Chapter 262 - 173 Unexpected Gains

Chapter 262: Chapter 173 Unexpected Gains

"I haven’t paid attention for a while, and I didn’t expect Eternal Life City to have become like this already..."

Bai Yi stood on the suspended walkway, holding the vines serving as railings, and admired the interior of Eternal Life City from afar.

The place she was in was at the absolute edge of Eternal Life City, belonging to the territories not yet fully developed.

Although the territory currently has millions of witches, all hoping to relocate to the interior of Eternal Life City, closer to her,

Shang Ji did not open up residency in accordance with the carrying capacity of Eternal Life City in one fell swoop.

Instead, witches were arranged to reside on the Floating Cities and ship islands brought back.

Some of the former were floating at low altitudes around Eternal Life City, becoming satellite city-like entities.

Others stayed near the sea area of Sea Suppressing City together with the latter, or became frontline mobile fortresses.

According to Shang Ji, as the "Capital," Eternal Life City has limited space and cannot be opened up that easily.

Moreover, there is not really a shortage of living space within the territory.

On the contrary, many directly governed Floating Cities have plenty of vacant areas available for living, completely overshadowing the area provided by Eternal Life City.

The witches were so keen on this place merely because it is closer to Bai Yi.

However, Shang Ji had much to consider, including potential future large-scale buildings and functional buildings like research facilities that also require adequate budgeting.

After careful deliberation, although not banning latecoming witches from residing, they mimicked some human solutions by imposing "real estate" limitations.

Later witches wishing to settle here had to "purchase" a property within Eternal Life City to obtain long-term residency rights.

Naturally, the "housing prices" here were not low.

This could both filter out some contributing witches and give witches a monetary goal to increase currency circulation and implement her monetary policy.

After all, only when currency could meaningfully help witches would they strive to earn it, making it more rapidly integrate into every witch’s life.

However, in such a short time and without "installment" plans, it was insufficient for witches to gather savings to buy houses.

This is why even now, there are still considerable areas within Eternal Life City that are undeveloped, with only a few original resident witches choosing to live there.

Looking towards the bustling commercial district far away, Bai Yi, unlike most witches using flight as transportation,

chose to walk on the suspended walkway to enjoy the appearance of Eternal Life a bit.

Initially, it was Bai Yi’s idea to come inside Eternal Life City to solve dinner, but upon arriving at the commercial district, Bai Yi felt somewhat bewildered.

Even though nominally it was still her city, each shop had appeared in Shang Ji’s daily reports.

Yet Bai Yi’s understanding of them, as an absentee manager, was almost zero.

For a moment, seeing the shops along the way, with at least 5 restaurants alone, Bai Yi found herself in a dilemma and involuntarily sought help from Hatti behind her.

"Do you have any recommendations?"

But as soon as Bai Yi asked, she realized her misstep.

Hatti had also just arrived in the territory a few days ago, likely knowing even less about it than her.

Just as Bai Yi was about to turn to the Witch Network for help, Hatti surprisingly offered a suggestion.

"Your Highness, I think we can try Hong Chao Restaurant, it’s one of the hottest on the Witch Network recently.

It’s said to be opened by a Human, and the name matches the restaurant’s name."

"Hong Chao?"

Bai Yi quickly found the source of this familiar name.

As the only Human allowed to study spells with witches, his name rightfully appeared in Shang Ji’s reports.

"It’s Councilman Hong’s son...

Let’s choose this then!

Ah, but Hatti, how did you..."

Initially, Bai Yi was curious about how Hatti, who had just joined the territory and always stayed by her side, knew about the popular places in Eternal Life City.

But before she could ask, she got distracted by information about Hong Chao accessed through the network.

"Not bad, already reached the 3rd tier of Mages, truly quite talented.

He only began learning spells recently...

And he even researched several spells on his own?

With such Talent, he could probably be considered a top-level genius.

Then later, I’ll increase his resource quota a bit more, give him some more incentives, and see how far he can go..."

Without checking, she wouldn’t have known; a search in the network revealed that Hong Chao’s growth was nothing short of legendary.

Having a good father inherently provided basics, but he himself also did exceedingly well.

Initially, he made some Tees with her animated characters in the Lower City District, earning his first pot of gold and successfully spreading his name among witches to a small extent.

He also seized the opportunity to exchange for some basic Spell Books from the witches, laying the foundation for studying spells and even prematurely converting into a recognized Mage.

Later, after Councilman Hong secured a learning opportunity for him, he firmly grasped it and diligently advanced.

He also caught the wave of the spell research trend she had initiated, inventing several highly creative Nature Series spells.

Although the effects were very mild, he successfully pioneered the foundation of Nature Series spells and received rewards.

Leveraging these awarded resources, he broke through the threshold of a 3rd tier Mage in one fell swoop.

This experience, if truly brought out, could be comparable to network novel protagonists she had read about.

"Whoa...

Wait, the resources I just gave him, could they also be part of a ’protagonist’s fortunate encounter’?"

However, Bai Yi merely marvelled at fate’s wonder and didn’t intend to retract the resources or suppress him.

After all, they were all her subordinates; even if he grew, the outcome would still be beneficial to her.

Even her kindness to Hong Chao could act as a kind of "Thousand Gold’s Test," if there were other non-witch Talents in the future, having this example could better attract talent.

Although she doesn’t actually need it.

Moreover, if the other party is really the Protagonist, suppressing him wouldn’t make sense.

Maybe destiny will let him find the missing resources elsewhere and grow again.

Instead, she might just offend this suspected Protagonist.

Even though she could use the witch’s assimilation infection to resolve the conflict, what’s the point of going through all this trouble?

Suppressing him is utterly thankless and only creates unnecessary complications.

It would be better to show some goodwill from the start and see how far this suspected "Protagonist" can go.

Also, he could serve as a good research material to study the relationship between the "Protagonist" and destiny.

As for why not turn into a witch from the beginning...

This is like doing an experiment in the lab. Even though the test subject is destined for destruction from the start, it doesn’t mean the destruction step has to be performed immediately.

Would there even be an experiment then?

If the results differ from expectations in the end, performing assimilation isn’t too late.

As for now...

"Let’s first find an opportunity to fuse the Swarm Consciousness, hm, this could be part of some kind of reward.

Directly asking him to connect to the network might be a bit improper; it should be phrased as rewarding him for using the same network as a witch while keeping his human identity.

Hm, this sounds much better.

Other items like Space Rings can also be arranged, use these small benefits to firmly bind him to the territory, and then see how he develops..."

Anyway, there’s always the final assimilation as a backup, Bai Yi is not worried that this guy will cause any uncontrollable trouble.

"Hey, speaking of which, this guy started gaining power only after I returned from the instance and began to assimilate the Sanctuary.

Although the Insect Swarm didn’t monitor him before, according to the memories of others in the Sanctuary, Hong Chao was a completely mediocre guy before.

Now it feels like he’s become a completely different person, the difference is just too big...

Could it be there’s some transmigrator messing up the world..."

While Bai Yi was pondering, under Hatti’s guidance, she had arrived at Hong Chao’s restaurant and saw this suspected Protagonist.

He was a calm-looking man, however, at the moment he seemed like an inexperienced boy, in the kitchen...

Flirting with her witch?

Strange, how did he end up involved with her witch?

Driven by a sort of mother-in-law mentality and the previous suspicions,

Bai Yi handed over the task of ordering to Hatti and directly switched into a soul perspective, and proceeded with dual-mode Thought Reading through the Swarm Network, trying to discern something from Hong Chao.

Though this was just one of her avatars, she possessed all of Bai Yi’s superpowers, undiminished in strength.

Thought Reading didn’t retrieve any useful information, as the opponent’s brain had nearly crashed under the witch’s onslaught.

But from the soul perspective, all of Hong Chao’s peculiarities were fully exposed.

"This is...

Some kind of Possession?"

From the soul’s perspective, Hong Chao’s soul obviously exhibited abnormalities.

Normally, a person’s soul’s appearance depends on their subconscious self-perception, which often leads to the soul’s appearance being identical to the creature’s original form.

While Bai Yi suspected that if someone’s self-perception is abnormal, it might lead to slight differences in the soul’s appearance.

Such as a gender switch, or some unnoticed details.

But Hong Chao’s case was not like that; he was entirely two different people.

Bai Yi had encountered this before.

In her recent experiments, Mutant Creatures transformed into witches also showed similar mismatches between soul and body.

However, with the passage of time, the soul is always reshaped by the body, gradually uniforming.

This has been verified with the witches assimilated and brought back by Bai Yi.

But Hong Chao’s soul didn’t show this tendency; it still maintained its initial form without any signs of transformation.

"Interesting...

I didn’t expect to find such a discovery on this outing...

Shang Ji, later try to arrange some tasks for Hong Chao, find an excuse.

Remember, don’t be too obvious, he has something special, I want to study it."

The last two sentences, of course, were not spoken directly but in a conversation with Shang Ji over the network.

Consciousness returned to the avatar in the restaurant, just in time for the dishes Hatti ordered to be served.

But when Bai Yi saw what exactly Hatti had ordered, her expression instantly became animated.

Why the hell is there a strawberry filling in this baked pie?

What’s with the octopus in this fruit pie? And it’s intact!

Even though Bai Yi considered herself quite tolerant of food, accepting most peculiar foods,

At this moment, she started doubting herself, unable to help but question in her mind,

"What the hell is this!"

...

Stica Sweet Strawberry Filled Baked Pie (Local Strawberry Improved Version): This was a traditional delicacy from my hometown. Whenever autumn arrived and Stica strawberries were harvested in abundance, strawberries that couldn’t be stored or sold fresh were taken back by the farmers and used as pie fillings, becoming a rare treat for children at home...

Even though food scarcity wasn’t a problem later, it still became a traditional delicacy passed down and eventually recreated here...

[Note: Oh my god, you actually baked strawberries into a pie! You heretic!]