Badge in Azure

Qin Empire was the most affected by Lianyun City’s loss. Grand Duke Iron Blood activated more than 100 iron blood warriors and close to 1,000 metal flying machines to attack Lianyun City along with the ancient combat vessel.

Lianyun City’s defense had improved tremendously. Countless magic stone artilleries and catapults had been placed along the shore and some heavy crossbows had also been set up on top of giant rocks that were hundreds of yards tall. Those defenses were helpless against the iron blood warriors though. The defenses that had been set up on the shore were destroyed very rapidly and the metal flying machines activated by Grand Duke Iron Blood hurled magic stone shells at the buildings in Lianyun City.

These magic stone shells were extremely powerful. They destroyed all the buildings in the city and killed more than 200,000 civilians. While the amount of damage could not be compared to the destruction Ironwall City, Saleen and the Grand Duke had the same mindset when it came to attacks. They initiated their attacks from the sky with the cheapest equipment and they only aimed to destroy, regardless of what their targets were.

Safilos did not think that was a coincidence. He had gone overboard by scolding Saleen in his residence. If Saleen had told him beforehand about the metal flying machines, Lianyun City would not have suffered such great losses.

The noble families of the House of Commons dared not anger him. Not only was Safilos a king of Qin, he was also a golden grand swordmaster. It would be easy for Safilos to kill many people in a fit of anger.

Safilos had a feeling that the Qin Empire might be destroyed in his hands. His nephew was innocent though. Although his nephew was the Emperor in name for the past few years, Safilos held all the true power. To make matters worse, the six-winged flying serpent imprint was in Saleen’s hands. Safilos was not the emperor, so he would not be able to activate the power of the Grukos family.

If he asked the emperor to do so, Safilos would lose his powers and Ojarvis would be able to call all the shots.

Could a sickly child control the entire Qin Empire? The Empire was in a dire state! Safilos’ hair had almost grown white because of all his worries. He was not satisfied with his two sons either because neither of them had ambition.

Something like ambition was even harder to develop than skills. Skills could be developed through tough training, but one had to be born with ambition.

Saleen’s fleet departed from the royal port and headed towards Ceylon City. The elemental magic tower had been put away then. It had used up quite a lot of magic nuclei due to all the flying. Since the fleet would be able to travel as fast as 100 miles every hour, there was no need for Saleen to waste his resources.

Magic beasts appeared very frequently in the Sikeqinyan seas. Saleen had to count on the ancient warriors, so his fleet could push forward without slowing down. Although it was summer, one could still see floating blocks of ice in the deep seas. It was said that they had floated over from a huge piece of land that was west of the Oceanic Ice Block.

That land had been covered with layers of ice that were as deep as 1,000 of yards. Every summer, huge icebergs would melt and break off from the land, floating towards the south.

Saleen was feeling troubled and decided to slow down the fleet and began to hunt on the seas. His naval route was 3,000 miles away from the shore, while Sikeqinyan fishing vessels would never dare go as far as 500 miles from the shore. There were no traces of human movements there. The magic beasts in the seas were very curious about the combat vessels, so quite a number of low-level magic beasts decided to follow them and even tried to attack them. Those magic beasts were quickly captured by Saleen. The combat vessels contained magic equipment that would specifically attack underwater targets, so they were able to kill those magic beasts rather quickly.

All the sorcerers had been left behind with Lex, so Saleen mostly brought along grand mages. The mages used the alchemy rooms in the dragon skeleton combat vessel to refine magic equipment for soldiers; it was also a form of training.

All the small noble families around Ceylon City had been convinced by Saleen. None of them intended to resist Saleen, even though all of them thought that he was extremely cruel. No one dared to go against Saleen because of how powerful he was. Besides, Saleen had his reasons. Emperor Danny had tried to kill Lex and even pursued her all the way into Metatrin and laid siege on Lonestar City. Everyone could empathize with Saleen’s fury.

Even Gugger could not deny that he might have gone crazy if someone had done the same thing to his wife.

Cuisi was the one who could empathize the most. When Cuisi’s wife died, he had also lost his mind. Given his intelligence, he would never have been subdued by a devil otherwise. Ordinary demons, or even supreme demons, would never have been able to do anything to him.

Nailisi was uninterested with that sort of hunting. Although there were plenty of magic beasts in the northern seas, none of them were very rare. All of them had already been catalogued in the mages’ Illustrated Handbook of Magic Beasts.

The fleet travelled for a day towards the west and covered a distance of 1,500 miles.

Nailisi noticed that Saleen was in a bad mood but didn’t know how to cheer him up. She suddenly had an idea and said, “Master, do you remember the map of Lex’s calculations?”

“What map?” Saleen asked.

Nailisi glared at the people in the cabin and everyone left obediently, except for Nicholas. Cuisi stood guard outside so that no one would dare to enter.

“When we went to the Central Temple, Shangqian managed to come up with a rough estimate of coordinates. With those coordinates, Lex managed to calculate the coordinates of the other temples. One of them is just around here.”

This was when Saleen recalled that he had wanted to search for the temples left behind by the Goddess for a very long time. Lex had also managed to calculate the approximate locations of 24 temples. One of them was in the northwestern region of the Sikeqinyan sea. He did not think that it was possible it was there before because the coordinates were deep under the sea and the map did not indicate any island on those coordinates.

The purpose of the Goddess’ temples was to spread faith. It was meaningless to build a temple in the ocean. Even if there was an unknown island there, how would believers ever have learned of it? The main temple, which was where the Goddess had lived, had a separate space of its own, but it was not something that the other temples possessed. Both disciples and oracles had to be self-sufficient. The Goddess of Nature disliked killing, and there was no land there to feed ant disciples.

“Let’s go take a look. Master, maybe you will…”

Saleen nodded. The bond that he had signed with the Goddess left him with a feeling of resentment. He had given so much. He even had to unify the Mainland just for the Goddess to be revived. There had to be secrets hidden in the 24 temples that the Goddess had built before her fall. Saleen did not manage to search them one by one because of his many responsibilities, but since they were there, there was no harm in taking a look.

He was worried that there might be traps in the Goddess’ equipment, so he had kept the Ring of Gifts, but there should be no problem opening the temples. The Ring of Gifts was in dimension stone because Saleen no longer wished to wear it on his finger.

Since his God’s Left Hand had vanished, and Saleen was no longer able to use the Godly Power within him, this Ring of Gifts had also become an important key to opening the temples.

Saleen gave the captain of the banner vessel a coordinate and ordered him to head north.

The captain had no idea what Saleen was up to, but he was the king, so there was nothing much the captain could do. Soon, Saleen gave another order for a high-speed combat vessel to transport a battalion of soldiers to Ceylon City while he brought the spirits of the dead on the skeletal warships to the coordinates of the Goddess’ temple.

Nailisi was pleased that Saleen had agreed to go ahead with the venture, but Nicholas was solemn because he was worried about the potential dangers they might encounter. Holy Masters were the same as mages on the seas; both found it difficult to maximize their powers. Fortunately, Saleen had his elemental magic tower, so in the worst case scenario, they would just fly back.

In Nicholas’ opinion, all Saleen had to do was to train his magic, increase his mental strength, find ways to control more ancient warriors, and revive the leader of the water-element creatures, then he would be able to rule over the entire Mainland. There was no need to search for any temples; doing so would only cause him more trouble.

The problem was that Saleen needed a distraction to adjust his emotions. That was something that was very important to mages.

The fleet changed the direction of its course as a high-speed frigate headed towards the south with a high-speed transport vessel, splitting away from Saleen’s dragon skeleton combat vessel. There were 12 skeletal warships behind the dragon skeleton combat vessel. Those skeletal warships were the last spirit combat vessels of the Metatrin navy. The winged skeleton had decided not to make more of such combat vessels until he had advanced to grade-10.

Skeletal warships were no match for the Cloudflow navy. Even if more of them were made, they would only be used to as armed merchant ships.

Lex’s mage did not manage to calculate the exact coordinates of every temple because all of them were prone to changes, regardless if they were on land or in the ocean. The coordinates of mountains and rivers would change, and many places no longer looked like how they did in the past over tens of thousands of years.

Some small islands might even have broken apart and floated closer to land. Such changes in coordinates were very obvious.

Saleen gave the captain three coordinates to search around the island. That might be troublesome for most people, but since Saleen possessed elemental eyes, he would be able to see as far as 100 miles, making the search much easier.

After a day’s time, the fleet was more than 5,000 miles away from land. The dragon skeleton combat vessel slowed down and began to search in an area of 500 miles in the sea.

Saleen decided to fly up and search with his elemental eyes. Saleen felt that he had already searched all the possible locations of the temple but did not manage to find any islands after a few hours.

“Drop the anchor.” Saleen decided that, instead of looking around cluelessly in the combat vessel, he might as well ask Nailisi to go look in the sea. The combat vessel could drop its anchor in the deep sea and secure it, preventing it from floating away with the ocean currents.

The skeletal warships in the back had skeletal chains that dropped into the sea. The front of a skeletal warship was suddenly pulled down into the sea. Something in the sea grabbed ahold of the skeletal anchor and was dragging it down.