Deep in the Eastern Sea, in an unnamed sea region, towering trees stood on an island covered in woodland.
Among those giant trees was one over fifty feet wide, its height impossible to measure. Like a mountain of stone, it rose straight into the heavens.
Only its spreading branches, floating amid the clouds, revealed that it was a tree.
High in the giant tree sat a nest woven from golden velvetwood.
Two Golden Great Roc Birds flew in from the distant sea and landed at opposite ends of the nest. Their two cries rang through the air, exceptionally clear and piercing.
But a moment later, the golden birds seemed to sense something and looked up. As though they had seen something terrifying, all their golden feathers stood on end, and they swiftly retreated to the side.
The next instant, a massive lightning spear shot into the spot where the Golden Rocs had been.
Lightning engulfed the entire nest.
There were still two spirit eggs inside it.
"Scree!" With two sharp, urgent cries, the Golden Rocs flew into a rage.
"Chen Yuan, Jin Zhan, stop putting on an act. You know what they mean. If you want a fight today, then fight!" The one overseeing this skirmish for the Flood Dragon Clan was Lan Ming, an early seventh-stage Blue Jade Flood Dragon.
The Ye Family had spent decades preparing and had long since arranged routes in, but clearly, even without those routes, neither flood dragons nor cultivators would have been able to return.
The core flood dragons of the Heavenly Flood Dragon Sea were already absent, leaving the entire clan on edge. On top of that, seventh-stage flood dragons kept dying, and their dragon offspring had vanished as though they had sprouted wings. Now, Lan Li, at the Seventh-Stage Peak,