Chapter 39: The Jade Palace in the Sky

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“We have to get across the river at once!”

The Zhong River was close enough to touch, yet seemed as distant as the edge of the world.

Even with the stealth techniques she had honed over many years, which let her weave swiftly through the shanty district—

Even with the void energy the Jade God had supplied her as a trump card—

Lily still felt her heart pounding.

She had evaded the White Lion Riders’ search and put distance between herself and the Stardust Army as it advanced rapidly toward Zhongzhou City.

Yet her heart continued to throb with unease.

At last, she reached the Zhong River, surging southward.

Among the rout of soldiers attempting to swim across, she saw, upstream, several hundred White Lion Riders racing across the shallows on pads of void energy.

Roaring, they charged toward the fleeing soldiers.

The White Lions’ whirlwind assault once again shattered the fugitives’ hopes of escaping with their lives.

Large numbers of Eastpine soldiers—even the formerly arrogant frontier troops of the Northern Commandery—fell to their knees, begging for mercy and surrender.

“Shhk!”

The long swords in the White Lion Riders’ hands offered them no chance to live.

The blades reaped the utterly demoralized soldiers, and the clear waters of the Zhong River were soon stained red.

“Long live! Long live!”

“Long live Eastpine! Long live our king!”

“Long live the three thousand miles of rivers and mountains!”

An unknown general clad in rhinoceros armor reined in his already gasping warhorse and turned around.

Lily saw the fear and struggle in the general’s eyes.

“Drink deep! Kill!”

With a great shout, the brave catfolk warrior charged forward, followed closely by several dozen Eastpine cavalrymen who had not yet broken and fled.

Together, they threw themselves at the White Lion Riders.

“Suicidal fools!”

Dozens of arrows imbued with void energy shot toward them, punching through the armor of the general’s comrades behind him.

The horses toppled into the mud, shrieking in agony.

Voidfire consumed the cavalrymen who had not yet died.

The charred stench of blood once more filled the riverbank.

An arrow of void energy struck the unknown general in the shoulder.

His body began to burn.

Yet he could see no flames. He could only feel endless scorching pain spreading through every inch of him.

“Kill!”

The general tightened his grip on his bronze halberd and thrust at the White Lion Riders’ breastplates—armor that should have been impossible to pierce.

“He actually made it this close to us? Good…”

A longsword severed the halberd’s shaft, then pierced the general’s throat.

“I’ll grant you an intact corpse!”

The warrior’s burning remains fell from his horse, only to be torn apart by the razor claws of the battle lion beneath his enemy.

“So close…”

It was not true. That Eastpine warrior had never stood a chance.

Lily knew that perfectly well, yet she still could not bear to watch.

But after only a moment’s hesitation, the commander of the Ninth Company among the White Lion Riders turned toward her, shaking the blood from his sword.

“Kill her!”

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Several White Lion Riders immediately spurred their lions toward Lily.

“Those wretched pests never let up!”

“Then let’s fight!”

Lily instinctively drew her broken sword.

The void energy the Jade God had transmitted into her surged from her lower dantian.

The time had come to stake everything on one desperate struggle!

“Girl, it seems we won’t be needing that void energy for now.”

A colossal floating fortress burst from a rift in space.

For a moment, Lily felt as though an immense black cloud had appeared overhead.

Everyone on the battlefield was shaken by the sight of the enormous fortress.

Lily looked up and saw it suspended more than a hundred meters above the ground.

Tall walls encircled the fortress’s circular base, firmly enclosing the buildings and bastions within.

At its center stood a gigantic circular hall hundreds of meters high, magnificent beyond description. Its roofs were covered in jade-colored tiles and adorned with flawless jade ornaments, lending the fortress an air of ancient, austere elegance.

Yet the battlements and weapon ports lining the walls and palace made it clear that this was no beautiful city in the sky.

It was a jade-colored aerial fortress.

Lily saw numerous black barrels protruding from the openings.

They seemed to be the same kind of weapon she had encountered in the underground city.

“Ballistae… from the Immortal War Chariot?”

Lily voiced her confusion, but in the next instant, a device resembling a teleportation array beneath the fortress drew her inside.

The array pulled her directly into the fortress.

Lily glanced around and discovered that she stood before the towering jade hall.

She was in a vast plaza outside the jade palace.

The plaza stretched for nearly three miles across and was paved with sturdy blue-gray bricks.

The material looked remarkably similar to that used to construct Black Mountain Fortress.

Buildings, palaces, and courtyards were scattered around the plaza. Lily even saw small lakes shaped like ponds, all built from the same blue-gray bricks.

Weapon ports had been set into them as well, while the courtyard walls were topped with battlements for defense.

Looking around, Lily realized that she was inside the high walls she had seen from outside.

“What a lovely fragrance… Is this…”

“Jasmine?”

In the Jade Realm, jasmine was a rare treasure.

The precious plants could be obtained only at the capital’s offering altar.

Even wealthy Heavenly Jade households might possess one or two plants, and those often died because of the soil in Heavenly Jade.

Yet now, the entire jade palace seemed filled with the rich fragrance of jasmine.

For a time, Lily became immersed in the novelty of the jade palace fortress and seemed to forget that she was still on a dangerous battlefield.

Outside the towering jade palace, the battle had not ended.

The White Lion Riders struggled to calm their battle lions, which had been thrown into panic by the fortress’s sudden appearance.

They, too, had never seen the black barrels protruding from such a massive fortress.

“Boom! Boom! Rumble!”

The barrels spewed terrifying tongues of flame.

Dense volleys of grapeshot exploded around the White Lion Riders like drops of rain.

“Use heavy void shields to block the shells! Quickly!”

Although the White Lion officers issued the order in haste, dozens of White Lion Riders who had not had time to gather their energy were torn apart by the storm of grape shot.

The indiscriminate barrage also left almost none of the Eastpine fugitives along the riverbank alive.

A vast cloud of blood rose into the air.

“Retreat! Fall back!”

The heavy void shields blocked the shells, which carried no void energy, but the terrifying “ballista cannons” that continued firing still filled the White Lion Riders with fear.

They had seen similar devices only in the Heavenly Jade underground city.

But they had never seen anything that carried hundreds of such weapons and could float in the air.

The volleys of grapeshot grew denser still.

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Despite the protection of their heavy void shields, half the sisters of the Eleventh Company were killed or grievously wounded by the grapeshot.

The deputy company commander’s right arm was severed by flying fragments because she had been too slow to circulate her energy.

“Fall back!”

Hearing the screams of her sisters through the transmission link, Solna, who had been holding the rear, gave the order to retreat.

This warrior, who had crossed several battlefields and was renowned for her savage courage, felt a trace of fear.

To prevent any more of her sisters from being turned into bloody pulp, she chose to withdraw her troops from the battle with the jade palace.

“Forget it. This thing consumes far too much energy, and remote operation consumes even more.”

“I’ll spare your lives this time!”

The Jade God muttered to himself.

The enormous jade palace did not pursue them. Instead, it rapidly absorbed the little void energy remaining around Zhongzhou, preparing to fly across the Zhong River.

“Lily, are you all right?”

The Jade God’s voice sounded inside Lily’s mind.

“Old man, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Having narrowly escaped death, Lily collapsed onto the broad plaza.

She still could not believe that the floating fortress before her was real.

A colossal fortress capable of flight, armed with weapons from the immortals—

Even Lily, who had spent so long exploring the underground cities of the immortals, was stunned by the sight.

“What in the world is this…”

“Heh, Lily, don’t look so surprised.”

“This is the gift I planned to give you.”

“You… you?”

The Jade God offered no explanation for her confusion and continued:

“Unfortunately, the void energy in this world is too weak to sustain the fortress’s operations.”

“Once you have the chance to reach the Void Realm, I’ll teach you and Mei how to use it.”

“This thing has all sorts of functions. Once you’re traveling through that region, it’ll make life wonderfully easy.”

Though she did not understand what the Jade God meant, Lily, still somewhat dazed, agreed for the moment.

“Whatever you say, old man.”

“For now, we’ll use this thing to get you out of here.”

“Wait, old man. Why can’t we use those… weapons on the fortress to help Eastpine win this battle?”

“It isn’t that simple.”

The Jade God’s voice sank.

“The jade palace has enough void energy to last only half an hour.”

“Getting it to carry you across the Zhong River and reach the Northern Zhong Mountains, where you can escape the Stardust Army’s pursuit, is already the limit.”

“If you want to use it as a weapon as well, that will be extremely difficult…”

As they spoke, Lily sensed a powerful surge of void energy approaching from the opposite bank of the Zhong River.

“Look at that. Our opponents have something that flies through the sky too.”

Lily stood alone in the empty plaza.

She regretted not immediately running into one of the distant buildings.

Now she desperately wanted to find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.

Because in the nearby sky, a gigantic figure was churning the clouds as it rushed toward the jade palace.

Its beating wings and terrifying head, crowned with enormous fangs, were already clearly visible.

Its massive body, covered in hard armor plates, surged forward through the currents stirred up by its wings.

Then, like a magnificent bolt of deep-blue lightning, it pounced toward Lily.

“It’s that enormous crawler!”

“Not a crawler, girl!”

“It’s a dragon!”

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