“He tricked us, the bastard.”
“Dwight didn’t say a word either; that old fox is slippery.”
Huan Bao’er thought for a moment and said, “How about this: I’ll submit it for evaluation for you. If we can get the approval of the Fate Track, then your design draft can be selected.”
“This… no…” Boboli had been looking forward to this moment, but now he directly refused.
“No, Chief Executive ma’am, we still don’t know where the key point is.” Yang Zicang also looked at her and said.
Boboli anxiously tried to persuade:
“Isn’t there still the last seven days? We can try again. And besides, we were just about to start assembling the gears.”
“Hmph, don’t try to fool me. For someone with the Right of Mental Manifestation, putting together mere three thousand gears wouldn’t even take a full day.”
Well, it turned out she was just like Croft, treating people as workhorses.
“Also, I can come and help too.” Huan Bao’er said.
“Hah, has Foster Mother Huanhuan come to make fun of us again?”
Just then, Jiaoma stepped out from behind Huan Bao’er with a cheerful demeanor, striding proudly with small steps and swinging her little hands.
The three of them all looked at her.
The young girl froze, sensing something was wrong, and asked: “What happened?”
“Hmph, little Jiaoma, well done.” Huan Bao’er patted the surprised girl’s shoulder for the first time, then her body gradually turned transparent and disappeared in the Spirit World.
Jiaoma said: “What did godmom say just now? Your atmosphere is so strange.”
“The General Director insists on taking our Magic English Hall to submit for review.” Yang Zicang explained to Jiaoma while busy working.
“Really? Ah, no wonder she’s my godmom…”
“Don’t get too excited. It’s because the review of the Green Lotus Crown didn’t pass, so they’re taking ours to Parliament for review.” Boboli said somewhat dejectedly, “We haven’t found the key point yet.”
Jiaoma stared at him with her pearl-like eyes, her eyelashes blinking.
“No way… Could it be… the last one…”
“That’s right, the Five Elements aren’t the key.”
Jiaoma bowed her head in thought: “But if it’s not the Five Elements, then what is it?”
They had no clue at all.
They’d thought it was a perfectly solved problem, but it had been standing like a mountain all along, without so much as a tremor.
“Let’s get to work first. We’ll start installing the turntable and the moving mechanism.”
Jiaoma pouted as she began to assist Yang Zicang with the task. With magical items that far exceeded their own abilities to help, the assembly work in the Spirit World wasn’t too tiring.
The scene in the sky gradually took shape.
Gusts of wind swept across the grassland. Boboli watched the magnificent and bizarre architecture he had designed gradually take on a concrete form.
Inside, over two thousand eight hundred information wavebands from the Old World became neatly arranged “rooms,” slowly rotating and floating on one disk after another.
Massive threaded pillars, varying in length like the teeth of a music box or a horizontal clock’s gears, began to interlock densely one another.
Some pathways dismantled from the Fortress of Myriad Paths, altered in color and texture, connected to it like ribbons; panels of water dismantled from the Crown of Green Lotus cascaded down from certain points like waterfalls.
“How beautiful.”
Water flowed down near the scene, some following the pathways, forming spiraling canals that enveloped these mechanical structures. Curtains of water, spreading from the pathways, seemed to veil the interior like gossamer, making it alluringly elusive.
“These water curtains help maintain an air of mystery, preventing outsiders from fully seeing the movements inside.”
Boboli gazed at the pathways on his creation.
Through some large intersections and pathways, one could quickly reach distant rooms far away—this was Boboli’s means to achieve rapid intersection and collision after mirroring the two cities.
“A perfect work.”
Yang Zicang, who had randomly embedded rooms of different colors into the wheel, looked down from above at the magnificent gear architecture and silently marveled.
After crafting another gear several kilometers in diameter, the employee card in his hand flashed. A golden thread spread like a trajectory to Boboli’s front, and Yang Zicang instantly appeared beside the boy.
“Don’t be upset,” Yang Zicang said, standing with him to gaze up at the vast structure that would astound everyone in the city:
“I think your design has, in some ways, even surpassed the Green Lotus Crown. It should pass review.”
Jiaoma also walked over.
The three of them, each with different feelings, admired the unique Arena City before them.
“But,” Boboli looked at them both, “Brother Yang, and Jiaoma, I… I feel unsatisfied.”
Jiaoma said, “Hey, what nonsense are you talking about? Mother is about to submit it for review, and there’s no time to make further changes. Don’t cause trouble.”
Yang Zicang turned to look at him.
Boboli clenched his hands, seeming to gather his courage as he gazed at them: “Do you… do you trust me?”
Yang Zicang didn’t understand why this younger brother, about four or five years his junior, was suddenly saying things like that.
“Of course, you’re the best,” Yang Zicang comforted him.
“I want to add some more elements.”
Boboli looked at them, his eyes flickering, like a child who knows he’s doing something wrong.
Yet he still spoke out:
“No matter how rich these scenes are, or how intense the collisions are, I feel they’re imperfect, because for me, a crucial part is missing.”
“What else is missing? This is already perfect.”
Suddenly, Jiaoma’s expression changed. “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about adding those?”
Just as Yang Zicang was about to ask what the crucial element was, he saw Boppoli say to Jiaoma:
“If it stays like this, not many people will enter. We won’t even need the mirrored venue, because from the start, they’ll think of who’s most likely to make it to the end in a city.”
Yang Zicang opened his mouth slightly.
Seems… there’s some truth to those words as well…
Boppoli hesitated and said,
“The rewards from the Magic Elite Hall that the Parliament offers—no doubt they’ll be precious, but…”
“No matter how good the rewards are, they won’t go in!” Jiaoma murmured.
“They’ll only think that the Magic Elite Arena has nothing to do with them, that it’s destined for the city’s strongest! From the very start, they know they’re just fillers.”
Jiaoma’s small face showed a flicker of struggle before she turned around and said,
“If you don’t have the strength, isn’t it the right thing to stay out for now? Doing so actually saves their lives.”
“As long as this time there’s a Magic Elite Hall-level arena available, they’ll realize there might be more in the future. They’ll spend the next few years working to improve themselves… And besides, the Parliament isn’t just offering the final reward; the stage rewards should be pretty enticing, too.”
Boppoli suddenly clenched his fists in excitement and said,
“Although there are stage-based rewards and final prizes provided by the council… But if along the way, everyone is only focused on the assessment and cannot become stronger…”
Cannot become stronger! These four words struck like a thunderbolt into the hearts of Yang Zicang and Jiaoma.
Boboli’s slightly agitated voice echoed in their ears.
“They should also have the right to become stronger. The Demon Palace of Heroes should offer new possibilities to the vast number of ordinary people! As long as they have the desire to improve, these are the kind of people the Demon Palace should be selecting!”
Yang Zicang and Jiaoma stood frozen in place.
New possibilities…
“They should be able to acquire weapons and tools here to contend with the powerful. That way, they might spark new miracles, just like shimmering light granting them newfound strength!”
“Shimmering… miracles?”
“New possibilities?”
Yang Zicang murmured softly.
He thought of himself, growing overnight into someone capable of defeating a Moon Shadow-level enemy because of a twist of fate—though to him, it felt like an accumulation of a long time.
Boboli turned to look at them, speaking as if both pleading and issuing an ultimatum:
“I… I want to add some rewards that, while trivial to the strong, are crucial for the weak. Otherwise, I won’t allow it to come to pass. My Arena is not a showcase for the powerful.”
Jiaoma’s expression shifted.
Yang Zicang took a deep breath.
—You’ve only offered a trial, without giving them the chance to grow stronger…
This seemed to echo what Executive Dwight Croft had said, except that he reserved such opportunities for those who could afford the price in time.
Boboli gritted his teeth and voiced the most heartfelt wish of this young boy’s heart:
“I want to give everyone a little hope. Even if it’s just temporary, let them know they could become people who snatch sustenance from the powerful, or even, or even confront them as equals.”
Jiaoma looked at him. “Hope? The hope of the weak…”
Exactly, it is a power that grants them courage.
Suddenly, a tingling sensation shot from Yang Zicang’s spine to his scalp.
Slap! Yang Zicang’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
“That’s right, it’s hope. The most crucial design of the Magic Hero Hall should be the hope for becoming stronger!”
The two exchanged a glance, and Jiaoma suddenly understood, smacking her palm with her fist.
“This is the key point! I believe we’ve found the key point!”
“Exactly, assessment isn’t the goal!”
“Giving people hope is what matters! This is what all those exquisitely designed Magic Hero Halls, rejected or suppressed by the council, lacked.”
Yang Zicang looked at Boboli: “If it’s just a points system, I can do it too. I can add thousands in a single day. But let me be clear, this will be available to everyone.”
“You guys agreed, that’s great! We can put out the treasure chests!”
Boboli cheered.
“But there’s a new problem.” Yang Zicang turned to Boboli. “For the extra rewards, we’ll have to contribute them ourselves.”
“Huh?” Boboli looked at the two, and his spirit instantly deflated.
But soon, Yang Zicang looked up.
“Boboli.”
“What?”
“We probably won’t be able to buy the shop anytime soon.”
“You mean…”
“All of our temporal energies will be used to acquire those high-level ability spheres, as well as Chrono Weapons and various daily necessities.”
With a heroic aura, Yang Zicang stared intently at the slowly rotating massive gear cluster.
“We’re going to provide at least twenty thousand people entering the Demon Hero Hall with all sorts of formidable abilities they might never have even heard of!”
Jiaoma stared at the man beside her in shock, feeling like she was listening to a fairy tale.
“Fantastic! Fantastic!”
The boy lunged and threw himself onto Yang Zicang.
“No wonder you’re the coolest and strongest of our three leaders—you even look cool when spending your life!”
“You… you guys can really pull this off? That’s supporting the reward lottery for twenty thousand, even thirty to forty thousand people!”
“Nothing’s impossible.”
Leave a Reply