"What did this Heavenly Screen mean?"
Lin Yi wondered to himself, unsure what to make of the situation.
During the prologue, the highlight scenes had rarely used large golden characters for explanations. For the most part, they had served to set the mood, provide basic information, draw attention, and make things look impressive.
Yet now that the main event had begun, the Heavenly Screen was furiously adding golden labels as though they cost nothing.
Xiao Hongchen hadn't even awakened his Martial Soul. Was that really worth a label?
Even Lin Yi was worried that something might go wrong. He prepared to shut down the livestream for the time being, as he needed to make preparations before continuing.
"Actually, it only labeled two people: Xiao Hongchen and Ji Juechen."
"I'm bound to play a piece on both of them in the future. Could the Heavenly Screen be labeling all my intended pieces so people in the Douluo I and Douluo Dalu III: The Legend of the Dragon King eras can keep track of them?"
Lin Yi thought that was quite possible.
After all, why had the Heavenly Screen appeared? Lin Yi didn't know either, but he did know that it was now serving the Heaven and Earth Chess Game.
Moreover, the Heavenly Screen's projection on Lin Yi's side was only a small part of its overall function. Most of what it projected was shown in Douluo I and Douluo Dalu III: The Legend of the Dragon King.
From that, he could judge where the Heavenly Screen's focus lay: on the audience.
It let the esteemed viewers see the entire game clearly and understand how it was changing and where it was headed.
Just as it had made things look impressive at the start, it had also been providing the viewers with background information.
Now that the actual game had begun, if Lin Yi had already played a piece but the viewers couldn't tell, that would make him a bit of a riddle-speaker.
"I'll have to do some testing to see whether that's really the case."
The method of testing it was actually quite simple.
With that thought, Lin Yi took a deep breath and continued toward his destination.
He had set out from Mingdu and crossed the Sun Moon Empire.
He headed straight for a southern city, the one farthest from Mingdu.
The collision of the Douluo Continent and the Sun Moon Continent had formed a completely new continent, with the Sun Moon Empire in the west and the Douluo Three Kingdoms in the east.
The southeastern part of the Sun Moon Empire bordered the western part of the Star Luo Empire. When the continents collided, a continuous mountain range, the Ming Dou Mountain Range, had formed there. It was a strategic location, and the fighting between the Sun Moon Empire and the Douluo Three Kingdoms was now concentrated there.
The southern city Lin Yi had chosen was not particularly close to the Ming Dou Mountain Range. It was already near the southwestern corner of the Sun Moon Empire.
Because of the Evil Demon Forest in the west, this southwestern corner was somewhat remote.
South Abyss City.
Even though he had crossed more than half the Sun Moon Empire, Lin Yi had not spent much time doing so.
In total, it had taken no more than half an hour.
After arriving in South Abyss City, Lin Yi released his spiritual power and searched freely throughout the city for his target.
Unlike Mingdu, with its many defenses, South Abyss City, though also a major city and the heart of the southwestern corner, was worlds apart from Mingdu in the strength of its defenses.
To Lin Yi, a Limit Douluo, virtually all of South Abyss City's defenses might as well not have existed.
Even the detection Soul Tools designed to counter Spiritual Detection-type Soul Skills had all failed at that moment, showing no reaction whatsoever to Lin Yi's probing.
Lin Yi had no fixed target.
So he conducted a blanket search of South Abyss City, looking for targets who met his requirements.
A moment later, he had narrowed the candidates down to three.
South Abyss City was, after all, a major city, and it held a considerable share of the resources in this southwestern corner. For Soul Engineers, resources were everything.
The scale of South Abyss City's resources naturally could not compare with Mingdu's, but they were still sufficient to support a Level 9 Soul Engineer.
Of course, South Abyss City had no Level 9 Soul Engineer at present.
Instead, five major powers held sway there, each with at least one Level 8 Soul Engineer.
After making a few inquiries, Lin Yi headed toward one of them, the Wang Family.
The Wang Family did not have deep roots in South Abyss City. It was an emerging power, overseen by its family head. Though it had developed over the years, the other four major powers had suppressed it, making every step extremely difficult. After the family head, Wang Xin, became a Level 8 Soul Engineer, he made no further progress and hit a bottleneck. The entire Wang Family had likewise entered a bottleneck period. Within the family, there was only one Level 7 Soul Engineer with a different surname, and among the Wangs themselves, there was only one Level 6 Soul Engineer.
If they could not nurture another Level 8 Soul Engineer in a short time, the Wang Family would probably have to build up its strength for quite a long time before it could truly secure its place in the top tier.
The Wang Family it is.
Lin Yi felt that Wang Xin met his criteria for someone to support. With his help, if Wang Xin could break through to become a nine-ring Titled Douluo, then with rare metals and blueprints for Level 9 Soul Tools as well, a few years of study might be enough for him to become a Level 9 Soul Engineer.
Wang Xin was currently stuck at Level 8 purely because his own foundation was too shallow.
His family could not provide him with any help. Instead, it held him back.
If he could abandon everything and go to Mingdu to develop, he might be able to fight for a chance.
Of course, it was only a chance.
The reality was that Wang Xin had not gone to fight for it. Instead, he intended to rely on his own strength to develop his family and nurture the family and its younger generation.
A Soul Engineer with no connection whatsoever to the original story. If I invest in him, will the Heavenly Screen label him? Lin Yi wondered.
He thought it probably would.
After all, based on his earlier conjecture, the Heavenly Screen had labeled those people because Lin Yi already intended to play pieces on them.
The Heavenly Screen was giving the audience, the people outside the game, a reminder. It was a kind of unconventional explanation.
As he thought, Lin Yi switched the Heavenly Screen's projection back on.
To be precise, this was his first time starting a livestream.
It was his debut broadcast.
Starting a livestream for the first time, Lin Yi found that it felt very different in many ways from the earlier broadcast, when he had passively continued the prologue.
A delayed livestream will count backward from my current point in time and start broadcasting.
It still counted as a live broadcast, only it could be thought of as the network delay between the two sides being a little high-a delay of several minutes or even several hours.
Lin Yi examined the feeling carefully and could roughly determine that the maximum delay was one day.
The maximum delay is one day. In other words, whatever I want to show had better be broadcast within a day, or my preparations will be wasted.
And I can only confirm one day's worth of livestream footage in advance.
As he thought, Lin Yi adjusted the broadcast time to the point when he had previously shut off the livestream.
At that time, he had just handed the Extraterrestrial Meteoric Iron sword to Ji Juechen.
As the Heavenly Screen resumed its projection, countless people in Douluo I and Douluo Dalu III: The Legend of the Dragon King, who had only just returned to their normal lives, looked up to watch once more.
The prologue projected by the Heavenly Screen had simply been too spectacular, drawing the attention of countless people.
That indomitable figure and the boldness he had shown in setting up the Heaven and Earth Chess Game drew these people in. They wanted to see how Lin Yi would play his pieces and witness the moment he turned the tables with their own eyes.
They looked forward to seeing what Lin Yi would do.
The image on the Heavenly Screen flickered, picking up from the point where it had previously cut off.
In the image, after leaving the Ji Clan, Lin Yi unexpectedly stepped into the imperial city.