Granny Liu Enters the Grand View Garden

Aramil found it somewhat incomprehensible.

He even felt that the gazes of the surrounding human onlookers were piercing his back like needles.

Thus, he tried once more.

Amidst the suspicious and mildly mocking glances of the crowd, he went through another series of incantations and frantic, dance-like movements, pushing his hands forward once again toward the direction of the floating city high in the sky.

A formless, invisible magical ripple, far more majestic than the previous one, surged toward the heavens.

Then, still nothing happened.

"How could this be?"

"Didn't those human mages pool the strength of a thousand to cast a colossal version of the Levitate spell just to make this rock float?"

"Why can't it be dispelled?"

Aramil found it quite impossible to comprehend.

In truth, if it had been over a century ago when the mages of Eldorun first gathered a thousand strong to just create this floating city, the magic sustaining the levitation could indeed have been directly undone by a legendary mage.

However, over the past century, with the gradual advancement of human magic, high-level mages and chief archmages had long since carried out numerous improvements to the levitation magic.

They had separately established magic with levitating potency in various parts of the floating city.

Conventional "Dispel Magic" type effects could only dissipate one location at a time, preventing the entire floating city from plummeting all at once.

In the decade following Elian's transmigration, the levitation magic had been further refined.

Drawing upon his legendary-tier magical might and a wealth of arcane magical knowledge far ahead of his era, he had readjusted the magical structure of the floating city.

Not only did this grant the floating city a higher maximum flight speed and more stable hovering, but it also placed the magical power source of the city's suspension deep within its interior.

If one wished to undo the floating city's levitation magic, they had to penetrate deep into the floating city and attack or destroy every single levitation power source.

Relying merely on external Dispel Magic effects was completely useless!

The surrounding people watched Aramil's spell fail and began to murmur among themselves:

"As expected, that elf mage performed it all over again, and still nothing happened."

"Did his spell fail again?"

"He looks quite irritated, doesn't he?"

"Wait, why is this guy still standing right in the middle of the road? He's blocking the way!"

At that moment, amidst the neighing of horses, a public carriage driven by a coachman narrowly swerved to avoid Aramil, who was standing in the middle of the street.

"Who do you think you are? Blocking the traffic here!"

"Can't you have some basic civic manners!"

A passenger in the carriage stuck their head out in deep dissatisfaction and hurled a string of harsh curses at Aramil.

*These damned humans. Hmph, I won't lower myself to the level of these humans!*

Aramil walked away to the side with deep displeasure.

--Of course, it wasn't because he actually heeded the human's words, but rather because he needed to walk and ponder his next course of action.

"Since I can't directly dispel the floating city's levitation magic, should I just try blowing the entire floating city up?"

"That's slightly troublesome; I'm not very proficient in large-scale destructive evocation spells."

"What if I use weaker magic and blast it away piece by piece?"

Only then did Aramil, finally having the leisure to care about his surroundings, suddenly sense a deep incongruity:

"Wait, this is a human settlement, right?"

"How is it so much more developed than I imagined!"

He had originally assumed the environment of a human settlement would be similar to an orc or goblin tribe.

Or, at best, just a small, slightly better village.

This was a full-fledged town!

Not only did it feature orderly bluestone-paved roads, but horse-drawn carriages also galloped along them.

There were even drainage facilities like sewers.

On both sides of the street, sturdy stone houses stood in orderly rows.

Judging from the clothing of the pedestrians on the street, human achievements in textiles were quite respectable; although their garments were far from matching the beauty of elven attire, they placed far greater emphasis on practicality and durability!

Naturally, Aramil had no way of knowing that most of these road surfaces had been paved by zombies, and many of these pedestrians' clothes were stitched by skeletons.

As for some of the houses, they had been conjured daily by a massive number of newly-minted surface mages casting "Fabricate," "Stone Wall," "Shape Stone," and "Mud to Stone."

Even the construction of the sewers required exploiting a vast multitude of mage apprentices, forcing them to continuously cast cantrips until they literally blasted a sewer system out from underground.

Today, the surface of Eldorun boasted over ten thousand mages and an even greater number of apprentice mages, so completing these tasks was not difficult at all.

"Hasn't the human race only existed for a few centuries? How on earth could they build a civilized town of this caliber?"

Aramil looked all around, growing increasingly astonished the more he saw.

This was already on par with most elven towns.

In fact, in many aspects, it even surpassed the standards of remote elven settlements!

Aramil found it utterly incomprehensible:

The infrastructure level of this town could clearly only be built under a relatively peaceful environment.

"I remember the barren lands to the east still harboring several orc tribes, along with numerous goblins and kobolds."

"Aren't they savage races similar to humans?"

"How come humans have already established towns, while those races are nowhere to be seen?"

Walking down the street, Aramil looked around in utter amazement like a country bumpkin who had never seen the world.

"What on earth happened to the human realms during the years I was in secluded cultivation?"

"Ah, whatever, what does that have to do with me anyway?"

Just as Aramil resolved to temporarily ignore the meaningless matter of urban infrastructure and focus intently on preparing to attack the floating city...

Suddenly, the high elf court mage froze in place, his eyes widening in shock.

On the sidewalk right in front of him, several orc zombies were busy paving the road.

"Undead?"

"Undead creatures are attacking a human town?"

"Is some human necromancer here to slaughter these magicless peasants?"

Based on the information he had previously obtained, Aramil quickly jumped to a conclusion and turned pale with fright.

--Of course, he wasn't worried that these magicless peasants would be slaughtered by a necromancer; what shocked him far more was another reality.

"How have human mages mastered necromancy to raise the undead?"

"This is an absolute taboo in the Elven Court! Exactly what did that fellow Seymour teach the humans?"

"No, when I get back, I must settle accounts with Seymour. How could he teach such life-profaning, evil magic to humans?"

"Moon elves really are a bunch of hopeless idiots..."

Aramil raised his right hand, invisible energy gathering as he prepared to casually wipe out these zombies, when he discovered yet another bizarre detail:

"Wait, undead creatures are attacking the town, yet why do the surrounding human commoners look completely devoid of panic?"

He noticed people passing by the roadside, chatting and laughing.

To be sure, they consciously avoided the area where those few zombies were working.

Yet even the youngest little girls showed no trace of fear.

"Are these humans idiots?"

"These are undead, the most blasphemously evil creations of magic! Why aren't they running away when they see them?"

"Wait, if they aren't afraid at all, why are they avoiding these zombies in the first place?"

Aramil felt entirely unable to grasp the human thought process.

He grabbed a little girl passing by and, amidst her bewildered gaze, voiced his confusion:

"Why am I avoiding these zombies, yet not keeping even further away?"

The little girl looked as though she had just heard a completely illogical and bizarre question.

She pointed to a sign standing beside the zombies. Following her pointing finger, Aramil looked over and saw the sign read:

"Road under construction, please keep a safe distance. Thank you for your cooperation!"

"Uncle must be an outsider. Teacher Joseph and Teacher Mary taught us to stay away from where skeleton and zombie workers are operating so we don't interfere with their road repairs."