Nonessential

All right, I just hadn't seen enough.

Ronan felt a little embarrassed. He also noticed that Peony, the person at the heart of it all, was exceptionally calm. She paid no attention whatsoever to her mentor's casual joke and continued streaming in the Task Channel.

Maybe this sort of thing really was nothing in the adult world.

Ronan turned his attention back to Peony's stream. Just as she had said, the square was soon filled with projected content, though most of it was still edited news footage.

For the Spring City residents holding their grand parade, it should have been enough—enough to drive their emotions higher wave after wave. For professionals and semi-professionals like He Yueyin, Bamboo Pole, and Zhang Yingying, it was enough as well. There were far too many details worth analyzing and discussing.

But after watching through it once, Ronan could not help feeling stifled. He could more or less understand why Peony was streaming this information to them. He knew it involved the political maneuvers of certain major powers. But pushing further beyond that was entirely outside his field of expertise.

In fact, the lead Peony had brought still stood somewhat apart from his Self Logic. As Peony had said, his thinking had not yet extended to a conspiracy thread spanning more than a decade. What concerned him more now were things that existed in the present—for example, the countless flickering indicator lights across the Soul Cape blanketing the world.

Or Huang Bingzhen's changes, which corresponded to the completeness of the "Advanced Formula." A problematic individual who had only recently entered the third stage of aberration had produced the formula's "elixir not belonging to the Mortal Realm."

What kind of people and causal connections might be involved afterward—that was the area Ronan found more interesting.

After