Since Penny was willing to cooperate, Zong Shen was willing to give her some face.
His view of talent was that attitude mattered more than ability.
As long as the attitude was right, it did not matter even if one's abilities were somewhat lacking.
Lord privileges and various buff items could effectively make up for shortcomings in ability.
In fact, in terms of growth potential alone, ordinary residents might not be much worse than lords.
When Maryl and Howie had first joined the territory, their aptitudes had not actually been all that high.
Yet both of them had continued to grow alongside the territory's development.
It was simply that their rate of growth had slowed somewhat recently.
This alone was enough to show that the growth potential of residents was no inferior to that of lords.
As long as residents were placed in suitable positions, they would learn, adapt, and gradually grow on their own.
By comparison, residents with high aptitude and strong abilities merely had a higher starting point.
That was why he was more willing to cultivate obedient residents.
He did not remain there to hinder Penny's work.
She had quite a few matters to coordinate.
The miscellaneous supplies throughout the city added up to an astronomical quantity.
If not for the full twenty million people available to carry out her orders, sorting through this batch of supplies would by no means have been easy.
Even with the information assistance Zong Shen had provided, completing the task of gathering the supplies would still take at least another twenty-odd hours.
And there would probably be around a 15% to 20% omission rate.
Ultimately, there was simply too little time.
If they had ten days or half a month to slowly scour the place, they could easily strip the Great