construct such buildings, since they lacked the specialists to design these structures for the construction of such projects. After all, these buildings had to be prepared to withstand the attacks from cultivators, fights, and training sessions.

So, if ordinary buildings were to be used, such structures would not be able to endure after a few matches!

Designing these buildings involved the participation of array masters, blacksmiths, and designers. The array masters provided the arrays that increased the spiritual concentration in the cultivation rooms and protected some structures necessary for the functionality of essential items within the place.

Blacksmiths produced high-strength items that could enhance the buildings' resilience against damage. Finally, the designers were like the engineers of the Spiritual World. They combined the items of array masters and blacksmiths in the best possible way, designing unique buildings, such as the cultivation towers.

However, there were none of such professionals in the region of Black Plain, so Minos wanted Mia to use his contacts to move forward with this project.

Mia replied with a smile on her face. "Okay, young master. I will start doing this work as soon as possible."

...

While Minos was busy dealing with the affairs of the Black Plain, a new cargo had already arrived on Stone Island, which had originated from the lands of the young Stuart.

This time, the merchant Elen Nash had decided on selling the produce grown in the Black Plain in several different cities on Stone Island. This was a measure she had taken to avoid drawing too much attention to herself.

That's because, after the previous sales of Minos' items, many families had become alert to the volume of business done by Elen. So, this time, she wished to spread her offer across many different cities, hoping that these families would think that it had been a stroke of unique luck, reducing the ongoing behind the curtain supervision on her.

It would be effortless to find out about her business if she was doing it in just one city, as she had done previously. However, those powers would not pay so much attention to her if her business operations were fragmented in many different places!

At least not in a short time...

And so, Minos' goods were now being sold in about 30 towns on Stone Island, including the city of Portland.

...

In the civil port of the city of Portland, a ship had recently arrived, disembarking several passengers who had traveled from Maritime City.

After finishing their work, the ship's crew would be provided a day of rest in Portland before finally returning back to Maritime City.

At that moment, a good-looking young woman dressed as a cook suddenly took off her apron and disembarked the ship to take a stroll through the city.

Upon witnessing this, one of the crewmates jumped up and said, as she handed over a bag with low-grade spiritual crystals to her friend. "Hey! Wendi! If you're going out, could you buy us some fruits?"

"Hmm, okay..." the young woman replied.

This was Wendi, a woman whom Minos had met during his journey to Stone Island. She worked as a cook for a travel company situated in Maritime City.

Anyway, Wendi started to wander around the elegant city of Portland for a while until she finally found an excellent market to buy some fruits for her fellow travelers.

After spending time walking around the big market consisting of all kinds of goods, she finally stopped in front of one of the local markets. 'Hmm, Nash family market ... Let's see if I can find something good here.'

Entering the place and after taking a few laps around the building, Wendi finally found a section of some good quality fruits.

This section where she had stopped consisted of apples, grapes, and mango. Each one looked enticing, to the point that Wendi even started feeling a little hungry just by gazing at them and smelling their fragrant aroma.

"Ahh! These fruits look very good... and the price is also low!" she murmured in a low voice.

After a while, she finally approached and asked an attendant to weigh her some fruits. The young man then smiled and said, "Haha, you're lucky, miss. These items just arrived here. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible that you would have found them with such a price!"

"Hmm, can you tell me where they come from? I've never seen anything like this at such a price!" she asked curiously.

"Well, I'm not sure of that either. Let me speak to my supervisor..." the young man responded.

After saying this, the young man walked to the other side of the building, while Wendi waited while enjoying eating an apple.

Chomp!

"Ehh?" She was startled the moment she took the first bite of the apple. 'How can it have so much spiritual energy? Is this a fruit with a highly concentrated spiritual energy?' she asked herself with a surprised look.

Young Wendi was unaccustomed to foods of such high quality since it was very costly for her. But it was just impossible not to notice the rich energy that was present in this apple she was eating.

'Did they get the price wrong?'

While she wondered about it, a middle-aged man approached her. At the same time, the young attendant had been dispatched to attend to another customer.

That was the supervisor of this Nash family store. He had been instructed not to disclose anything about the origin of these items unless the customers were weaker and less talented.

And it wasn't hard to get a good idea of a person's talent, just by looking at their level.

For example, if someone was in their 20s to 30s, as in the case of Wendi, who had a Black talent, they should already be at least in the 4th stage of cultivation, even when using a Blue-grade technique.

However, if someone was below that, which was the case for Wendi, it meant that they most likely had less talent than someone having Black talent and probably had no contacts with any of the big family!

So, as soon as he saw Wendi, the man probed the girl's strength before speaking. "Young girl, were you interested to know where these items came from?"

"Hmm." Wendi nodded.

"Well, if that's the case, I can tell you that it comes from Dry City," the middle-aged man replied, without having any change in his expression. He then continued, "I have heard that these products are even cheaper within that city..."

"What!"

Wendi was utterly shocked to hear this answer. After all, she knew the reality of the place this man had just spoken the name of. 'How can this be? I thought...'

As she was thinking about it, she suddenly seemed to have remembered something. A few months ago, a young client had made a strange comment to her, which seemed to make no sense back then.

'Is that what he was talking about?' she started to wonder out of curiosity. If that were true, it would definitely be worthwhile to live in Dry City. After all, with such good food, even if she had a low talent, her cultivation speed would undoubtedly have a significant increase!

'Hm, when we return back to the continent, I'll see if I can verify this...'

Wendi nodded, thinking to herself.