"Now that introductions are out of the way, let's start the event," Sophia said, creating a floating crystal ball from her side and sending it flying to the sky on top of the coliseum.
The moment it gained some altitude, it exploded into fireworks, vanishing later as the stadium fell into complete silence.
The next moment, light spots hit the main entrance, and a lady in her 20s stepped inside. From Ray's perception, he could sense that she was on the 80-something level.
Ray sank back into his seat, waiting for the excitement. Massive screens lit up behind Yuna with a live feed of her.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Plana Juniors Finals."
Yuna, as Sophia described, is one of the relatively new residents of Plana. With a sound-based material soul, she found passion in singing and doing gigs, such as commenting or judging in competitions.
On the screen, the image changed to show Ray lazily sitting on his couch. The crowd was confused for a second before realizing something and looked at Yuna with surprised eyes.
"As all ladies and gentlemen guessed, we have a special guest today," Yuna said. "Ladies and gentlemen, after a long wait of 30 years, I present to you our young king."
With her words, she put a hand on her chest and bowed to the main balcony.
Around her, the crowd rose in a delicate scream before they did the same as Yuna did, hands on their chests and bowing their heads to the balcony.
Ray raised his hand with a wary smile, trying to put them at ease. The crowd instead began to roar, but before the noise could rise too high, Yuna cut them off with a clap.
"Well, the young king will honor us with a few words," Yuna said playfully, knowing that she was helping Sophia set up Ray.
Despite not being that old, she had one of the closest relationships with Sophia, and she knew Ray fairly well from their talks.
Even now, her actions were something Sophia instructed her to do.
Ray glared at Sophia for a second before standing up.
Looking down from the balcony, the crowd and the number of people there stopped his breath in his throat.
'Who would expect…' Ray looked at them, not really sure how it ended like this. What he purely did out of goodwill, despite his sole intent to use them in his dealings.
It never came to his mind that after what felt like a small journey, he would be back to find such a latitude of change.
With the view of the seated people and the horizon behind, Ray found himself calm. His smile widened as he looked down.
"To all of you, Plana residents," Ray said, looking around as if trying to remember every face around. "Thank you for your hard work. I won't say much, except: it is an honor to have you all."
The last words surprised even Sophia. That was a clear declaration of his position. The crowd froze for a second before screaming.
Getting back to his seat and sinking there with a sigh, even as Sophia was about to say something, he glared at her and said, "Shut it," knowing fully what she was about to ask, or more likely tease him with.
Seconds later, the crowd calmed down enough for Yuna to start the show.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this time, with the great king here, we decided to add an additional part for the finals," Yuna said, pointing at the screen.
The screen lit again, this time with two bold lines, one under the other:
Survival
Battle
"Now, as always, the battle part, as everyone knows, is one-on-one and group battles with our classic rules," Yuna said, pointing at the screen showing the stages of the battle. "The first is 1-vs-1 back to back, then group battles after it."
"The additional part, survival, is the ability to survive in the wild lands for a week, along with retrieving the demanded items from the judges' jury." Yuna smiled as the screen changed again, giving the map and the rules of the competition, such as no direct interface with others, and so on.
"But before we begin," Yuna said, extending her words, "I present to you this year's champions of the Forest City."
Light exploded from her feet and traveled to the right side of the arena, and from there, three youngsters who appeared in the council before stepped onto the stage, wearing similar uniforms.
"From the Tranquility School, Team Lao," Yuna exclaimed wildly.
With the charts of the team appearing on the screen and the viewers greeting them with shouts, they waved excitedly, stepping into the center of the stage, giving Ray ample chance to observe them more carefully, as last time he didn't bother with that.
With all of them being two-ring elders and one on the verge of breaking through to three rings, age less than twelve, it was a surprise for Ray.
"Well, isn't that a surprise?" Ray said lightly to the elders. "I never thought we'd see a team of less than twelve-year-olds with all of them at two rings."
As Ray spoke, a weird look appeared on the elders' faces, and Sophia chuckled.
"Actually, there are some already on three rings or higher at the same age," Sophia explained. "Them winning the champion of the forest was purely for their synchro and fighting ability."
Based on her story, the three kids had one of the highest purity material souls, causing them to slow their cultivation, but their teamwork and personal skill and technique made them a menace to most of the same age and also to those two to three levels higher than them.
"And from this city," Yuna said, smirking, "the champions of Sea City, Team Zi."
Again, light traveled from her standing point to the left side and exploded to reveal three kids of the same age as the first ones, but Ray noticed that two of them were already three-soul-ring masters.
"Interesting, so we got an uneven match," Ray said, amused. Looking at the rest of the elders, they sighed.
"Well, they won, so there is no way we could rig the champions, also not what you expected, king," Amey said. "The forest champions have more chances to win, actually."
Saying this, she handed a tablet to Ray, intending to show him how to use it. But Ray just slid the screen in a relatively used manner, surprising her.
"You can look at the finals file; it has the specifics of the team members," she said with a wary smile, remembering that Sophia once said Ray was actually the source of most library knowledge.
At first, they thought she was just exaggerating or meant that it was given by him. Now she clearly saw him use what was supposed to be a new product as if he knew what it was at first sight.
But knowing this tool was based on some unique designs her fellow elder discovered in the great library led her to believe the talk now.
"Now let's roll the wheel," Yuna said, and a wheel appeared on the screen with dozens of types of geographic domains.
Ray recognized some forests and seaside views, but the rest were completely unknown to him, which surprised him and made him more excited.
And the wheel stopped at one he completely didn't expect: a lava-cavern-like scene.
By the time the wheel stopped, the crowd screamed excitedly, and the elders sighed, looking at the old man.
"Looks like your grandchild lucked out in this," Sophia said playfully.
Ray looked confused and asked, "Mind explaining what that place is?"
"Well, to put it simply, a deep volcanic sea we discovered not far from the mountain chains. It has a high concentration of fire soul energy and natural-born monsters," Elder Fu said before playfully smirking. "And it's their family ground if we're talking about lava."
The Zhu family had quite the reputation when it came to playing with fire, and one of the sea team members was his actual grandchild.
"Not quite," Zhu Lin sighed and refused. "With the high spiritual ability the other team has, they also have quite a shot."
"Will they be okay? We're talking about venturing into a magma sea," Ray said, raising an eyebrow, not understanding how they were this calm seeing their kids jumping into lava.
"Ah, they aren't in any mortal danger, you see," Zhu pointed at the bracelet that Yuna was currently handing the teams. "Those are mystic-grade soul tools. They will absorb any damage and replicate the effect of the damage on the body for the duration they wear it. The moment they get a deadly blow, they will be transported back to the arena, counted as their death."
"So…" Ray drew out the word, looking at them stepping into two gates opened on the sides. "If they get a critical hit, like a hand cut, they will feel it and experience it, but only until they get back here, and it will be brushed away like it never happened?"
Getting a nod, he raised an eyebrow. "And who came up with this idea?" Ray asked, wanting to know who was behind it.
If it could work without being in competition, then the youngsters could venture in Plana as they liked without minding the danger.
And if one wondered what kind of danger? even if Plana was relatively safe, the natural environment still produced monsters with varied levels of strength, from normal animals to Douluo-title level, thankfully only appearing in the deeper parts of the savanna forest or in the newly appearing biomass.
The saving grace was that they didn't venture closer to human or soul-beast residents often, and even if they did, they wouldn't put them in danger.
So the youngsters venturing alone was something Ray didn't expect them to do. Surprisingly, under the elders' explanation, they were actually using it as he was thinking.
What more it it was a product of blueprints they retrieved from the library.
'I need to visit it sometime later,' Ray thought before shifting his thinking to the competition.
"So this round is a piece of cake for your grandchildren?" Ray asked, smiling, now knowing they weren't in any severe danger.
"Normally it wouldn't," he said, "but now it looks like it will."
Under the observation of the crowd, more hologram screens appeared around, each with either of the teams on it, showing them venturing in the deep red environment.
Ray's attention fell on the unique crystals the kids dug on occasions, so he scanned them.
------Energy Crystal: Compressed and tempered pure energy in solid form. Each has its unique attribute (water, fire, spiritual…). Has many uses and can be used as an energy source for cultivation. (Current Plana use: weapon craft, alchemy, cultivation)
---------
'Except that much, the energy in Plana is that dense,' Ray thought, knowing it was normal matter for Plana to generate something like this.
Ray lay back, watching the kids venturing around. Soon his view seemed to be fastened, as if he were looking at them in fast-forward at x10 speed.
"We set speed-up formations in their competition zone," Elder Electro sighed, "but sadly, we have to see the fast version of this survival game."
Ray nodded in understanding, but one look at the audience made him get confused. From time to time, he noticed soul-energy fluctuations from the audience—not one or two, but all of them.
Then he came to a realization. "Now I understand. If they have the ability to watch part of you early," Ray said before sighing, "the event is really exclusive to cultivators."
Ray grinned after spreading his senses and scanning the crowd, finding all of them without exception to be soul masters of some kind, and the weakest was a three-ring master.
Ray's exclamation caused the elders to look at him weirdly, and he could only look at them in confusion, as he didn't know what was wrong.
"Ray, you didn't notice?" Sophia looked at him, completely surprised. "Plana residents are all cultivators."
This revelation put a stop to Ray's thoughts. A population of that size, and it was 100% cultivators? What concept is that?
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