Building a sect from scratch.

Chapter 118 Award-Winning Works
The competition process for this "Ten Continents Chronicle" is very simple. After submitting their work through the designated webpage, participants can wait for the results.

During this process, netizens can also vote; however, the resulting list has no reference value and is purely for netizens' own amusement.

You asked why we need to set up an online poll if it's useless?
That was, of course, to make it easier for Fang Xianyu, the game planner, to secretly observe which styles and designs were more popular, so he could copy... cough, no, use them as a reference!

Ten days or so passed quickly. While the game announced a server shutdown for updates and preparations for the third closed beta test, several new pinned posts appeared on the game forum.

The most popular post was naturally the competition ranking announcement. The most shocking one was about a master who had been shortlisted for the World Rendering Competition multiple times and won countless modeling and rendering awards. She won the gold awards in both the 3D design and creative short video categories, stunning countless netizens!
While netizens congratulated her, they also joked that this big shot could probably achieve the freedom of owning a property in a first-tier city—because according to the latest post yesterday asking for activation codes, the price for buying activation codes that are not bound to the third closed beta test has been inflated to more than 600,000 yuan. With the rewards from the two gold prizes added together, even after deducting the activation codes she wants to use herself, twenty activation codes that are not bound to the third closed beta test could still sell for more than 10 million yuan!

Although many netizens were envious, most of them offered blessings and jokes to this person who relied on his own abilities. After all, this genius, who seemed to live on his liver, only spent a little over ten days creating and rendering an extremely grand city model. His technical skills and level of detail almost completely outshone the silver award winner, which was truly impressive!
It was a city floating on the sea, with a classic Bagua formation at its center. The eye of the formation was a domed building, whose shape and design were quite similar to the Temple of Heaven in the real capital, and it looked like a temple used for sacrifices.

Beyond the temple lies a square shaped like the Bagua (Eight Trigrams) formation, its surface rippling with the light of the sea. Further out, concentric circles of buildings radiate outwards. Pavilions, terraces, towers, and galleries abound; verandas, waterside pavilions, corridors, and archways are scattered throughout.

What's even more ingenious is that there are high-speed trains running between the buildings!
Unlike the trains and subways on Earth, the rail transportation in this fairy city on the sea consists of small boats decorated with colorful glass and carvings, which shuttle across the water in a track-like pattern. The waves lap against the boats, but can only wash away an invisible barrier.

After all... once you're cultivating immortality, who still needs a glass dome? Of course, you go straight for the barrier!

The fantastical technology of the Xianxia world seemed to have become a reality at this moment.

The city is larger than imagined. In the video, as the camera changes, tens of thousands of buildings are shown. It is hard to imagine that this work could be completed in just over ten days.

The gold medal entries in the other two categories were also outstanding.

The gold prize for illustration and illustration design is a floating fairy mountain, its body inverted in a triangular shape, with various buildings shrouded in celestial clouds atop it. Among them, rare and exotic beasts fly above, and demon cultivators and humans stroll among them. The whole scene resembles a romantic oriental fairy tale, gradually depicting a world of fantasy.

The gold medal-winning AI visual art piece was even more creative: a spaceship comparable to an aircraft carrier, upon which were densely packed buildings, layered and intertwined. Numerous cultivators flew between the houses and pavilions on their swords, creating a bustling and vibrant scene. Outside the main spaceship, many small boats of varying sizes hovered, some as large as a basketball court, others just big enough to hold a table and chairs, all surrounding the spaceship, adding a unique charm.

In addition, among the winning entries, there are cities built on the back of the legendary Kunpeng beast, those built on mountain peaks, and those standing on ice and snow, and so on.

However, after carefully reviewing all the entries, Fang Xianyu decided, considering the cost and effect, to copy the entry of Zhao Qing, the runner-up in the illustration and illustration design category.

The Jade Palace in the heavens, with its twelve towers and five cities. An immortal touched my head, granting me eternal life. This poem, over a thousand years old, is the earliest inspiration many Chinese have for the world of fantasy and chivalry.

It is perfectly reasonable for the poet Li Bai to write about immortals.

Before the information age arrived and before modern novels flourished, the Chinese people's entire fantasy about "immortals" consisted of the Heavenly Court, auspicious clouds, and immortals who were all solemn and immaculate.

It is "auspicious clouds abound, and the emperor sits in the golden palace," it is "auspicious light surrounds, and civil and military officials stand before the white jade steps," it is "golden rays roll in red rainbows," and it is also "a thousand auspicious wisps spray purple mist." It is a romantic fantasy of traveling 108,000 miles in a somersault and reaching the thirty-three heavens.

In any case, the word "immortal" refers to the heavens, because for the ancients, the sky was mysterious and unattainable. Only by conquering the "heaven" could one be qualified to be called an "immortal".

In Zhao Qing's works, above vast expanses of auspicious clouds are all kinds of palaces, with octagonal pagodas and square pavilions scattered throughout. Winding corridors form the entire architectural complex, with pavilions and towers everywhere, and the roofs alone are diverse in style, including hip roofs, gable roofs, and pyramidal roofs, too numerous to mention.

In the scene, people walk on auspicious clouds as if on flat ground. Among the exquisite houses, there are human cultivators and demon cultivators. A young disciple runs with a bag of herbs, a pointy-eared girl carries a stack of books, a few furry tails peek out from the bamboo forest in the corner, and a cultivator sleeps sprawled out in the dense grass.

It is the "celestial realm" that Chinese people once fantasized about, but it is no longer the "celestial realm" that was imagined to be hierarchical and aloof.

However, Fang Xianyu chose this painting not only because of its artistry, but more so because of it…

Low cost.

In the rare quiet of the Taiyin Sect's headquarters, Fang Xianyu stood in front of the sect's main hall, took a deep breath, and began to "build" a new sect headquarters using system energy.

Large swaths of auspicious clouds were kneaded into a ball and slowly spread out. First, there was an exquisite hall from a certain competition entry. Hmm, copied... Change the ridge beast, modify the pillars, fix the carvings, and it's perfect!

Then, a certain building in another work looked perfect as a library, so I copied that too...

By the way, the corridor modeling in that 3D gold award-winning film looks pretty good, let's just use it directly...

What? You're saying I'm shameless for copying players' ideas?
Can the game developers call that plagiarism? That's called fully listening to player feedback and adjusting the game content according to player feedback! These days, there aren't many game designers as conscientious as her!
(End of this chapter)