The villain daughter did all kinds of things

Emery spread her hands innocently, then pretended to guess:

"Perhaps those people got lost? Or maybe they encountered some powerful sea monster? After all, the White Sea is so vast, even our Melson fleet can't guarantee a smooth voyage every time. It's not surprising that those bad guys would encounter some kind of accident, right?"

"Did you get lost or accidentally encounter a powerful monster?"

Tian Gongxue frowned and pondered for a few seconds before decisively shaking her head:

"Probably not. Some of those old guys have cultivated at sea for many years and are very familiar with the routes in the White Sea. They definitely won't get lost."

"As for encountering powerful monsters... that was more than 10 people at the Enlightenment stage acting together. What kind of ocean monster could make them disappear without even sending out a single message?"

"We don't know about that, but our fleet was definitely not attacked."

Emery shrugged innocently again and said:

"Why don't you come and take a look at our fleet, Aunt? You can also visit the Snowy Magic Warship that Uncle gave you."

"Then go and have a look."

Amamiya Yuki immediately agreed, and without waiting for Milaine and Emeryte to lead the way, she took the initiative to lead her priestesses and warriors towards the fleet.

Milaine naturally followed quickly, while Emery frowned slightly as she watched Tengu Yuki's retreating figure.

This aunt seems kind and even a bit love-struck, but she's actually quite clever. She's clearly starting to doubt what Milaine and Emeryt said, wondering if the conservatives from the three main families have already been killed by Emeryt and the others.

After all, the conservatives of the three main families were opposing Milain, not Amamiya Yuki, and those powerful individuals were also part of the national strength of the Shangying Kingdom.

From Tian Gongxue's perspective, she definitely wanted to stop the conflict between the two sides; the complete annihilation of the conservative powerhouses of the three major families was definitely not the outcome she desired.

As the ruler of a feudal kingdom, balancing the various forces is an absolutely essential skill.

Tian Gongxue's choice of Milaine as her partner certainly has her personal love factors, but it is also highly likely that she intends to introduce new forces to counterbalance the traditional powerful clans.

But checks and balances are not the same as annihilation. If the three main families cause turmoil in the Kingdom of Sakura because of this loss, Amamiya Yuki will certainly not be laughing.

Everyone here is a powerful cultivator in the third stage, so none of them are slow when they fly. The distance of several thousand meters is covered in the blink of an eye.

Amamiya Yuki made a swift decision. She herself, along with two guards, followed Milion directly onto the magical warship Aishuki, while Amamiya Jun led the priestesses onto the surface ships one by one.

Nominally, Jun and the others were representing the Queen and the Tengu Shrine to comfort the crew members, but in reality, Emerald knew very well that they wanted to find possible traces of battle on several ships to determine whether the fleet had truly not encountered the attackers from the conservative faction of the three founding families.

Fortunately, Emery and Milaine are both excellent actors with great acting skills and great teamwork. They can divide the work well without even having to communicate.

Milion was naturally responsible for entertaining his queen wife during her tour of the magic warship, while the great witches like Tengu Jun, who possessed the strength of the Enlightenment stage, were entertained and looked after by Emery.

There's really nothing to see here, because the fleet hasn't actually been attacked, so no matter how much Amamiya Jun and the others check, it's useless.

Of course, the journey across the White Sea was long and arduous, and the fleet could not have been without encountering monsters. The cannons of the two surface warships fired hundreds of times almost every day, and the two fusion-stage mages who had been working for Milion for many years also took action several times.

Emerald was always very relaxed because she was a young lady from a wealthy family, and theoretically, she didn't need to do anything until all the escorting mercenaries were killed.

Therefore, there were many signs of battle on the two surface warships. The priestesses used the excuse of praying for the mercenaries to stay on the two ships for a long time, hoping to find some clues.

Unfortunately, it was all in vain.

The traces left by attacks from ocean monsters and powerful humans are quite different.

Although the high priestesses of the Tengu Shrine are not professional investigators, they are all experienced and powerful cultivators at the Enlightenment stage, so they shouldn't be unable to see these things.

It seems that the conservative powerhouses of the three founding families have never actually encountered the fleet.

Undeterred, the high priestesses even resorted to a little trick—two of them secretly used a spell that could peer into the memories of several crew members and mercenary captains while Amamiya Jun and Amamitte were chatting and distracting Amamitte, but of course, they still got nothing.

The cargo ship that the old witch Granny Ya was on was, of course, also inspected by the high witches.

But the old lich was a shrewd woman. While Amelie and Tengu were exchanging pleasantries, she had already left the fleet and cleaned up all traces of her, leaving only a message for Amelie using a special method.

The gist of it is that the old lich is going to visit her old friends, and she asks Amelie to attend Milaine and Tengu Yuki's wedding first, and then contact her again after taking care of the related matters.

The old lich will not go to the capital city of Shangying Kingdom—Yingdu City. If she went, she would definitely not be able to escape the perception of the divine tree in the Heavenly Palace Shrine. The divine tree would not allow such a dangerous person as the old lich to operate in its territory, and a conflict would most likely break out.

Therefore, the old lich has temporarily left the party, and Amelie must stay away from the Heavenly Shrine in Sakura City before she can contact her.

Besides these important matters, Amelie also keenly noticed something interesting in the old lich's message.

When the old lich mentioned going to see his old friend, his tone unconsciously carried a hint of anticipation and eagerness... It felt like that old friend might not only be an old friend, but also the old lich's old lover.

This made Amelie quite curious—given the old lich's current appearance and bizarre aesthetic sense, who could possibly fall in love with her? She really wanted to find out soon.

However, the old lich certainly didn't want Amelie to disturb her meeting with her old friend, and Amelie herself had important matters to attend to, so they could only wait a few days.

That evening, Emerald saw Queen Amamiya Yuki again in the restaurant of the magic battleship Ayumi.

Under the guise of visiting, touring, and offering friendly condolences, Amamiya Yuki and the high priestesses of Amamiya Shrine spent an afternoon with the fleet, but failed to find any clues related to the conservative powerhouses of the three main families.

Faced with the facts, although Tian Gongxue was still unwilling to believe it, she could only believe that those people did not meet the fleet, but encountered other accidents on the way.

As the Queen of Shangying Kingdom, Tian Gongxue certainly couldn't stay overnight on foreign ships at will. She and Milian weren't married yet, so after having dinner on the magic warship, she left with her entourage.

The speed at which a Dao Enlightenment stage expert can fly is much faster than the speed of a ship. A distance that would take a fleet about 3 days to cover can be covered in less than 2 hours by air.

Losing 11 powerful individuals at the third stage in peacetime is a significant loss for any country. Tian Gongxue probably won't be able to sleep well tonight.

Milaine seemed a little distressed, but showed no regret.

As a husband, he will comfort his wife.

But as a man, Milain would not forgive those who wanted to kill him. If given another chance, he would still choose to cooperate with Emerald to eliminate the conservative faction of the three founding families, even if doing so would cause trouble for his wife's work.

After Queen Tengu Yuki of Shangying Kingdom personally led a delegation to visit, three more days passed quickly before the fleet finally crossed the White Sea and arrived at the west coast of Shangying Kingdom.

The fleet docked at Lukang City in Shangying Kingdom, which is the largest port city on the west coast of the main island of Shangying Kingdom, with a population of nearly 200 million.

The Merson family's fleet is clearly a regular at the port of Lukang City. Even the docks where their ships dock are permanent locations that they have bought. The dockworkers who unload and transport cargo after the ships dock are also experienced.

Here, Emerald once again witnessed the charismatic side of her third uncle.

As the young master of the Melson family and the future prince of Shangying Kingdom, Milain would definitely be considered a high-ranking and powerful figure wherever he went.

Yet he could chat and laugh with the dockworkers with a genuine smile, squatting there with a bottle of cheap liquor costing around 20 rupees, asking the workers about the gossip and rumors circulating in the streets.

Many dockworkers knew Milion, and they were not at all reserved when chatting with him. They addressed him as "Young Master" in a very friendly manner and were all very talkative.

In just a short chat, Milaen gleaned a considerable amount of information.

These dockworkers at the bottom level don't know much about the key information, but they can already sense that the atmosphere in the country has become tense in the past two days.

Many lords have intensified their private armies' training and increased nighttime patrols. The finest weapons and armor produced in every blacksmith shop have been snapped up, creating an atmosphere of impending war.

The impact of the complete annihilation of the conservative faction of the three founding families seems to have already begun.

Although both were feudal dynasties, Shangying Kingdom and Tianyun Kingdom were quite different.

Tianyun Kingdom is a highly centralized country, with all power in the hands of the imperial court. Local administration is based on the prefecture-county system, and there are no so-called lords.

Kamioka Province is a country formed by the union of many lords. The Tengu Shrine is the most powerful of all the lords and the ruler of the land, thus it is the royal family of the country.

However, the area that the Amamiya family can truly control is only the royal city of Sakura and the surrounding area within a few hundred kilometers. The rest of the territory is actually controlled by more than 100 lords of varying sizes.

The strongest of these lords, such as the three founding families, each had tens of millions of people in their territories, nearly 10 well-equipped private soldiers, and about 30 other armed forces.

The smallest lord might be less powerful than the village chief of a large village on Earth, with a total population of only a few hundred in his territory, and it would be difficult to gather 30 people capable of fighting... These lords' territories are generally the surrounding small islands that are subordinate to the Sakura Kingdom.

These 100-plus lords never dared to have any designs on the Amamiya family, because the sacred tree enshrined at the Amamiya Shrine was the strongest existence in the Kingdom of Kamioka, and it was also the one that protected humanity and established civilization in the early days of various disasters. It can be said that the Kingdom of Kamioka was built around the sacred tree, and the people of Kamioka would have no objection to the fact that the Amamiya family, who were favored by the sacred tree, were the rulers of the country.

However, the status of the three great families in the Kingdom of Sakura, second only to the Amamiya family, is not static. The current Fujiwara, Hoshino, and Sakurai families have only been at the top for a little over 300 years. Before that, several other once-glorious families have almost disappeared from this land forever.

Although the Tengu Shrine holds an unshakeable and transcendent position, it also serves as a referee and cannot arbitrarily interfere in the fair competition among the lords of the country. It can only limit the intensity of the competition through rules.

When the three main families are powerful and internally stable, other lords naturally dare not have any ideas.

But now that the three founding families have lost so many powerful members at once, it is inevitable that some ambitious lords will start to stir up trouble—they want to take their place and become the new three founding families.

Milain seemed somewhat worried about this situation, after all, he was about to marry the Queen and become a prince of the country.

But Emerald didn't care about it. She came to Shangying Kingdom just to have fun. Even if the lords really started fighting, what did it have to do with her?

Actually, it wasn't entirely unrelated. As the eldest daughter of the Melson family, Emery could take the opportunity to sell Melson family weapons to the lords when they were fighting.

This kind of thing would be inconvenient to do after Milain truly became the Prince of Shangying Kingdom, but it would be fine for Amelie to do it.

With these random thoughts in mind, Amelie and her party did not stay in Lukang City for long before heading straight to Sakura City.

The overall level of civilization development in Shangying Kingdom is definitely not as high as that of the Allen Federation.

When ordinary people travel between cities within the country, they can't even ride on ground vehicles like magic-powered cars, let alone airships. Most people have to ride horses or carriages.

However, when the nobles and wealthy merchants of Shangying Kingdom travel between cities, they also have a mode of transportation that is not much worse than the directional teleportation portal of the Allen Federation—the Earth Vein Shuttle.

The facilities for riding the Earth Transit Shuttle are very similar to underground facilities like those in the Blue Star subway station, with upscale restaurants and luxury stores, and the decorations are also very luxurious.

The Earth Vein Shuttle itself is a teardrop-shaped boat with an interior space roughly the size of an elevator car. It is one of the crystallizations of spiritual power technology in the Kingdom of Sakura and is operated by the Tengu Shrine.

These teardrop-shaped boats can travel at extremely high speeds through the earth's veins, just like Barbara does when she uses Earth Escape Technique. They can travel more than 100 kilometers per minute and can reach the other end of the Upper Cherry Blossom Country in about 20 minutes.

In terms of speed, it certainly can't compare to the fixed teleportation portals of the space system, but the cost of use is much lower, and each ley line shuttle can carry multiple people at the same time.

Even though they are all ley line shuttles, there are still differences in their levels in Shangying Kingdom.

The most basic Earth Vein Shuttle costs around 5 Luns for a one-way ticket. The environment is similar to a gondola on Earth, with nothing inside, but it is fast, so it is acceptable.

The ley line shuttle that Emerald and her party rode was, of course, the best kind.

Even though the flight was less than 10 minutes long, the cabin was still luxuriously decorated, with soft and comfortable leather sofas, drinks and snacks, and beautiful women in kimonos and fishnet stockings serving you.

These beauties are not only stunningly beautiful, but each of them is also well-educated. Their manners are impeccable, and their conversations reveal their exceptional knowledge—a talent that would be enough to be a civil servant in some local governments of the Allen Federation, and even some civil servants who got in through connections are not as good as them.

Amelie chatted quite pleasantly with the beautiful woman who served her, and the woman told her many interesting stories about the customs and culture of Shangying Kingdom.

Unfortunately, a few minutes was far too short, barely enough time to drink a cup of tea, before the ley line shuttle, which had been traveling at high speed through the ley lines, came to a stop—they had arrived at Sakura City.

After exiting the underground station where you board the ley line, the first thing that catches Amelie's eye is not the ancient city full of anime-style Kyoto, but a huge cherry blossom tree.

The giant cherry blossom tree is conservatively estimated to be over 1000 meters tall, taller than the Burj Khalifa in Amelie's previous life on Earth. Its canopy covers an area with a radius of over 600 meters, which is the central area of ​​the Tengu Shrine and also part of the Kamisakura Royal Palace.

This is the Divine Tree, the strongest existence in Shangying Kingdom, and the original protector of humanity on this land. The entire country was initially built around the Divine Tree, and even the name of Shangying Kingdom is clearly a way for people to express their reverence for the Divine Tree.

Chapter 249 Tiangong Shrine

Oh, sacred tree...

Emery looked at the huge cherry blossom tree, her eyes sparkling.

According to the existing storyline in the original game, this divine tree should be the third strongest being in the world, second only to the Elf Queen and the final boss.

This is also confirmed by the reaction of the old witch, Granny Ya.

The old lich was such an arrogant person, yet he was unwilling to provoke the divine tree, and even avoided the vicinity of Sakura City. Clearly, the divine tree was more powerful than the old lich, and the old lich might even have suffered losses at the hands of the divine tree in the past.

Based on this, the power of this divine tree should be equivalent to around level 900 in the original game.

Perhaps it was because Amelie's probing gaze was too obvious, a powerful consciousness suddenly swept towards Amelie from the direction of the divine tree, causing Amelie's body to tense up and goosebumps to rise on her skin.

The sacred tree was observing her in some way, without malice, but with vigilance, making Emeralt feel as if she could be thrown out of the city at any moment.

In front of ordinary people, Amelie can act like a saint, using only holy magic and bathing people in holy light with every move she makes.

But in front of a powerhouse of the Divine Tree's caliber, the secret that she was essentially a necromancer could no longer be hidden... and the reputation of necromancers is not good anywhere.

As a result, the divine tree's vigilance towards Amelie quickly increased. Amelie even felt a gentle yet powerful cherry-pink spiritual energy enveloping her tightly, trying to forcibly send her out of the city.

"I'm not... um!"

Emerald wanted to explain, but the Divine Tree clearly didn't want to listen. Emerald, who had just opened her mouth, felt as if a peach had been forcibly stuffed into it, silencing her completely.

Marcy and Flora, who were standing nearby, also noticed Emerald's abnormality, but Emerald was unable to resist the power of the Divine Tree, let alone the two of them; there was nothing they could do.

Just then, Emery suddenly felt a cool sensation sweep through her body from her wrist, which quickly merged with the gentle, cherry-pink spiritual energy.

It's the jade bracelet that Queen Amamiya Yuki gave to Emerald, and it's been activated again.

Clearly, this jade bracelet is not only a top-tier piece of equipment that can boost attributes by a percentage, but also a form of identity verification.

Upon sensing the jade bracelet on Emerald's body, the Divine Tree's attitude towards her immediately became much friendlier. Although still somewhat wary, it no longer intended to simply abandon Emerald outside the city and even welcomed her, presenting her with gifts.

The strange power that had been blocking Amelie's mouth from speaking actually transformed into a luscious peach, much like the peach of immortality in the mythology of the Blue Star Celestial Empire. The spiritual energy contained within it was extremely rich; it was no exaggeration to say that an ordinary person could extend their lifespan by a hundred years by taking a single bite.

Although spiritual power and magical power have different names and properties, this difference is actually caused by the different understandings of this miraculous power between Eastern and Western cultivators. In essence, the two are the same.

Eastern cultivators can use Western magical materials, and Western cultivators can certainly use Eastern spiritual materials. This peach will also be very effective for Amelie.

"Thank you, Divine Tree!"