‘So that’s the Empress? She does look Empress-like but… something feels strange about her…’

Zhang Dong arrived at the throne room. It was a luxurious-looking place with many many smaller mermaids gathered on the side. The fish ladies were smiling and laughing without a care in the world as if they were meeting with a friend instead of someone that could turn them to minced meat with a snap of his finger.

The scene was truly strange and perhaps one of the reasons was the tune that was playing. This enchanting music was similar to the one he encountered when he rescued Zhang Jin from the mermaids. It was a magnified version of it and would probably have enticed anyone else than him by this point. Along with the music, there was also a sweet smell that he instantly blocked out from entering his body. It was clear to him that this Empress here was some type of enchantress that was trying to brainwash him.

Her looks were astonishing and quite exotic. Her form was larger than that of the other mermaids and it was hard to see if she was an actual one. Her lower body was covered by some type of gown with only her upper body showing. This part was quite voluptuous and the lower part of her face was covered by a veil. She looked like some type of exotic dancer with that light pink dress she was wearing. Her belly button was exposed and so were her shoulders along with quite a bit of those breasts that jolted with vigor each time her body moved.

She was just sitting there while facing forward. Her elbows were forward and her fingers were in between each other. Her chin was resting on the back of her palms as she watched him enter. Those enhancing eyes that seemed to belong to an otherworldly succubus continued to be glued to his form. For some reason, it felt as if he was getting undressed by this person while the people on the side remained silent.

“Not bad, haven’t had such a great specimen in a while, you shall do quite nicely…”

“A specimen? I’m not sure if I understand.”

“Hoh? You seemed unaffected by my beauty. This makes things even more interesting, I might have rated you too low.”

Zhang Dong could feel her voice trying to penetrate through his defenses. It seemed this person was in control of some type of Charming Technique. The only reason that he was able to resist was thanks to his new cultivation method and his strong soul. Even when his body and brain were being affected by this strange technique, as long as his soul wasn’t penetrated through he would be able to retain his faculties.

‘If Qiang or Gramps were here they would probably already be licking this woman’s feet… that is if she has any, to begin with…’

The mysterious lower body was the least of his problems as it was clear that this person was constantly trying to control his mind. If they were up in the empire something like this would be considered extremely rude. Reacting with anger wouldn’t be strange as she was performing something similar to demonic arts.

However, before everything turned bloody he had to attempt a more pacifistic approach. The person was apparently the leader of these people and could end all of this animosity between their two parties. While killing her and absorbing the Daos she came equipped with was on his agenda, he would abandon the notions if peace was possible. Even without absorbing more Daos he felt that he would eventually break through and this fact had become more apparent after defeating his last foe where he earned multiple ones.

“It does seem so… Would you please stop that? It won’t work on someone like me, I’m also a happily married man with children of my own.”

“...You refuse to accept my offering of love?”

“Offering of love? You have a strange way of defining coercion.”

“He dares talk to the Empress this shamelessly as a male?”

“How could this be possible, is the Empress allowing him to talk?”

The other mermaids that were around here were shocked for some reason and so was their leader. From their whispers, he deducted that men didn’t really have a high standing here. Even now none of the males in the room dared to speak out, they were just acting like guards while the mermaids continued to speak. Perhaps this was the first time they even saw a man continue to speak without being allowed to. This was perhaps a matriarchal society where a man like him had no say in anything.

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“You’re an interesting one, just wandering into my palace while destroying my toys, why should I listen to anything that you say?”

“By toys do you mean them?”

Zhang Dong pointed towards the clones of the generals that were all gathered here. The strongest of them were all here together and after the little conversation with their Leader, they were standing up at attention. In their hands, they had tridents of various shapes and sizes. Their power was tremendous and if all of them attacked at once even he wouldn’t get off scot-free.

‘Hey Bob, are you done with the analysis, I’m not sure how much time I have here.”

‘Calculating, 76% done…”

He did not just come here to have a talk. The bubble that blocked his people from entering here could still be broken. If he could just figure out what was powering this defensive formation and turn it off, then he would have a winning chance. If not then facing all of these people along with their leader would be difficult. Her true power level was unknown to him but considering that she was one of the Emperors, her strength had to be great.

“Those? No, I wouldn’t call those objects my toys… Nevertheless, why did you come here human? What is your desire?”

“My desire? I guess there is one.”

It was even worse than he anticipated, the Empress didn’t even consider these clone soldiers to be people. This meant that he would probably have a hard time talking about the current war effort. Normally a leader had to at least watch for their troop's approval rating or how much they were feared. But even fear had its limits and troops would abandon the fight if it was too inconvenient and the leader fell.

“I wish for you to halt your advances into the empire.”

“My advances?”

“Yes, the losses on our sides will just continue to pile up and you have also lost a lot of troops.”

“Troops?”

The woman looked bored and as if she didn’t understand where he was going with it. Just like he anticipated it was hard to work with a person that didn’t consider their army living beings. To her the masses of soldiers and sea creatures that were sent out to the empire were nothing. She probably considered them to just be cold weapons with no emotions that would never hold her responsible for their deaths and were loyal to a fault.

“Y-yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to waste your resources for a war that won’t amount to anything?”

“You want me to stop? It amounted to you coming here… can’t you see it? I’ve already won by you coming here~”

“Huh?”

A bomb was dropped during the conversation that he didn’t fully understand. What was the meaning behind those words and why was she looking at him like a juicy piece of meat?

“Yes my dear, all that I wanted was to find a toy like you. The next generation will be even stronger than the previous one, it will take some time to foster them…”

“Hello?”

“I can’t wait to see how well the first batch will come out… they will probably not be as ugly as this one…”

Zhang Dong wasn’t sure what was going on but the woman started talking to herself as if he wasn’t there. For some reason, he was the prize and she started talking about another generation. Then suddenly it started dawning on him, this strange woman wanted to foster a new generation of clones and probably use his genes as some type of base.

While she was talking he took a good glance at all the clones and mermaids in here. While he wasn’t that great at interpreting bloodlines these people were eerily similar to each other. The same could be said for the mermaids. While at first glance they looked different it was due to the change of fashion, makeup, and hair styling. They had the same face, the same voice, and very similar body movements to their queen. It was as if all the mermaids were clones of the bigger one here.

‘Could this be why she feels so old… maybe that’s why her soul feels strange…’

There were demonic arts that allowed people to switch bodies but they were quite risky. First of all, a soul needed a vessel that fit it perfectly or during the transfer some of the energy would be lost. A person that attempted such an art would soon find themselves forgetting things and losing their mind. That’s why demonic cultivators that performed these arts just turned into soul-sucking monsters. These creatures were trying to get back the part of the soul that they lost but this was an impossible task.

‘But what if the body could be remade to be an exact copy of the original one… then it could be possible…’

This was his current theory. All the mermaids here were just clones of the Empress and perhaps if she started getting older she just switched to a new and younger body. There were quite a few of these fishy women here which could have meant a few things. Either the Empress needed to switch quite often or the procedure had a high failure rate. Perhaps it only succeeded once in a hundred or a thousand tries.

‘I don’t think I can reason with a person like this… Bob, are you done?’

‘Sending data to the user, updating the map with the coordinates.’

‘Nice.’

Zhang Dong looked at his minimap that now showed him the places that were most likely to have the off switch that he was looking for. It was lucky that this woman didn’t see him as much of a threat and decided to tell him her glorious plan of stealing his juices for her plans. However, this didn’t mean that it would be easy to bust his way into the forbidden areas of this castle.

‘Here goes nothing then…’