Chapter 51 - Chapter 51: Chapter 50: The Commercialization of the Secret Realm

Chapter 51: Chapter 50: The Commercialization of the Secret Realm

Guanghu District is located in the southern region of Jincheng, and in ancient times, it was the outer city of Jincheng. As time went on, Guanghu District became the sixth most economically powerful district in Jincheng.

“The main economic pillar of Guanghu District is the Ze City Secret Realm and its surrounding industries,” Tong Xuhua introduced to the three junior students.

Sitting by the car window, Chen Xing looked out at the brightly lit market, “I can tell.”

“Is that the Ze City Secret Realm?” Chen Xing looked towards the faintly spinning dark brown swirl in the middle of the square in the distance.

In the middle of the swirl, it was like a window had been opened in our world; through this window, one could clearly see the scenery on the other side, where it seemed a construction had also been built in the Secret Realm.

Sitting at the very front, Kuang Shiyi pointed at a tall hotel building of over twenty stories and said, “That’s where we’re staying tonight, let’s head to the arranged hotel and drop off our luggage first.”

The school bus soon stopped at the hotel portico, and Kuang Shiyi, carrying a large backpack, was the first to get off, followed by the other seven students.

After handling the check-in at the hotel front desk on the first floor, everyone received their room cards.

Kuang Shiyi said, “Later you can disperse freely, you can go nearby to wander and grab some food, but make sure to return to your rooms before 10 pm. We’ll wake up at 8 am tomorrow and set off at 9 am.”

“Got it!” Tong Xuhua nodded happily with a smile.

Kuang Shiyi hummed in acknowledgment, then gave a final reminder, “Right, don’t go to any inappropriate places at night, and absolutely no staying out overnight.”

Took the hotel elevator back to the seventh-floor room.

The rooms arranged by the school were single occupancies, a point that received much praise.

Pushing open the door, the room’s setup was warm and inviting, with concealed lighting installed around it. The orange warm light shone on the fluffy white bedsheets. The wooden flooring wasn’t cold either, and the room’s temperature and humidity were both quite moderate, but most importantly, the room was very spacious.

The room was a suite, with a connected room slightly lower than the bedroom, accessible by taking two steps down the stairs. There were granite floors, with water outlets along the walls, and one side was covered with a layer of pebbles.

On a small drawer nearby, there was a manual. Chen Xing opened the manual to learn that this room also had a water storage function, capable of retaining water up to 20 cm high.

This was a room especially prepared for Beast Tamers, particularly suitable for Water Attribute beasts.

The manual also stated that their hotel building offered many such “suites,” built with different layouts for various Species and Attributes of beasts.

Returning to the bedroom, there was a large floor-to-ceiling window directly ahead; from the seventh floor, one could perfectly view the Secret Realm’s square across the street.

The square was surrounded by more than a dozen brightly lit commercial streets bustling with crowds and vibrant activity.

Descending the stairs, Chen Xing arrived at a nearby snack street, where many food stalls featured creatures from the Secret Realm as their specialty: grilled Thorny Crown Fish meat, roasted White Fluff Flower Patterned Spider Legs…

Chen Xing tried a spider leg, nearly fifty centimeters long and three to four centimeters thick. The leg was slit open on the side, revealing pinkish-white flesh reminiscent of a shrimp peeled from its hard shell, sprinkled with cumin, chili powder, MSG, and salt, wafting an aromatic scent.

After trying one, Chen Xing was reluctant to eat more. Although delicious, they were quite expensive at 199 yuan each. It was enough to taste; besides, grilled food didn’t keep well for storage. He could bring some back for his parents and sister to try after returning from the Secret Realm.

He then visited another store and had a bowl of stir-fried noodles. After eating, Chen Xing strolled around the nearby streets.

He noticed that the most common establishments around the Secret Realm were restaurants, followed by “travel agencies.”

The travel agency walls were plastered with three-day tours of the Secret Realm and advertisements for one-day tours, full of grand promises to ensure customer safety and provide a genuine and thrilling experience.

There were also some souvenir shops and Beast Taming shops.

The souvenirs were primarily miniature dolls of various beasts from the Ze City Secret Realm, including cloth dolls, porcelain dolls, puzzles, keychains, backpacks of the same kind… Among them were Jincheng’s most classic Golden Iron Beast series of dolls. Chen Xing bought his sister a cellphone case that was a replica of a mud doll, it wasn’t big or heavy, and was easily stuffed into a bag.

In the Beast Taming shops, different beast younglings were housed in separate glass enclosures, some of which even had pictures and information about their parents stuck on the surface.

Three types of beast younglings were displayed in prominent positions.

To the left was a blue crab the size of a bowl.

When it noticed Chen Xing approaching, the blue crab raised its two claws, the left claw resembled a scythe with serrations on it, while the right claw was larger, shaped like a V-shaped shield with the terminus splitting into bluish-purple pincers.

“Dear customer, this Dancing Reaper Back Crab is the offspring of our shop’s king of crabs. It’s brave by nature, and if well trained, it could definitely become a great ally,” said the sales associate with a smile upon seeing Chen Xing observing the beast youngling. “Both of its parents are at full Energy Level, with the father being a Green-faced Asura Crab that has evolved once and reached Energy Level 51.”

The sales associate’s enthusiasm made Chen Xing a little uncomfortable; he wasn’t planning to buy anything, just looking around…

The sales associate quickly picked up on Chen Xing’s discomfort and said with a smile, “Please continue to look around, customer. If you need anything, just call me,” and then retreated to the counter.

Apart from the Dancing Reaper Back Crab, the one in the middle was a mud doll the color of clay, forty centimeters tall, housed in a two-meter-tall colossal glass enclosure which also contained a mud hut it had built. Sensing Chen Xing’s approach, the mud doll retreated two steps and hid inside the mud hut, only revealing half of its head to sneak glances at Chen Xing.

They say that mud dolls belonged to the Elemental species of beasts, and even if they lose an arm or their head, it would not be a problem. They could simply reattach it and it would heal, with their core weakness being something called the “core.”

The glass enclosure to the right was filled with water, its base layered with small white pebbles, and a half-meter-long blue snail lay quietly within the tank.

Occasionally, small shrimps or fish would dart into the dark orifice of the shell, only for those that entered never to come back out.

Is this the beast known as the most dangerous in the Ze City Secret Realm, the N35 Blue King Snail?

It seemed to be just an ordinary blue snail, only bigger by a “billion” little bits.

It was said that in the Secret Realm, the Blue King Snail would disguise itself as a young, beautiful woman, luring men to crawl into a hole underneath it, then they would be devoured.

This was one of the horror stories that many local children of Jincheng had heard, where the protagonist was the monster from the Ze City Secret Realm: the Water Illusion Dual Attribute creature known to be the most perilous, the Blue King Snail.

But… where was the woman?

He saw the snail, but where was the woman?

Would a snail girl crawl out from the lowest orifice of the shell?

Chen Xing leaned in closer, only to see the Blue King Snail at the bottom of the dark shell orifice blowing two bubbles…

The next morning, Chen Xing gathered in the lobby on the first floor after finishing breakfast on the second floor.

Seated on a sofa, Coach Kuang was accompanied by a bald man.

“Is this your student? Such a young kid going on adventures in the Secret Realm?” the man beside the coach stroked his bald head.

“He’s a freshman in his first year of high school,” Kuang Shiyi spoke to the man with a familiar tone.

The bald man sighed, “Going into the Secret Realm in the freshman year, the kids nowadays are really something! I remember my first time entering the Secret Realm was at twenty-four.”