After the two girls went shopping, Grey returned to his room to rest and take care of a few things, making some phone calls along the way.

Two hours passed quickly, and Lia finally came home carrying a bunch of shopping bags in her hands.

All of them were luxurious brands and each and every one of such items cost thousands of federation credits.

"You're back." Grey came out of his room and greeted her.

"Yeah." Lia said with a happy look on her face.

Lia always loved shopping sprees and even back in Nova City she occasionally did it, now Sister Valeria had taken her directly to the top luxury brands in Ashspire City.

Ashspire City in terms of business and variety was at the top, it was after all one of the main business hubs in the southern region and there was not a single brand that wasn't in Ashspire City.

And people from other cities occasionally entered Ashspire City to purchase items and more.

Of course, the people could still enter the city as long as they had a tourist permit which one could easily apply for by going into the Ascension Province website, that was what he was doing when he was cooped up in his room the last two hours, he swiftly made a new website and merged the other main websites for the cities together and he also made sure to publish it quickly and give it a soft announcement. Now those who had visited the sites before would receive the notification about the mergement.

He also made some other preparation for the cities. For example, he was going to make the law enforcers visit some shops across the four cities for a few words. It was a large province and due to that there were many people that did not pay commercial taxes.

Every shop, every business and every company that existed under the four cities had to pay commercial taxes depending on the size of them, small businesses or shops only had to pay little and the ones that generated more revenue naturally had to pay more, but the thing was the majority of the people had not even bothered paying taxes for years.

And now that he was the city lord, things would be different, nothing and no one could escape his eyes, all the information was laid bare before him and since that was the case, he would naturally make them pay the tax.

The city would not run itself would it?

There was also the matter of the three families he expelled from the province. Their family mansions were basically deserted right now and he had contacted Orion to confiscate the items and all the treasures within their mansions, it would be beneficial for the city after all and considering what they were doing, they must be drowning in millions of gold coins.

Smart men knew how to turn black money into something useful after all, and considering the family heads it would be effortless for them to convert the black to white money and the best option was gold coins. He had seen many transactions related to gold in their database.

He would use this gold along with the gold he had inside his secret realm and sell them in massive bulks and fund the development of infrastructures outside the outer ring which was now completely deserted.

There were also the arrays inside the secret realm utilized by Brandon for herb farming, if he utilized that array in the province and boosted its effects somehow, wouldn't he be drowning in millions?

If he did things right, he could dominate the agricultural field in the entirety of the southern region within months. There were also cattle farms, he could deploy arrays to nourish them and increase the quality of meat with cosmic energy as well.

Who was he? He was a 2 star formation master.

In the entirety of the southern region, the amount of 2 star formation masters could be counted on one hand and those people were far beneath what he was capable of doing.

That aside, he believed he should be able to do something with all the gold coins he had lying around and the taxes would also be beneficial, the city lord funds deployed by the federation were also available, Orion had not touched much of it yet.

Speaking of city funds given by the federation, a 2nd rate province like his received a massive amount of federation credits for development per year, the more cities you had under you the more you would get and not only that, a city lord could directly request resources for evolutionary purposes from the federation with a set limit quota and Grey naturally planned on using it to his advantage. He would make sure that he depleted all of his quota by the end of this year itself. He also had the privilege to get techniques from the federation.

He would get himself more techniques that were only available in the floating cities.

He would use those resources to push his rank faster. He still had to unify the southern region and after that go to other regions to get the chaos seal fragments and eventually go to the floating cities to have a few words with the federation master himself.

And before doing all that, he wanted to pay a visit to the ice wall at the edge of the southern region as well.

He wanted to see if his comprehension could help him with anything related to the seal and quite honestly he believed it might actually let him comprehend the seal.

And once he fully comprehended it and with the power of true origin insight he was sure that he would be able to break it and go past Starcrest Continent to find the other seals.

But before all this, he wanted to go meet Richard, it had been a while since they met, he wanted to have a long chat with him and also maybe discuss things about how he appeared on this planet in the first place.

His and Alissa's origin was most definitely from the starry sky after all.

And there was his own origin, he too was most likely from the starry sky.

But on the other hand, Little Hong's words resonated in his mind when he thought about it.

She told him that he was beyond the river of reincarnation and beyond fate itself, if he was beyond fate then wouldn't that mean he would be parentless?

But then again, the timeline contradicted itself, if that was truly the case then he would need to have nexus energy at that time, but only recently had he formed nexus energy.

It simply did not make sense and understanding Little Hong's words was worse than staring at a wall for several hours.

"What are you thinking about, Grey?" Lia raised an eyebrow, he seemed deep in thought when she saw the shopping bags in her hands.

Could it be that he was sad she did not have any gifts for him? Lia was bewildered.

Should she go back and buy something for him? But they went shopping for clothing. Would Grey like to wear lingerie and expensive girly clothes?

Lia was dumbfounded, what was she thinking?

"Nothing, I was just thinking about some things for the city." Grey shook his head. He had trailed off from the matters of the city to the matters of the world itself.

To him, his thoughts trailing off like this in the middle of something was the norm.

"Oh, is that so?" Lia nodded and then smiled and spoke. "Come, I'll show you what me and Sister Valeria bought."

An excited look appeared on her face as she finished her words. She wanted to show all the new outfits she had brought today.

She quickly grabbed hold of Grey's hand and dragged him into the room that was arranged for her by Grey.

...

"Mi~?" Mimi tilted her head as it stared at Little Hong who sat cross legged on her bed.

"Un." Little Hong nodded as if understanding it.

She stretched her arms out and lightly poked Mimi's white fluffy face.

Grey had let the little cat out after a while to accompany Little Hong, not only could he keep her in check but also let her play with the little cat who used to play alone in the mansion before.

"Mimi." Seeing Little Hong poke it, Mimi jumped onto her lap.

It nuzzled itself against Little Hong's small body.

Seeing this, Little Hong was dumbfounded. She froze for a bit, then slowly hugged the little thing in her arms.

"Little thing. What are you?" Little Hong tilted her head as Mimi looked up at her in confusion. "I sense Nihility."

Mimi froze at the word, ears twitching. "Mimi~?"

For a split second, Little Hong's form glitched, her outline warping like a reflection on broken water. Her pupils distorted, losing focus entirely. The room seemed to fall silent around her.

Her expression went blank.

Slowly, almost mechanically, she lowered her gaze to Mimi.

"Fluffy," she muttered, touching the soft fur… but her voice held no warmth this time, just a hollow echo that didn't belong to a child.

Another brief flicker flashed and then her eyes cleared.

"You are just a normal cat." She nodded with a serious expression.

Mimi blinked, tail puffing slightly.

"…Mimi?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.