Yu Lin Bloodhawk ignored the silent Yiluo Chenfeng. With his head lowered, he drew line after line on the map with a ruler. He estimated that if he allowed refugees from the Kingdom of Stormwind to enter, vast numbers would likely pour in within a short time-somewhere between thirty thousand and a hundred thousand.
That meant making sweeping changes to his plans. If that many people really arrived, he might not be able to sell a single grain of the food he had worked so hard to stockpile the previous year. But he did not want to lose such a huge sum of gold, either. He needed to find a way to pass that expense on to the Human Kingdom.
Gaddediwa was right: human refugees should be taken in by human nations. The main difficulties lay in supplying food and daily necessities, and managing the refugees themselves. Food was so expensive now, and the war had spread far beyond what the humans had anticipated. The mass exodus from the Kingdom of Stormwind had placed considerable pressure on every nation.
With insufficient food and poor management, refugee riots could easily break out. In wartime, food was more precious than gold. Taking in large numbers of refugees meant spending heavily on daily necessities. He needed to convert those expenses into gold and demand reimbursement from the human nations.
He therefore had to find a way to intercept Sylvanas's negotiating delegation en route and discuss the matter with them first. He believed the Human Kingdom would gladly pay the costs-or at least the Kingdom of Stormwind would. Without its people, how could it recruit soldiers? But before contacting Sylvanas's delegation, he had to make the appropriate changes to his original development plans.
On the map of the Seaside Plain, he drew a straight