White Phoenix Fief entered a feverish period of construction.
All ninety-eight young men and women were put to work.
Farming came first. The first field had been cleared, and the youths carefully sowed seeds in the soil, rich with Spirit Force.
This first field was best tended by hand. The Skeleton Workers were too dim-witted for Bai Xiaowen to trust them with the initial sowing. They would take over only after farming reached a certain scale.
In the fief's level-three Spirit Force environment, crops matured quickly. Judging by the Three Kingdoms Plane in the Spirit Realm, wheat and rice could be harvested in about two months, with no need to wait for a spring green-up. Vegetables took even less time.
Next came mineral resources. Bai Xiaowen sent several teammates across the fief, each with a small team of Skeleton Workers, to prospect for mineral veins. Spirit Crystal Veins were the priority.
Finding a Spirit Crystal Vein should not have been hard. Evolvers could sense concentrations of Spirit Force keenly, and land containing a vein would have a higher concentration than the surrounding area.
Yet Spirit Crystal Veins proved elusive. Perhaps exposed deposits were rare. Whatever the reason, none of the prospecting teams found one.
Instead, they discovered an open-pit gold mine and an iron mine.
Bai Xiaowen immediately ordered the Skeleton Workers to mark out land near both mines and build tunnels and shafts.
Han Xu's blacksmithing profession finally came into its own. He chose several talented youths as his first apprentices and taught them to use tools, smelt iron ore, and forge ironware.
Their first products were household tools, which the fief urgently needed.
With iron shovels, for instance, the Skeleton Workers could clear wasteland more easily instead of digging with their hands—or claws.
There were iron pots, too.