Tang Xin rolled her eyes, thinking to herself, sure enough, it's as expected, luckily she asked in time. "This is the open selection, my Little Princess. The first match has over a hundred teams from various places participating. Are you planning to watch here for a year? Have you even looked at the rules?"

"I, I, I probably read them—right?" Ai Xiaoxiao responded sheepishly.

Tang Xin was not surprised by this and only replied, "The tournament organizers have divided the Spire Square into ten arenas, with five matches in each, ending in three rounds. The scores are tallied to determine the top thirty teams that advance to the next round. So each round has fifty matches happening simultaneously. Which arena do you really plan to go to?"

Ai Xiaoxiao felt dizzy and quickly replied, "Why don't we take a stroll first?"

"Take a stroll?" Tang Xin looked at the girl suspiciously—are you really here to watch the match? But this suited her intent as she wasn't here to watch the match either, so she nodded without objection.

"Tangtang, you're so nice!" Seeing her friend capable of coming up with a solution, Ai Xiaoxiao was so thrilled she jumped three feet high. But as she stepped back, she accidentally bumped into someone behind her, startling her, just as she was about to turn around to apologize.

However, upon seeing the person, she was slightly stunned and blurted out, "Ah, it's you!"

Diket was also somewhat surprised to see these two young girls.

He couldn't help but chuckle and said, "What a coincidence, we're meeting again."

Tang Xin nodded to him, "Mr. Diket, we meet again, hello."

Ai Xiaoxiao, on the other hand, was curious and couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Diket, did you finally find that person?"

"Found them, it was quite troublesome for you, ladies." Diket responded with a slight smile. After he left Elfendo Spire previously, he unexpectedly bumped into both of them, so he conveniently asked them to help contact Fang Hong, leading to a series of events.

But he didn't expect to run into them again today.

"Just lending a hand." Tang Xin replied politely.

Diket nodded and looked at the two girls, asking, "Are you also here to watch the matches?"

"Exactly," Ai Xiaoxiao quickly replied, "But we haven't made any plans yet; we're going to stroll around the plaza first to see."

"Then how about this," Diket smiled, "Actually, one of my companions is also participating in this match. If you two don't mind, could I introduce him to you?" It seemed that he quite liked these two little girls.

Especially the one who was so amiable with everyone, Ai Xiaoxiao. As for the girl named 'Tang Xin,' she seemed a bit aloof. However, given Diket's experience, he didn't mind this.

"Sure, sure," Ai Xiaoxiao eagerly wanted someone to guide them, but also found it strange, "Your companion is also participating in this match?"

"Don't be surprised," Diket explained, "He's just a little fellow, a cross-generational friend of mine."

Ai Xiaoxiao heard this and couldn't help but be very curious. She understood that this older knight was a native—and a native's cross-generational friend, who was also an Invoker, what kind of person would that be? She immediately forgot about the match, hurrying to agree:

"Then you must take us to see, Mr. Diket."

Diket nodded lightly.

Meanwhile, in the plaza, Fang Hong was naturally unaware of this.

Actually, he realized he was not at all adept at handling such crowded situations.

The Soul Fingerprint notified them earlier that the tournament organizers scheduled their match in the third round, at arena seven, but Fang Hong, Dill, and Cui Yu couldn't find their way in the crowds. Adding to that the watchful eyes of the Southern Region Alliance Alchemists above them, Fang Hong couldn't openly release the Clockwork Fairy either.

That would be too disrespectful to the big shots, considering that today Elfendo Plaza was under a no-fly order—

Fortunately, Mulan, with tournament experience, anticipated this and came early to lead them newbies out. This made Fang Hong appreciate the benefits of being backed by a guild; if it were just him, he might be lost to death without finding the direction of the arena. It's known that in such tournaments, there's always a team that loses eligibility for one reason or another—

With the tournament about to start, everyone appeared very calm, only briefly discussing what their next round opponents might be like—As for the opponents in the open selection, with fifty matches starting simultaneously in each of the three rounds, among over a hundred and fifty teams, it's impossible to know each person's details.

With this kind of setup, there's no means of targeting anyone either, the only thing each person can do is deliver their best performance to enter the top thirty and smoothly advance to the next round. Discussing the opponents of this round is actually meaningless.

However, five teams from the same tournament area would definitely check each other out. Interestingly enough, Fang Hong found out that besides two unknown teams, there were 'two' of his old acquaintances in this tournament area.

One of them was the Shadow Throne team—though he heard that Shadow Throne sent three teams to compete this time, so encountering one of them might not be surprising. Shadow Throne being a Southern guild is considerably more enthusiastic about local events than other guild forces.

As for the other one, it was the team from Elite, led personally by Virus.

Fang Hong was startled to see the latter, and that Ice Goddess also looked at Fang Hong with a suspicious glance, probably because he seemed familiar. However, there's an outside rumor that Virus holds the Elite Alchemist team in high regard, personally overseeing the training of new Alchemists within the guild.

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