novelraw Chapter 970 - 532: First Arrival at the Prince’s Mansion
Chapter 970 - 532: First Arrival at the Prince’s Mansion
The location of the Mirror Sea King’s palace in Duling City is known even by three-year-old children, so Ning Xiaoxian and her group found it with hardly any effort. Upon presenting their invitation, a servant respectfully came forward to lead the way.
As the dominant force in the central region, the Mirror Sea King’s palace is undeniably a magnificent complex, covering one-fifth of the entire Duling City. Within the palace, there are up to a hundred thousand servants. Just by looking at these numbers, one can tell that the Mirror Sea King’s family enjoys a treatment far exceeding that of a prince.
The Hidden Stream members hail from the Ba Snake Mountain Range and have seen enough massive structures, as the palace in the woods itself towers several hundred meters high. Therefore, they might not be shocked by the grandeur of the palace, but they are stunned by its luxurious beauty. The Divine Woman, now imprisoned in the God Demon Prison, served the Great Master here for over ten years and knows the layout of the palace well. She once told Ning Xiaoxian that the whole palace layout is a "Mountain Concealing, Sea Embracing and Forest Showcasing".
The few limited hills on this plain lie within the palace grounds, each meticulously managed to present different features—one even serves as a hunting park for breeding live animals. Within the palace, there is also a large "Little Mirror Sea", a lake dug out based on the true shape of the Mirror Sea but scaled down by thousands of times. The banks are lined with willows and forsythia, and although it’s the depth of autumn, it’s still filled with the vibrancy of spring. More importantly, the water flowing in this lake is actually seawater. Even though the palace is situated some distance from the real sea, an artificial tunnel was dug at the bottom of the Little Mirror Sea, directly connecting it to the seaside. Through an array, seawater is continuously drawn into the lake, thus creating the ebb and flow of tides within the lake.
In the lake, there are about ten small sandbanks and islands, with various rare sea fishes raised in the water. On the emerald waves, there are stilts and small buildings built for guests to enjoy the scenery and observe the fish.
The Mirror Sea King also commissioned the construction of a garden within the palace, collecting jagged strange stones, clear springs, the vigorous growth of ancient pines and cypresses, and the charming flowers of a hundred kinds, and combined it with the way of array formation. It can be said that with every step, one changes the view, as the profusion of flowers almost dazzles the eyes. Ning Xiaoxian even saw a great labyrinth made of trimmed tree walls like those in English gardens, harmonized strangely with the garden landscape.
The various houses and courtyards in the palace, along with the furniture and arrangement, naturally showcase understated luxury everywhere. However, when compared with these grand schemes of mountain concealing and sea embracing, it all seems rather normal.
As Ning Xiaoxian and the others walked on, they changed servants several times. The closer they got, the better the material of the clothes worn by the servants coming to greet them, clearly indicating their higher status among the servants. Finally, two servants respectfully led Ning Xiaoxian to the Hongyan Hall, which the Mirror Sea King often uses for receiving guests, while the Hidden Guards were invited to a side hall to rest. If there were still dangers present with the Mirror Sea King, this palace would have fallen apart decades ago.
To be fair, whether it was meeting Huangfuming at first or later capturing the Divine Woman, both events left her filled with curiosity about the Mirror Sea King’s family. To achieve such accomplishments as a mere mortal can only be described with the words "incredible".
Now, the person himself sat before her. Huang Fusong Yun had a tall and robust physique, dressed in a gold White Crane Sun Singing Robe, his appearance showing only in his thirties, with silkworm eyebrows, phoenix eyes, skin slightly dark, and wearing a carefully trimmed small mustache. Perhaps due to years of holding a high position, he had an aura of authority without anger. For a mortal, he had great power, but to a cultivator like her accustomed to great demons and powers, even such a strong presence was just that.
Is this Huangfuming’s father? She thought of Huangfuming with his rosy lips and white teeth and his youthful tendency for peach blossom eyes, wondering if perhaps the boy took after his mother in looks, otherwise how could he look so different from his father?
Most importantly, the aura around Huang Fusong Yun was indeed only that of a mortal!
Before meeting, she had always assumed that this Mirror Sea King had some way to conceal his divine skills since, apart from demonic power and spiritual power, the external manifestations of power are quite various. Not to mention others, even her own divine power would appear quite chaotic in other’s eyes.
However, what she sensed from Huang Fusong Yun was really only the aura of a mortal. He was the host, and she was the guest, so it wasn’t polite to extend her divine thought to probe him. If there was anything unusual about him, it would only be the evil qi she also felt on Huangfuming, but much fainter on Huang Fusong Yun. Without the guidance of Changtian when she met Huangfuming, she might not even have noticed the anomaly on Huang Fusong Yun.