Buzz, buzz, buzz～ Amidst the murmurs, Yang Zicang felt his awareness burning under countless gazes.
He felt the tension from the hand on his shoulder and heard the rapid, heavy breaths from some of those around him.
Although, according to regulations, Lost Illusion Company had no means to prevent him from resigning without violating any confidentiality terms, still…
“It’s fine, I can sit out,” Yang Zicang said with a sigh.
“You!” Croft looked over.
Yang Zicang glanced at the man—right now, no one would support his resignation more than this blue-skinned master designer of the Mordo Fang Hall.
Fu Qiyong looked at the young man with suspicion and said:
“You’ve changed your mind, and you’re no longer willing to contribute to your city?”
Yang Zicang seemed relaxed, as if he had just made some difficult decision, and said calmly:
“I can transfer my model using ‘Spatial Relocation’ and hand it over to our city’s people, letting them compete with my strength.”
Boboli’s eyes went wide in an instant! He abruptly stood up, slammed both palms on the table, and shouted: “No! You can’t! I won’t allow it!”
Yang Zicang looked at Boboli:
“Maybe this way, I’ll return to a fate that has remained unchanged.”
“Then Morrie’s adventurous sacrifice would all be in vain!”
“If Mo Li’s changes to the future are smoothed over again, he probably won’t die. That time-shift should still be there…”
Jin Fangmao’s eyes swiveled to look at Yang Zicang.
Croft was stunned. The look he gave Yang Zicang was as if he were staring at a total idiot.
“Ah, I have truly missed a huge treasure,” he sighed to himself.
Boboli urgently addressed the two phantoms:
“The gear room can be replaced! All of us can rebuild it together—it only takes two or three days! We can swap the load-bearing pillars of two wheel sets, and I can still alter the city’s structure, so it will be absolutely nothing like our previous one! Please give me a little more time!”
The two phantoms exchanged glances.
{Seriously, this competitive city is way too convenient.}
Gritting his teeth, Boboli turned to Yang Zicang and nearly shouted:
“We agreed! All major decisions require the unanimous consent of the three leading members of the Puming Group! You have no right to unilaterally decide to hand over the time-sequence orb! I’m not on board first!”
Jin Fangmao said, “I don’t think it’s necessary to redesign the terrain either. Just swapping the room positions will do.”
“This…”
“Elector Yang Zicang,” Chief Jin fixed his gaze on the young man, “You have rendered great service by finding a new path for the Starlight Illusion to build a Demon-class competitive city amidst difficulties, and by participating in the creation of this permanently residing Demon Palace.”
He addressed the others:
“Besides, he’s a true warrior who gave up his personal rare opportunity to fight for his bottom-ranked city. Since the Magic Elite Hall has been rated as a permanent structure, dwelling on such trivial matters would make our Holy Ring Council seem petty.”
“Yeah!” A group of people jumped up.
“Sigh.” Croft dropped his head in utter disappointment.
“But!”
Croft jerked his head up, and everyone else immediately fell silent.
Gold Fangmao said with a smile, “There still needs to be due punishment, Yang Zicang.”
All eyes fixed on Gold Fangmao’s smiling face.
“For the sake of fairness, you cannot participate in battles for the first five days after the Magic Elite Hall is deployed.”
Yang Zicang’s breath caught.
Five days—he hoped the people from the two cities wouldn’t be able to finish exploring all the rooms in that time.
“I… agree.”
“Very well. From now on, you are unable to contact the Illusion Company or anyone in the city until the battle begins!”
As he spoke, a polygonal crease instantly appeared.
[I have obtained Within the Tetrapod.]
Whoosh! Yang Zicang entered a transparent square frame with a toilet inside.
{To prevent leaks of information, from now on, cease all forms of communication—whether through dreams, telepathy, or connections via the Mind Ring!}
{You will receive food on a daily basis. When the time comes, you will naturally appear at the entrance of the Magic Elite Hall.}
“Ah, put in solitary confinement.”
The crowd looked at this frosted large square box, whose insides were invisible to the outside.
……
……
Yang Zicang sat cross-legged inside the seemingly transparent box.
Before long, from the fact that the crowd’s eyes were not focused on him, he realized that the outside couldn’t see inside clearly.
“It looks like I won’t be able to enter the Youhui World to get a statue before the ranking battle starts.”
Yang Zicang sighed, calculating the expenses of this outing in his mind.
Even with Executive Director Huan Bao’er’s “slush fund” support, he had still spent most of the time clusters he had earned on purchasing Ability Spheres.
There was originally no need for so many rewards, but thinking about the two cities’ people, many of whom were struggling on the edge of life and death, under Morrie’s suggestion, the three decided to give back the extra time earned from skill books over the past half year to everyone.
Now, after calculations, the three of them still had about 300,000 time clusters remaining.
“Since it’s a rare break, I might as well train properly.”
Yang Zicang began to recall and summarize the gains made since recently constructing the Demon Hero Hall.
This trip to Lost Illusion Company could be said to have given him a very, very profound understanding of mental power knowledge that he had been completely unclear about.
When his own strength was still weak compared to the strong, being able to gain such an experience would help him avoid a lot of detours on this path in the future.
He recalled the content of “Primitive Spiritual Exercise Yoga,” feeling the forest aura within his mind becoming more and more integrated with him, while tangled stray thoughts quietly receded.
Yang Zicang sat cross-legged in stillness, slowly cultivating his mental power.
……
Two days later, Boboli returned to his residence.
Liang Xi, who was washing dishes, saw him coming back and immediately greeted him cheerfully.
“I’ve put you through a lot these past two days,” Boboli said gratefully.
“It’s nothing. Brother Morrie is a good friend of Brother Yang, so of course I had to take care of him.”
Morrie opened the bedroom door. “Boboli’s back. How did it go?”
“Pretty good!”
Boboli glanced at Liang Xi, who was busy in the kitchen, then entered Morrie’s room and closed the door. “There’s something I’m not sure how to handle, and I wanted to ask you.”
“Ask me? What’s up?” The scruffy-bearded man stared at the young man suspiciously.
“An executive from the Lost Illusion Company invited me to join their company as a designer. But I don’t know if I should accept.”
“That’s a good thing!”
“That’s great news!” Morrie exclaimed excitedly. “If you’re both working there, my biggest worry is gone.”
He had heard all about the Lost Illusion Company from Yang Zicang. The man kept no secrets from him.
“But Brother Zicang is going to resign. He wants to participate in the rankings battle at the end of the year. And he said if he doesn’t resign, he’ll just give the model to their city friends. That way, your future changes might fail, and you wouldn’t have to worry.”
“That bastard!”
Morrie said loudly, “How can he think like that? If he really does that, I’ll have Luo Bin kill that last Li Shangxiang right now!”
A murderous intent radiated from Morrie.
Boboli knew Morrie wasn’t joking—he was fully capable of doing something like that.
“Don’t worry, I’ve already talked him out of it. Besides, he’s been grounded.”
Morrie froze. Hadn’t he just pulled off an incredible feat? How was he suddenly grounded?
After Boboli finished explaining, Morrie burst into laughter.
Liang Xi knocked on the door from outside.
“Brother Morrie, what are you laughing about?”
“No, nothing, hahahaha.”
Morrie waved his hand as if he had laughed until tears came to his eyes. “That Zicang guy deserves to be locked up! By then, he’ll probably miss the fight at Arena City altogether. It’s fine. Since you two are both in LOST ILLUSION COMPANY anyway.”
“But you…”
“I’m a living man—am I just going to starve to death? Don’t worry.”
Morrie patted Boboli on the shoulder.
“Since you’re heading off to LOST ILLUSION COMPANY, don’t act high and mighty. You have to follow the company rules. So, just go on over there. They’ll treat you well.”
Boboli stared at Morrie’s eyes for a long moment.
“Something about you feels off to me.”
“I’m just genuinely happy for you guys. Our team is just three people, yet two of you got into LOST ILLUSION COMPANY and are even known by the Holy Ring Council. Something like that almost makes me want to go out and celebrate with you.”
“No. You stay put quietly. Wait out the rest of your sentence—two and a half more years, and you’ll be out.”
That evening, within the room, Liang Xi, Boboli, Morrie, and Zhu Yin gathered as a quartet.
Under a very lavish dinner, with their minds linked to Luo Bin and the others still stranded in the Uncanny Fields, they celebrated Boboli’s completion of what had seemed like an impossible feat.
Looking bored out in the large tent, by the warm campfire saw Luo Bin and Zuo Feixian and the rest laughing and dancing wildly, Ning Jiajia’s face wore a cold expression.
Then she turned her head. Outside the tent, the Ghost-Train emitted a faint glow, silently watching the people inside.
Inside the room in Hub Town.
“Young Master Boppoli.”
Deputy Mayor Zhuyin sincerely lamented,
“You’ve been here for so long, and I’ve never properly appreciated your abilities. I never expected that Yang Zicang and Mr. Morrie had such keen eyes to recognize your worth, unlocking your potential to such a degree.”
Liang Xi clapped his hands excitedly on the other end.
“Awesome! Haha, Bro Morrie, I want to join the Pu Ming Group too!”
“You can join after Yang Zicang returns. I’ll hand over the resonance authority of the statue to him later.”
“Don’t, you’ll always be our captain,” Boppoli said.
“We can talk about that later, haha. Come on, let me toast you all. Deputy Mayor Zhuyin, drink up.”
Amid the laughter and joy, they were all thoroughly intoxicated. After saying goodbye, Deputy Mayor Zhuyin stumbled out unsteadily, vanishing into thin air at the doorstep.
“You should leave too,” Morrie said to Boppoli.
“I…”
“Now that everyone’s getting to know you, quickly go over to maintain those interpersonal connections in the company.”
Morrie lectured the young man.
“Don’t think that just because you’ve built a Competition Arena, you’re something special. You also said yourself that model can be used long-term, with or without you—it won’t matter to have you or not. For the sake of our future meetings along the Fate Track, don’t waste time.”
He admonished Boppoli seriously.
Boppoli, half-drunk, eyed the man warily and suspiciously.
“Forget it, suit yourself. I’m going to sleep. Let Yang Zicang stay over there on his own. Liang Xi, those bowls are your problem.”
Morrie got up, stretched, walked through the door, and closed it.
He leaned back against the door.
“I no longer have any lingering worries, Julia.”
The man thought nervously and expectantly about the information in that phone call.
His future self hadn’t maintained the team called the Puming Group but had instead joined a team composed entirely of non-Asians.
Future Yang Zicang was missing for a full three years, and now, Yang Zicang had indeed left the Lost Frequency Zone for six months since that point in time.
The fate he seemed to have changed…
Appeared to have returned to its original course.
This brought him great comfort.
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