No Need

Chen Shu had long since finished building the Thousand Mechanisms Art.

His Spirit Sea now held many fixed groups of Runes, packed so densely they seemed to glow white. Some shone brightly, others faintly; some flickered. Their light showed which groups worked constantly, which lay dormant, and which worked intermittently.

This was already his modified version of the Thousand Mechanisms Art.

He had fine-tuned the Runes to improve their effectiveness.

He had added several groups of Runes to round out its functions.

He had changed the preset parameters for casting spells to better suit his own habits in attack and defense, as well as his personal circumstances.

For instance, his Spirit Sea was larger than those of others at the same rank, and he had more spiritual power, so he raised the default spiritual-power output for quick-cast spells by about fifty percent.

Then he integrated several small spells he used often.

More substantial spells took longer. He had already integrated Bodyguard Divine Light, Impact Art, and the unimproved version of Thunder Magic. Work on the Tracer Technique was underway. Chen Shu figured that in a place like the Jade Capital, he would never need to use the Tracer Technique intensively, so he had put it further down the list.

A week later.

All three members of Room 504 went out together.

The arena Jiang Lai frequented was in the south of the city. It was rather out of the way but still within city limits, on the basement level of a hotel.

Privately run arenas weren't illegal in Yi Nation, but legitimate ones had their hands and feet tied. Not only were the fights dull, betting wasn't allowed, and there were enough rules to drive anyone mad.

This arena was half legitimate, half illegal.

How legitimate, and how illegal, depended