A large influx of players poured into Steam Island, breathing new life into this player-owned island.
More than a dozen packed buses carried hundreds of players into Steam Island's Ring Central Plaza Avenue like sightseeing coaches.
Before that, however, players who had failed to squeeze onto the buses and used their own vehicles had already arrived, experiencing the island's prosperity and grandeur firsthand.
The first thing that caught their eyes was an absurdly enormous church north of Ring Central Plaza Avenue. Taller than all the surrounding buildings and still unfinished, it was particularly conspicuous.
The church currently stood 320 meters tall and occupied over 40,000 square meters. Only some sections were open, and construction was about 60% complete.
The church blended architectural styles from several different eras, as though several designers from different schools had worked on it together, but none could persuade the others, so they had decided to draw lots to divide up the work, each taking charge of their own section. The result was a bizarre, fantastical building full of grotesque charm.
It had both solemn, sacred Gothic spires and exquisite reliefs, as well as the golden glazed-tile roofs, upturned eaves, and roof ridges found in Eastern architecture,
Stained-glass windows, fountains, stone lions, dragon-entwined columns-everything had been added, yet rather than feeling disjointed, it all came together.
At the very center of the church, a huge single eye had even been recreated using mechanical components, looking remarkably lifelike.
Its eyeball was made of crystal and rendered with extreme realism, even reproducing its blood vessels and dark spots. Mechanical components controlled its opening and closing, and with the built-in lighting, the eye seemed to come alive. It was a work of art.
Beneath the eyeball was a signboard handwritten by Yang Yi. The lettering was a little crooked,