Within the vaunted Alchemy Pavilion, there were different areas with different levels of access. There were areas for conducting business which was open to the welcome public. There were also areas that were forbidden to all but the loyal members of the Alchemist Guild. Above all else, there was a certain residential zone that only the upper echelons of the Guild and the families of their top leaders were permitted to enter. This was called the Inner Sanctum. Every so often, however, a certain young man from a certain leader’s family would have his henchmen haul in an unauthorized guest, usually tied up, unconscious, and/or crippled in terms of cultivation. Such a person had been brought in earlier that day, and locked in a private room, denied care or food until such time as she might yield. But almost nobody knew of it, while those who were familiar with such antics and kept it secret. After all, he was not the only one in the Inner Sanctum with private endeavors or secret

Over the next week, the markets at Scorched Eartch City went crazy. First, there seemed to be a major shortage of pharmaceuticals. Then, the Xue family abruptly began to sell everything they had. A lot of useful basic pills were sold at premium prices. The Alchemist Guild, upon hearing the news, immediately pounced on them and investigated those pills, but it turned all, all of them had been bought legitimately, and clearly found on their own records. The Xue Family was above susicion especially since pills weren’t all they sold. They sold everything! Furniture, houses, shops... even clothing and dishes were sold out in massive yard sales. “Y-you’re moving?!” Mu Hou quailed when he finally managed to meet up with Big Li and Little Li. “The entire Clan?!” “That’s right.” Xue Yueli answered. “B-but why?” “The city is getting too dangerous. The demons are coming, and anywhere highly populated is like a huge buffet for them. We need to go.

Captain Lance found George moping around after fully recovering from his injuries. “I know that look. It’s the one that says ‘I want to get stronger!’” “What?” George was startled out of his melancholy. “Don’t worry. Everybody goes through such times. Nobody is ever able to breeze through life without facing difficulties. It’s at this point that you pick yourself up and get stronger...” “Strong enough to match... her?” George asked, glancing back the way he was looking earlier. Lance paused and took a look. There was Mindy in the new training area... “Goodness, she’s strong.” She was crippled in terms of cultivation. Her bond-mate had practically died. Yet here she was ignoring the regular systems of using the gym machine by setting specific weights and using the entire machine as a barbell. What does a girl like that need cultivation for? She was already stronger than most martialists below the Earth Qi level. “She used to be

A month passed peacefully.Well, not entirely peacefully. As more and more refugees flooded Fal’Herim and Kara-Goth, many spontaneous conflicts broke out. People fought for food, for resources, for space, for culture, for dignity, for attention, for fun, for the sake of bad tempers, or even for practically no reason at all. The Order of Light had their hands full bringing people in, and the Order of Steel had their hands full keeping them in line while the Order of Sand scrambled about recruiting more and more people to scavenge food in the Wildlands trying to keep everyone fed.Despite their best efforts, halfway through the month, the Xue Clan overshot them in the amount of food brought in. The sheer volume of trade they did in Xiao Yan’s world had risen to well over three billion Black in that month alone. Roughly one billion Black was spent buying food and herbs. The money spent was Mindy’s cut, but the effort was entirely theirs since Mindy herse

At this point, Craggy Falls was really starved for skilled labor. There were plenty of refugees, but the biggest need for labor right now was for solar technicians, and most of those refugees couldn’t tell which way was up when it came to solar panels. They could be trained enough to install panels, if someone techier handled the tricky stuff. The bulk of the installation process had already been dumbed down to plug-and-play by Ermine’s best efforts. Even so, the work was delicate, precise and required the use of late Class 3 tools. Part of that was because Ermine had her autoforges churning out Nanowire Solar Cells designed to absorb the full sectrum of sunlight both visible and invisible. Already they covered roughly half the water surfaces of the Seven Lakes. These were enough to power all the aquaponics pumps and cycling systems, along with some few structures, for lighting and cooling and such. Given that they had spent five million Clira for that tech,