The normal sign you see when you buy a ticket and swipe your card to enter is "The Four Continents Hub Station Welcomes You."

But if you cast a spell, or crawl in under the turnstile, then what you see is a different slogan.

[Fare-dodging is a crime, offenders will be beheaded]

The sad thing is, because of Li's height, whether it buys a ticket or not, all it ever sees is this line: [Fare-dodging is a crime, offenders will be beheaded]

Feeling personally targeted, Li got a little mad. Its chubby little hand grabbed at the air, and in an instant it had written a complaint letter.

Then, with perfect composure under the surveillance of eight monitoring arrays, it stuffed the letter into the mailbox hanging from the ceiling.

After finishing everything, it finally floated off toward another direction, satisfied.

Over there was an internal test route that hadn't been opened to the public yet.

Li decided to go take a spin around Chang State.

To see how the Village was doing.

...

Chang State.

Two young Cultivators were chatting. One of them asked, "Tell me, why did the Mother Tree turn into this? Isn't she supposed to be a tree? Like the giant tree in Spirit Deer Valley."

As he spoke, he took out that volume of "The Burning Legion and the Old Deer Planting Trees," pointing at the illustration of a sky‑piercing giant tree in the storybook.

"Mm." The other Cultivator, who had been a bit pollen‑allergic lately, sneezed. "Maybe she was influenced by Lord Village and Elder Xiaoxue."

As he spoke, he gestured, "So she turned into this form with the upper body of a girl and a long, strip‑like lower body."

"I get the logic and all that, but who in the world taught her that way of walking?"

In front of the two of them, the snake‑bodied girl the Mother Tree had transformed into had shrunk a lot, but to ordinary people she was still huge.

Right now she had coiled her tail into a loop and was moving forward by rolling like a wheel, and wherever she rolled, furrows opened up.

And after she rolled past, fresh green sprouted in the furrows.

Now, thanks to the Mother Tree and the Village awakening at the same time, the purification progress at Luoyu Mountain had suddenly sped up a lot.

Especially the Mother Tree—now that she had a concrete consciousness, her control over Chang State had increased further. At this moment, the wasteland beneath Luoyu Mountain was already filled with her root system.

The Village's Dragon Qi and the Life Force that the Mother Tree had integrated from Chang State were driving out the strange death qi in the wasteland.

Even if the way of purifying was pretty weird.

Just as the two young Cultivators were tangled up over this, another "set of tires" rolled past in front of them.

It was the Firefly Spirits and Fuji.

Fuji was acting as glue, while the Da Tou Cai Firefly Spirits were connected hair‑tuft to hair‑tuft, forming one green tire after another that rolled along the furrows plowed by the Mother Tree like spinning wheels.

"I think…I know who she learned it from now…"

"…"

The two of them looked at each other in speechless silence and decided to stop dwelling on it. Together they stepped onto a floating array and flew toward that golden platform.

According to the sect mission displayed on their second‑gen Little Walnut devices, their job tonight was to observe the star region south of Chang State and redraw the Star Map.

They walked into the Absolute Spirit Array, somewhat clumsily activated the telescope that the Thousand Mechanism Pavilion had sent over, and the round platform rotated, pointing it toward the south.

There were no clouds tonight—perfect weather for stargazing.

Except…

The Cultivator looking through the lens rubbed his eyes. "I think I'm sick."

"What's wrong? Did you drink A‑pa tea or eat Taisui? I'm telling you, no slacking off, no skipping shifts." The other Cultivator replied absent‑mindedly while sorting the Star Map records from the past few days.

"I'm not lying. Come look, there's something weird out there."

"Something weird?"

Putting down the Star Maps, the other Cultivator walked over. He sat down where his companion made room and pressed his eye to the scope.

"?"

He saw that in the starry sky, something was approaching the Four Continents, but it wasn't traveling in a straight line.

Instead it kept tracing circles, doing all kinds of ridiculous three‑dimensional maneuvers, like it was dodging something. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

As for what that thing actually was…

The young Cultivator wasn't sure either. Personally, he felt it was a stone arm with a hand.

And that stone arm, which kept doing three‑dimensional maneuvers, was flipping him the middle finger.

Highly disrespectful.

"Better report it. It's pointing at me."

With that thought, the Cultivator pressed the alarm button for reporting anomalies.