In the next instant, Lin Qi stepped through the void and descended upon the summit of the Holy Mountain with vast divine majesty. Bare-chested, Blackbeard had a huge cigar clenched between his teeth and a bottle of red wine in hand. With no shred of seriousness, he spread his arms and greeted Lin Qi with a grin. "Aha, look who's here! My dear little Lin Qi, His Majesty the Emperor of the great Dragon Mountain Empire! Hahaha, what brings you here?"
Blackbeard was holding a boisterous feast. The place he had chosen was the grand hall where the Church's Crown Pontiff convened assemblies to discuss matters of great importance. Now, music shook the heavens within the hall, while crowds of gorgeously dressed young women drifted among the guests. Teasing laughter and cheers rang without end. In the corners lay mountains of wine bottles and barrels, with discarded bottles rolling everywhere across the floor. Not even utter chaos and foul smoke could describe the sight of the place.
Lin Qi shrugged. Fine. He admitted that Blackbeard had done the Church no small amount of harm—but what did that matter?
An elderly man in a violet-and-gold divine robe squeezed miserably through the crowd. He seized Blackbeard by the sleeve. "My lord, my lord, you must dispatch reinforcements at once! The elite forces of fifteen legions from the Temple of Punishment have been surrounded by those damned foreign races! They bleed every day, they fall every day—we must rescue them!"
Blackbeard widened his strange eyes and shot the archbishop of the Disciplinary Office a vicious glare. "Nonsense! Of course I know we need to rescue them! But I have no soldiers left! Unless you can mobilize several million troops for me from the underground world, I can't spare a single man! Just yesterday,