The carriage pulled by flying lizards did not head toward the bustling heart of Dragon Emperor City, but instead made its way out of the city.
The carriage moved neither fast nor slow and was fairly steady, yet it swayed along for nearly two hours. It was almost evening by the time it finally delivered Zhang Tie and the others to a manor at the foot of a mountain east of Dragon Emperor City.
The manor was vast, backed against a lush, towering mountain. A river ran directly before it, and across that river lay a village town. This was already the outskirts of Dragon Emperor City, with broad stretches of farmland adjoining the village.
After getting out of the carriage, everyone stared at the manor before them and the wisps of cooking smoke curling above several homes in the village across the river, all of them still dazed.
Just as they stood there in a daze, an old man drove a flock of sheep down the hillside. As he passed along the little path before the manor, the flock went by, leaving fresh sheep droppings all over the ground, like black pine nuts scattered everywhere.
Because his state of mind was different, Zhang Tie found everything here rather interesting, without the slightest discomfort. As for the Liu brothers, merely seeing the expressions on their faces nearly made Zhang Tie laugh—whatever expression people dragged into a tour group by a shady tour guide wore when they discovered they had been scammed but could not withdraw from the group, that was more or less the expression on the Liu brothers' faces.
A stern-faced Water Divine General in a white robe, seven red dragon patterns embroidered on his cuffs, stood with his hands behind his back on the steps at the manor