Another morning, Josephine Wong woke up from her deep meditation. The purple flame at the center of the room was still burning, but its size grew small like it was about to burn out. She waved her hand at the flame to distinguish it for the time being, and walked out from the underground room.
The time array, which accelerated the flow of time in the room while the students were down here training with her, and while she was meditating in there alone like she did the previous night, was burning at the cost of the energy reserves in this inn. There was still plenty in the reserves, but she decided not to expend more than she needed. According to the rule of time magic, the more powerful an the or individual whose time being affected, the more energy it would consume of the caster, and in this case, her and the inn's energy reserves.
When she stretched and came back to the lounge of the inn, she saw that Jianmen was standing by the reception's desk, chatting with Rash who was sitting on a chair and trying to practice his hand writings.
"Oh, so you're up. How'd you sleep?" Jianmen asked with a smile.
"I slept well. And I thought it'd take longer for you to stand." Josephine Wong looked at the wooden wheelchair beside Jianmen.
"I've decided I wanna be able to walk sooner than cook, so my hands are gonna have to wait longer." Jianmen raised both his arms, showing Josephine Wong his trembling hands and numb fingers: "And this is because, I have something to show you."
"Hmm, I thought this thing already gave me access to everything you have built here." Josephine Wong tilted her head and asked with a teasing smile: "What have you kept from me?"
"You have access to it now, take a look." Jianmen chuckled: "Call it a happy loophole, or a surprise gift, but it was only fully built and grown last night, while you were still meditating. Here, you wanna do the honors?" He showed Josephine Wong a wooden key, laced with orange and golden engravings.
Josephine Wong stroked the bracelet with her eyes closed for a short moment. Then, she opened her eyes, walked up to jianmen and took the wooden key from him: "Let's go together then. Rash, you wanna come with? Jianmen's got a pretty cool surprise."
"Yeah yeah, here I come." Rash stood up from behind the reception's desk: "What is it? Mr. Yu? How did you even prepare this surprise at all?"
"Well, there's a certain kind of spell, combining with some very special materials, some of which came from Realm Greenrock, that would automatically build and grow certain constructs according to a blueprint. Things won't be very refined and will require a lot of work to make them look perfect, but it will at least save me from a lot of the manual labor in building it from the ground up."
"Ah, so you have mastered the spell of inorganic genesis." Rash nodded: "At least - I hope that's the word for it. I think I heard another word from the internet the other day - programmable matter? Or something like that?"
"Pretty much it, yeah." Jianmen smiled, and slowly led the way to the parking lot.
Right now, there were five cars in the parking lot, three of them were old and dusty, one looked relatively new, and the other one looked completely broken down, with its tires deflated, its paint peeled off, its side view mirrors long gone and all of its windows completely broken.
Jianmen led Josephine Wong and Rash to the car that was completely broken down, and showed Josephine Wong the driver side door, and pointed at the keyhole on the door, which was a little too big for any normal car key, but just big enough for the wooden key.
"I've always wondered who the hell owned this car." Rash laughed out loud: "Now I do."
Josephine Wong stuck the wooden key into the keyhole, then gently twisted it.
"Keeesh" hydraulic sound came from the broken down car, then similar sound came from the entire parking lot. A gap appeared from the middle of the ground and gradually opened up. The surface area of the parking lot expanded as the gap continued to open, revealing the walls, towers and a bunker built with metal and tough clay beneath the ground level. The other cars were completely unaffected by this change, they didn't even shake from the moving ground.
When the ground completely opened up, the structures below started slowly rising up. One tall tower on top of a bunker, three shorter towers placed around the bunker, and right in front of the gate to the bunker, was a metal statue of a sword with its blade and tip pointing upwards. All of these buildings were of the same light grey color, of stone and clay. There were patterns and relief sculptures on the walls of the towers and bunker, but they shared the same color with the buildings to which they were attached, there were no differentiating colors, everything looked powerful and sturdy, but bland.
"Like I said." Jianmen walked around the hole on the ground, through which the structures were rising: "Still needs refinement, but all fully built. This is truly the last unfinished part of the inn. So Josephine, if you ever need a separate office, or a command center for your upcoming war, feel free to use this place. And Rash, there was a bigger resting place underneath the bunker, so you can go and sleep there if you feel like trying to rest somewhere other than your tank."
Josephine Wong walked into the area of the floating structures, the area did not look that big or spacious from the outside, but there was more than enough room for a large army inside of the bunker. Even the small towers around the bunker could fit at least twenty fully armed agents and some equipment.
"I love it." Josephine Wong came out of one of the smaller towers with a bright smile: "Thank you, Jianmen."
Just this moment, a car drove into the parking lot and parked right beside the completely broken down car. A man and a woman got off and started walking towards the main door, completely ignoring the giant structures just behind their car.
"Guests at this hour? I better get back." Rash scratched his head and said: "Mr. Yu, can you keep this open? I want to come back some time."
"No worries. This will always be open." Jianmen smiled and sat down on the ground and chuckled.