Recap
Long Shiyu diligently constructed their nest of blankets, then turned off the light. Though there was no bedtime story, he received his goodnight kiss, and his heart fluttered.
Shen Chaomu soon fell asleep.
Long Shiyu eyed a bag of snacks, but he resisted the urge to retrieve them, afraid of disturbing his princess. He whispered his usual endearment, “Princess, princess.”
Shen Chaomu’s breathing was slow and even.
Long Shiyu turned to admire his handsome profile in the moonlight.
So beautiful.
Silence reigned, broken only by the soft rhythm of their breathing.
“Princess, princess,” he whispered again, unable to help himself.
“What did you call me?” Shen Chaomu’s voice startled him.
“Ying!” Long Shiyu squeaked, startled. He hadn’t realized the princess was awake. Panicked, he tried to escape, but Shen Chaomu caught his tail.
“I didn’t call you,” Long Shiyu insisted, but his tail twitched nervously in Shen Chaomu’s grasp.
“Ying!” he whimpered.
“Explain yourself,” Shen Chaomu demanded, his voice tight with amusement.
Long Shiyu attempted another escape, but Shen Chaomu held him firmly. “No more Happy Beans for you if you don’t tell me the truth.”
“You’re the princess,” Long Shiyu mumbled. He remembered Shen Chaomu’s anger when he had learned of Long Shiyu’s “princess” delusion all those years ago. He had been shaken, then abandoned. He couldn’t bear to be separated from his princess again.
“Do I look like a princess?” Shen Chaomu asked, incredulous.
“Of course,” Long Shiyu insisted. “Because you are one.”
“Princesses are females.”
Shen Chaomu remembered their previous argument about this. He had assumed the silly dragon had a warped worldview. Now, he realized the truth. It all made sense now – the questions about skirts, the insistence on gifting him flowers, the hesitant “gong…” in their conversations, the nightly nest-building. Long Shiyu had kidnapped him, the princess, and stashed him away in their shared quarters.
“Princesses are all women,” he repeated firmly.
“No, they’re not,” Long Shiyu argued. “The princess is the princess.”
“Males are princes.”
“No, you’re a princess.”
Shen Chaomu felt his sanity slipping away.
“You’re knowledgeable and talented,” Long Shiyu continued. “You’re gentle, kind, and you’re like a flower…”
“Wait,” Shen Chaomu interrupted. “What’s ‘like a flower’?”
“It means you’re pretty. Don’t you understand idioms?”
“And you can talk to animals,” Long Shiyu added.
“When have I ever talked to animals?”
“I’m an animal.”
Shen Chaomu stared at him, speechless.
“And you’re of noble birth,” Long Shiyu continued. “Except you don’t like wearing skirts. That’s a bit strange. But you’re still a princess.”
“The Shen family is well-known,” Shen Chaomu admitted, “but you don’t understand. Our family…we slay dragons.”
Long Shiyu’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Even in fairy tales, I’m the dragon slayer.” Shen Chaomu hadn’t wanted to bring this up, but the words tumbled out.
Long Shiyu was taken aback.
Shen Chaomu said: “Even according to fairy tales, I should be the hero who slays dragons.”
He didn’t really want to bring up this topic again.
But he still said it.
Long Shiyu looked at him.
Shen Chaomu felt something churning in his heart, and slowed down his speech a little: “I also told you in Bei En that at the beginning, I really approached you with the intention of using you. I will not deny this, so maybe I am not what you imagined. After all, you like the kind of princess in fairy tales, right?”
Long Shiyu: “…”
Long Shiyu said: “Okay, then you are a brave princess. Ahhhh, don’t shake me.”
He was aggrieved and shaken by Shen Chaomu for a while.
Shen Chaomu said: “In short, you can’t treat me as a princess anymore.”
“Ying.” QAQ
“Absolutely not.”
“But you obviously…”
“No, I’m not a princess.”
“I won’t allow you to say that about yourself again.” Long Shiyu wrapped his tail around Shen Chaomu’s wrist.
Shen Chaomu: “…”
Long Shiyu said again: “Although I am very poor now, I will definitely become rich. I will definitely give you all the jewelry then.”
Shen Chaomu suddenly remembered that in the dream of light rain, Long Shiyu also persistently wanted to give him gems.
His heart suddenly softened, and he withdrew his words to refute.
Long Shiyu looked at him cautiously: “So, you won’t be angry, right?”
“If I’m angry, will you think I’m not a princess?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not angry.” Shen Chaomu sighed and rubbed the dragon’s head, “Forget it, forget it, I’ll settle accounts with you later, let’s rest for a while now.”
Having said that, neither of them fell asleep.
Shen Chaomu was so shocked that he couldn’t sleep.
He had just calmly accepted that his dragon-slaying career was over, and now he had to accept the identity of a princess?
And recalling the light rain again…
At the elf wedding, Long Shiyu’s original target was him.
The more he thought about it, the more shocked he became, it was even more terrifying than seeing the most ferocious monster (Akasa Mo).
Long Shiyu was still nervous.
He was very afraid that the princess would run away after being angry, and if she ran away, it would be for several months.
So he started to eat his hands secretly.
This move was quickly discovered, and Shen Chaomu rescued his little hands.
Long Shiyu continued to eat his hands.
Shen Chaomu rescued his little hands and held his wrist.
Long Shiyu began to bite his tail nervously.
Shen Chaomu rescued the tail again, and held it in his hand: “Don’t bite it, what if it breaks?”
Long Shiyu looked at him with aggrieved eyes.
He restrained Long Shiyu’s hands and tail, but the next second, Long Shiyu started to run down the bed again.
The two tossed back and forth like this for more than ten minutes.
It’s just that when the two got off the plane, their mentality was not very stable.
The frenzy was subdued, the desert flying snakes retreating. Shen Chaomu, wiping blood from his cheek, returned to the aircraft. There was still no news of Bai Yiyi.
“Mr. Shen,” the cook called out, his voice panicked. “Our rice is gone.”
Long Shiyu held an empty bowl and chopsticks, his expression a mix of innocence and defiance.
“It’s really gone,” the cook insisted, waving his hands defensively.
Shen Chaomu, with a sigh, led Long Shiyu away.
“Are you still angry?” Long Shiyu asked as they settled in their tent.
“I said I wasn’t,” Shen Chaomu replied, rubbing his forehead. “But your understanding of certain concepts needs work…”
His terminal buzzed. Yang Zhiming’s excited voice filled the comms.
[Brother Shen, we’ve located those coordinates! The sky garden might be real!]
A stream of data followed. Yang Zhiming, with Lu Shanyao’s help, had analyzed the information. There was an anomaly in the sky – a specific area with reduced light, minimal rainfall, and an absence of aerial creatures. But such variations were common in the Western Hemisphere’s unpredictable climate.
The real evidence had appeared two days prior.
[This is the sandstorm data from the flying snakes. Notice the unusual drop in wind speed as it passed through that area…as if blocked by a wall.]
[I reconstructed the scene based on the wind speed reduction. To cause such a significant change, the object must be massive, maybe two or three times larger than the Luomen Conference Hall in Star City.]
[This is the simulated outline. It’s definitely a structure of some kind.]
[This anomaly was initially just logged, but combined with the coordinates, I believe Wen Erpas exists. It’s moving through the sky.]
[Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until after the frenzy to investigate.]
They couldn’t spare the resources for a sky garden expedition right now.
“I might have a solution,” Shen Chaomu said, a plan forming in his mind.
His private aircraft was nearby, currently occupied by a group of mantises who spent their days cursing and practicing their pronunciation of “fuck your mother.” Despite the damage they had caused, their wounds were almost healed. They were preparing to return to the sky.
The rear door of the aircraft opened wide, and a group of black mantises filed out.
Before parting, a dry wind came from the sky, and the mantises spread their wings.
Black Sickle hissed: “Humans, dragons, the settlement will not forget your help.”
“F**k your mother.”
“F**k your mother.”
“And Romeo, it’s a pity that the settlement didn’t have time to thank him in person.”
“F**k your mother.”
“As for Shen Di…the settlement still needs a little time to recover. One day we will personally take revenge on him. If you want to declare war on him one day, please be sure to tell the settlement. Our brave and powerful soldiers will prove who is the strong one.”
“F**k your mother.”
Finally, the spiritual power turned into a large cloud and gathered at the feet of the mantises.
The setting sun in the distance was about to set, but the sunlight was still shining brightly, and the sky was clear.
They flew towards the sky, and the clouds and mist under their feet gradually turned into huge cumulonimbus clouds.
Shen Chaomu looked at their receding figures.
Just like many years ago, he, who was still a teenager, had just finished his trial in the wilderness and returned with his companions.
The afternoon sun bathed the landscape in a golden glow. A group of teenagers, returning from their training, noticed the scale-like patterns etched into the sky, sunlight filtering through the gaps. In the distance, cumulonimbus clouds rose like mountains, their peaks home to powerful, mysterious creatures.
The companions had boasted of being the first to harness the power of the Sky Settlement, but after the Dragon Clan’s disappearance, their paths diverged. They became hunters, mercenaries, scholars, and entrepreneurs, their youthful dreams fading into the background of their busy lives.
Only Shen Chaomu still remembered, the beauty of those cumulonimbus clouds forever etched in his memory. Now, years later, he had forged an unlikely alliance with the settlement.
But this time, the mantises didn’t simply depart. Their cloud forms drifted toward those mysterious coordinates, the region shunned by other strange beasts. A tendril of white mist extended from the main cloud, stretching across the sky, searching.
It encountered an obstacle.
The target acquired, the cloud surged forward, its form growing as the mantises poured their combined spiritual power into it. It enveloped the obstacle, revealing its shape – a vast structure, its hexagonal gazebos and winding corridors a testament to the ingenuity of the desert-dwelling dwarves.
It was a place where day met night, where scorching heat yielded to cool shade.
The wind carried the whispers of an ancient legend:
[We built a garden in the sky. We named it Wen Erpas, eternal spring. Facing the desert sun, the divine bird Xijia brought the first seed, and life flourished. From this day forward, the sky is also the domain of machinery.]
The clouds revealed a portion of the garden’s grandeur, a fleeting glimpse of a forgotten wonder. It was a parting gift, a gesture of gratitude from the Sky Settlement.
But the garden was too vast, even for the mantises to fully encompass. Having revealed its location, they retreated, their cumulonimbus forms growing, the golden sunlight outlining their majestic shapes. They roamed the sky, free and unbound.
Ten minutes later, they vanished from sight.
“…Go up and have a look.” Shen Chaomu said.
Yang Zhiming was taken aback: “Do we really have time?”
“Ten minutes,” Shen Chaomu said with a smile, “Let’s go, haven’t you always said that you want to be the first to see it?”
The aircraft took off silently.
With the mantises searching, locating the sky garden became much easier.
An unseen force field shielded the garden. Shen Chaomu, guided by his spiritual sense, expertly navigated the aircraft through the invisible barrier.
Instead of the expected lush greenery, they were met with a massive, oval-shaped wall of silver metal, an aircraft entrance set into its side. This was no ordinary garden; it was a fortress, protected by advanced technology, drifting for centuries on a power source the Alliance couldn’t comprehend.
The mantises had only been able to reveal a fraction of its true form.
As the aircraft approached, the entrance doors opened automatically, revealing a passage lined with blinking lights. They landed smoothly at its end.
Long Shiyu disembarked, taking in the massive control platform, the unfamiliar machinery, and the dwarven aircraft. Inert robots, tools still clutched in their grasp, stood sentinel. A nearby staircase bore a sign: To Wen Erpas.
“L-let’s go,” Yang Zhiming stammered, his excitement palpable.
They ascended the spiraling staircase, its walls adorned with murals depicting a magnificent mechanical bird soaring through the sky.
Xijia, the divine bird.
The final image showed it landing gently on a flower-filled plain.
Long Shiyu stopped abruptly.
“What is it?” Shen Chaomu asked.
“That’s the planet where my treasure house was,” Long Shiyu declared, pointing to a celestial body depicted in the mural.
The planet was a unique creation, its landscape forged entirely of metal. Jagged steel mountains pierced the sky, cascading tides mimicked by the rhythmic motion of iron sheets. At its core burned a heart of star-black iron, capable of withstanding unimaginable forces.
Shen Chaomu knew this was where the old Dragon King had hidden his treasure house. Royasno, captivated by the dwarves’ craftsmanship, had waged a relentless war to claim this artificial planet. It wasn’t a true celestial body, its existence a defiance of natural laws, making it impossible for Long Shiyu to sense its location.
“Maybe we can find the treasure house here,” Long Shiyu said, his voice filled with a hopeful awe.
“We’ve seen too many incredible things to dismiss another miracle,” Shen Chaomu replied, his gaze steady. “If it’s here, we’ll find it. I’m with you.”
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