Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 864 - 863 - Bleak Land but Living Sky

The test flight was a success but revealed a few key issues that needed addressing before they truly set out. Lind had to sleep for a week before he was up for fixing what only he could.

He was then exhausted once more but did not delay launch. Wen already had the heading to follow and the crew would be getting used to flying anyway.

Lady Esmerelda had chosen to stay behind to help guide the hybrids and dragons that would live on the dry dock.

The Wings of Freedom could only take about 150 people in total even though it was fairly large.

It all mattered little as the grim voyage had to start. The crystals lit up on all 4 fins as well as the living section of the ship to get it going.

They were flying at 15% speed to start to push the systems slowly and compensate for any issues that cropped up but it all went smoothly.

Lind was resting on his simple bed in quarters that were pretty much identical throughout the ship.

It had 2 beds in a bunk bed style set into a wall with a desk, shelves, and bathroom facilities.

Those had been an amusing design and testing process. Cultivators were fairly neat beings at his level but he was looking to the future to see if they would work for lower realm beings.

It also never hurts to have a place to clean up as well.

He was currently looking at a panel set into the bottom of the bed above him. Hope was currently dead asleep above him too as she had watched over him non-stop when he basically collapsed.

She also refused to take her own quarters under the current circumstances. He was outvoted entirely on that front.

The bridge now had 6 people operating it for full flight but observed their progress on his current display.

Unlike anyone else on the Wings of Freedom, he could use his aura to see more outside the ship where the rest were entirely reliant on the artifacts he created.

He closed his eyes and enjoyed seeing the Elementals of the Soul ro Sky Realms flying happily around them in curiosity. They could not keep up with their speed but they really didn't try either as there was too much to see.

It was like small children trying to see all parts of a parade and letting each section slip away as they focused on the next carriage or person coming up the street.

"Hmm, 25% speed seems stable after a day now. Wen should speed us up soon." As the dry dock had fallen behind, the feeling of speed had vanished but he roughly calculated they could cover 3000 kilometers a day at the current speed.

Unlike airplanes from Earth, the forward speed did not matter as the ship generated an upward lift against gravity all on its own. So long as they had Qi and Laws fueling it, the Wings of Freedom could float almost indefinitely without ever dropping a nanometer!

The max speed they could hold without stopping to let the Hacore recover was like 55 to 60% of their speed. It would put them at 10 to 13,000 kilometers per day.

The problem, of course, was no one had any idea how far they were from their target.

Based on the records of the temple, the original Celestial Fields could take years to cross even with the ability to fly. The issue was of course that cultivators needed to recover Qi or their artifacts could have a massive variety of speeds.

So there was no standard but their current speeds were approaching Shard Tier level at that range.

In a dire situation they could maintain 90% speed for half a day and theoretically reach 40 thousand kilometers in that time but it would nearly exhaust the ship's power plus strain almost every system supporting power alone!

He also suspected the gravity weavings would break down which would present many issues of stress on the ship's frame as well as turn the crew into paste with acceleration slamming into them so suddenly.

The dangers of his new vessel became more sharply defined as he studied the real data at his disposal.

The gorgeous sky full of curious children and Qi would normally be half of the duet between sky and earth but the ground below was depressingly dead.

Lind turned his aura to below the dome and could only look at it as no matter how he resonated with the ship's artifacts, any aura still died the instant it touched the Qi wall. He dared not push past it.

Instead, he simply saw the cracked and broken surface that did not even seem like dirt. Somewhere deep underneath were Sacred Paths keeping it all together but they were weakening like everything else.

He saw dust storms but unlike any storm he had witnessed anywhere, it was dead. It was just lacking all sense of an imbalance and just loose flecks of the world caught in a wind from somewhere.

The wind made him curious but it all came from the same direction from what he could tell. It was the same direction they were heading in!

After resting for a month, he felt a lot better internally but mentally he began to truly grasp the massive size of the Celestial Fields as there was no sign of change on the horizon!

They had been heading forward at 45% speed and he could feel they were getting closer to something but he could not define how he knew that.

The only real clue they were going the right way was when the top of the dome got closer to them. Wen smartly had the ship rise as much as it could but it led to a rather dark thought.

Both Esmerelda and the High Priestess had confirmed even Shard Tiers had a limit on how high they could go. He was not so arrogant to think the Wings of Freedom could break that limit like the Sliver Tier height.

His limit was more about Qi density which his ship no longer cared about.

He went to the basin and splashed some water on his face as it helped clear his head. Hope was out and about as he had been all right as he just rested for a bit longer.

The warm wood along the walls and ceiling did make the ship feel better to be inside without a window to look outside.

He slid his door aside and then secured it behind him before heading towards the bridge. All the bridge crew had rooms on deck 2 so they could easily get to the bridge quickly.

The bridge door easily let him in and he saw Wen sitting in the command chair as 5 more people monitored their panels.

"Ascension of course updated, Lady Wen. We are maintaining our distance from the Qi barrier." He simply observed as they reported to her. It looked like the artificial night cycle was currently in effect as the lights were a bit dimmer than normal.

It seemed silly to have low lights on the bridge but cultivators were not really bothered by that. It also let them doze if they need to.

"How are the external readings working out?" His voice made them all jump which amused him. They were clearly concentrating on their jobs.

"True Lord! We are currently following the course you gave us and the dome is rising which indicates we are getting closer to our target." He nodded at Wen's words.

"Do you have a projection of the increase in the dome height?" She waved over to the analytical panel she usually monitored.

He relieved the young man with blonde hair sitting at it. Lind believed he was one of the youngest hybrids that came up but his name was not known to him. It felt rude but time was not his friend these days.

The display lit up for him and he saw the history of their flight. He then was able to do some calculations not only based on their flight but the measurement of the dome to the distance he knew to the ground and frowned.

"What is wrong, True Lord?" Wen either was blessed with x-ray vision or her nose was better than his to sense his displeasure.

"A moment." Lind began to flip a few crystal switches and a new jade stone display lit up with a stream of numbers. Confusion flitted across the young man next to him but the more advanced options were not fully known to the crew.

They were not related to flying, just analysis.

He had created them to help but training how to use spreadsheets and numerical analysis were not something many cultivators put their time into.

Once the sequence was done running he got a result that depressed him.

"We need to go higher, much higher. Ascend at 45 degrees now." The girl with sapphire hair slid the speed back and then touched a dial on her left. The cloudy display showed a swirl of colors as they tilted up but he was happy not to feel it inside the ship.

"Did we do something wrong, True Lord?" He shook his head but touched a stone panel that lit up to change the main display.

"The issue is the increase of the dome height. It is not gradual but exponential. It will sharply rise in less than a day." The display showed a diagram of what was not just a dome but their rough location from the center of it.

They were only a quarter of the way but that was not the problem. There was a red line below the top of the projected dome!

"The limit of Shard Tier?" He nodded and they all frowned. Based on the diagram, they would be testing the limit of the Wings of Freedom in a few weeks. Their hope could be dashed before they were even halfway to the center of the dome!