After leaving Xu Family Settlement, the Iron Dragon made a brief stop in Xingyu City to replenish supplies.
This was Zhang Tie's first time replenishing the airship's supplies since leaving Torch Dragon Territory. Great Xia's airships needed no energy or fuel, but the people aboard them could not go without food or drink.
The airship's propulsion, levitation, and core systems used a metal called Levitation Gold. It was said to come from some mysterious place in the Earth Element Realm and was extremely rare. Among the entire human race, only the Great Xia Imperial Family currently possessed the technology to use Levitation Gold to manufacture airships. It was said to be a craft from a prehistoric civilization. Airships built with Levitation Gold as their core virtually never faced the problem of running out of energy.
Aside from Golden Power Way, the airships of Great Xia's seven major sects—including the Iron Dragon that Zhang Tie had won from Taiyi Mystical Sect—had in fact all been exchanged from the Great Xia Imperial Family using certain assets of their own sects.
In a sense, the relationship between the Great Xia Imperial Family, Great Xia's foremost great clan, and the seven major sects was similar to that between the Iron Dragon Sect and the great clans within the Northeast Protectorate. They restrained one another, yet depended upon and coexisted with one another. The greatest foundation for mutual benefit lay in the prosperity and stability of Great Xia and the Hua Clan. It was precisely this foundation that ensured that, no matter how sour their relationship became, it could never truly deteriorate beyond repair.
The point at which their interests contended—and the special nature of the relationship between the Great Xia Imperial Family and the major sects—lay in the fact that throughout all of Great