Chapter 291 His Majesty the Southern Emperor!!! "It really worked..."
"It really worked." The three looked at Sang Zhitao without surprise.
"Wood magic." Sang Zhitao turned to the three of them. "Who among you can do it?"
Ying waved her hand: "Besides absorbing, I only have a little bit of healing magic ability."
"I already said I only have earth elemental magic," Lin Xiao shrugged.
Aria glanced at the two of them with disdain and stepped forward, saying, "I'll do it."
As she spoke, she looked up at the top of the city wall: "But I'm not sure if I can climb that high."
Sang Zhitao took out a handful of seeds from her sleeve and began searching carefully.
"Huh..."
"What's wrong?" Aria asked, noticing her strange expression.
Sang Zhitao circled the seeds with her fingertip before saying, "It seems like one seed is missing."
"What kind of seed is it? Is it important?" Aria was a little worried. This person was a god-slayer. What if the seed in her hand was some kind of divine seed? She wondered if it might cause some trouble.
But Sang Zhitao shook her head: "I don't remember, it probably isn't important."
"Should?!" Aria opened her mouth, but ultimately suppressed her speechless complaint about Sang Zhitao because of her strength.
Sang Zhitao picked up a seed with her fingertips, wondering if she could still activate her wood-type spiritual root after merging with the jade pendant.
Thinking this, she subconsciously activated the seed using the activating spell she had learned in the cultivation world.
A vine, about ten centimeters long, quietly grew from her fingertips.
"You know wood magic?" Arya looked at the plant in her hand with some surprise. "Is there anything you can't do?"
“That’s too much,” Sang Zhitao replied instinctively.
She felt that the energy consumption in her body was far less than when she was in the cultivation world.
“I’ll activate it,” she said, looking at Aria.
Arya was naturally happy that she could take over, and quickly nodded in agreement, taking a few steps back.
Sang Zhitao placed the vine, which was about ten centimeters long, on the ground. Soon, the vine's roots sank deep into the soil, and it grew to about a meter tall and as thick as a fist.
She placed her hand on the vine and carefully channeled her energy into it.
Soon the vines grew to the clouds and became about half a meter thick.
"Do you need me to fly you around?" She turned to look at the other three.
Arya shook her head, took a lightness scroll from her body and used it, and then used a scroll that added wings.
Ying removed a section of the bandage from his hand, chanted a spell with his palm facing the ground, and a vortex-like wind blew from his palm to the ground. As the wind increased, his body floated into the air.
Lin Xiao circled the vine, grabbed two handfuls of soil and placed them on the vine, directly creating two mud steps on the vine.
He took two steps up, then turned the steps he had just walked up into new steps, and in the process, he climbed up two or three meters higher.
Seeing that the three people had their own methods, Sang Zhitao didn't delay any longer and flew straight into the sky with a flick of her sleeve.
Sang Zhitao suddenly flew away, and Ailiya immediately flapped her wings to chase after her. At the same time, Ying urged the wind in her palm, and Lin Xiao also accelerated the alternation of movements.
In no time, the four of them were standing on the city wall.
Lin Xiao was the most exhausted, as he had to keep running to keep up with the others.
The one who suffered the most damage was Shadow; the cracks in his palms were a serious injury.
Arya borrowed external force and only felt a significant depletion of her mental energy, but nothing else.
Sang Zhitao showed absolutely no abnormality; in fact, she even remembered to retract the vines on the ground.
"Who are you!" The four people were looking at the environment inside the city wall, hesitating whether to greet them first or go in first, when they heard a group of soldiers approaching from a distance, making threatening noises.
None of the four people were on guard; they simply looked indifferently at the newcomers.
Lin Xiao, the weakest among them, was already considered a half-saint in earth magic, so he naturally had no fear of such an ordinary person.
The soldiers breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the boys were obediently standing still, but they still cautiously surrounded them with their rifles.
"Outsiders?" one of the older men asked, frowning as he stepped forward.
Recognizing that he was the leader of the squad, the four nodded in unison.
The man first looked at Sang Zhitao, who was clearly the leader, before looking at Lin Xiao and Ailiya beside her.
His gaze lingered on Arya's mechanical arms and legs for a while longer.
Finally, their gaze fell upon the figure standing at the very back, dressed in tattered clothes.
“You…” He stared intently at Ying, then hesitantly took two steps forward.
For some unknown reason, Ying subconsciously took a step back.
But since they were already on the edge, they had nowhere to retreat, so he could only stand there and endure the soldier's scrutiny.
"You..." The soldier frowned, remained silent for a long time, and then tentatively spoke, "His Majesty the Southern Emperor?!"
"Your Majesty?!" Sang Zhitao and the other two exclaimed in unison.
Ying hid behind the three people before lowering her voice and saying, "I've mistaken you for someone else. I'm not."
“But…” the soldier waved his hands repeatedly, “I remember the portrait the Queen gave me, you look like this.”
As he spoke, the soldier took out a portrait from the cloth pocket at his waist.
The portrait is a dynamic one, and the first thing that catches the eye is a handsome man in his twenties wearing a king's crown.
The image then disappears, transforming into a portrait of a ragged, bearded man who looks exactly like Ying.
The soldier placed the shadow and the portrait together and gestured before saying, "The Queen said that after you leave, you will definitely live like this beggar, so she found a magician to make a predictive portrait for you."
"How did your queen know he would return?" Sang Zhitao couldn't help but ask curiously.
The soldier smiled and said, "The Queen said that His Majesty the Southern King will not abandon his country."
With such irrefutable evidence presented, Ying had no way to hide and could only step out from behind the three of them, saying, "I'm sorry."
The soldier looked puzzled: "Why do you say that? It was because of the architectural blueprints you left behind that we were able to build such a safe fortress, and it was also because you risked your life to seek help from the other two continents."
“But…” Ying’s voice was a little hoarse, “I haven’t come back for so long…”
The soldier couldn't help but laugh and said, "Our ancestors went out three hundred years ago, and we sent out the second batch of people two hundred and fifty years ago."
"By the time you left, we had seen off no fewer than ten groups of people."
"They didn't achieve anything, so how can we force you to?"
Ying opened his mouth, wanting to say that he had tried to find the Guardian Tower and the higher-ups, but unfortunately no one was willing to help them.
He later gave up, became so despondent that he wandered around and eventually became a vagrant.
He meant that he met two companions and later embarked on a path of saving the world.
He also wanted to say that he had visited the Soul Spirit Continent many times in his ten reincarnations, but had never been to the capital.
He had so much to say, but in the end he only opened his mouth and said nothing.
The soldier seemed to sense the indescribable emotions in his complex expression, and chuckled as he patted him on the shoulder: "You are our King of South Germany, the greatest king."
“Your people don’t feel you owe them anything, so why punish yourself with your emotions?” Sang Zhitao patted Ying’s shoulder and sighed softly.
Lin Xiao and Ailiya gently patted his shoulder.
"Are these people your friends?" the soldier asked the three men respectfully. "Are they here to help us?"
He hesitated as he spoke, "Are you really capable of dealing with those monsters? They're incredibly powerful now."
Ailiya and Ying subconsciously turned to look at Sang Zhitao.
Lin Xiao hadn't witnessed Sang Zhitao's abilities firsthand, which delayed his actions.
Seeing that all three of them were looking at Sang Zhitao, the soldier looked at Sang Zhitao with surprise, and then looked at the three of them with a puzzled expression.
Ying sighed silently and pointed at Sang Zhitao: "She's enough on her own."
"Huh?" The soldier stared blankly at Sang Zhitao.
"Never mind, let me see... Chris first." Shadow was a little unsure where to begin, so she could only wave her hand helplessly.
The soldier didn't pursue the matter further. He summoned another soldier and had him lead Sang Zhitao and the others to the palace before saying to them, "We still have to patrol, so we won't escort them."
"It's alright." Ying nodded slightly and led Sang Zhitao and the others away with the soldiers.
The environment inside the walls was just as they had originally imagined: farmland, streams, hills, and forests.
The whole complex consists of eight small towns, with a magnificent palace at the very center.
They were located above one of the small towns.
It was evening in the town, and the family cooks at home, calling their children to go to their workplaces to find their fathers or mothers to come home for dinner.
The single man was heading to the town's pub with a few friends.
The girls, adorned with pretty flower wreaths and wearing brightly colored dresses, brushed past them.
Some girls in combat uniforms and girls in skirts greeted each other.
Sang Zhitao discovered that the people busy with housework were not just the women she remembered, but mostly men, and there were more women than men wearing combat uniforms.
She turned to look at the soldier who had led the way and asked curiously, "Are there more women fighting here?"
The soldier followed her gaze to the girl in combat gear not far away, and said with pride, "Of course, we have the most powerful woman on the entire continent."
"Huh? Don't you guys feel unconvinced?" Sang Zhitao became even more curious.
Even though the technology of the Eastern Kingdom has reached interstellar levels, and even though the idea of gender equality and women holding up half the sky has been around for centuries, in the hearts of a large number of men, women are still considered appendages and objects to be protected.
Moreover, in the other two continents, even though women hold high positions, there is still a hidden patriarchal ideology.
"Why are you not convinced?" the soldier asked, somewhat surprised. "In this world, the capable rise to the top. They are indeed very capable and are our heroes. How can we question heroes because of their gender?"
"Moreover, many years ago, women were in charge here. It's only been a thousand years since men were in charge, and those thousand years haven't been much better than before." The soldier curled his lip as he thought of something. "Even before the monsters appeared, there were more wars than before."
Sang Zhitao and the other three fell silent for a moment.
Sang Zhitao, who had received a lot of Eastern ideas, was fine, but Ailiya and Lin Xiao, who had received a more Western education, reacted quite strongly.
However, being a person who had lived for a hundred years, he quickly recovered and suppressed his somewhat shattered worldview.
Ying chuckled twice and couldn't help but sigh, "We don't have as many ridiculous rules here as outside."
Sang Zhitao noticed that ever since Ying's identity was discovered, she seemed to have been under some kind of spiritual rejuvenation magic, and her whole person was different.
Even now, though he is still dressed in rags and has a stubble on his face, you can still discern a certain air of good upbringing from his tone and demeanor.
The capital city was not as large as they had imagined; the towns were more like slightly larger villages. So much so that they arrived at the palace in just over half an hour.
Although the palace is not large, it is very exquisite. However, it is vaguely visible that the palace has not been repaired for a long time, and there are some broken carvings in the corners.
They walked on the steps beneath their feet, where cracks were faintly visible.
"That's quite rare."
Hearing Sang Zhitao's soft sigh, Ying paused, her straight back bending even more.
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