"Horses?"
Jiang Wanwan froze for a moment, then covered her mouth and let out a soft chuckle.
"Little girl, you're quite amusing~"
She extended a fair finger and lightly tapped Zhu Zhuqing between the brows, a hint of teasing affection in her eyes.
At her words, confusion surfaced on Zhu Zhuqing's cool, pretty face.
"Then... if we aren't riding horses, are we walking there?"
As far as she had known, long journeys meant carriages, horses, or boats. Even Soul Masters mostly relied on carriages when traveling long distances.
There were no rivers nearby, either. She truly could not imagine...
What other means besides a carriage could take them on a long-distance journey.
"Oh, you~"
Jiang Wanwan was amused once again.
She reached out and affectionately ruffled Zhu Zhuqing's silky long hair, feeling as though she were facing a little kitten, curious about the vast world yet utterly ignorant of it.
"Little girl, remember this."
"From now on, you're one of us in the Heavenly Court. Set your sights higher. You mustn't keep asking questions that will make people laugh at you."
"After all, if word gets out, people might think our Heavenly Court is so poor that we don't even have an immortal boat to travel in."
As she spoke, Jiang Wanwan's bright eyes swept around their surroundings.
They were standing on an open stretch of level ground outside the city, with distant mountains dark as painted brows and lush, fragrant grass nearby.
"Mm, this place should be large enough. No mortals will get hurt."
Jiang Wanwan nodded in satisfaction, then grew serious and said to Zhu Zhuqing:
"Zhu Zhuqing, watch closely!"
"This is how cultivators like us ought to travel!"
Before her words had faded, Jiang Wanwan had already raised both hands.
Her ten fingers formed a lotus, weaving an intricate and profound hand seal.
As she moved, an indescribable spiritual resonance spread from within her. A faint silver light enveloped her body, and her robes fluttered without wind, lending her an ethereal bearing beyond the mortal world.
"Rise!"
With Jiang Wanwan's clear cry, the hand seal settled into place.
"How cultivators ought to travel?"
Zhu Zhuqing held her breath and focused in curiosity, wanting to see just what Jiang Wanwan meant.
At first, she noticed no obvious change in their surroundings. Just as she was wondering...
Whoosh-!
An unusual sound suddenly came from the sky.
At first it was faint, like the buzzing of bees, but in an instant it became a deep roar, as though some colossal thing were tearing through the clouds and hurtling through the air toward them!
Zhu Zhuqing instinctively looked up, peering into the distance in the direction of the sound.
The next second.
Her pupils abruptly contracted, and her cold, pretty face filled with shock!
High in the sky, dyed with the glow of sunset, the clouds parted to either side as an enormous vessel slowly flew toward them!
Its entire surface had the warm, lustrous quality of jade, yet gleamed with the cold sheen of metal.
The vessel was immense. At a rough glance, it stood thirty-three stories tall, each level adorned with carved beams and painted pillars, sweeping eaves and interlocking brackets, with terraces, towers, and pavilions arranged in graceful harmony.
There even seemed to be spiritual springs and cascading waterfalls among them, dotted with immortal mushrooms and precious grasses...
Clouds and mist curled through it, suffused with immortal light.
How was this a boat? It was clearly a moving immortal palace suspended above the nine heavens!
"This... this..."
Zhu Zhuqing's rosy lips parted slightly, her throat tightening. For a moment, she could not even form a complete sentence.
On the Douluo Continent, she had seen Spirit Hall's magnificent carriages and the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's luxurious coaches. She had even heard that certain high-grade Soul Tools could fly short distances.
But when had she ever seen such a breathtaking sight?
This lay completely beyond the bounds of her understanding.
"Well, little girl? Stunned, aren't you?"
Jiang Wanwan seemed to have anticipated Zhu Zhuqing's reaction. She released her hand seal, the silver light around her faded, and she blinked smugly.
Then she pointed at the magnificent immortal palace hovering overhead and casting a vast shadow. "This is your big sister's means of transportation. Its name is-the Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace."
"...Immortal palace?"
Zhu Zhuqing murmured the unfamiliar term.
Jiang Wanwan chuckled softly and formed another seal with her delicate hand. A gentle beam of light descended from the bottom of the Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace, enveloping her and Zhu Zhuqing.
Zhu Zhuqing felt her body grow light, and the scenery before her changed at dizzying speed.
The next moment, her feet were on solid ground again, and she stood on a broad platform on the immortal palace's lowest level.
Beneath her feet lay a deck as warm and lustrous as jade, with clouds and mist swirling all around. Looking down, she could see the mountains, rivers, and cities below reduced to something like a sand-table model. A dreamlike sense of unreality lingered in Zhu Zhuqing's heart.
Douluo Continent, the Pope's Hall.
"A flying... palace?"
Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo stared at the Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace, their eyes filled with horror.
Even Bibi Dong, seated upon the papal throne, wore an unprecedented gravity in her phoenix eyes.
Her fair fingers gripped the Pope's Scepter tightly, her knuckles even paling slightly from the force.
Spirit Hall had a long heritage and naturally possessed some Soul Tools passed down from ancient times, including records concerning Soul Tools capable of carrying people through the air.
But all of those were small, delicate objects that consumed enormous amounts of power. They were suitable enough for short journeys or surprise attacks.
When had she ever seen a "Soul Tool" so enormous and extravagant, as though an entire city had been lifted into the sky?
The system of power in that world... could it truly be completely different from Soul Power?
Waves surged through Bibi Dong's heart.
She had accepted the Rakshasa God's inheritance, knew of the Divine Realm's existence, and understood that divine power was a form of energy far above Soul Power.
Yet the feeling this Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace gave her was neither that of a creation purely of Soul Power nor that of the divine power she had sensed. It was a power she did not understand.
Perhaps I really must reassess this Shrouding the Heavens World...
Bibi Dong took a deep breath, suppressing the shock in her heart.
Zhang Ming's death and the loss of Shui Lanhua seemed to pale into insignificance beside this Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace before her.
Meanwhile, at Shrek Academy.
At that moment, the square was deathly silent. A falling pin could have been heard.
A long time passed.
"Oh, my dear mother!"
Ma Hongjun let out a strange cry, breaking the silence. He rubbed his eyes hard, his plump face filled with horror.
"That thing is a boat?"
"Didn't they just haul a whole damn mountain into the sky?"
Oscar, too, sucked in a sharp breath. "Good heavens, they use that thing to get around?"
"This Heavenly Court... just what kind of force is it? It sounds even more imposing than our two great empires and Spirit Hall combined!"
Yu Xiaogang stood rooted to the spot, the muscles in his face twitching slightly.
Earlier, he had been speaking with easy confidence, analyzing Zhang Ming's experience and defining the Shrouding the Heavens World as "a somewhat unusual minor plane."
Yet now, as he looked at that magnificent thirty-three-story immortal palace plowing through the sea of clouds on the screen in the sky, he felt as though an invisible palm had struck him hard across the face, leaving his cheeks burning with pain.
"T-Teacher... this... this is the minor plane you were talking about?"
Tang San's eyes were full of disbelief as he instinctively turned to Yu Xiaogang, his gaze filled with confusion and doubt.
As a disciple of the Tang Sect, he was proficient in hidden weapons and mechanical arts, and could appreciate the terrifying technological prowess represented by that Moon-Escaping Immortal Palace better than others.
It was by no means a simple mechanical creation. Its enormous size, its steady suspension in the air, its exquisitely ingenious structure...
All of it far surpassed the Tang Sect's mechanical arts, and even the limits of his imagination!
"Just what is going on with this Shrouding the Heavens World?"