Old Jiong had not fallen ill this time. Aside from looking a bit thinner and having brighter eyes, he was almost the same as when he left.
"Your Majesty, I did not fail you. I located a total of six pterosaur nests, and I marked all of them on the map."
As he spoke, Old Jiong pulled out a roll of parchment, spread it across the table, and pushed it toward Dany.
She skimmed through it. Old Jiong had been gone for more than twenty days, flying tens of thousands of kilometers. The area marked on the map covered roughly more than two hundred thousand square kilometers. Aside from the complicated flight routes, most of it was blank.
Fortunately, Old Jiong came from a highborn family, received the best education, and was well-versed in battlefield formations, which included knowledge of mapmaking.
If Dany had sent those dragonriders who were once slaves, they would not even be able to tell north, south, east, and west.
A total of nine marshlands were marked with red crosses. Old Jiong had gone to Sothoryos twice: the first time, he found three nests previously visited by Jenny, and this time, he found six more marshlands with adult dragons.
Dany noticed that the dragon nests were extremely far apart. Even the closest two were more than eighty kilometers away.
Pterosaurs ate a lot. A pterosaur colony consumed enormous amounts of food each day and required a vast hunting range.
And rainforests were among the richest natural environments in the world.
Dany lifted her gaze from the map and asked, "Did you encounter any dangerous areas, or places we should be particularly cautious of?"
Old Jiong thought for a moment and shook his head. "I followed the method you taught me. I let the Silver Prince—my shadow dragon—choose the direction. Wherever it flew, I honestly followed. When I needed rest at night, it also chose the landing spot.
"I spent more than half a month in the rainforest, and I never removed the gauze clothing beneath my armor. I wasn't afraid of mosquitoes, but I never once stepped into a river.
"Fortunately, the rainforest has plenty of rain. There were days when I encountered several downpours. Following your instructions, I bathed at an altitude of more than a thousand meters. I did not fall ill."
Dany tapped a few points on the map and asked, "Roughly how many dragons are there?"
"From the sky, using a spyglass from afar, I counted at least twenty marsh dragons more than thirty meters long, and ten shadow dragons over twenty meters long.
"There are also two marshlands whose dragon nests contain pterosaurs with green-and-white striped scales. They are only over ten meters long, but their fleshy wings are broad and powerful, and they should be able to carry riders.
"In my opinion, purely for travel and for dropping wildfire bombs from the air, those striped pterosaurs are better.
"The marsh dragons are big, but they move slowly and eat a lot.
"The daily rations for ten ordinary marsh dragons are nearly equivalent to feeding fifteen hundred highbred warhorses—the quality steeds trained for proper knights. If we were to raise a hundred marsh dragons for a long period of time… with the Long Night approaching, even wealthy Slaver's Bay might struggle."
King's Landing had a population of five hundred thousand, yet only three thousand Gold Cloaks.
This showed that the Iron Throne could only afford to maintain three thousand standing troops. The duties of the Gold Cloaks included policing, defending the capital, guarding the Red Keep, and helping kings and princes bully common folk. They were often stretched thin.
Winterfell, for example, could muster at least thirty thousand soldiers in an emergency, yet its garrison was only one or two hundred men.
Eddard brought only a few dozen guards with him to King's Landing, leaving Winterfell undermanned, which allowed an assassin to attempt to kill Bran.
Heaven have mercy; Bran had been staying in the innermost part of the main keep.
The combined area of the New Gift and Old Gift—lands belonging to the Night's Watch—was equal to one and a half times the size of Korea, yet they could not even sustain a mere thousand Watchmen and had to rely on supplies from the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms.
Even the cheat-laden Dragon Queen had her Mother of Dragons Guard farming. Aside from the Unsullied, even the horsemen had to graze their own herds.
In this era of extremely low productivity, even a king could not maintain a standing army of more than ten thousand.
A hundred big-bellied marsh dragons were truly impossible for any small city-state with few people to maintain.
"How much do the striped pterosaurs eat?" Dany asked.
"Roughly one-tenth to one-fifth of what the marsh dragons consume," Old Jiong said.
"If only pterosaurs could learn magic, their food intake could be reduced by seventy percent," Dany sighed.
Striped pterosaurs consumed less but also carried less.
They were sufficient for dropping one-hundred-pound wildfire bombs, but wildfire was scarce, and most of the time they would still have to drop fire-oil bombs.
Fire-oil bombs were certainly needed in large quantities.
Dany wished they could have a type of pterosaur that ate less than a horse, flew faster than a great dragon, and carried more weight than an old swamp dragon.
Unfortunately, that was just wishful thinking.
Hmm… she wondered whether Sheep Ball's blood magic could create a new type of pterosaur.
"What do you plan to do now? Will you stay in Slaver's Bay or return to Westeros?" Dany asked.
Old Jiong had promised to help her finish the Battle of Meereen, but now that he had rendered great service, he could redeem himself and leave.
He understood that the Dragon Queen meant well.
She was giving him a graceful exit, but with the Little Imp's help, Aegon was thriving. He had even formed a True Dragon Alliance, so they probably did not need him anymore.
"I will stay in Meereen and help you command the knights. After we repel the coalition army, I will return," he said.
Dany nodded. "If that is the case, I will give you a few days off. Aegon is getting married, and I truly cannot spare the time. You are his foster father—you must not be absent."
"Ah, in the blink of an eye, His Highness is already getting married. If only Prince Rhaegar were still alive…"
Old Jiong rubbed the thinning hair atop his head with a sigh, his mind drifting to thoughts of his Silver Prince.
Dany was extraordinarily decisive. The very night Old Jiong returned, she left Astapor under the cover of darkness.
The next morning, she entered the strange continent, flew over vast rivers and plains, and finally saw the rainforest known as the 'Green Hell.'
It was only about eight hundred kilometers from New Ghis to the continent of Sothoryos. Another four to five hundred kilometers further south marked the true beginning of the rainforest.
More directly, the first marshland where the dragon nests were located was only about four thousand kilometers from Astapor.
Uh… four thousand kilometers is not exactly close.
Old Jiong was gone for so long because he had been flying "aimlessly."
In truth, his range of activity was only a few hundred thousand square kilometers, roughly half of Province SC.
If you went to New York and carefully visited every attraction, even half a month wouldn't be enough.
But if you only crossed New York from one end to the other, even on a bicycle it would take just an hour or two.
As soon as she entered the continent of Sothoryos, Dany plunged into a world shrouded in rain and mist.
It was not only the humid fog in the air, but also an active magical factor that enveloped her mind like a dense haze.
How should she describe it?It was like a ruler of the laws of World A stepping into World B, where the laws were completely different.
The magical factors of Sothoryos differed from those of Essos and of Westeros.
The farther south she flew, the greater the difference became.
Dany very much wanted to know where she would end up if she kept flying south.
At dawn, under full daylight, Dany felt as if she were being engulfed by a green tidal wave.
Never before had she realized that green could be so rich, so pure, so full of life.
Everywhere she looked, in all directions, were layers upon layers of green: the olive green of towering trees, the tea green of shrubs, the bean green and spring green of unknown flowers and grasses, the tender green of fresh buds, the dark green of moss on the forest floor, the ink green of swamp water, and the fluorescent green of aquatic plants.
The forest's emerald stillness felt so tranquil that she could clearly distinguish the cries of red-furred monkeys and macaws. Yet its picturesque beauty was also deafening, with the cacophony of animals and birds rising and falling, blending together like a jungle concert.
Dany suddenly thought of Simba—the opening song of The Lion King.
The composer must have visited a rainforest!
The air here was exceptionally fresh, filled with a rich woody fragrance, and Dany felt her lungs had never been so delighted.
The dragon skimmed over the rainforest canopy, and the animals below screamed in terror and fled in chaos.
The scene was like the local police raiding a village mahjong den in the middle of the night.
Through this, Dany finally witnessed the creatures of the rainforest.
Lions, monkeys, jungle pythons over a dozen meters long, hippos the size of trucks, and long-snouted crocodiles—these normal beasts were hardly worth mentioning. There were countless ferocious creatures that Earth had never seen.
For example, a striped spider the size of a sow, whose web could even snare a lion.
Or a lizard-snake the size of a cow, with a rooster's head, a pangolin's body, and eight centipede-like legs.
Back at the small fighting pit on the docks of Qarth, Dany had once seen a lizard-snake as big as a hound, and she had thought that one day she would let such a creature witness her burning Huaxia spirit.
Uh… but after two consecutive plagues—greyscale and the blood fever—she had chickened out.
Faced with magical beasts carrying deadly viruses, even her drooling Huaxia spirit felt parched and powerless.
Swish—
Just as Dany was happily, curiously, and triumphantly herding the jungle beasts like sheep, a sharp whistling tore through the air from afar, approaching at a terrifying speed, like a bolt of black lightning ripping open the sky.
"Shit! They have this kind of thing too?!" Dany turned her head and cursed aloud.
Her dragon, Daehan, didn't need her command. With a powerful snap of its wings, it accelerated upward, narrowly avoiding the coconut tree that had shot toward them like a giant crossbow bolt.
Indeed, just a hundred meters away, a black gorilla nearly thirty meters tall had ripped a ten-meter-high coconut tree out of the ground, its roots still tangled with clumps of soil shaking loose.
It was as easy for it as a human pulling up a scallion in the garden.
"Ho-ho-ho-ho—!"
Having failed its ambush, the gorilla stood upright and beat its chest with fists the size of locomotive engines, letting out a roar that shook the sky.
"This is too absurd. Even King Kong is showing up now?"
Dany signaled Daehan to climb higher. Watching the furious gorilla roaring from below, she felt both shocked and incredulous.
King Kong was indeed tall, nearly thirty meters, but the ancient rainforest trees were even taller and denser, easily hiding the gorilla's movements. No wonder she hadn't noticed it earlier.
Daehan circled the gorilla twice from an altitude of three hundred meters.
Then the Dragon Queen entered the Fifth-Level Dragonsoul state and unleashed her Soul-Shattering Strike.
Crack—
"Awuuu—!"The enraged, chest-thumping King Kong rolled his eyes back, let out a wail, and crashed backward onto the ground, crushing several sky-reaching trees as he fainted.
"Uh… and here I thought you were impressive. Turns out you're just all looks and no substance."
Dany smirked but did not have Daehan fly closer.
Exiting the Fifth-Level Dragonsoul, she sent a thought from her second Green Seer soul down toward the gorilla below, striking its brow in an instant.
"Ho-ho—!"The gorilla, which had previously fainted with its eyes rolled back, suddenly flipped up like a carp leaping from water, sprang forty to fifty meters into the air, stretched out its arms, and reached upward as if trying to grab a rebound. It still fell more than two hundred meters short of Daehan.
Uh… so it had been playing dead.
However…
The thought of the Green Seer shot forward like a bullet, piercing the cracked, battered wall of the gorilla's soul—the earlier Fifth-Level Dragonsoul strike had been like a massive hammer against a fortress wall, not collapsing it but leaving it full of fractures.
(PS: About King Kong—this is not my invention. In The World of Ice and Fire, the rainforest really does have King-Kong-like creatures capable of smashing an elephant into pulp with one punch.)
(End of chapter)
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