Chương 63: Exhibition Floor

The itch in his palm lasted only for an instant. It was like an extremely thin thread of blood turning over lightly beneath his skin. Rowan did not lower his head. He simply let his right hand hang naturally at his side, his fingertips curling in slightly as he followed the group out of the elevator. The cold light of the twelfth-floor public exhibition hall fell from above, illuminating the number on every temporary attendant's chest with perfect clarity.

Vann stood at the entrance to the service corridor, the thin control panel in his hand unfolding a row of routes.

"C-31 to C-36, beverage tray group. Responsible for the east side of the outer ring."

"C-37 to C-40, cold-food replenishment group. Move between Service Corridor Three, the back-of-house food preparation area, and the outer ring of the central exhibition hall."

"C-41 to C-46, viewing queue guidance group. Responsible for verifying the roster of young Tier 1s and preventing unregistered personnel from entering the viewing area." He raised his eyes.

"Remember, you are attendants, not guests."

"If you see something while passing by, that is your eyes doing their job. If you stop, that is dereliction of duty."

"Initiating conversation is dereliction of duty."

"Entering a VIP passage without authorization is a breach of contract."

"If you approach within three meters of the central projection array, the security system will issue a warning the first time. The second time, it will directly freeze your temporary permissions." No one spoke. The service terminal quickly projected each person's route onto their wristband. Rowan lowered his head and glanced at it. [C-39: Service Corridor Three.] [Task: cold-food replenishment, empty plate recovery, visitor-flow maintenance around the outer ring of the central exhibition hall.] [Authorized areas: twelfth-floor outer ring, back-of-house food preparation area, Service Corridor Three.] [Restricted areas: seventeenth-floor private preview area, twenty-first-floor collection maintenance area, internal floors above the twenty-third floor.] Rad had been assigned to the beverage tray group. Looking down at his wristband, he cursed under his breath.

"I knew it. They saw my arms were thick, so they definitely put me on heavy lifting." Noah stood on the other side. His task was viewing queue guidance. It sounded a little more respectable than serving drinks, but in reality, he would just be standing beside the outer-ring passage, checking the roster and reminding the young Tier 1s who came to view the exhibit to line up, not to crowd, not to barge around, and not to lose control in front of the projection.

He looked at the number on his chest, then straightened his cuffs again. Rowan did not look at him again. Vann clapped his hands.

"Everyone, to your posts." … Service Corridor Three was behind the outer ring of the central exhibition hall. Forward from here was the public exhibition floor, so bright it felt almost empty. Behind it were the low-temperature food preparation area, the washing counters, the automatic recovery tracks, and a narrow silver-grey door marked [Freight Elevator · Authorization Required]. When Rowan picked up the first cold-food platter, he first swept his gaze over the surroundings.

There were two surveillance orbs on the left side of the service corridor. On the right was a backup water-purification counter. Beside the narrow door leading to the freight elevator was an independent identification plate, with permissions higher than his temporary wristband. There was a faint trace of wind beneath the crack in the door, which meant that behind it was not a sealed wall, but a vertical transport shaft. He memorized the location, then turned and walked toward the outer-ring food counter.

The cold-food platter was very light. But he recognized almost nothing on it. Silver-white slices of meat had been cut extremely thin, their edges suffused with a faint blue water-element mana. Beside them, shellfish meat resembled translucent gel, its surface covered in fine natural patterns. There were also a few curved segments of carapace limbs, the shells deep blue, with a faint glimmer of white showing through the joints. They carried a salty, damp, cold, and vast briny scent.

A slightly older regular attendant nearby glanced at him and reminded him in a low voice,"Don't touch the Silver-Spined Mana Shrimp. Lose one, and you'll be paying until you don't need to eat next month." Shrimp? He suddenly realized that these things probably came from the sea. Although he had no idea what the sea looked like. Rowan placed the platter onto the corresponding chilled counter.

"Got it." The attendant glanced at the nameplate on his chest again.

"New?"

"Temporary."

"Then remember this: the prettier the plate, the more careful you need to be. The more nobody eats something, the more expensive it is." After saying that, he carried an empty plate and stepped back. Rad happened to pass by from the other side, holding a tray with six cups of pale-golden liquor. Hearing that, he glared at the food counter.

"How much is one plate of this stuff?" The regular attendant casually said, "Starting at ten times your hourly pay." Rad's hand steadied at once.

"I'm starting to think five hundred an hour is a little low." Rowan said nothing. He saw a man in a dark-blue formal suit pass by the food counter. The man casually picked up a slice of silver-white meat without even looking at what it was, then continued chatting and laughing with the person beside him. The price of an hour, a day, or a month at the bottom was sometimes just one mouthful on someone else's plate here—one mouthful whose name they would not even remember.

The outer ring of the exhibition hall soon became lively. But this liveliness was not the noise of a Lower Hive market. Here, every sound was pressed low by the sound-absorbing walls. The light touch of glass against glass, the fall of heels, the switching of projections, and the friction of formalwear fabric all seemed to have been carefully calibrated. New guests continued to arrive. Rowan carried an empty plate and passed along the edge of the crowd.

He did not raise his head for too long, only using the corner of his eye to memorize those symbols. Most of the people from Blackwater Heavy Industries wore dark formal attire. Their bodies carried more or less some prosthetic interfaces, and the exoskeleton lines of their accompanying security personnel were extremely clean. The regional agents from the Akashic Network wore silver-blue data pins on their chests and looked like engineers.

The people from the Yggdrasil Energy and Chemical Group were easier to identify. A tree appeared on their cufflinks, brooches, and accompanying cases almost like a sect emblem. People from the Aether Consortium were among them as well, but they were not the only group present. There were also people from the Black Snakes Consortium. Several officials walked farther back near the VIP passage, wearing low-profile identification badges from the City Administration Bureau and the Resource Bureau.

When Vann faced them, his voice was clearly half a degree lower than when he addressed the temporary attendants. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. This was not the venue of a single consortium. This was the entire Seventh Abyssal Hive's table. Everyone qualified to sit at it had used Master Hill's return as an excuse to pull their chairs a little closer. Some wanted to invest. Some wanted to push the price down. Some wanted a share of the technical authorization.

Some wanted to borrow the reputation of the Hill faction to stabilize their own position. And some had only come to confirm how much weight a bankrupt Soul-Nexus Archmage still had left after returning. Rowan placed the empty plate onto the recovery track. The track silently swallowed the silver plate and sent it toward the washing area behind. He had just turned around when he heard a soft laugh from the outer-ring passage.

"Noah?" The voice was not loud, but it was just enough for the nearby people to hear. Rowan shifted half a step to the side and saw Noah frozen beside the entrance to the viewing queue. Several young guests were walking over from the side of the VIP passage. The one in the middle was Cecilia. Today, she wore a dark-red formal dress. The line of her shoulders was sharp and clean, and under the cold white lights, her hair looked like fire that had been pressed down. Beside her were two people of similar age.

One of them had short pale-gold hair, with the school emblem of Northwind Applied Magitech Academy pinned to his chest. The pale-gold-haired boy looked at the temporary number on Noah's chest, then at the guidance panel in his hand. His smile slowly widened.

"What a coincidence." He said, "I didn't expect you to have entered Starlight Tower as an attendant at such a young age." Noah's fingers suddenly tightened. The edge of the guidance panel made a faint sound.

"No," he immediately said.

"I'm only here to experience life." As soon as those words came out, his own face flushed first. The pale-gold-haired boy's smile deepened.

"Experience life?" Someone beside him laughed softly. Noah's lips pressed tight, and his shoulders and back stiffened even straighter, as if doing so could push the temporary number on his chest back out of sight. Just then, a hand slapped heavily onto his shoulder. Rad passed by with a tray and gave him a casual smack, nearly making Noah lurch forward.

"What are you panicking for?" Rad looked at the young guests and grinned.

"This is a temporary attendant job paying five hundred Terra Credits an hour. One hour is enough for an ordinary person to eat and drink for ten days. Plenty of people would be jealous if you told them." The pale-gold-haired boy's smile stiffened for a moment. Because those words should have made someone feel embarrassed. But Rad said them too openly, as if he were introducing a genuinely decent job. Noah's face turned even redder.

This time, it was not only shame, but also the awkwardness of being exposed in public. Cecilia did not laugh. Her gaze first swept over Noah, then landed on Rad, and finally paused on Rowan for a breath. Rowan was standing at the edge of the service corridor, holding an empty plate in his hand, his expression calm, as if he just happened to be passing by. Then she looked away.

"Let's go." The pale-gold-haired boy seemed to want to say something else, but Cecilia had already walked toward the viewing area. Noah stood where he was, his expression still not recovered. Rad said in a low voice, "If you really think it's embarrassing, you shouldn't have come in the first place." Noah gritted his teeth.

"What do you know?"

"I know five hundred an hour." Rad walked away with the wine glasses. Rowan withdrew his gaze. Another group of people arrived at the outer-ring entrance. This time, Rowan saw Julian. Julian was wearing a well-tailored black formal suit, with a silver button carved with a flame pattern fastened at his cuff. Walking ahead of him were several local representatives from the Yggdrasil Energy and Chemical Group. Among them were people from the Aether Consortium, as well as two emblems Rowan had never seen before.

Julian was not at the center of the group. He was only one of the young people following behind the elders and representatives. But when he entered the public exhibition floor, the expression on his face was calmer than it had been back at school. His gaze swept around the crowd and soon stopped on Rowan. Rowan stood at the edge of the service corridor, holding a recovery tray. Julian's steps paused slightly. The next moment, an extremely faint heat spread from beneath his cuff. It was not an attack.

It could not even be considered a true spell release. It was only the lightest brush of Source Rune fluctuations in the air. At first, it was fire. Dry, bright, and carrying Julian's usual flamboyance. But very soon, a layer of damp, cold flow surfaced over the outer edge of the fire intent. It was like coolant crawling over the exterior wall of a high-temperature reaction vessel, or like thin mist condensing on the inner wall of a potion bottle. Fire phase within. Water phase without.

The fluctuations of the two Source Runes interwove with remarkable stability. Tier 1 Dual-Phase. Rowan's eyes did not change. No wonder Julian had not continued looking for trouble with him recently. He had not given up. He had been etching his second Source Rune. And he was not using ordinary Etching Fluid either. Julian looked at him, the corner of his lips lifting slightly. Long time no see. I'm no longer the same Tier 1 Single-Phase Mage as before.

Just as that fluctuation was about to sweep across the corner of Rowan's uniform, a black-clad security guard in the distance raised his eyes. No hand gesture. No incantation. Only a glance. The wisp of fire-water fluctuation beside Julian seemed to slam into a transparent wall and was instantly flattened. The air returned to calm. The black-clad security guard's voice fell through an extremely close-range sound transmission.

"Unauthorized mana release inside the exhibition hall will be considered provocation." He paused.

"Please maintain proper etiquette." The smile on Julian's face stalled for an instant. Then he withdrew the fluctuation as if nothing had happened.

"Of course." After saying that, he caught up with the group ahead. Rad leaned over from the other side and lowered his voice.

"He etched his second Source Rune?"

"Fire-water dual phase," Rowan said. Rad frowned.

"No wonder he hasn't come to school looking for trouble lately." He glanced in the direction Julian had left.

"I heard people say the subordinate consortiums in the Seventh Abyssal Hive haven't been very stable recently. Yggdrasil's side, Obsidian's side, Akashic's side—they're all using Master Hill's return to renegotiate cooperation."

"The Aether Consortium is also recruiting people."

"But they're not the only ones. The Black Snakes Consortium, Blackwater Heavy Industries, those people are here too. The officials are here as well." At this point, Rad clicked his tongue.

"These people look like they're here to look at paintings, but they're probably all calculating who can put up the money, who can get the authorization, and who can squeeze someone else out." Rowan watched the VIP elevator close in the distance. Julian had stayed on the twelfth floor with the young Tier 1s. The real elders and representatives had been guided to the seventeenth floor. In his mind, he rearranged these fragments. The Hill side needed money. The local consortiums wanted to choose sides.

The officials wanted to control the situation. The young Tier 1s wanted to seize an opportunity. … The lights in the central exhibition hall suddenly dimmed by a layer. All conversation in the outer ring lowered. In front of the semi-transparent curtain, a woman slowly stepped onto a small floating platform. She wore a long white dress, with a layer of silver gauze draped over her shoulders like mist.

Her features were as exquisite as they had been in the promotional projections, but in person, she looked colder, and more tired. Lydia Hill. The instant she appeared, Rowan felt the air around him grow a little quieter. It was not pressure. It was the natural presence of a more stable mana field spreading open. Tier 2. She did not release mana, yet the fluctuations of the young Tier 1s inside the twelfth-floor public exhibition hall all seemed to become lighter by a fraction. Lydia looked at everyone.

"Thank you all for coming to the Starlight Vanguard Art Exhibition." Her voice was amplified by the exhibition hall array, clear and steady, carrying just the right amount of warmth.

"My father once said that the Seventh Abyssal Hive was not his destination, but his starting point."

"That is why, this time, we have brought The Boundless Martial Diagram back here." The breathing of the young people in the outer ring visibly became lighter. Lydia continued,"What is displayed on the twelfth floor is the low-tier mana projection of The Boundless Martial Diagram."

"It is not a complete inheritance, nor will it forcibly instill any techniques into anyone."

"It is only a mirror."

"What viewers can see within it depends on the paths you have already taken, your crystal cores, your bodies, and your minds." She paused slightly.

"Tonight, all Tier 1 Transcendents under the age of twenty may complete one brief viewing under guidance."

"Please do not attempt to forcibly resonate with it."

"What you can see within depends only on yourselves."

"I wish all of you young people good fortune." As those words fell, someone in the outer-ring viewing area unconsciously straightened their back. Noah was one of them. Rowan, however, noticed that after Lydia finished speaking, her gaze did not linger on the young Tier 1s for long. After giving a brief nod, she soon turned and left along the side passage. The doors to the VIP elevator leading to the seventeenth floor opened for her. That was the true venue.

The projection on the twelfth floor, the excitement of the young people, and the rumors of selecting a disciple were only the part placed out in the open. The curtain began to rise. Deep within the central exhibition hall, a huge dark scroll emerged. It was not truly paper, nor was it like an ordinary projection. There were no fixed lines on the surface of the scroll. There were only countless extremely faint traces of light moving, crossing, breaking, and returning over the dark background.

The first batch of young Tier 1s was guided into the viewing line. Noah stood beside the queue, his voice a little tight.

"Please enter according to your number. Each viewing must not exceed thirty breaths. If you experience dizziness, mental stabbing pain, or crystal core tremors, please step back immediately." He spoke very properly. But his eyes could not stop drifting toward the scroll. Soon, the first young Martial Artist stood at the edge of the viewing area. He had only watched for ten breaths when the muscles of his right leg suddenly tightened, as if something had pulled on them.

Beside him, a saber-using youth turned pale, his fingers closing around empty air as if gripping an invisible blade. Some people were at a loss. Some frowned. Some only saw a mass of chaotic shadows. And some quickly found their eyes lighting up. Rad passed by the outer ring with a tray and could not help glancing over. The next moment, his footsteps paused slightly.

"Hiss." He inhaled softly. Rowan looked at him. Rad frowned as if trying to recall something.

"I think I saw a leg."

"What kind of leg?"

"Don't know," Rad whispered.

"A leg that kicks people." Rowan did not comment. The service terminal reminded him to replenish the third batch of cold food. He picked up a new platter and passed along the edge of the central exhibition hall's outer ring. According to the rules, he was not allowed to stop. But as he passed by, he still glanced at the dark scroll. In an instant, the sounds in the exhibition hall receded into the distance. He did not see fist techniques. He did not see leg techniques.

Nor did he see blades, bows, spears, or any fixed weapon. What he saw was like a spring. Not water. Rather, it was the illusion of something deep within his mental sea being stirred. An extremely fine strand of Mental Power gushed out from the spring, scattered outward, then slowly fell back just before it was about to break. Gushing out. Scattering. Falling back. Then gushing out again. It did not resemble a combat technique. It was more like a breathing method for Mental Power.

But he was not standing in a viewing position, nor had he actively resonated with it. That sensation merely brushed against the edge of his mental sea before the sounds of the exhibition hall pressed him back into reality. Deep within his mental sea, the auxiliary core gave a faint tremor. The mana vortex formed by the Lancer Mana Channeling Art also slowed by half a beat in that instant, then began turning again. Rowan withdrew his gaze. He continued forward with the platter in hand, his steps never stopping.

Just as he passed the entrance to Service Corridor Three, his right palm suddenly began to itch again. This time, the itch no longer flashed past. Something beneath his skin slowly pushed upward. Rowan placed the platter onto the chilled counter and lowered his hand under cover of turning around. In his palm, a thin tendril of granulation tissue emerged from between the palm lines. Blood-colored fibers twisted, straightened, and formed a line of extremely fine words. [Ring Finger-7.] [Mission item confirmed.] [Drop-off location: twenty-first floor, collection maintenance area, bottom level of Cold Cabinet C-19.] [Time limit: fifteen minutes.]