“Honey… I don’t want to go to the elder meeting…”

“...”

“Huh?”

Zhang Dong opened up his eyes to see a cute small dragon’s head in front of him. Before he could say anything his face was assaulted by Bahamut’s tongue. His face was covered in a lot of slobber which meant that he had been out for the count for a while now.

“Aghh… stop licking me… ugh…”

While trying to push away his small dragon companion he felt pain shot through his body. Now that he was awake he noticed that his body was in a rough state. His robes were torn and he had various burn marks everywhere, even the long white hair that he was proud off was somewhat charred.

‘I pushed into the beam and was barely able to teleport away, It’s a miracle that I’m even alive.’

It took him a second to remember the previous incident with Long Qing. His brother through some strange manner was able to pull him into a secluded location. It forced his teleportation function to not function which resulted in quite the escape. Somehow he was able to activate it in time before he was disintegrated by the giant beam cannon of the capital city.

“Ugh… is everything in place? Both arms are there, my legs too and most importantly… yeah it’s still there.”

His body was darker than usual as he suffered third-degree burns. Even though the body refining technique was at the great circle level it could not resist all that damage. Luckily he was in possession of many healing techniques, already the wounds were starting to heal and even his hair was returning to its previous form.

“I must have been out for a moment as a large chunk of my Qi has already recovered but… where is everyone?”

During the stressful situation, he had instructed Bob to bring him back to the Golden Palace. It was supposed to be close by and a safe haven. He expected to be injured by the energy beam and barely make it out alive. Then his plan involved getting scooped up by the sect members that were supposed to help him stabilize. Yet, no one was here and he woke up with all the wounds intact.

Perhaps the only reason he was alive was due to Bahamut being here. His dragon was able to use healing techniques as well. Their souls were connected so his power had decreased but it was enough to keep his body stable. To get to the bottom of this mystery he quickly brought up his status screen.

‘What happened…Bob, scan the palace, search for anyone that could be alive or even dead, prioritize Zhang Liena.’

He had a bad feeling about this as he was greeted by red windows. The Golden Palace looked to be in bad shape, even the room he was in now had a lot of sizzling panels. This was supposed to be the main cockpit where all the elders gathered. His chair that he usually used to sit in was there but the whole place was devoid of life.

‘Scan finished, unable to find any life signals.’

‘No life signals? Could it be?’

When Bob was finished with the quick scan and forwarded him the information he almost fell over. Was it possible for everyone to have been dead? This golden palace had thousands of people in it before he was forcefully teleported away, his wife included.

‘Bob, what about the bodies?’

‘No bodies could be found.’

‘No bodies either? So they all could be alive then? But where did they all go then…’

It seemed that there was just no one here. It was probable that the people were also caught up in some type of trap, perhaps even teleported away. If no dead remains were present in this huge palace then his sect members were probably somewhere else. To no surprise, he could not check for them in his faction window. It showed an error when trying to seek out Liena’s location.

‘It’s working in some ways but not in others, it’s only a partial blockage…’

His system was working to some extent as he could actually use his teleportation feature. It was limited to the area he was currently in as something was blocking him from going to places like Spirit Spring City. This could only mean one thing and partially explained what transpired.

‘They must have pushed into the formation after I was pulled into it by Long Qing. My connection to the Golden Palace lets me get back here but this formation is blocking me from directly leaving, it must be something similar to the Cerulean Empress area.’

He had enough experience with taking out the other Emperors to know what was happening. His people must have fallen into a trap and were whisked away to another location. After they were gone the palace must have crashed somewhere. Considering that there was damage done to the main engine, the main protective formation must have been depowered during the descent.

‘It’s like an EMP was sent through this place… Bob, can you bring this place back online?’

‘Golden Palace is offline, do you wish to spend spirit points to reactivate it?’

‘Nothing is free but this is just highway robbery, why does it cost so much to reactivate the generator?’

‘The main power battery has been destroyed, it needs to be replaced.’

‘The main battery?’

Zhang Dong didn’t want to waste time but he decided to quickly make his way into the engine room. What was previously powering this place was a holy golden egg. It could output at least as much energy as it could and also restore it with time. Now it was just a collapsed cracked shell with powder in the middle.

‘I see… This whole place is unusable…’

After the power outage, it seemed that the whole place couldn’t really hold itself together. This golden palace defied the laws of physics and also architecture. Some spaces had spatial formations in them to compress them to fit the palace. All of them had expanded and caused massive amounts of damage to the entire fortress. How something like this could have happened was above him as he believed this place to be impenetrable by normal means.

‘It has an obvious weak point that not many should be aware of, could this be Long Qing’s doing?’

He had no idea how it was done but somehow the whole Golden Palace was shut down in one fell swoop. It was the first time that this fortress had fallen and it came rather easily. His only explanation was the location and the closeness to the Long Clan. Perhaps the ancestors of this clan had prepared for such an occasion when the golden dragon could rise again. Only legends remained but perhaps the golden and azure had a problematic relationship in the past.

‘If I spend points to reconstruct this engine will it just collapse again?’

This was a conundrum that he was not sure about. If he used up his points it was possible to repair this flying fortress. With it operational it would probably be easier to traverse the outside areas. The only problem was the reason behind the collapse, if it happened once it could happen again. His resources were limited and after upgrading this fortress, the point expenditure had increased.

‘Maybe I should postpone this for now. First I need to figure out the reason behind this, otherwise, I’ll quickly run out of spirit points.’

After making the decision he changed locations to the teleportation chamber. While he would not repair the main generator this didn’t mean that he wouldn’t do some minor repairs. It was impossible to teleport outside this area but it was within its boundaries. However, it was possible to create a safe haven for his people. This chamber still had a mostly intact gate that could be quickly repaired with spirit points.

After bringing up his system window and clicking a few times the entire room started shifting. The rubble that covered the floors started to shift around and connect back with the partially destroyed walls. The gate was doing the same as the parts that it was composed of started reforming. It was quite an interesting sight which still baffled him. How was something like this possible and how would he handle the being that was able to create this system?

‘I should probably not worry about that for now, I thought the biggest problem would be the Overseer but Long Qing already almost killed me once…’

After his victories against the other Emperors, he somewhat discounted his older brother as a potential threat. His power was around the level of the Emerald Phoenix Emperor which at this point was nothing special. The Quasi-Immortal weapon that he produced was not something that he expected to see. It was possible for more such items to exist and probably the formation that caused this golden palace to fall was of such quality.

‘I need to figure out how this happened.’

The teleportation chamber was restored to its previous glory. While the main generator was offline this didn’t mean that he couldn’t use a secondary one. There were various devices in this palace that with some fuel could at least power this one area. The smaller generator looked like a cylinder and was quickly connected with the help of cables to the gate. After jump-starting it with his lightning Qi, it was operational once more.

‘Good, the system is picking it up. I’ll be able to send people back here after I find them.’

Zhang Dong continued to wander through the golden palace to repair some of the critical structures. The costliest procedure would be to recreate the whole generator but getting some critical areas working first wasn’t that bad. First came the gate to allow his people to come back, then the medical chamber for any potentially injured, and finally he also decided to recreate the shield formation. It wouldn’t be that strong but he at least needed to have the insides of this fortress to be protected from any outside forces.

‘So this is it…’

It took him around twenty minutes to get the few places back to working order, a task only possible thanks to his system. After it was done he found himself outside together with Bahamut. Both of them were greeted by a lush jungle filled with massive trees that were thicker than a person. It looked similar to one of the pocket dimensions he visited during the raid of the Cerulean Empress's lair.

“Let’s go Bahamut, they can’t be that far off…”

“GAO!”

The tiny dragon gave out a rather cute-sounding roar before the two ascended into the air. Both kept their senses spread out for any signs of life and quickly discovered something nearby…