"You heard that, Catherine. Have someone get things ready..."
"Mm, right, one more thing. Xiao Feng, what's the population of Maple Leaf Territory now?"
Seeing that both [Empress] Jiang Lan and [Emperor] Gu Xiaobei wanted to visit Maple Leaf Territory,
Lan Qingyou immediately wanted Catherine, who stood behind her, to make preparations.
But just then, she suddenly remembered something.
She turned to look at Xiao Feng.
"As of this morning, Maple Leaf Territory has a population of 2,138,214."
"Of those, 830,000 main-force members of the Maple Leaf Knights Order and their families live in Lakeside City."
"The rest are spread across the other villages, handling logistics such as farming, animal husbandry, and mining."
Xiao Feng rattled off the figures smoothly when asked.
Lan Qingyou raised an eyebrow at what she heard.
Well, damn.
"As of this morning"?
Looks like Xiao Feng checks these things every day.
Otherwise, he couldn't possibly remember the exact figure down to the last person.
Then again...
Before I left, Lakeside City was being expanded to accommodate a million people.
I even had people draw up proper plans back then.
The whole point was to take in large numbers of displaced farmers, artisans, and some alchemy-related industries to expand the territory.
So much happened after I left and Xiao Feng took over.
The Magic Power explosion, the outbreak of contamination...
There should definitely have been huge numbers of refugees.
Yet now, there were only a little over two million people left.
That could only mean one thing.
Over these eleven hundred years or so,
apart from the "period of turmoil on the Karim Continent" during the first hundred-odd years, the overall trend in Maple Leaf Territory's population
had been a gradual decline.
Eventually, it had fallen to its current figure.
"Two million, one hundred and thirty-eight