Hu Ren was shaken awake by his mother, and berated for sleeping in.
"You are the one that was excited for today", his mother lectured him, "So why am I having to wake you up?"
Hu Ren remembered that class at the academy was canceled today due to a celebration. It had been announced that due to a successful collaboration with the beastkins, a great victory was won and in recognition, a parade alongside other events will take place today here in Sun city. He was still trying to adjust to the city's name changing because he had been taught originally, this city was called Sun & Moon city. He has been told that once the merfolk had move here, this city keep the Sun and the city under the water became Moon city.
Excited, Hu Ren endured his mother's sermon with a humbled expression until she left the room. He quickly got dress, ate breakfast, and left the house running towards the local pod cafe. When he arrives, he sees his friends, four boys and two girls, standing outside the cafe trying to see inside.
"We have been waiting for you Ren", one of the girls scolded him when he arrived.
Hu Ren bowed to the group with a smile on his to apologize before saying to the group, "Let's get going, we have to leave now to get a good spot for this 'parade'"
Hu Ren motioned to the others, and started walking down the sidewalk. Everyone else decided to forget about Hu Ren's selfishness, and chased after him.
Twenty minutes later, the seven of them arrived at a park that is mostly used by children. Sitting on the wall that surrounded the park, the group were discussing what a parade was.
Hu Ren was arguing with another boy about which element was the strongest, when music started playing, attracting everyone attention. An illusion array had been activated, and confetti and streamers filled the air, resembling snow while fireworks randomly exploded in the sky. A portal had opened at the end of the empty street, and the crowd as amazed as people start coming out. Hu Ren's jaw dropped when around thirty woman exited the portal dancing to the music, and he couldn't help but notice how beautiful they all were. After the dancers move forward, they are followed by a moving stage that had musicians sitting while playing their instruments. He was still appreciating the the perfume lingering in the air when the next group of people appeared.
A small group of law enforcement officers were walking in formation, but what caught everyone's attention was the battle armor they were wearing. The armor was the same as the armor that Huoran made, but the materials were different. The officers did not currently have their helmets on as they marched, but after one hundred meters, they stopped. The armored group turned towards the audience, saluted, and activated their helmets. After their commander shouted some commands, the officers flew into the sky and performed a quick routine to the delight of everyone. Hu Ren and his friends were amazed as the officers finished their demonstration and landed, where they reformed and continued their marching.
The next participants of the parade were a squad of cars and bikes from the law enforcement department as well. The children wanted to see the vehicles perform some tricks as well, but instead the vehicles slowly paced after the armored officers. Following the cars and bikes, was a very impressive-looking group of cars. Hu Ren recognized that these were very expensive vehicles, and vowed to earn enough to buy one day. When he refocused on the cars he saw that they did not have a roof, and groups of people were sitting in the seats, waving to the crowds. He looked up afterwards, and saw light screens following the car, displaying videos of the battles in the Shuo continent.
Hu Ren realized the people sitting in the car are the crew of the ship on the screen. This caused him to feel conflicted, because he was not sure which job to pursue now. Before he could continue to contemplate his future, the next floating platform rolled out.
This float had an idol group of four cheerfully singing a song that Hu Ren had heard on the radio. Just like the dancers, these entertainers received strong support from most of the male audience. The next set of cars that came was the crew of Captain Tang, and the light screen highlighted his accomplishments during the mission.
The crowd stopped cheering when the next entrant of the parade exited the portal, a frigate class flying ship. It was the Razor Gale, and it was projecting its own light screen. Some of the screens displayed the bridge where the parade goers could see Captain Long and the crew inside, other screen showed the ship fighting in battles like the first two. The ship had to fly a bit higher to avoid damaging the buildings, and as it moved forward, the stunned crowd snapped out of their condition and started cheering.
The next atendee was a troupe of jesters that acted silly and perform acrobatics entertaining the masses. As much as Hu Ren tried to act mature, even he eventually laughed at their antics. The ones that followed the clowns was the last set of cars carrying the crew of Captain Zhou alongside the highlights of her battles.
The last entry exited the portal, which closed afterwards, and everyone saw it and humbly bowed. It was a double decker bus, and sitting on top was all the ministers, plus Wei Huoran and Zeng Meirong. After the crowd raised their heads, they clapped and shouted encouraging words to everyone sitting on the bus.
As the parade finished, the illusions disappeared and all the confetti, streamers and fireworks were gone, and Hu Ren and his friends were pleased that they got to see it in person. They left the place they were sitting, and ran off to participate in more events that were announced today.
The next day, all across the Nanying continent, cultivators in ever city were sitting at QR pods in anticipation. The first round of qualifying rounds was due to start in less than an hour, so anyone that registered had priority for a seat. An hour before the start of the event, a broadcast appeared on everyone's pod and everyone was listening at the as the show's hosts discussed several topics such as the games, several well known players and teams, and the surprise competitive game.
When there was a minute left, everyone's screens went blank with the exception of the timer. When the timer ran down, [Start] appeared on all the screens as matches were randomly selected.
Most of the categories had a round robin for the first round, with the exception of a few games where this style of selection was not feasible. The monster hunting game was based on speed, the racing was based on heats, and the Battle Royale would only let the top ten percent move on to the next round.
The commentators would switch between different matches to highlight excellent and funny moments. Not every game could be played today, so the schedule was staggered.
One of the noticeable things for the people watching was, occasionally the commentators would speak about a certain business or product, and during short breaks or transitions, short videos would play advertising goods as well. What attracted most people were the types of commercials that appeared: some had animated mascots, others who use beautiful scenery, there were even some who use beautiful men, women, and beastkin to advertise their goods. Unlike his past life, Huoran had limited how long an advertisement could run, and how often it appeared to not bother the viewers too much.
By the end of the day, the first round was completed for the Monster hunting, battle arena, and racing. It was a disappointing days for many, and an exhilarating day for the few, but everyone watching was already ready to watch tomorrow's matches.
Wei Huoran was working in Simspace and as usual, Quanliyuan was watching him work. Today, the artifact spirit was a male black panther beastkin mostly in human form.
"I do not know why you never take time off", Quanliyuan commented.
"You are physically implanted in my head, I think you know why", Huoran countered, "More and more enemies from the Draco empire are sitting outside the five hundred kilometer zone. It's obvious that the attack will happen soon."
As the two talked, Huoran would arrange the simulation of the twelve stones they captured into a formation and the activate it. He was pleased to see that the potential power of using the stones was greater than anything he tried so far, but when he observed the reaction using his divine sense and Quanliyuan's help, he noticed that there was a lot of wasted potential.
Sitting down in his favorite drafting chair, Huoran was not satisfied with the progress he was making as some test would display an increase in power only to decrease during the next two test.
"I think you know the problem ", Quanliyuan remarked, "But you have tunnel vision, and decided you can only solve through brute force tactics."
"Yeah, I can't dispute that", Huoran admitted, "This reminds me of many years ago when I was trying to create my own cultivation method. Things were easier then because I only had to make five elements harmonize."
Huoran stopped speaking, realizing what Quanliyuan was trying to tell him. The reason his progress was slow was because he was methodically trying to brute force his way to the correct answer. Like trying every combination on a lock until one works.
Huoran had been doing this mindlessly instead of paying attention to the relationship between the stones.
"It was obvious", Huoran complained while putting his forehead in his hands, "Just like the elements, certain stones harmonize, suppress, or are neutral to others."
Because of his perfect memory, he could recall all the results of his experiments so far, but it did not give him the full picture.
"Wait a minute", Huoran said, "Picture, we have some pictures from the Yak clan."
"Now that you mention it, we do", Quanliyuan agreed with him.
Huoran commanded his QFold to take the panoramic image from the Bull stone's altar room, and display it at same size as the actual room. The surroundings around Huoran changed as he went from his workshop to the underground chamber with the altar to the Bull stone and the walls covered in murals.
"So there was more to this room than just showing your dedication towards the ancient beasts", Huoran guessed.
He returned to the workshop, and decided to try this in stages to verify his findings. He did not pay attention to any of the stones except for the Rat and Ox stones but he did arrange them in the same positions as the room. After trying it out, he found it much weaker than many of his attempts but the Rat and Ox stone did show synergy. Then he repeated the process adding a new stone each time: Tiger, Rabbit, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and finally Boar. Each time the test produced stronger results, but when he added the last stone of the Cat, the power decreased again.
Checking his memory, he saw that Cat was not a mural on the wall, but on the ceiling. According to the story he told the Bloodclaw, Razortalon, Ironclaw, and Foxfire, when the cat discovered that it had overslept and missed the race, it had nothing but hatred for the rat.
Huoran reasoned that his placement of the stone disrupted the formation, so he returned to the workshop and made another attempt. This time it showed the greatest strength so far, but he knew without the Stone of the Dragon, it couldn't be perfected.
"Xiao Ran, this is probably the best way to do this", Quanliyuan mentioned when he noticed Huoran fretting over not have the Dragon stone.
"Why do you think so?", Huoran asked the artifact spirit.
"I have access to more information since your rise in realms", Quanliyuan responded, "Do you know why spirit beast live long, but take so long to grow in strength?"
"Because they mainly lean towards body cultivation", Huoran answered.
"That's mostly correct", Quanliyuan replied, "But let me make it clear, Even if the Deagon emperor got his hands on all these stones, he would take tens of thousands of years to refine them all. Each stone houses the beast core and soul of an ancient beast. Just one stone would take his significant time to refine, so all of them would be too much."
"Thank you for the inspiration", Huoran exited Simspace and contacted the control room directly.
"Control room, Daoist Cheng", Huoran heard on the phone.
"Greetings Daoist Cheng", Huoran said, "It is Daoist Wei Huoran, I am informing you of of some work that I am about to do."
"Boss Wei", Cheng replied, "Please, how can we assist you today?"
"I will be taking all the Stones we store in isolation", Huoran informed the guard, "Due to the danger of my work, I will be using the Grand array formation for protection. Could you do me a favor and let everyone know so there are no misunderstandings?"
"Of course, Boss Wei", the man affirmed.
"Good day to you, Daoist Cheng", Huoran bid farewell before ending the call.
Huoran made his way to his basement where he stored the stones, removed them, and went to the lowest floor where his workshop currently was. He activated the Grand array formation, removed the Rat stone from its isolation field first, and held it as he started the first step.
Huoran began absorbing the energy from the fused crystal surrounding the ancient beast core a layer at a time. Quanliyuan specifically focused on keeping the stone suppressed out of precaution. They two had theorized that the beast core inside used most of the essence to avoid capture, but they also did not want to be caught unaware.
Huoran absorbed all the layers of the stone, and just as feared the ancient rat inside attempted to retaliate, but ultimately was unsuccessful.
Huoran then put the beast core in his furnace they had built for core batteries, and started the process of rebuilding the stone. He would add a layer, inscribe the arrays, and then go to the next layer. Once he finished, the stone in front of his was actually larger than before, and it now had a much more complicated inscription on it.
Once Quanliyuan reaffirmed that Huoran suffered no ill effects from the process, the latter picked up the next stone to start anew.