When the system prompt sounded, Shi Feng selected the option to promote Zero Wing City without a second thought.
System: Promoting to a main city requires 500,000 gold coins and 200,000 magic crystals. Do you wish to proceed with payment?
"Pay!"
Shi Feng wasn't surprised by this at all. He had long since prepared the gold coins and magic crystals needed for the promotion in his bag.
The instant Shi Feng confirmed payment, the 500,000 gold coins and 200,000 magic crystals vanished from his bag, and a series of system notifications rang out once more.
System: Payment complete. All players in Zero Wing City will be teleported outside the city in three minutes. Estimated time to completion: two hours.
Zero Wing City Regional System Announcement: Zero Wing City will be promoted to a main-city-tier guild city. All players currently in Zero Wing City will be forcibly teleported out in three minutes. Please prepare for teleportation accordingly.
However, in a city whose remaining population had already dipped below one million, the streets erupted in waves of shocked exclamations and disbelief.
"What's going on? Promotion to a main city?"
"Zero Wing City wasn't even a high-tier large-scale guild city — how is it suddenly jumping straight to a main-city-tier guild city?"
"What did Zero Wing do to earn a main-city-tier promotion?"
……
The idea of Zero Wing City being promoted to a main city left both the independent players and the representatives of the major powers stationed there completely stunned. For the members of those major powers, it felt as though the system was playing a cruel joke on them.
Ordinary players might not grasp the significance of a main city, but the members of the great powers understood all too well just how difficult it was for a guild city to achieve such a promotion. Even reaching the mid-tier city level was an immense challenge, requiring enormous investments of manpower and resources, continuous development of the city, raising its reputation to wider recognition, upgrading its defensive capabilities, and far more. It was never something that could be accomplished through just one or two decisive actions.
And Zero Wing City had, in the wake of Zero Wing's announcement to scale back public activities and a dramatic increase in entry fees, seen both its prosperity and its reputation plummet. Forget promotion to a main city — even becoming a mid-tier city had been out of the question.
Now, without warning, they were being told that Zero Wing City was about to become a main-city-tier guild city. How could anyone believe that?
But no matter how skeptical the players in Zero Wing City were, the system's countdown timer did not stop. It simply ticked down, second by second, until three minutes had passed and every player in the city was teleported outside the walls. Standing there in a daze beyond the city gates, only then did they truly realize — all of this was real.
And the staggering news spread swiftly to every major power in the Star Moon Kingdom. One after another, they were left in shock.
While the great superpowers across the Divine Realm had not yet managed to promote even a single mid-tier guild city, Zero Wing had already produced a guild main city. It was, without question, an astonishing development.
"Guild Leader, what exactly did you do?" Liang Jing contacted Shi Feng the moment she received the news in Silver Wing City, unable to contain her urgency. "How did Zero Wing City suddenly get promoted to a main city?"
Silver Wing City, currently one of the hottest cities around, was still a long way off from reaching the high-tier large-scale guild city level. It was hard to imagine how a city like Zero Wing City — which had virtually no foot traffic — had somehow leapt ahead to become a guild main city first.
And right now, Zero Wing was not only critically short on equipment and weapons, but the revenue from its guild towns was also steadily declining. After clashing with the various superpowers, it had been hit with all manner of economic blockades. Even Silver Wing City, despite boasting its own teleportation hall, found that most adventuring groups had been pressured by the superpowers into staying away.