Just lower than Yuehua Mavis was the Wen family, led by Wen Yao, Wen Sansi, and Wen Qian’er. Below them was Balsam and Yan. On Mr. You’s side, first came the Sword Sect’s Li Zimo, who was representing Elder Lianxin. The elder still had not fully recovered from being poisoned, so the only option was for Li Zimo to go in her stead. Below the Sword Sect sat Ling Gong, Ling Que, Little Mountain God, and the other representatives of the Innerverse. Even though they all represented powers from the eight great flowzones, they were still just juniors.
Seated a bit lower was Lyman Phoenix, from Daynight Flowzone’s Phoenix family. Serati Phoenix was also present.
Lu Yin had once looked up to the Ten Arbiters as being distant powerhouses, but at this moment, they could not even enter his eyes.
In addition to the people who sat at the top of the banquet, there were also many other people from the Innerverse and the Cosmic Sea who were seated further away. There were not many people from the Neoverse who had attended. Aurora Enterprises had sent some people, but they had not appeared at the banquet itself.
Not long after Lu Yin took his seat, Qing Shaohuang also arrived, and his arrival announced the official beginning of the banquet.
In Venom King City, the banquet was not an individual event, but rather one accompanied by a competition.
Strange jincans from all over the Divine Venom Dynasty were to be presented during the banquet, and guests like Lu Yin and the others were allowed to choose any of the jincans to take away.
A young man walked out onto the stage beneath the seats. He had an arrogant expression on his face as he took off his shirt to reveal the image of a three-clawed monster that was branded on his back. “I spent 130 years cultivating this jincan. I call it cave, and it has an odd internal structure that allows it to store power several times beyond its own attack ability. Simply put, as long as a Limiteer has this jincan, they can easily escape from an Explorer without being harmed.”
Many of the people attending the banquet were amazed, and even Lu Yin was impressed. When he had been a Limiteer, he had been able to fight against Explorers when he had been sent to Erudite Flowzone. It was because he was capable of doing that that he understood just how absurd this ability was. For a jincan to have this ability was absolutely amazing.
“How long does it take to raise this ‘cave?’” Someone suddenly asked. It was a question that came from the lower seats. This was a tradition for the one presenting jincans, as certain people would be expected to speak up and ask questions and identify the pros and cons of a jincan. This was how the presentations were conducted.
The young man replied, “It can be cultivated in twenty six years.”
“Twenty six years? How powerful of an attack can it receive after that long?”
The young did not hesitate. “A Limiteer’s attack.”
“If you were given twenty six years, could you become a Limiteer?”
“Naturally.” The young man was proud of himself, as he was considered a genius in his home. He certainly had not taken twenty six years to become a Limiteer.
“In that case, is it worthwhile to cultivate this jincan?”
The young man’s expression finally grew ugly. “If it is cultivated for an additional 30 years, it can receive an Explorer’s attack.”
“Can you become an Explorer within fifty six years?”
This time, the young man hesitated. Becoming an Explorer was a massive hurdle. Even though he considered himself a genius, he still was not fully confident in accomplishing this. Still, with so many people staring at him, he could only reply, “Naturally.”
“So, what’s the purpose in cultivating this jincan?”
The young man’s mouth twitched, and he stepped down.
Lu Yin smiled. While this was a truly impressive jincan, it unfortunately took too much time to cultivate, which made it worthless. Those who could afford this sort of jincan were not ordinary cultivators, but that also meant that they had access to many resources and were usually quite talented. For such people, this jincan was rather useless.
The next person to step onto the stage was a woman who introduced a jincan that could bloom into a hundred flowers, but it had no practical purposes.
After that, one strange jincan after another appeared. There were hundreds of cities on the Divine Venom Continent, and every single one of them researched jincans, which led to there being far too many of them. While some seemed to have rather mediocre uses, this usually depended on how they were used.
For example, the jincan that could cause a hundred flowers to bloom could be quite useful to people who studied poisons, as there were some poisonous flowers that took far too long to bloom.
Typically, the Divine Venom Dynasty’s jincans could be considered similar to cultivators’ innate gifts. There was no such thing as an absolutely useless jincan, only completely useless people.
Half a day passed, and Lu Yin’s felt as though his eyes had been opened. There was a truly unique side to the Divine Venom Dynasty’s culture. The jincans that they cultivated seemed rather similar to Beast Tamers Flowzone’s tamed beasts. In truth, one used research and utilization while the other established control.
Beast Tamers Flowzone would never study why an astral beast was able to utilize certain sorts of attacks; all they focused on was controlling the creature and helping it to grow and develop. Jincans were different, as they had to be researched, and that study allowed for the development of countless different uses.
A young man stepped onto the stage. He looked somewhat timid, and his clothes were very dirty. There was a large character for “small” embroidered on the chest of his shirt.
Qing Shaohuang unconsciously frowned when he saw the young man appear on the stage.
Many other people from the Divine Venom Dynasty frowned as well.
The teenager started to become even more nervous. “I- I- I’m from a small town. My name is Xiao Fa.”
“Show your jincan!” There was a loud shout that startled Xiao Fa. He quickly raised his hand out of reflex, and everyone stared at his arm that was not moving.
Everyone grew confused; where was the jincan?
Xiao Fa looked at his arm and blinked. Huh? The jincan?
Someone suddenly whispered to him, “Under your foot! Under your foot!”
Xiao Fa turned around. “What?”
He shifted a bit, and his right foot stepped onto a soft mass. The sensation startled him again, and he ran a few meters away.
Everyone stared in absolute speechlessness. This was a show, right?
Qing Shaohuang’s frown grew more pronounced.
Xiao Fa quickly ran back and checked out the soft mass that he had just stepped. He carefully picked it up, and let out a sigh of relief. “It’s okay, it didn’t die. It just got squished a bit, just a little bit.”
As he spoke, he suddenly seemed to notice that everyone was still staring at him. He swallowed his saliva, and his face flushed brightly. He raised his hand. “Um, the jincan is here. This is a jincan that my hometown spent a long time developing. This is the wireless jincan.”
Everyone looked at what Xiao Fa was holding in his hand; wasn’t that a tadpole? It was the same squishy mass that had been stepped upon and nearly destroyed.
The entire place fell silent.
“What does it do? What does it do!” Someone in the audience whispered fiercely.
Xiao Fa coughed again. “Well, this wireless jincan can ignore all distance to allow for instant communication no matter where you are, even in the Astral Wilderness. You can communicate instantly without any hindrance anywhere. It works much better than gadgets.”
After this brief explanation, Xiao Fa fell silent and looked towards Qing Shaohuang, as if he were waiting for a compliment.
Someone in the audience dropped their face into their hands, looking completely helpless.
“Just communication?” someone asked.
Xiao Fa replied, “It can ignore all distance to allow instant messaging.”
“Can it work with video?”
“That- that hasn’t been looked into yet.”
“Audio?”
Xiao Fa pursed his lips. “It’s not easy to speak to communicate, but you can understand what the other side is communicating through the vibrational frequency of the wireless jincan.”
“If you already have a gadget, why would you need this wireless jincan?”
Xiao Fa started to become anxious. “It ignores distance! It ignores distance!”
“You’ve been in Venom Flowzone your whole life and aren’t even a Limiteer, so how can you have possibly verified that this jincan can ignore distance? Do you even understand what sort of distances exist in this universe? Can you even conceive just how far away the Sixth Mainland is, let alone the even more distant Astral Wilderness?”
“I know, but it can ignore those distances.” Xiao Fa remained stubborn.
“Hmph, get off the stage.”
Xiao Fa wanted to say something more, but the voice called out again, saying “Leave” with enough force that Xiao Fa was almost blown away.
The people from the Divine Venom Dynasty either laughed or ridiculed the young man, and they all seemed to absolutely hate Xiao Fa’s jincan.
Lu Yin felt quite curious. “Is there something special about his hometown?”
From the side, Qing Li explained, “That small city is the smallest on the entire Divine Venom Continent, so it can’t actually even be considered a city. It was originally somewhere for the more extreme people who specialized in researching jincans that can benefit ordinary humans to gather. Eventually, more and more people gathered, especially ordinary people and businessmen. Finally, enough gathered to form a small town.”
“The jincans that they develop are basically useless in battle, but they can be very useful for ordinary humans. For people who can’t buy a gadget, they’ll be able to buy this wireless jincan.”
“Can they really ignore all distance?” Lu Yin asked.
Prince Qing Li shook his head and laughed. “That’s just their claims. How could it really be possible for these jincans to ignore distance? Most of the researchers aren’t even Explorers, so there’s no way they can understand the vastness of this universe and how difficult it is to travel through space. That wireless jincan is something that they already submitted a report about a long time ago. However, a person needs to learn how to interpret the vibrational frequencies of the jincan, which makes them far inferior to a gadget. Also, those jincans can die from a touch, as they’re very fragile. In fact, even a regular person stepping on them can kill them.”
Lu Yin stared at the bizarre little hairball that was on the stage below. Could it really ignore any distance? If that was true, then it could be incredibly useful.
Gadgets worked by utilizing signals that connected them to the network. If a war broke out, especially one against Aeternus, then given Aeternus’s understanding of humans, they would absolutely destroy every part of the humans’ network that they could.
No matter if it was against Aeternus or the Perennial World, Lu Yin had to maintain an upper hand, and instantaneous communications were crucial, as they could have a massive impact in a war. Lu Yin had already ordered Ban Jiu to study this topic, but there had been no results yet.
Upon thinking about this, Lu Yin stared at Xiao Fa with eyes that lit up.
The presentation of the jincans continued on for two days, and some particularly powerful ones appeared as well. Even Lu Yin took note of them despite not particularly caring.
However, if a jincan similar to the Life-Prolonging Butterflies existed, there was no way that the Divine Venom Dynasty would reveal such a thing. Their most precious jincans could not be shown in public, especially in front of outsiders.
After the presentation finished, the city that won the competition was unsurprisingly Venom King City. The capital city had won for many years in a row.
The jincan that Venom King City presented looked like a bead. It had a simple appearance and was not large at all. After being incorporated into a person’s body, it would allow their speed to increase to an extreme level that far surpassed anyone else in the same cultivation realm.
The jincan’s main flaw was that only a few could be produced, and it took a long time to cultivate them, which made it unsuitable for mass production.
Qing Shaohuang looked quite happy about the fact that the bead was the winning jincan. “Dozens of new jincans are developed in my Divine Venom Dynasty every year, but only a rare few can be used for decades. Most of what are developed are useless jincans, but this Escaping Orb is a rare jincan that is useful for anyone.”
“Congratulations, Your Majesty.” Yuan Taishi was the first to speak, and everyone from the Divine Venom Dynasty quickly bowed as well. “Congratulations, Your Majesty.”
Qing Shaohuang laughed.
Mr. You spoke up with a smile on his face. “Venom Flowzone’s unique environment and cultivation methods are truly enlightening. If His Majesty Qing Shaohuang is willing, I would like to ask for an Escaping Orb to take back to the Hall of Honor for the people there to see.”
Little Mountain God also smiled and spoke up, “Your Majesty Qing Shaohuang, if there are any extra, this junior would also like to ask for one.”
Wen Qian’er quickly raised a hand as well. “This junior would also like one.”
Ling Que’s hand shot up too. “Um, I would too.”
