Ever since Christmas, Jin had wanted to renovate the Shop Instance so his new customers would have a better first impression while his repeating customers would have a more inclusive experience using it.
He had been experimenting with new interior designs inside the Dungeon Maker and felt that the ones he found had been extremely inadequate. It did not feel right when he tried to balance the needs of the masses while trying to do a makeover to give a better aesthetic to the whole Shop Instance. There was no sense of closeness or familiarity if something was too grand in his designs.
It was only after the Demon War Defence that it clicked inside of him that there was actually no reason to create an interior design. If it was an instance like all others, so why should he restrain it as part of a building? With more resources in his hands, Jin could create something quite different from his past designs.
And with the Chinese New Year, he had also repurposed and recreated the Shop Instance to fit the holiday’s theme so they could experience with the Chinese New Year thematic designs as well.
“Hi, everyone. Happy Chinese New Year! There will be an update to the current Shop Instance in five minutes, but it should not affect your current activities. However, we will ask you to move out of the old Shop Instance once I have pushed the data into the server. So if you wish, take as many pictures as you want of the old Shop Instance before it is taken down.” Jin said through a microphone via the Dungeon Maker Instance.
“Hopefully, they will appreciate this version just as much as they did the previous one.” Jin thought as he waited the five minutes. He could have done it instantly if he wanted to, but he chose not to. Then he clicked on the ‘Load’ button on his Dungeon Maker Interface as it created the new Dungeon Instance. And soon after he pushed the data into the System’s servers, he went in first to have a quick look of the area.
When he saw that everything was to his liking, he allowed the System to open it for everyone. Not even a second after, his customers started to teleport into the new Shop Instance to see what Jin had changed.
To their surprise, they found themselves back in time.
It wasn’t back to the initial version when Jin had just started out, but back in historical time. There was an extensive row of old shophouses similar to the ones which were popular in the 1930s to 1950s. Jin had taken his inspiration from Hong Kong’s Queen Road which the British first built it in the 1940s. The row of shophouses gave a nostalgic jump to the past where everything was less modern and more face to face interaction.
At the centre of it all was a two way street with a train platform in between them. Jin had incorporated Lynn’s Restaurant Train into his Shop Instance, so people did not have to go into a new instance, breaking the immersion.
And that was Jin’s main idea for his new Shop Instance.
He wished to incorporate all the current Service Instances he had into one gigantic Shop Instance and hoped this would make people make use of his Service Instances. At the same time, have fun travelling around the new ‘shop’ instance rather than merely teleporting for the sake of convenience.
Naturally, he did not remove such an option, but he did rename it into ‘fast travel’, and they could only do it by going to a shop houses that specialised in such services. That was none other than the ‘Tourist’ Information Centre. The Dungeon Supplier had supplied Panda NPC Employees to take charge of the shophouses in order to relieve the load of the other NPCs and his employees within the Shop Instance. Naturally, Yun could take over whenever she wanted, but she was no longer needed to man the counter twenty four hours round the clock.
As for his Service Instances, they could also be accessed without the fast travel via the train, by foot or even by flying which Jin monetised a little on. For those who are at low grades and wished to fly around with Qing Gong (Light Martial Arts), Jin sells temporary flying inscription charms at his tourist information centre which would temporarily boost their chi. This allowed them the ability to fly to the service instances with their Qing Gong.
The Emerald Mountain Hot Spring Instance as the name suggested, had been placed at the mountains where the cultivators would have to make an effort to reach there. The same goes to Deep Fishing Reservoir and the Wunderpanda Theme Park, which could be seen from the top of the mountains.
However, sensitive service instances like the Emerald Mountain Hot Springs were all adjusted to show Pandas and Red Pandas using the hot spring pools whenever any cultivator flew over them. The cultivators would still be able to enter a separate service instance and use the services as previously intended.
As for open service instances like the Wunderpanda Theme Park, they had been placed with a distance detecting feature. Once someone entered the area above it, they would be asked to get out or pay for it. Failure to comply within the time limit would warn them, that the cash would get subtracted from their cash wallet. And after which, they would still be allowed to enter the theme park.
Other than that, Jin did place some minor discounts to encourage people to take the train but made sure everything was also reachable by foot. Similar to aeroplane miles, Jin had made an experimental Panda Miles programme which would keep track how much the cultivators had walked. If they travelled sufficiently, they would be given rewards like a one time discount which had a maximum cap of 5% or even used to redeem Panda medals.
With the creation of the new Shop Instance, Jin had not intended to make it so wide and vast, but the System stated that with this new instance format, it would collect sufficient data for Jin’s new Virtual Reality Network platform.
Initially, the System needed even more processing capability to power such a large instance since it had used to collect even more monsters and animals. But because of how Jin had closed and combined various instances into this particular Shop Instance, it eventually became feasible creating this new possibility.
Panda Street Instance.
