Locke exchanged a few simple words with them, then returned to his suite at the White Dragon Tower. During this period, a whole bunch of people had been bothering him, wanting to insert their students or themselves into his research group.

Even just walking in the corridors of the White Dragon Tower, there were piles of wizards greeting him, trying to leave an impression on him.

Locke found this extremely annoying.

Finally, he simply used the Large Green Leaf Dragon Sparrow, walking around everywhere with the Enchantment School magic Dragon's Might active.

After all, for botanical wizards, wearing some decorative magical plant on their back or head was quite common.

This way, never mind apprentices, even among the First Circle wizards in the White Dragon Tower, only a minority could stand before him. Most First Circle wizards couldn't approach within 10 meters of him.

Because as long as they came close, they had to endure the First Circle Enchantment School magic Dragon's Might, constantly being mentally suppressed.

Only then did Locke get some peace and quiet.

When Locke returned to his suite and entered the potion room, preparing to conduct another round of Hive Mind Potion practice, the gray stone tablet before him suddenly manifested before Locke without being summoned.

Locke frowned, because wrapped around that gray stone tablet were the fibrous roots of a water hyacinth-type magical plant, with green-colored roots.

A water hyacinth was wrapped around his gray stone tablet.

Locke recognized where that water hyacinth came from. When he had previously read large amounts of Cloud Marsh Cup related materials, he had seen magical plants unique to the Cloud Marsh Wetland, so naturally he could recognize this water hyacinth as coming from the Cloud Marsh Wetland, with the name Azure Mist Damask.

Its water hyacinth body was like transparent gauze, able to absorb water vapor and transform it into some kind of healing mist. The lake surface where it appeared would definitely be shrouded in mist, extremely beautiful.

But it was said that the mist emitted by Azure Mist Damask water hyacinth wasn't just simply able to heal others.

The gray mist covering the gray stone tablet quickly turned azure.

A line of text appeared on the gray stone tablet: [Hello, Cloud Marsh Cup contestant, Mr. Locke Augustine. Please don't be angry. I am a staff member of the Cloud Marsh Cup competition committee at Bonifacius University in the Cloud Marsh Wetland. I simply used the unique water hyacinth network of the Cloud Marsh Wetland to connect to your southeastern quadrant's Nigervold astrology system.]

[Major wizard lands are far apart, and for various reasons, the communication systems of different major wizard lands are not interconnected. Therefore, we can only use some gray area methods to contact the breeders participating in the finals.]

[Next, I can pull you into our Cloud Marsh Cup finals small group. After I release the magic, this small group will continue to exist.]

[This is accomplished by using our Cloud Marsh Wetland's water hyacinth network, scientifically named 'Floating Cattail Silk Thread,' to connect to association-level communication facilities in various major wizard lands. We can connect the Land of Six Towers' letter network, the southeastern quadrant's Nigervold astrology system, the Thunder Marsh Lowlands' thunder cloud network and other communication systems together through the water hyacinth network, and through Divination School means, allow you to use various major wizard lands' communication systems to join the same group.]

[You may choose to accept or refuse. If you refuse, we will try to notify you about competition matters through other means, such as sending letters, but it may delay more time than notifying within the small group.]

Locke thought for a moment, then typed a line on his gray stone tablet: Agree.

Soon, a group automatically appeared on the gray stone tablet's interface.

A line of text appeared on the contact interface of the gray stone tablet: [Welcome to the Cloud Marsh Cup finals small group. If you have any questions, you can communicate in the group.]

Locke saw that there were currently twelve people in the group. Ten main participants, one competition committee staff member, and one wizard who didn't make it into the finals circle.

This wizard sent an expression of regret in the group, then sent a line of text: [Very regretful about not entering the finals circle. I will participate in the next Cloud Marsh Cup.]

The next moment, he voluntarily left the small group.

And the Cloud Marsh Cup small group ignored him and sent a whole bunch of messages:

[The genius breeder from the Land of Six Towers finally entered the group?]

[Really a rare guest. Previously for a long time, we hadn't seen breeders from the Land of Six Towers.]

Staff member: [Yes, because the Land of Six Towers has always been rather isolated, so it was relatively difficult to contact them before. We spent a long time before finally finding Wizard Augustine's contact information.]

[Probably they didn't guess before that the Land of Six Towers team could make the finals circle, so they didn't prepare to pull them into the small group from the start. When notifying about the competition process before, the Land of Six Towers wizards weren't in the group. They probably didn't see any of it. You probably didn't expect that even like this, they could still enter the finals.]

Locke looked at the person who sent this long string of messages. He seemed to be a wizard from the Twilight Border named Alaric.

His main research was on golden-attribute magical plants. The tactical magical plant project he proposed this time was also a golden magical plant, Golden Apple Treant.

From their conversation, he only now learned that this small group had existed for a long time.

Previously, it seemed they had pulled in the main persons in charge from all wizard teams that entered the first round of the main competition. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

This small group's name was probably only changed in the past few days.

Locke felt somewhat embarrassed. Turns out he had never received notifications from the competition committee.

"However, this really didn't affect my participation in the competition." Locke sat on a stool in the bedroom thinking, "Cloud Marsh Cup's previous competition materials are available for reference."

"Based on previous competition materials, I could write a good project proposal. Ten thousand changes never depart from the core principle."

"Sometimes knowing too much information is useless. Better to bury one's head and work hard based on existing materials."

Locke looked at the small group, preparing to close it. After all, he was still very busy. Who knew that wizard Alaric from the Twilight Border would suddenly @ him, asking, "Wizard Augustine, I reviewed your project proposal. How is that magical plant you mentioned designed based on permanent defensive fields? Do you already have a prototype?"

As soon as these words came out, Locke instantly became alert. This was probing for intelligence.

The other party was obviously testing his progress, judging how much of a threat he posed.

Locke even suspected that at this moment, more than one contestant wizard was staring at this small group.

Right, Alaric seemed to be ranked fifth, while he was sixth, so of course he paid a lot of attention to him.

At the same time, the fourth-place wizard from the Thunder Marsh Lowlands, Karel Knight, also @ him in the group. "When I read your project proposal, I thought Wizard Augustine was a wizard with great ideas. I just wonder what the current progress of this magical plant is?"

"I'm quite interested."

Locke immediately felt somewhat speechless. Fifth place and fourth place were both old foxes.

And first, second, and third place hadn't said a word now. Was this truly not paying attention, or were they lurking?

Locke pondered for a moment. Replying to any message could potentially reveal his current experimental progress, and these two people were obviously very concerned about his experimental progress.

After all, his project proposal ranked low largely because the team's past credentials weren't enough, and the topic was too difficult.

But if his current experimental progress was good, then everything would be different.

'Better not chat too much in a group full of competitors.' Locke thought, "If you don't speak, even immortals can't make a move."

Locke directly sent two expressions.

Immediately, Wizard Alaric and that Wizard Karel Knight both appeared very disappointed.

Wizard Alaric said, "Another one who keeps things tight. Recently no one in the group talks. Everyone couldn't be making good experimental progress and about to create finished products, right?"

Wizard Karel Knight replied in the group, "How could it be that fast? Don't forget, a few days ago, the tenth-place research group team almost disbanded because of various connections inserting people everywhere. He hasn't spoken in the group these past few days, probably has a headache."

"Now it's only the first month after the finals started. Every day after this, we'll become more and more tormented. Time pressure, results not perfect enough, resources becoming scarce, people's hearts in the research group wavering."

"This is only the first month. It will get harder and harder to endure. Alaric, you'd better stop going around the group asking for information all day. With this time, you might as well go do a few more sets of experiments yourself."