Chapter 43

In just ten days, the time passed in a hurry amidst the intense preparations. In the middle of this, an incident occurred: the day before the duel, Zhuochuan received a message from Gaia on his home communicator.

This was the first time he had received a message from this super intelligent system. For a moment, he thought the duel had been canceled, but it turned out to be the opposite.

"Citizen E3488432 has challenged you to a duel. Location: School ZX77692432 Sports Training Hall. Duel start time: October 23, 3243, 10:00 AM. No one is allowed to start early or delay. Do you agree? Note: Any injuries or deaths during the duel will not hold the other party responsible."

If Jiecheng hadn't threatened to take him into the underground arena if he refused the duel, Zhuochuan would have naturally refused, as there was no benefit for him. However, his thoughts changed after he agreed.

After he chose to agree and sent the message, the communicator was immediately flooded with countless messages. Fortunately, this communicator, though simple in appearance, had its software optimized to the extreme, filtering the most important few for Zhuochuan.

"Hello, Mr. Zhuochuan, we are the largest media and entertainment company among the underground reserve citizens. We hereby apply to broadcast this duel. The conditions we offer are very generous: 90% of all broadcasting revenue, of course, calculated in underground currency. The broadcast process will be connected through Gaia, causing no disturbance to your duel."

Zhuochuan read the first message and understood. In this new world, the underground society, despite its highly advanced technology, was not much different from the modern world in terms of entertainment. After all, human spiritual needs have not changed much from ancient times to the present. Ancient people liked prostitutes, and modern people do too. Ancient people enjoyed listening to songs and reading wild history novels, and modern people enjoy music and novels, just with different content.

This duel, unprecedented, had a huge appeal. One side was the top soul successor among the reserve citizens, and the other was an E-level citizen, which was a mid-level citizen. Many reserve citizens had no chance to see such a match. Battles have always been a popular and attention-grabbing content, as long as there is survival pressure, fighting will always be of interest to humans.

It was easy to imagine that once the broadcast was allowed, the viewership and click rates would be extremely high, and the income would not be lacking, given Gaia's order and control, which currently showed no loopholes.

Zhuochuan, coming from the modern world, naturally knew that if he could survive the duel, he wouldn't have to worry about underground currency in the new world.

However, if he had a choice, he wouldn't want to risk his life for a quick fortune.

Shaking his head, he casually opened the second message, which offered even more generous terms. The content was similar, but they claimed to be the second-largest media company and would give him all the broadcasting revenue, as long as they had the broadcasting rights.

This was something absolutely unseen in the modern world. Zhuochuan smiled bitterly and looked at the remaining messages. Not only did they offer him all the broadcasting revenue, but they were also willing to pay him in advance. This showed more sincerity, as if he failed in the duel and had to hide in the modern world, he could use this money to buy some knowledge and return to the modern world.

However, Zhuochuan naturally didn't have this mindset. He believed he would definitely win, so he decisively chose the first message. Indeed, in any world, the top choice is usually the best. Zhuochuan didn't have the patience to investigate each one.

It seemed these media companies had been paying attention to this duel for a long time but had not disturbed Zhuochuan until the duel was officially confirmed. This was indeed smart, as they were still underground companies, and getting involved in matters concerning E-level citizens before confirmation could be risky.

Zhuochuan cleared up these trivial matters, then went to the modern world to clean up the other body's personal hygiene, ate and drank his fill, and waited for six hours before returning to the new world.

Now, there was only one night left before the duel.

Zhuochuan calmed down, having made all the necessary preparations. His soul power had been absorbed to its limit again, allowing him to use "Sigh of Time and Space" only twice. After all, in such a short time, it was not enough to significantly increase his soul power limit.

With nothing to do, he thought idly.

Currently, his use of soul power was based on the soul skills left by his predecessor, but he had no real grasp of the underlying soul power. This was easy to understand: the soul skills left by his predecessor were like the API calls in an operating system. Any programmer could learn and use them, but their effects were fixed. However, soul power itself was the lowest-level code of the system, accessible and freely callable only by core developers to create different effects.

Time passed as he thought, and he fell asleep without realizing it.

The alarm clock he set rang at 8:00 AM the next day.

Zhuochuan had slept well and had no dreams. He slowly got ready and then went out.

His heart was naturally not calm, and he was inevitably nervous. Although he was very confident, just like exams in the modern world, being well-prepared didn't mean he wouldn't be nervous.

With less than two hours until the duel, he called an autonomous car, gave the location, and soon arrived at the school.

The school was empty, and he didn't encounter a single person. Only the cleaning robots, which he saw every day, were working according to their fixed programs. As Zhuochuan passed, they only avoided him without any additional reactions.

Zhuochuan guessed that they were all gathered in the sports training hall.

He arrived at the sports training hall and pushed open the door.

He was stunned; there was no one inside. Old Xu, Feng Lan, and his classmates from the new world were all absent.

Could today not be the day of the duel? Or had some emergency occurred? Zhuochuan didn't believe the latter was possible. In the four months he had been here, he had never seen any emergencies, as Gaia would make arrangements in advance.

He soon found out the reason.

"B47995 has arrived at the duel site. The duel will begin in 1 hour and 15 minutes. For safety reasons, the venue has been cleared. The broadcast is now starting. The organizations allowed to broadcast this duel include: the first media and entertainment company of the underground reserve citizens and the virtual network management company of the surface citizens. The current number of viewers is: 922,374,323,724 underground reserve citizens and 316,000,324 surface citizens. Citizens can watch for free, while reserve citizens need to pay 2.5 units of underground currency per person."

The emotionless voice of Gaia echoed in the sports training hall, making Zhuochuan realize that the duel was about to begin, and trillions of people were watching his every move through countless screens.

Thus, despite the empty gymnasium, Zhuochuan could faintly feel countless eyes and voices watching and discussing him.