Another spring had arrived, warm and bright with blooming flowers.
Every April was the season for the Bunta City Road Bicycle Race, which brought the city to life.
With last year's Xinfei Cycling Championship having been a success, more and more people following the Bunta City Road Bicycle Race were also turning their attention to the Xinfei Cycling Championship held afterward.
Last year had been its inaugural year, and only teams from a handful of merchant guilds had participated, so it had not attracted much attention.
But when the final stage of the Xinfei Cycling Championship concluded at the end of last year, the overall champion was crowned, and his total prize money for the year was announced to be a staggering eighty-four thousand gold coins, the event immediately drew widespread attention.
Before that, everyone had treated the claim that the event offered up to a hundred thousand gold coins in prize money as nothing more than a slogan. Few had truly believed it.
But when the Xinfei Merchant Guild personally handed the winning cyclist a seemingly gold-shimmering banknote from the Chimera Chamber of Commerce worth eighty-four thousand gold coins before countless spectators, the event immediately caused a sensation.
As a result, the opening of the second Xinfei Cycling Championship this year drew countless people's attention, even surpassing the interest in the Bunta City Road Bicycle Race.
Of course, the Bunta City Road Bicycle Race had not been neglected either. Last year's top three finishers had each been recruited by one of the three bicycle merchant guilds participating in the Xinfei Cycling Championship and become professional cyclists. Their base salaries alone had reached an astonishing two thousand gold coins over the past year.
Anyone who won the Bunta City Road Bicycle Race this year would presumably attract those merchant guilds'