The blizzard didn’t affect Hot Springs Town’s commercial operations at all. In fact, this heavy snow even made quite a few tourists feel like spending more money. At the very least, Qi Chen was sure those outdoor seats at the dessert shops would never be fully occupied on normal days.
After all, all the desserts and snacks here can be delivered straight to the hot springs, just like what Qi Chen and the others did earlier. Compared to eating at the outdoor seats outside the shop, enjoying snacks in the hot springs is obviously a lot more fun.
Qi Chen glanced at the time on his phone. Even though it was only a little past four in the afternoon, the sky was already dim. All over Hot Springs Town, the streetlights had replaced sunlight as the main light source illuminating the place.
Randomly picking a shop and ordering some small desserts, Qi Chen and the others sat at an outdoor table. The outdoor seating here was a round table with a few chairs arranged around it.
In the center of the round table there was an iron pole to support the sunshade. Right now the umbrella was fully opened, and the snow that had piled up on it formed a bunch of snow mounds of different heights.
From time to time, a small Spirit Beast would fly over and use a Wind Attribute Ultimate Move to blow the snow off the top of the umbrella, gathering it in mid-air into a snow dragon and moving it over to the snow pile area, so as to prevent too much snow building up on the umbrella and causing problems.
"No wind, and the temperature isn’t even that low. Hot Springs Town really is as stable as ever."
Nibbling on his dessert, Qi Chen admired the snowy scenery outside as he spoke. The blizzard hadn’t stopped; the constantly falling snow made visibility in the whole town very low. But precisely because of that, there was a special kind of hazy beauty to it.
Although Qi Chen and the others could tell that Hot Springs Town hadn’t tested this blizzard effect that many times, even so, they still managed to avoid most of the flaws and issues that might come up. That was clearly related to their usual way of doing things.
Like the temperature, for example. Normally, very few people would immediately realize just how sharply the temperature drops when it’s a blizzard, especially a blizzard triggered by an Ultimate Move.
If it were somewhere else, maybe it wouldn’t matter. But this is Hot Springs Town, where people have the habit of walking between different hot spring pools in just a bathrobe. Once the temperature drops too fast and too low, that’s going to cause a lot of trouble.
Hot Springs Town, on the other hand, had taken that hidden danger into account from the very start and specially adjusted the temperature change associated with the blizzard, forcing the air temperature to stay almost the same. They’d even suppressed environmental changes like humidity in the air.
As for wind, while a blizzard with strong winds is also a pretty cool special weather effect, the moment there’s wind, anyone walking the streets in just a bathrobe is definitely going to feel cold. That’s not exactly tourist‐friendly.
"Well, they’re a veteran operations team. It’s only normal they can pull this off. But there do seem to be a lot of Spirit Beasts working here."
Watching those busy little Spirit Beasts, Qi Chen couldn’t help sighing. These Spirit Beasts were clearly employees of Hot Springs Town, and just the ones they could see already outnumbered the service Spirit Beasts at many of the tourist attractions in Maomu City.
"True. Maybe Hot Springs Town’s profits are pretty good. Otherwise, just paying all these Spirit Beasts would be terrifying."
It’s not that a lot of scenic spots don’t want to hire more Spirit Beasts to provide better service—it’s that they don’t earn that much. Hiring Spirit Beasts to work for you costs money.
As for making them work for free?
If they’re doing it to repay a favor or something, that’s one thing. But if you’re thinking of tricking them... what, you take Divine Beasts for decoration pieces? Some of them are very idle, you know. Once they find out, things are not going to end well.
So, you can more or less estimate how well a scenic spot is doing based on the number of Spirit Beast employees they hire. Of course, you also have to consider whether there are more jobs suitable for Spirit Beasts behind the scenes.
In a place like Hot Springs Town, it was obvious their Spirit Beast staff far exceeded the normal demand, which meant a large portion of their expenses was technically "negative profit."
Qi Chen and the others didn’t know why Hot Springs Town would do this, but they all understood one thing: if they didn’t have scary‐good revenue, they definitely wouldn’t dare operate like this.
"This little cookie is actually pretty good. You two aren’t going to try one?"
Having come across something tasty, Qi Chen couldn’t help recommending it to the other two. Qi Chen shook his head and said,
"I’ve already tried it. It is good... but don’t you feel stuffed?"
Qi Chen couldn’t quite understand how, after eating so much just now, Qi Chen could still eat these desserts. He and Dou Yanlan could only take a small taste of these sweets at this point.
No helping it—they’d already eaten a lot of snacks back in the hot springs. Right now both of them felt really full and simply couldn’t eat that much anymore.
Qi Chen, on the other hand, had clearly eaten more than the two of them earlier, yet he could still keep going with these desserts now. That inevitably made Qi Chen a bit worried.
"Mm, it’s fine. Maybe I just have a better digestion?"
Qi Chen froze for a moment, then chuckled after thinking it over. Tamur looked at Veronia with some confusion and asked,
"What are you looking at?"
"Mm‐hmm? I was just thinking—where are the Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts? A place like this should have quite a few Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts too."
Staring at the group of busy Spirit Beasts, Veronia spoke. Most of these small Spirit Beasts had the Water Attribute, which wasn’t strange at all. Fire Attribute and Water Attribute Spirit Beasts were both very common in Hot Springs Town. After all, Spirit Beasts tend to settle in environments where they feel comfortable.
On the surface, Hot Springs Town’s Fire and Water attribute energy was extremely abundant, so naturally Spirit Beasts of these two Attributes would settle here in large numbers.
The only exception was the Earth Attribute Energy. If not for their trip to Deepwater Cave, Veronia would never have thought there would actually be such a large amount of Earth Attribute Energy here.
On the records, Hot Springs Town was famous for its hot springs, and the area around Baiman City as a whole was renowned for its rich Fire Attribute ore veins.
Strictly speaking, except for the ocean, everywhere counts as the domain of Earth Energy. But if you judge by the strength and abundance of the energy, it’s not that simple.
Since there are no obvious Earth Attribute ore veins around Baiman City, people usually regard it as an area without large Earth-Attribute Spirit Beast habitats.
Yet in the depths of Deepwater Cave, Veronia had seen stalagmites formed by dense Earth Attribute Energy. The existence of those actually proved one thing instead—that in the region around Hot Springs Town, Earth Attribute Energy was quite rich and concentrated.
Where attribute energy is dense, it attracts Wild Spirit Beasts of the corresponding Attribute to settle there. So Veronia was certain this place should be home to some Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts.
It was just that, for some reason, she hadn’t seen many Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts among the Spirit Beast staff in Hot Springs Town.
Had she just not found them, or were they being deliberately kept hidden?
"Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts? There probably aren’t that many here."
Because Veronia hadn’t kept her voice down, Qi Chen also heard what she said. He thought for a moment and answered, and Veronia glanced at Qi Chen and asked,
"Why do you say that?"
"Running into that one in Frost Dew Mushroom Cave was more or less an accident. The environment around there doesn’t have Earth Attribute Energy that strong. I suspect that place only became what it is because the space where Earth Attribute Energy can move around got squeezed out by Fire and Water Energy, forcing it to gather together."
"After all..."
Watching the white snow continuously fall, Qi Chen paused and said,
"No Earth Attribute ore veins have been discovered here. As you know, those are the inevitable manifestations that appear when a certain elemental attribute accumulates enough, and they’re also an important way of identifying habitats for Wild Spirit Beasts."
"But it’s exactly because of that peculiarity that I feel there should be some pretty special Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts living here. Whether we’ll actually run into them, though, is another story."
Qi Chen smiled, not holding out much hope. Without using any special methods, he felt it wouldn’t be easy to find where those Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts lived.
After all, all the habitats of those Earth-Attribute Spirit Beasts would be underground. Qi Chen also guessed that not only the people of Hot Springs Town, but even those in Baiman City had probably never imagined there were such special little guys hidden here.
"A special Sub-spirit Beast? Could it be a converter of Earth Attribute?"
Something occurred to Veronia and she swept Qi Chen with a rather odd look. He gave a faint smile and said,
"That’s probably it."
"A converter of Earth Attribute? Fushiwan?"
Dou Yanlan was taken aback. She immediately thought of a very special Earth-Attribute Spirit Beast that also had the ability to convert attributes. It was just that Fushiwan was somewhat similar to Carlott in that they were both special kinds of Spirit Beasts.
Fushiwan converts its teammates’ Ultimate Moves into the Earth Attribute. Unlike Carlott, Fushiwan’s Attribute Transformation doesn’t just add Earth Attribute on top, but directly changes the Finishing Move Attribute.
The slightly special thing was that after Fushiwan’s attribute conversion, if the Ultimate Move hit a target and the Earth Attribute would have a negative interaction, then the attribute change wouldn’t take effect.
At the same time, some Ultimate Moves would gain additional special effects, somewhat like how the Crystal Domain alters the form of Ultimate Moves.
"Chances are high it’s them. I just have no idea where they are."
Qi Chen nodded as he spoke. While he couldn’t be absolutely sure it was Fushiwan, he felt the odds were pretty high. It was just that he really couldn’t guess where they might be.

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