"Welcome to the Demon Sealing Clan! If you have gifts for the Divine Paragon, please hand them over to the attendants stationed at the red-clothed table over there!"
"And if you did not bring anything, please proceed to the blue-clothed table to check in! The venue has not officially opened yet, but it will be ready soon!"
The Demon Sealers enthusiastically greeted the arriving guests.
"Where is the Divine Paragon? I’d like to pay my respect to him before the banquet begins," inquired one of the guests.
"I apologize, but the Divine Paragon is not present at this moment."
"What about the new leader of the Demon Sealing Clan?"
"The Clan Leader is currently not accepting any guests due to her tight schedule."
Meanwhile, the Demon Sealers working inside the courtyard would glance at the new guests from time to time out of curiosity.
"Wow! That’s the current head of the Array Masters’ Association, Ye Chen!"
"Isn’t that the Divine Essence Monastery’s Holy Empress? Even if it’s the Divine Paragon, to think she’d travel from the Ninth Heaven just to see a man!"
"Who’s that veiled woman beside her?"
"Isn’t that the Holy Maiden, the number two genius of the younger generation? I heard she’s the kind of genius that only appears once in a billion years."
"Surely, that must be an exaggeration. From what I’ve heard, nobody even knows what she’s capable of and is questioning her position in the ranking."
"Didn’t the Heavenly Son fight her and acknowledge her strength?"
The Demon Sealers continued chatting about the Holy Maiden for several minutes before another recognizable figure arrived at the venue.
Meanwhile, the guests passed the time by observing the newly arriving attendees as they waited for the venue to officially open.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the guests who arrived were influential and widely renowned figures.
Of course, there were also attendees with little to no reputation whatsoever. Under normal circumstances, such people would have been ridiculed or outright chased away from a gathering of elites. However, since the Divine Paragon had personally declared that anyone was allowed to attend, the other guests could do nothing but tolerate their presence.
"Do you think the Celestial Emperor will show up?"
"Who knows? But if he wants to, it won’t take any effort, since he can still travel between the realms even without the Stairway to Heaven."
"He clearly already possesses the technology to create treasures capable of teleportation between realms. I don’t understand what’s taking him so long to replace the Stairway to Heaven."
"I bet he doesn’t even want to replace the Stairway to Heaven. There’s a reason he restricted access to the Stairway to Heaven not too long ago."
A week passed in the blink of an eye, and before long, the venue for the banquet officially opened, with the Demon Sealing Clan finally allowing guests into the grand courtyard.
However, due to the overwhelming number of attendees, those with the greatest influence and status were given priority entry first.
"There’s still a month until the banquet, but there’s already tens of thousands of people here... I can only imagine how much more crowded it’ll get later."

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