Hannibal briefly explained where the schematics had come from, then brought up footage of Emerald City.
"You... built it into a city?"
Yi'er, the four-armed alchemist, jerked his head up. Deep within his pure-black compound eyes, countless tiny flecks of light trembled violently.
Seeing his reaction, Hannibal flipped back a few pages through the aerial images of Emerald City on his holographic terminal. Tall industrial smokestacks rose beside ancient temples that had crumbled into ruin. Bustling commercial streets blazed with neon signs. Caravans of pack beasts laden with materials came and went. In another image, several sweating players crouched beneath a damaged ancient statue, red-faced as they argued over a battered set of Hepa schematics. The images unfolded one after another in the air.
Yi'er studied them slowly, closely. At some point, all four of his hands had clenched into fists. He could hardly bear to look away, even from the weathered markings on a single broken wall.
"That's the Great Library from your records, isn't it?" Hannibal pointed to the magnificent pyramid at the center of the image. Several player workshops stood in the square before its entrance.
"It is the Great Library..."
Yi'er's trembling lower hands slowly folded before his chest. He bowed solemnly toward the illusory screen, his voice barely above a whisper:
"In our oldest hide scrolls, it was the most brilliant hall of truth within the divine body... I was born on Lord Burden Bearer's Carapace Plains and have spent my life traveling between the cities on his shell. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime."
The image changed. In the square before the Great Library, seven or eight players with bizarre IDs were working together to hoist a massive Bio-Mecha skeleton, arguing heatedly over whether its transmission ligament belonged on the