What happened to my Sleeping Beauty-style castle from Disney?

  Instead of the arched ceilings, marble floors, grand staircases, stained gss windows, tapestries, chandeliers, and other opulent furnishings I was expecting, what we found was a gloomy rectangur room with no windows and a bare concrete floor. Its only saving grace was the numerous light fixtures on the walls and ceiling that made it as bright as the day outside.

  “Dang it, I wanted to see a majestic castle hall!” I walked further in and spotted a welcome sight. There was a pin wooden staircase leading down to what should be the celrs, which were the main feature of the house in the pocket dimension. “There seems to be nothing on this level. Let’s go down.”

  “My dy, can you decorate this the way you did the house?” asked Fengying.

  “Yes, but you know that costs money. I was hoping the castle would already be furnished. Before we go down, do you see anything that looks valuable?”

  We all turned our heads here and there to look at everything, but the room was empty. The lights, as Schor Wu pointed out, were magical ones that should be expensive if they were sold. However, as with all things provided by the System, they only really worked inside the farm. If they were taken out of their proper pce, they would work for a time and then disappear.

  Schor Wu went down to the celrs first even though I knew it wasn’t dangerous.

  “Now this is more like it.” I beamed as I patted the nearest oak barrel. Called a [Cask] in the game, they were the key to making a lot of cash in Adventure Incarnate. Putting [Wine], [Beer], or [Brandy] in them to age for a few months made their quality and price triple.

  It was cool in the celr because it was probably temperature-controlled for maximum quality. Oak barrels stacked three high on steel racks stretched out in front of me and the brick ceiling was around twelve feet overhead, with exposed wooden beams and lights that cast a soft golden glow over everything.

  “These spell formations are incredibly complex.” Schor Wu gingerly touched a wall. “I know you can’t see it, but every inch of this pce is inscribed with extremely eborate arcane symbols.”

  Watching raw amazement wash over her face, I felt goosebumps rise on my arms. She wandered off to explore, sometimes kneeling to examine the floor more closely or flying up to the ceiling, presumably to check the symbols there.

  I turned to Fengying and Deming and raised an eyebrow, wordlessly asking what they thought.

  The Demon Chef and his wife turned to each other and exchanged some form of communication that others couldn’t hear.

  These days, Fengying looked a lot younger because of all the potions and spiritual food she had eaten ever since she came to work for me. When I first met her, she looked like a sixty-year-old woman with gray hair, but now she looked like a well-preserved forty-year-old, mostly due to her improved skin condition. I knew for a fact that she now dyed her hair bck. Deming had altered his appearance to fit hers, and they matched each other perfectly.

  “Deming says he can see the formation, too, but he doesn’t understand them. They’re like nothing he’s seen before,” said Fengying.

  “Does he want to inspect the [Casks] before I put the wine in them?” I asked.

  “No, my dy. Since he can’t make sense of the spell formations, it’s best for him to leave them alone.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll get started.” I turned to my apprentices who were politely keeping quiet while the adults were talking. “Watch. You won’t be able to see anything, but I’ll be right-clicking [Use] on the wine bottles in my inventory and then clicking on these [Casks]. That will fill the [Casks] with the [Wine].”

  There were various types of alcoholic goods that could be made on the farm in Adventure Incarnate. The most basic was [Wine] made from grape juice but there was also [Brandy] made from fruit and [Beer] made from hops. [Wine] was the most valuable one, therefore, I pnned to age it in the celr.

  The celr had 33 [Casks] in them, but more could be added, so I added 92 more, for a total of 125. Exactly 300 bottles of [Wine] were needed to fill one oak barrel. I walked down the line of shelves, filling all the containers until I reached the end. Since the shelves could stack three barrels at a time, they could hold 123 max, but there were two empty spaces at the end where I could pce the st two barrels.

  I turned to the others and said, “You know, I could actually fill this entire space with barrels. We wouldn’t have any space to walk on, but it doesn’t matter since it’s not like we need to tend to the wine.”

  Lari, Kharli, and Mo all frowned.

  “But, Teacher, isn’t that excessive? I thought you wanted Schor Wu to investigate what makes the celr work,” said Kharli.

  “Hmm. I’ll ask her if it matters or not.”

  We went back to the middle of the celr where Schor Wu looked down from the ceiling and said, “That would make the formations on the floor unreadable. I don’t know if it matters though, because I can’t make heads or tails of this, and every square inch of the space here has at least two formations in it.”

  She paused and flew down to where I was standing.

  “It’s hard to see with the naked eye, but I can tell each of the symbols in those formations are also made of formations,” she added.

  “Wait, the formations are made of formations?!” I said.

  “Yes, it’s a very advanced technique that only the most expert formation masters can use.” Schor Wu pointed at one particur point in the ceiling. “This one spot here seems to be the center point of the whole thing, and I estimate it would take twenty years to make.”

  “Wow, so the celr would take people twenty years to make after you record all the formations?”

  “Ah no, you misunderstood. The center formation there, which is three inches by three inches, would take twenty years to create. The entire thing…” She folded her arms across her chest and tapped her feet as she became lost in thought. “Three hundred years at least, and that is assuming they use the highest quality spirit stones.”

  “Could this be replicated elsewhere?” That was the crux of the matter. Could we build more celrs?

  She looked at me as though I was insane. “Even if they could, no one would spend three hundred years of their life to make wine better!”

  “Oh.” I scratched my head sheepishly. “I guess you’re right.”

  “We could learn something from these formations that could help with other things,” she said. “The qi-gathering formations are quite valuable, for example.”

  “Okay. Then it seems you have no objections to me filling the entire floor space with [Casks], right?”

  “It should be fine.”

  Starting from the farther end from the door, I pced as many barrels as I could and filled them all with [Wine], for a total of 189 [Casks]. “I’m done. Time to start up the golems!”

  We all went back up the stairs and outside the castle where, at my request, Schor Wu flew up the battlements to find the best view of the northern quarter of the farmable nd. While she was doing that, I read the System tabs about the features I could use now, and Fengying and Deming went to fetch the household staff. They guided the others to where we were waiting at the outer courtyard of the castle.

  When Schor Wu found a good pce on the northern side, I suggested using a telescoping dder from my inventory to climb up there, but they found it too scary. Instead, Schor Wu flew us up one by one. I could tell she was quite amused by my fear of heights. However, she was nice enough to fly very slowly for my sake.

  “Such a great view!” I said.

  Thankfully, the parapet was quite high which made it a lot less scary than I feared. To the north, I could see the green hills in the distance. The open fields, dotted with trees, spread out below us.

  “I’ll start with pnting grass on the northern field for the animals,” I said to Schor Wu. “Our goal is simply to see how it works with the golems since we’ve never seen, much less used, them before.”

  “Will we really get no exp from it?” asked Mo.

  We had already discussed this, but I guess she was feeling uncertain now that it was actually going to happen.

  “No exp from this, but we will when we pnt the Immortal Herbs,” I said. “Rex and watch.”

  Using the golems to till the fields and sow them with spirit grass cost one thousand gold coins. With a simple command from me using the System interface, the golems ponderously walked north and tilled the soil with their bare hands.

  “They can use magic!” said Kharli, her voice a hushed whisper as she leaned forward against the parapet, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

  The golems merely had to lightly touch the ground with their fists to loosen and overturn the soil. Once it was tilled, they scattered the seeds in a shower of green light.

  “I’m not even disappointed even though I’m not getting exp,” said Mo. Her eyes were glued to the scene and she was frowning with concentration as she watched. “It’s amazing to think Teacher has these magical creatures helping her.”

  Lari nodded his agreement, his eyes never leaving the spectacle, too.

  Though the golems looked slow, in reality, they were nimble and fast. Their bodies were made of rocks and soil which looked crude even from this far away. However, their limbs moved smoothly and could bend every which way for maximum efficiency. The pnting was done in half an hour, whereupon I turned on the rain function.

  “That’s incredibly powerful!” said Schor Wu, her eyes fixed on a spot in the sky. “I know you can’t see it, but a formation in the sky was just activated.”

  “It’s just regur rain though, right?” I asked her.

  Schor Wu tore her eyes away from the sky and said wryly, “Yes… because rain normally falls on command whenever you want it.”

  I ughed and threw my hands up in surrender. “You have a point.”

  Once the job was finished, the golems walked back to the field in front of the castle which was in the south.

  “The st thing we’ll do today is to pce the [Animal Pen] and eggs,” I said.

  Schor Wu flew us all back down, and we trooped to the northern field. I chose a spot near a stand of apple trees and pced the pen there.

  “There’s a limit of six animals in the pocket dimension,” I said as I handed a basket of twelve identical white eggs to Kharli. “Pick one. They all look the same, but the animals that hatch will have different colors and characteristics.”

  We put the eggs in the pen.

  “Okay, there’s nothing more to do today, so everyone can explore or go back to the farm if they want,” I said to the others.

  Most of the staff wandered off to explore the castle grounds, leaving me to decorate the interior as I pleased. Schor Wu went back to the celr to study the spells.

  My apprentices and Yinuo, since she was my maid, stayed by my side along with Fengying.

  I rubbed my hands together with glee. “It’s time to decorate the ever-loving heck out of this thing! Shall we go for the most outrageous decor this time?”

  Without waiting for their reply, I clicked on the [Bambi’s Dream Castle] furniture pack. The Adventure Incarnate developers seemed to be fond of Barbie because even the fact that they couldn’t get the license from Mattel didn’t stop them from making their own version. Instead of Barbie, it was named Bambi, and her castle was suitably cute, with a pink, white, and gold color scheme.

  Then we entered the castle's main door.

  The soaring ceiling above us was white with gilded moldings and a grand chandelier made of gold and pink crystals hung from its center, with smaller chandeliers in silver and white crystals around it. The floor was a marble mosaic with fairytale scenes of Bambi with various woodnd creatures. I particurly liked the one where Bambi was a ballerina dancing with a bevy of swans. On the far side was a cozy firepce with plush armchairs in front of it, and long, elegant tables, den with silver ptters and crystal goblets, lined the room. The east side was full of floor-to-ceiling windows and on the west side was the reason why I was in a hurry to decorate.

  “That’s it!” I pointed to the west wall where a rge circle of glowing light had appeared. “It’s the skilling portal!”

  LinMeili