While Minos and Ruth traveled through the Cromwell Kingdom, the group from Stone Island had already left the Dry City after receiving Dillian's orders on the Black Plain.
Butler Dillian ordered 100 high-level grade-1 spiritual weapons and a low-level grade-2 spiritual gathering array.
With these requests, he prepared the Black Plain Army with more weapons available to soldiers, which would soon increase in number. As for the spiritual gathering array, that would allow more people to enjoy greater spiritual concentration in the city.
After all, every day that passed, more families were coming from the Yellow City. As a result, the demand for new homes in the Dry City was on the rise, with the need to build new buildings in places that were not yet affected by the old spiritual arrays.
Thus, in 2 weeks, when these new items arrived in the territory of Minos, the city could receive the improvements related to this, improving the local quality of life.
Simultaneously, the Dry City's two alchemists had begun receiving their ingredients regularly and were already delivering the pills ordered by the local population!
Due to the cultivation level of Davis and Edric, who were both at level 39, they were only able to refine 120 pills together per month. But for the time being, there was not much to do, and the population of the Dry City did not care about the delivery rate of these two alchemists.
After all, until recently, they couldn't even dream of paying for pills!
However, by the time Minos left for the Spiritual Tournament, the two alchemists had already delivered over 100 pills, which had already aided numerous city residents to overcome their bottlenecks!
The people who received these first pills were pleased, and even some of them, who were in their last years of life, were now full of vitality.
They had even gone back to work!
As a result, the city's climate was delightful at the moment. At the same time, almost everyone felt hopeful for an even better future!
...
Meanwhile, Dillian had dispatched a small group of the Black Plain Army to the City of Waters to conduct a local survey, infiltrating and living there.
The group's objective was to discover all the crucial information about the City of Waters, such as, for example, the family that was behind that region.
This mission would take just over a month when they finally would return home to report their findings.
With this, the butler hoped to devise a plan so that when the Black Plain Army recruited more members, they could send other teams to that city to attract workers.
...
Anyway, a few days had passed since Minos, and Ruth found Abby's group. At this time, the two youths were arriving in the capital of the Cromwell Kingdom while flying on Ruth's great white eagle.
Quickly, the silhouette of Capital City appeared on the horizon when White began to descend slowly. At first glance, this city looked as big as Old Stone, the capital of Stone Island.
However, this city was still a little smaller. There were just over 5.5 million inhabitants, losing to Old Stone.
However, despite having a slightly smaller population, due to its proximity to the Flaming Empire, Capital City was much more developed than the capital of Stone Island.
After all, even if some of Stone Island's powers were related to empires, their territory was still a long way from any great power!
Just to give you an idea, the closest empire to Stone Island was the Flaming Empire itself, which was only a few weeks away. However, for the island inhabitants to reach the Western Empire, the trip would take almost ten months, even in spiritual beasts of the 6th stage of cultivation!
The Spiritual World was vast, so the distances between the extreme points of the Central Continent were simply absurd!
Anyway, as they approached the entrance to the city, Ruth said to Minos, with a provocative smile on her face. "Some interesting things are going on here. Maybe you will regret not coming before..."
Minos then hugged Ruth from behind while his mouth was at the height of the young woman's neck. He then curiously asked as he touched Ruth's sensitive parts. "Oh? Is that so? Why would I do that?"
Sensing Minos' movements, Ruth blushed as her heart beat faster. "When the Spiritual Tournament is going to take place in a certain location, a few months before the tests, a group from the empire is sent to build some structures of the competition."
"For example, for the many competitors who arrive before the tournament, there are ways to strengthen themselves even more, without taking too many risks."
"There is a structure that they always bring to this competition, which rewards people with the highest cultivation speed. For simplicity, this structure has an array, which can measure the speed of cultivation of the people who are training within it."
"There is also an almost high-level of spiritual concentration there, so the speed of cultivation there also helps cultivators. Finally, this array sets up a classification of the best cultivation speeds, giving specific prizes for each of the positions."
"Oh! Interesting. But this is not enough to make me regret it since I have no interest in exposing my cultivation speed to so many strangers." Minos said as he released Ruth's body.
Until now, only those very close to Minos knew how good his cultivation speed was. Therefore, this feature had never caused problems for him before.
However, suppose so many members of influential families in the north of the Central Continent knew about this fact. In that case, Minos and his forces could be in extreme danger!
After all, only high-level techniques could increase someone's cultivation that much!
Ruth then continued. "But there is more to it. Event organizers also set up a fighting arena in which killing and maiming are prohibited. It can also pay a reward for the best cultivators. And so, those who have talent, but don't come from large families, can improve their strength and make the competition more interesting."
"Hmm, I understand. That is a good initiative. Maybe I will copy it to my Dry City." Minos said with a smile on his face.
This trip was also helping him understand things that could be done to strengthen a population. After all, Minos' knowledge was related to cultivation and essential details of the Spiritual World. But he didn't know about these ingenious ideas for improving a city!
"This may be a good idea. Are you thinking about running your own tournament?" Ruth asked with a curious smile on her face. She liked how Minos always cared about his subordinates and his city. And that was also why she had attended almost all of Minos' meetings in the Dry City.
"I can do that in the future, yes. But I was referring to building a structure specialized in these events. So, fixedly, the people of the Dry City could compete and improve their cultivation speed." Minos calmly said as he felt the white eagle land on the ground.
"I get it..."
After saying this, the two youths left White in a place for tall beasts like this one, and they head towards the central area of Capital City.
The moment they entered the place, Minos could soon see how excited this place was. So many young people like him and Ruth came and went with smiles on their faces, while some had an arrogant look as they passed through the streets.
Many people were going to participate in the Spiritual Tournament. However, there were even more people who were here to watch!
After all, future specialists from the northern region of the Central Continent would be introduced to the world in a few days!
And for some people, the Spiritual Tournament was a lottery ticket, where they and their families could rise to a new level!
As Minos and Ruth moved through the city's outskirts, they soon arrived in a region with very tall, glass-clad buildings, where the beautiful Ruth said there was a good hotel.
It was almost night now, and the two youths had decided to go out and explore just the next day after they rested and had a lot of fun tonight...
And it was not long before Minos and Ruth entered the reception of a very fancy hotel, where many people came and went.
The entrance hall was quite large, with a marble floor and several high-quality paintings on the walls of this place.
Ruth then took the lead and led Minos straight to the receptionist.
She had already made a reservation at that place before, and with that, she only needed to check-in. And even though she previously booked two rooms, that was not a problem. She just needed to cancel the reservation for one of them...