"Jai, you can't be serious?" Yvonne asked, her disbelief evident.

I had invited Cai, Helen, Fiat, and Yvonne to join me on the tournament's opening day. They had pretended to be impressed with the design for the arena I'd commissioned. They had each come from high-tier Sects and had visited some of the best Arena's the Empire provided. I understood their compliments were obligatory; a few words uttered that conformed to social niceties.

That had changed when they reached the private boxes.

Much of the arena would be dedicated to duels between Beast Tamers, so aerial duels would be expected. I'd had the arena designed with that in mind. Once a group or person had entered a private box, the room would begin to move and separate from the stadium and launch upwards to take a position revolving around the tournament boundary.

From the ground, it appeared that a Pagoda lifted and settled into position, a rotating spectacle of decadent architecture, each launch accompanied by an explosion of fireworks. The rooms were comfortable, well-appointed, and had access to food, drink, and restrooms from inside. The barrier overlooking the field had been inscribed so that those inside each private box could clearly see what was happening while those outside were unable to see in, affording those who had spent the stones a modicum of privacy.

That privacy wasn't guaranteed. A powerful cultivator could breach the wards and arrays I'd had installed, but if they did, alarms would blare out, and the people in the boxes would be apprised of the situation.

I had charged low-tier spirit stones for the use of the private Pagodas. Even then, I hadn't expected many to pay that price. I knew it wasn't precisely excessive. The price for these same boxes in the Empire would go for a mid-tier spirit stone. But the people living on Delph Island didn't have access to that type of discretionary wealth.

Still, the cost of maintaining the flying Pagoda had to be considered. The number of cores required to power the illusion array for the arena was already problematic. I needed to make back my investment selling seats. The cost for the private Pagodas was set just low enough to keep the power draw within limits.

I had been pleasantly surprised when Zui had informed me that a half dozen of the Pagodas had been reserved for the entire two weeks of the event. That was almost two-thirds of the arena's private booth capacity. Information that I had received happily.

Just the number of spirit stones I would receive over these two weeks would be almost enough to offset the initial construction cost. When I factored in the general price of admission that most people would pay, I might see a small profit.

I could only assume that cultivators from Four Element Sect had chosen to attend this tournament and weren't concerned with what was an insignificant cost for them. Why they would book a private box for the entire time, knowing that they wouldn't attend every day, was more about Mianzi than anything.

Elves could be relentless when it came to saving face. The more powerful a cultivator becomes, the more they seem aware of their dignity and prestige. They went out of their way to present themselves in a particular manner and were quick to anger and action if they felt their Mianzi had been insulted.

"Why are you worried?" I asked.

"This is the first significant event you have hosted as a Baroness. What happens here will help define how you are perceived. Inviting cultivators and the Hindel and not being present to greet or meet with them would be seen as a sign of contempt.

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"They would wonder what was more important than showcasing your burgeoning Fief and the people that live here.

"I am wondering that myself," she continued indignantly. "What is so important that you have to attend to it personally? You have House members that are adopted and sworn to you. If whatever it is is so important, send people from your House."

"Cultivator Yvonne is correct, Jai," Zui chimed in. "Many would take your absence as an insult. And we cannot afford that insult to be discussed among those attending. Not when we are trying to build a business partnership with some of these cultivators."

Zui and Gwen had made this same argument before, but I had dismissed their concerns as misplaced worry. I should have listened to them. It seemed I had my own Mianzi to consider. And they were right. What good did it do to find talented and capable people to adopt as members of my House or join my Dojo if I was going to ignore their advice? Especially when the solution Yvonne suggested would work.

I didn't need to be at the rift when it closed and signaled the Mystic Realm was opened. I just needed to know it had. It was only a matter of an hour to reach the rift while flying, and with the communication tokens keeping us connected, I could be informed without delay.

When the Mystic Realm opened, my goal was to deploy the bevy of defensive and obscuring arrays I had purchased. An hour or two delays would make no real difference, especially considering it might take that amount of time to find out where the realm was located.

"Alright," I agreed graciously. There was no point in accepting the inevitable with ill grace or taking out my frustration on friends.

"Now that that has been decided," Gwen said, gaining our attention. "The Hindel Alpha has been spotted arriving. It would be best if you went to greet her and her pod. Use this opportunity to demonstrate to them how you have merged water and land so that both can enjoy the entertainment within the arena."

When exiting an active Pagoda, the private box remained floating. For those observing from the ground, the person leaving seemed to be floating in the air one moment and then plunging to the grown in the next. I could have created a more seamless transition, but I thought it hilarious when I saw the effect.

It reminded me of a cartoon from my first childhood, the Wile E. Coyote constantly stepping off a cliff, only to pause a second before he realized what had happened and began falling.

For those experiencing the transition, it was like riding a roller-coaster. The cars had just crested the top, and you got that sinking feeling in your stomach as you seemed to plunge. I had designated a landing and launching pad area to facilitate those needing to leave and return.

I had also had the arena constructed so that there was an underground area filled with water, one where they could view the events within the stadium. The Hindel could swim around easily, and their ceiling was transparent. It worked like a reverse aquarium. They could observe the people outside, each duel appearing to be held in a fishbowl.

There were exits the Hindel could use as well. If they decided, they wanted to mingle with Elves. Place a bet on the outcome of the duel. Or explore the arena at large. Exits existed, wide enough for them to use the unwieldy devices they used to move across land. Devices that were not needed.

That was the other significant addition I had made. The entire arena had been constructed using the identical environmental arrays installed in the pavilion I used to host the Alpha. It would allow our two people to intermingle in an unprecedented manner.

This tournament field would allow Elf or Hindel to fight while forcing them to deal with the same limitation. They each would need to figure out how to get their martial techniques to work when they had to transverse environmental mediums.

A cultivator would need to adapt, the refraction of light making the Hindel seem to be not exactly where it appeared. Further, the water could act as a shield, insulator, or conductor for different types of attacks. Each participant would have to understand how water would affect their techniques.

The Hindel would be just as handicapped. Techniques that worked well underwater may be ineffective when traversing between water and air. A significant component of the Hindel arsenal was their sound attacks. The whistles, moans, grunts, blasts, and shrieks they produced were a combination of sounds found in dolphins and whales, sounds that they had learned to weaponize.

How that works when there is no water to conduct those sounds and focus them into an attack will have to be discovered and tuned as each battle progresses. There had only been a handful of Hindel registered for the event. But that had been enough to elicit some excitement and anticipation from even the jaded members of the Sect.