“Scenes of the Five Elements… so does that mean we need to balance their numbers?”
In the room, Yuwen Haowen furrowed his brows as he began to review the content that he, along with Gong Huanwu and dozens of others, had recently created.
He was planning how to increase the sparse number of Fire- and Metal-related scenes.
……
The matter he had been worried about finally saw a critical breakthrough.
Huan Bao’er returned to her room and lay down casually on the velvet soft bed.
“By the time this is all over, it should give us quite a bit of production experience.”
After a moment of thought, she got up, slid open the drawer, and looked at the wooden pomegranate pendant inside.
A few days ago, she had heard that her so-called goddaughter, egged on by Yang Zicang and that Zoro, seemed to be secretly cooking up something.
In the following days, aside from mobilizing a large number of Lost Thought Wavebands, nothing else happened.
Since no news had leaked out publicly, it was highly likely that these youngsters were up to some sneaky business in the Spirit World.
“Hehe, little Jiaoma, it seems you also have the potential to directly enter my group.”
Huan Bao’er smiled as she flipped her palm, and another delicate white hand emerged. Like a rippling distortion, her whole form transformed into a majestic, elf-like figure of pure white.
Then, she hung the modified wood-pomegranate pendant around her neck and vanished from the bed entirely.
……
“Like this, right? Just curve one side a bit?”
“That’s right.”
In the Psychic Illusion Field, Yang Zicang swiftly pressed a curved indentation into the longer edge of two scenes.
Meanwhile, Jiaoma was dismantling decorative elements like mud piles, floor tiles, and wallpaper in the projections of the Fortress of Myriad Paths and the Crown of Green Lotus. Compared to when she started, her speed, technical fluency, and accuracy were now incomparable.
Boboli stood close to them; with the two present, the boy could rely on his own imagination to conjure certain scenes, which Jiaoma then effortlessly stabilized. This was all thanks to the continuous use of the “Right of Mental Manifestation” on both their parts.
The three, busy at work, had no idea that an extra person had already appeared beside them.
Huan Bao’er looked somewhat puzzled at the scenes that kept appearing and quickly vanishing in the air.
“Are these guys practicing?”
Huan Bao’er crouched in front of the boy, looking at the clock placed before him.
She watched Boboli intently tinkering with the clock’s internal parts, thinking to herself: These kids are secretly doing this kind of thing here? What are they planning, practicing to become competition city designers in the future?
Also, where did this little yellow-haired kid come from?
After watching for a while, Huan Bao’er sat on the grass, hugged her knees, and let the wind of the spirit world blow against her, as if she had returned to the carefree days of herding sheep on the grasslands long ago.
After staying for a while, Huan Bao’er, whose body was translucent to begin with, vanished from the spot.
After she left, Boboli, who had been staring at the clock for a long time, imagined a music box—something he had found in Pivot Town the past two days, and memorizing its structure didn’t take much time.
Next, he imagined a stationary crane.
Looking at these items, Boboli scratched his head a bit irritably.
“Sister Jiao, that workshop of Officer Kroft you mentioned, I really want to go in and play!”
The Fortress of Myriad Paths was Kroft’s first masterpiece. I’ve heard it originally contained many reward elements, but unfortunately, this blueprint doesn’t show them.
“Is that supposed to be a playground for people?! Although it looks like a game, don’t you dare treat it as one. It can be deadly.”
“I…” Boboli’s hands itched as he rubbed them over the phantom image before him.
Jiao Ma narrowed her eyes and stared at him: “Don’t get any ideas about modifying this thing to have the same content as that officer’s work.”
“Hehe, it just doesn’t make sense for a Demon King’s Castle not to have treasure chests.”
“Don’t you dare!”
……
“Today is the day of the review!”
In the office, over seventy people cheered, looking at Gong Huanwu.
Yuwen Haowen stepped forward and shook Gong Huanwu’s hand:
“Dear Officer Huanwu, thank you for giving me this opportunity.”
Gong Huanwu placed one hand on his, and the two shook hands vigorously.
“I must also thank you, Mr. Haowen, for your dedication. Building the Demon Ying Hall outside the Fate Track is no easy feat!”
“Indeed! But with this experience, I think I’ve taken a big step closer to my dream of becoming an Arena City designer.”
After several rounds of mutual encouragement.
Yuwen Haowen checked the displayed illusion once more.
Confirming it was correct, he solemnly handed over the mental spectrum synchronization device, similar to a group leader token, to Gong Huanwu with both hands.
“I’ve already signed my name inside, along with the name of Starlight Illusion.”
“Wait for our good news.”
Goang Huanwu took it and rushed non-stop to Huan Bao’er, who was already waiting in an ancient control room.
Inside the room, Croft’s eyes fell on Gong Huanwu as he ran in.
“Come on, we’ve been waiting for you, huh.”
……
It was mid-December.
The design was temporarily over, and Yang Zicang had taken half a month off.
In reality, he might resign directly after that half month, because by then it would be the end of the month—the start of his city’s ranking battle.
Fu Qiyong didn’t say much. He had long heard that Yang Zicang was receiving special attention from Officer Croft. That immense workload would have been grueling even for himself. So he agreed to Yang Zicang’s leave quite readily.
“Have a good rest. If it weren’t for the fact that the photo can’t be given out casually, I would have reapplied it for you. But I suppose it doesn’t matter much to you anyway.”
“Thank you, Group Leader Fu, for looking after me. I’m really ashamed—I haven’t been of much help to you all.”
“You did work for a month, didn’t you? And you contributed to the construction of the Demon Palace this time. It’s not like you didn’t help. When you leave, I’ll give you what you want. Officer Montai gave it to me long ago.”
“Thank you, Group Leader!”
Yang Zicang couldn’t wait to head back and start building again. The time-sequence expansion state could end at any moment, and he wouldn’t complete it in time if he didn’t hurry. But by now, he was no longer as anxious as before—the other two Demon Palaces had been submitted earlier that day. And only now did he realize that the lost Illusion Company was still renovating the Green Lotus Crown.
This delighted him—so the company had a backup plan after all.
Even if he couldn’t finish his work, it wouldn’t matter anymore.
It wasn’t until now that he had regained a bit of clarity—what he had been doing was indeed unreliable.
Building an arena city with just three or four people?
That was pure wishful thinking.
…..
In the quiet night, Huan Bao’er put on the gray-black psychokinetic pendant that resembled a pomegranate for the third time.
Seeing the three figures still bustling about, Huan Bao’er gradually materialized as she walked over from the distant grass, like a majestic fairy emerging from a dream.
“What are you all busy with?” she deliberately asked in a stern tone.
“Ah! Foster Mother Huanhuan.”
Jiaoma exclaimed, her face full of surprise and awkward embarrassment.
The thing she had been praying would never happen had finally occurred today. Little Jiaoma knew well that her foster mother had a wood-grain amulet capable of entering the mental mirage.
From Yang Zicang’s employee card in the distance, star-trail-like lights shimmered and suddenly appeared on the ground before the two.
“What are you little rascals up to?”
“General Director, we…”
There was a hint of embarrassment in Yang Zicang’s voice as well.
He hadn’t expected Huan Bao’er to be so bored as to wear the amulet and sleep.
“We didn’t know that you, General Director, also had a contingency plan in place. So, a month ago, we discussed it privately and wanted to see if we could come up with a design draft to rebuild a Demon Hero Hall. I know it sounds a bit fanciful.”
A glint of light flashed in Huan Bao’er’s eyes.
She turned her head to look at Boboli, who stood uneasily to one side, and snorted:
“Are you three people delusional enough to think you can build a Demon Hero Hall? Hah, truly you’re like newborn calves unafraid of tigers.”
Hearing this assessment, Boboli felt a twinge of discomfort. He knew the woman before him, who seemed to have stepped out of a fairy-tale world, must hold a high status, but her instant discouragement rubbed him the wrong way.
Before Boboli could dwell on it further, the woman exuding an intimidating aura turned to look at him.
“Among the three of you, what are you responsible for, little yellow-haired one?” Huan Bao’er asked with a smile that kept people at a distance.
“I…”
“He’s the chief designer.”
“Ha, ha. What, you three even set up a ‘tiny action team’? Oh my, how impressive—you even managed to snag a ‘chief designer.’ Not bad, little Jiaoma, and you, little celebrity Mr. New Ma Chao.”
Yang Zicang let out an awkward cough.
Jiaoma, blushing, explained for the boy: “Godmother, Boboli is really amazing. He managed to get us this far in such a short time. I feel like even if we submitted this now, it might be approved.”
Daydreaming. After silently mocking that thought, Huan Bao’er looked at Boboli.
The boy quickly said: “Sister Chief Officer, Sister Jiaoma’s exaggerating a bit. Right now, we’ve basically just finished the various scenes—we haven’t even done the assembly yet.”
“So, you only have fragmented scenes, without even a framework?”
The first two times they came in, they were busy with all sorts of mess. She hadn’t set eyes on the finished product even once.
This third time, what she saw were more scenes, stacked layer upon chaotic layer, blotting out the sky and the earth.
Although it’s impossible to create the Demon Hall, the fact that these kids have managed to build such an exaggerated scene over the past few days is really commendable. At least they’re wholeheartedly devoted to the company. Huan Bao’er wanted to praise and encourage them, but she held back in the end, and instead said with a smile:
“Give it up. You won’t succeed. Time is almost up, and at most, by the day after tomorrow in real time, I’ll withdraw the application for Temporal Sequence Expansion. You know that maintaining that state continuously will have a severely destructive impact on the Fate Track.”
“The day after tomorrow?!” Jiaoma was stunned; she hadn’t expected her godmother to deliver such bad news the moment she appeared.
“No, Director General, please support us. We already have a framework,” Yang Zicang said, glancing at Boboli, whose face had changed in an instant, and then addressing the woman’s Psychic Body. “Actually, we’re already ninety percent done. All we need is the final assembly.”
“Ninety percent?”
Huan Bao’er looked toward the scenes in the sky, which were almost all identical in shape. Their outer forms were the same; only the scenes within them differed.
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