Chapter 200: Jiang Yong’s Ambush

Long Cheng still walked with that elegant dance-like pace in the back garden of the Victory Palace.

The muscles in his left arm rippled like flowing water, and pieces of green Dragon Scale emerged from beneath his skin. His left hand had transformed into a huge green dragon’s head. Taking a deep breath, Long Cheng stuffed the seven Seals and one Crown he had seized into the dragon’s mouth. The dragon head closed its jaws and slowly retracted back into Long Cheng’s arm.

“What a lazy Emperor. This pure gold Crown weighs exactly twenty-seven jin, three liang, and eight qian. It must be quite heavy to wear on the head. But you still shouldn’t just leave it lying around in the study, right? Well, I’m giving you a warning—this time you only lost the Crown, next time you might lose your head!”

After bitterly mocking the old Emperor of the Gaul Empire for a while, Long Cheng furrowed his brows and thought for a moment. The dragon head on his left arm slowly reappeared and spat out a fist-sized medicine bottle carved from white jade.

“That kid does things in a messy way, but his temperament suits mine quite well. After we part now, I don’t know when we’ll meet again. Maybe we’ll never see each other in this lifetime? I’ll leave him something to remember me by. This bottle of ‘Reviving Life Elixir’ might give him a better chance to break through to the Saint Realm.”

“If he breaks through to the Saint Realm, we might still have a chance to meet again. If he doesn’t, maybe by the next time I see him, his bones will be old enough to use as drums.”

In this world, ordinary people could live to about eighty years of age. A Mortal Knight could add about twenty years to their lifespan, an Earth Knight could add about fifty years, and by the time one became a Celestial Knight, they could live to about a hundred and fifty or sixty years if nothing unexpected happened. But once entering the Saint Realm, one would have at least three hundred years of life. Reaching the Saint Master rank meant becoming an ageless, deathless monster who could live for a thousand years.

If Lin Qi could step into the Saint Realm, he and Long Cheng would have another chance to meet within three hundred years.

If Lin Qi ended up being just an ordinary person, merely a Celestial Knight, then Long Cheng might truly have no opportunity to see him again. “He’s quite an interesting young friend. It’s a shame he didn’t want to come with me to the Eastern Continent. Otherwise, if I recommended him to the Celestial Temple, those old fossils would probably be driven to tears by him, right?”

Chuckling softly, Long Cheng gripped the medicine bottle in his hand, carefully avoided the Magic Traps, and quickly walked toward the back wall of the Victory Palace. This was the retreat route Lin Qi had arranged with him: climb over the back wall, and about three li away, in that small grove, was where Lin Qi would help Long Cheng escape. Based on Lin Qi’s preparations in that grove, even a hundred Heavy Armor knights would be completely wiped out there.

“That kid is good, really good!” Long Cheng cautiously looked around on both sides. He only had one lingering worry in his heart.

Where were Jiang Yong and his men? That vile eunuch came from the Western Intelligence Directorate, was cunning and ruthless, and his nature was completely twisted—he couldn’t even be treated as human. A few days ago, Long Cheng saw him slaughter an entire family. He had also exposed the Blood Spirit Green Dragon Halberd in front of Jiang Yong and punched him, injuring him. That despicable eunuch held grudges fiercely; there was no way he would let Long Cheng off easily.

Moreover, Jiang Yong’s target this time was Long Cheng himself. He must have arranged countless treacherous schemes.

The only question now was: where was that vile eunuch? If Long Cheng could kill him here, it would cut off one of his rival’s arms and deal a heavy blow to his arrogance. If he could kill him, he absolutely must! But where was he?

The walls of the Victory Palace weren’t very high—at least compared to the Imperial City of that massive empire in the Eastern Continent, the Victory Palace’s walls were like a small dirt barrier. At just over five meters high, Long Cheng leaped over them effortlessly with a light tap of his toes.

But just as Long Cheng’s body jumped into the air, reaching the highest point where it was hardest to change breath or turn and maneuver, an angry shout came from afar: “This is not a place you can come and go as you please!”

Before the shout was fully heard, an iron arrow over six feet long and as thick as a thumb shot toward Long Cheng with a piercing whistling sound, stopping less than three inches from his right ribs. The golden armor on Long Cheng’s body shattered, with the section directly in front of the arrow completely breaking apart. The arrow’s force was so powerful that even from three inches away, the energy it carried shattered this proper set of Imperial Guard armor.

Long Cheng took a deep breath, and his body miraculously rose upward. Judging by his initial jump, his body had already started to descend; by common sense, it was impossible for him to rise again.

But he defied reason, rising upward in an unbelievable manner. His body spun once, rising three meters, then spun again, rising another three meters. In the blink of an eye, Long Cheng spun nine times, soaring nearly thirty meters high, and also flew sideways for almost a hundred meters!

It was an incredible, miraculous feat. The arrow that had shot like a thunderbolt merely brushed past Long Cheng’s body without touching a single hair.

Long Cheng laughed mockingly: “Fool, so there really was an ambush! Hahaha, but your archery is too lousy! Go back and learn from your mother for a few more years how to shoot people and how to be shot!”

Taunting the archer who had fired the hidden arrow with vile words, Long Cheng’s body drifted away with the cold wind as if weightless. For every ten meters he floated, he descended one meter. At this rate, by the time he landed, he would already be over a li away.

One li from the back wall of the Victory Palace was the high-end residential district where nobles and officials lived. Once he reached there, Long Cheng would be like a green dragon entering the sea—no one would be able to catch even a single strand of his hair.

Rapid alarm bells rang from a high tower on the palace wall, and the entire Victory Palace suddenly fell into chaos. A burly general in light gray armor, holding an oddly shaped Longbow, stood atop the tower, angrily watching Long Cheng swiftly escape.

“Your Highness Picius was right—this reckless scoundrel is truly strong!”

A mouthful of blood suddenly sprayed from the gray-armored general’s mouth. That earlier arrow had required him to use all his Combat Qi and even burn some of his life essence to achieve a speed twice that of sound. But Long Cheng had easily dodged the arrow without getting the slightest scratch. Witnessing this, the gray-armored general was so enraged that he spat blood.

In a hotel less than a hundred meters from the Victory Palace’s back wall, the frail Picius sat wrapped in a thick quilt on a sofa, quietly watching through the floor-to-ceiling window as Long Cheng effortlessly avoided the hidden arrow and escaped. He suddenly sighed softly and reached out to stroke the cheek of a cold-faced young girl with golden hair sitting beside him.

“Jie, he really is a very powerful man. But that’s just as well. I don’t know what he took from Grandfather’s study, but as long as my men can capture him and recover the stolen items, that will be my achievement!”

“Take your men and follow him. See if those strange people from the Eastern Continent can handle him. It would be best if they both end up wounded, and then you go finish them all off! Do these Easterners think that just because their country is strong, they can come to our Gaul Empire and act recklessly?”

The cold-faced girl Jie, dressed in a pale gold robe with faint glimpses of a Holy Cross Emblem shimmering in her eyes, stood up. She bent over and gently kissed Picius on the forehead, then said calmly, “Cripple, send out all your men to monitor all entry and exit points of the Imperial Capital. Don’t let any injured person escape.”

The Cripple in the corner of the room hurriedly bowed deeply and then rushed out.

Jie picked up an unusually shaped longsword from beside the sofa—it was two meters long but only as wide as a thumb—slung it over her back, and strode out of the room.

Heavy footsteps sounded as dozens of strong men in black outfits with light gold Leather Armor over them, standing in the corridor outside the room, quickly followed Jie. These men were filled with a stern, murderous aura, rigid and unyielding like freshly forged battle-axes, every strand of their hair radiating a chilling sharpness that warned others to stay away.

Picius curled up on the sofa, the thick quilt enveloping his thin body.

“Marrs, Lartus… The deaths of six Divine Descendants didn’t even implicate you?”

“Those fools from the Odin Temple, I have no expectations of them anymore. How could they jump out and take responsibility for this?”

“Fine, I can only rely on myself!”

He sighed softly and narrowed his eyes as he looked out the window. “I can only rely on myself. Father, if only you were still alive!”

Hidden in the small grove, Lin Qi heard the distant alarm bells. He scrambled to his feet and whispered urgently, “Get ready, the alarm bells are ringing. I don’t know if he succeeded or was captured alive. Be prepared!”

Gripping two Armor-Piercing Crossbows tightly, Lin Qi said grimly, “If he escapes, we’ll cover his retreat. If he’s captured alive and executed on the spot… well, we can consider collecting his body!”

Long Cheng chuckled softly, soaring through the air like an arrogant green dragon. He left the Victory Palace behind, the sound of hurried footsteps fading into the distance. If nothing unexpected happened, those Imperial Guard from the Victory Palace and the Dragoons from the Imperial Capital would never catch up to him.

He flashed past a large pine tree like lightning. The wind blew, the tree swayed, and hundreds of thousands of pine needles suddenly rose swirling into the air, shooting toward Long Cheng with sharp whistles. Amid the dense mass of pine needles, over a dozen faint glimmers of cold light flashed by!

Eighteen fine, hair-thin needles, each imbued with a sinister, icy energy that could pierce Heavy Armor and kill a bull.

“Jiang Yong, you’re here!” Long Cheng suddenly laughed. He shouted in the common language of the Eastern Continent: “I know you have three younger brothers outside the palace. Don’t worry, I’ll send them into the palace too! Every male in your family—I’ll send them all into the palace! As long as you die here, I swear on the life of my father’s favorite concubine that I will make every male in your family a eunuch!”

Amid his laughter, Long Cheng pressed his right palm downward. A green talisman flashed out, and a roaring gust of wind swept up, carrying away all the pine needles and fine needles.