But they had to procure all the provisions, weapons, and resources needed to maintain their troops themselves. The Dragon Palace supplied none of them.
His sons' struggle for power and profit also provoked a defensive reaction from the old Dragon King.
Although he could understand why his sons coveted the throne at this point, he could hardly help feeling anger and suspicion.
Wanting to advance was human nature, but their eagerness inevitably made the old Dragon King feel that his sons could not wait for him to die so they could take his place.
Thus, some irreconcilable rifts gradually developed between the old Dragon King and his sons.
The most intense and public of these conflicts involved the Seventeenth Dragon Prince, Ao Que.
That prince was said to have obtained fragments of the Sea Eye Spell Canon in the Sea Eye. No one knew what forbidden spells they contained that had made him so ambitious and audacious.
After openly having a fierce argument with the old Dragon King in the Dragon Palace, he actually sneaked into the Dragon Palace's Treasure Vault and stole a vast quantity of heavenly materials and earthly treasures.
Originally, the matter had not really been all that serious. After all, as the old saying went, a son who stole from his father was no thief. There was nothing particularly terrible about a Dragon Prince taking a few things from the Dragon Palace.
But what truly crossed the line and utterly enraged the old Dragon King was that the treasures Ao Que stole included no fewer than ten Dragon Pearls!
Each of those ten Dragon Pearls had formed from the essence left by a deceased ancestor of the Dragon Palace when his lifespan ran out, containing an old dragon's lifetime of cultivation heritage and insights.
If put