"Anyone want a meal? Come get it yourself if you do. Once the time's up, you're out of luck."
An armored soldier was shouting on the mountain path outside the building, with several fellow soldiers carrying food boxes beside him.
Shi Chun, who had been deep in thought in front of Bian Weiying, abruptly snapped out of it. He looked back, then jogged over at the same time as Wu Jinliang beside him.
Neither of them was hungry. They simply had never tasted food from the royal capital, much less food from this immortal mountain, and naturally did not want to miss out.
They each took a box and asked about the daily mealtimes. They were told someone would deliver food at the appointed hours; anyone who wanted some could have it, and no one would care if they did not. Used food boxes could be left by the roadside for someone to collect.
After waving goodbye to the delivery men, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang opened their boxes in unison, tasting and commenting as they ate, their faces beaming as though they had never eaten before.
Bian Weiying, Gan Tangyu, and Xiang Lan'er stared blankly at the pair's perfectly synchronized behavior.
They scraped their boxes clean and had just set them down by the road when more armored soldiers arrived with deliveries: one copy per sect of the contest rules and reward notice, and one atlas of the contest grounds per person. The latter was essentially a set of maps, with illustrations and descriptions of insect core crystals.
The rules were nothing out of the ordinary. The real focus was the reward notice from the Royal Court of the Victory Spirit Continent. The rewards were for participating sects and individuals, with none for the subordinate continents themselves. For those