Chapter 402 Going To Helios City
At the dawn of the following day, Mark, Song Yue, Black Knight, and Allen departed from the Imperial city, traveling in the bicorn carriages given by the royal family of eastern sun, a while ago.
Xie Mei was left behind at the store, and to keep an eye on her, the manticore was also left at the store.
As for Lan Ju and Jinlong, they traveled to Western Moon and joined the princess.
Following them from behind, an ambassador from the Phoenix Empire also left for the Eastern Sun as a formality. However, strangely, this ambassador wasn't any politician or a member of the imperial court. Instead, it was the fourth prince who usually never steps out of the palace.
Mark didn't know about it and didn't care even if he knew.
Under his orders, the bicorn carriages traveled through the Dwarven kingdom and then went through the Leon Empire, entered the Eastern Sun kingdom, and finally reached the destination by late in the evening.
It took them about 17 hours of travel to reach Helios City. Excluding Allen, all the remaining travelers including the coachmen and the bicorns were dead tired by the time they reached the royal palace.
On the way, he realized that he would need a transport aerial vehicle that has enough space to make it feel like a moving house. He also had his eye on an aircraft.
Unfortunately, he would need a proper runway to fly it in the first place. Hence, he could only postpone the thought of purchasing it until some other time.
Meanwhile, inside a private chamber, Ouyang Zen and Lan Jing were in the middle of a conversation with the ruler of the Dwarven kingdom, King Kraggek Jadefury.
The dwarven king was admiring the wine while Lan Jing was hoping for a possible trade between the two kingdoms other than wine too. "The Blue Jeweled wine is indeed praiseworthy. My people would surely love this taste. Yi Di (the god of wine and alcohol) blessed your kingdom.
However, I was actually looking forward to tasting that legendary Black Spirit wine of your kingdom."
"Ugh… this barbarian has nothing but alcohol in his mind." Ouyang Zen wanted to speak about the situation of the trade of veggies and fish meat.
Eastern Sun kingdom shares boundaries with the Dwarven kingdom, Leon Empire, Kun Empire, and even the Xiezhi Empire of the Black turtle continent.
The majority of its kingdom was in the Vermillion bird continent and it was mostly filled with the Rocky Mountains and barren lands.
As for the remaining part, they were just islands in the ocean between the Vermilion bird continent and the Black turtle continent. Those help the kingdom in extending their maritime boundaries and so, in turn, help in fishing.
Hence, the kingdom majorly depends on either Kun Empire or Leon Empire for vegetables.
Having a border with Xiezhi Empire known for its fertile land, Ouyang Zen compromised on some islands to form trading relations with its northern neighbor and reduce dependency on the other two empires.
And he wanted the Dwarven kingdom to follow his route with Eastern Sun becoming the mediator.
However, the drunken dwarven king didn't even give him an opportunity to talk about it. He kept asking things about meat and alcohol, and Lan Jing was forced to give him explanations as the host.
It was then a soldier disrupted their meeting and informed them of the arrival of Mark.
Ouyang Zen immediately got up on his feet and excused himself as the matter wasn't going anywhere, "I need to go and attend to an important guest. Our Prime Minister will keep you company."
The Dwarven King furrowed his brows in displeasure. "Important guest? Which Empire's prince is he?"
"No, he is a commoner and the owner of a weapon store," replied Lan Jing in Ouyang Zen's stead. The teenager smiled as he added, "he can be considered a chief guest for this event. So, if you excuse me…"
He turned around and picked up his pace as he was walking away.
"A weapon store owner?" The Dwarven king fell into thoughts for a while before he opened his mouth, "Is he 'that' Lu Zhen?"
Lan Jing asked with a slight surprise, "You know him?"
"I read newspapers too," replied the dwarven king. "We might live in mountains but that doesn't mean we aren't aware of the world outside of our kingdom. We heard that he sells unique weapons called firearms and has a supreme being as a servant with the power of a pseudo-demigod."
Lan Jing nodded with a bright smile, feeling proud of his grand nephew. "His weapons will change this world. I think dwarves will benefit a lot if you form a friendship with him."
"I have seen a couple of those firearms. They couldn't be made by simple hammer and forge. Furthermore, the parts of each weapon are different from another. It is easier to make a semi-divine grade weapon compared to an ungraded firearm." The Dwarven King thought that it wasn't worth learning the making of firearms when they could just make semi-divine-grade weapons and earn lots of gold.
As for protection, the treaty with Leon and Phoenix empires will keep it safe. Hence, he didn't see any benefits that Lan Jing suggested.
Lan Jing could only shrug his shoulders and think that it is a pity before taking this opportunity to bring up the trade.
Meanwhile, Ouyang Zen reached the entrance of the palace and welcomed Mark and his companions in person.
"Who else has arrived, King Ouyang?" asked Mark as soon as he met the teenager. The latter answered, "The Leon Empire has sent its third prince and a minister. The Dwarven King is also here."
"What about Prince Qin Yu? Is he coming?" asked Mark. He had personal business with the crown prince of the Kun Empire but didn't have a communication talisman to talk with him like he had with Shen Ling, Lan Jing, and Feng Wu. Hence, his participation is important.
Unfortunately for him, Ouyang Zen only had a piece of bad news. The teenager shook his head, "No, the representative was changed at the last minute. The fourth prince, Qin Zhi, is coming."
Mark could only inwardly sigh and nod in understanding, "Okay, umm… Princess Shen Ling was also on her way. King Shen Niu wasn't coming because of some urgent matters. Anyways, shall we go?"
Soon, everyone was escorted to their rooms, leaving Ouyang Zen to have a private talk with his chief guest.
As they took their seats, the teenage King went on to ask about the Eye of Talim.
eaglesnov?1,сoМ Mark took out a fist-sized, eye-shaped amulet and, showed it to him. "With the help of an expert (system), I removed its consciousness. All that's left is to use it on Mari, I mean, Zan Rong to unlock her memories."
Ouyang Zen sighed in relief after seeing it with his own eyes, "phew, finally, I can relax a bit. Thank you."
"You can thank me after the task," replied Mark. He then said, "Anyways, let's talk about the business. Your kingdom is full of rare materials and I'm interested to buy them in raw form. We could…"
After a while, the discussion was finished and Mark went to his room to sleep, well, atleast in the eyes of Ouyang Zen and his soldiers.
However, once he locked his room from inside, Mark didn't hesitate to open the skill tab and scrolled down to the section where his spatial skills were listed. He clicked on teleportation.
As soon as he did it, a new window was opened, displaying a 3d globe of the planet.
Just like his home planet, this one is also made of mostly water (~84%) but larger in size and has four continents with two in the eastern hemisphere, one in the center, and the other in the western hemisphere.
The system also made it quite convenient for him by dividing the continents by their kingdoms and empires. Along with the provinces, even towns, and cities were displayed, although the villages were omitted for some reason.
The Vermillion Bird continent was divided into eight regions. Phoenix Empire in the south. Above it, there was Bloodhill forest covering the vast area.
To the left of Bloodhill forest, there's the Western Moon kingdom. To the right, there was the dwarven kingdom and the mountains of Kush. And to the north, Leon Empire covered a massive area.
To the north of the Leon Empire, there's the Kun Empire. To the right of the Kun Empire, there is the Eastern Sun kingdom, and to the left, there's the Qilin Empire, which was isolated geographically from the Kun and Leon Empires by the mountain range of Tawang.
And to the northeast of Eastern Sun, a couple of thousand kilometers away, the Black Turtle continent is located.
The Black Turtle continent is ruled by just two empires, the Empire of Xiezhi, and the Empire of Baize.
As for the central Dragon continent, it was ruled by only Dragon Empire.
And the remaining White Tiger continent was called the beast empire, where various top-tier intelligent Spirit beasts formed their own kingdoms like the Werewolves, Pantheras (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, etc…), Bears, giants, etc…
The ocean is inhabited by a lot of known and unknown species. It is not much explored in history. As a result, the system couldn't gather much information from the timeline.
It wasn't the first time he used teleportation, and hence, he wasn't that surprised by the details given by the system.
However, when he just practiced during the past few days, he didn't travel so far. So, this was more exciting for him.
He couldn't stop smiling as he zoomed in a lot of times and finally clicked on a mountain nearby the Kunyu valley.
*Ding! The destination is selected. Please wait for ten seconds for the generation of the spatial door.