After returning to the Dragon Temple, Yuan immediately began walking around the massive dragon statue trying to find a way to activate it.
However, even after circling around the thing for a few minutes and finding nothing, Yuan took a seat in front of the statue and began pondering.
"Oh, right. The Great One mentioned using the Dragon’s Gaze on it."
Once he’d realized this, Yuan quickly stood up again and activated his Dragon’s Gaze before walking around the statue again.
However, to his surprise, he wasn’t able to find it even with the Dragon’s Gaze activated.
"Nothing’s happening... Maybe I need to increase the strength of the Dragon’s Gaze?"
Thinking that, Yuan pushed his Dragon’s Gaze to its limits.
"Haaa... haaa... It didn’t work..." Yuan gasped for air a few minutes later, as the Dragon’s Gaze consumed an insane amount of spiritual energy when used at its full power.
Yuan collapsed on the floor a moment later and just laid there while staring at the statue that spiraled up as though it was trying to ascend.
"Wait a second... What if the reason I cannot find the thing is because it’s at the top of the statue?"
With this in mind, after taking a few minutes to recover his spiritual energy, Yuan flew into the air until he was even higher than the dragon statue, where he activated the Dragon’s Gaze once again.
Almost instantly after he activated his Dragon’s Gaze, Yuan noticed a golden glow inside the dragon’s mouth.
"That should be it!" Yuan approached the dragon statue with excitement.
However, even though he could see a golden light inside the dragon’s mouth, he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and putting his hands inside didn’t feel right.
After pondering for a moment, Yuan decided to poke the inside of the dragon’s mouth with the Empyrean Overlord just to make sure it was safe.
A few taps later, the dragon statue suddenly began rumbling.
The rumbling quickly spread to the city, and within just moments, it seemed as if the entire world was shaking.
"I hope nothing bad happens..." Yuan mumbled to himself as he helplessly watched the entire world shake violently.
The earthquake eventually stopped after a few minutes, and Yuan looked around to make sure everything was okay.
However, he quickly noticed a change in the scenery.
Although the skies were still dark, there were subtle lights coming from the ground around the city that gradually grew clearer and brighter.
If one looked closely, one would see that an enormous magical circle had suddenly appeared around the city.
Furthermore, this formation appeared to be only half complete, as some symbols and patterns looked incomplete.
"What a massive formation... How am I supposed to activate something like this?" Yuan mumbled in a dazed voice.
Suddenly, a notification appeared before him.
[The Great One’s Seal of Approval is reacting to the surroundings]
[The Great One’s Seal of Approval has activated]
The next moment, a golden orb of light the size of a baby’s fist appeared from his forehead.
This golden orb of light then dropped towards the ground, acting almost like a drop of water under gravity.
A few seconds later, the golden orb of light reached the ground and created a ripple effect in the formation before disappearing into the ground like a drop of water in a calm pond.
The formation that surrounded the city began to change, and the incomplete symbols and patterns began fixing themselves until they looked complete.
However, this process didn’t finish in just a few minutes, and by the looks of it, it might take hours, even days before the formation becomes complete again.
After waiting around for a few hours without anything happening, Yuan decided to log off for breakfast.
Hopefully, it’ll be done by the time he returns, but he wasn’t feeling very hopeful.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Meixiu slowly opened her eyes five minutes before the alarm in her phone began ringing.
After taking a moment to fight through her morning grogginess, Meixiu stretched her body on the bed before sitting up.
Once she could open her eyes fully, Meixiu looked at the time on her phone.
Seeing that it was only a few minutes before her alarm, she went to turn off the alarm before getting off the bed.
However, right as she prepared to leave her room to go to the bathroom, her phone suddenly began ringing.
"A phone call? Who’s calling me this early in the morning?" Meixiu mumbled to herself as she went to pick up her phone again.
"Yu Rou? What’s the matter?" Meixiu answered the phone after seeing the caller.
"Meixiu! Are you seeing the news?!" Yu Rou immediately asked her in a loud and excited voice.
It was so loud that Meixiu subconsciously moved the phone away from her sensitive ears.
"The news? Why would the news be on? It’s barely sunrise... And I just woke up." Meixiu said a moment later.
"Don’t mind the minor details! Hurry up and look at the news! It doesn’t matter which channel you pick! Just hurry! This is massive!" Yu Rou said to her.
"O-Okay..."
Now fully awake thanks to Yu Rou’s excited voice, Meixiu went to open her laptop and looked at the news.
The first thing she saw after opening up the news was the large and bold title that read— [Breaking news! Cultivation is real! Cultivation techniques from the popular video game ’Cultivation Online’ works in the real world according to many players, and there is even solid proof that it’s real!]
"W-What...?" Meixiu mumbled in a low voice as she stared at the title with a dazed look on her face.
Not daring to believe her eyes, Meixiu read the title again and again until Yu Rou’s voice resounded, "Are you seeing it?! They say cultivation is real! I just started watching, too!"
"This must be a joke... There’s no way cultivation techniques from a video game could possibly work in the real world as well, right?" Meixiu said.
"That’s what I thought at first too, but after looking around the forums and the other news sources, everybody is talking about it! There’s no way they’d make such an elaborate lie just to mess with us! I think it’s true! We might be able to become Cultivators in this world as well, Meixiu!" Yu Rou said, her voice peaking with excitement.