Hou Jingshu had left the capital not long after her meeting with Zhou Lihua. It had taken several days to prepare the Imperial Family’s airship, gather the necessary supplies to make the trip, and handpick her bodyguards, but she was able to leave in five days.
Because the Shang Kingdom was small and lacked the resources to build airships on their own, they only had a handful themselves. Airships relied on materials their kingdom lacked. All of the materials they had used to construct the ones they currently had were imported from the Xia Dynasty. More specifically, they came from Heavenly Sword Mountain—where the most powerful among the Three Celestial Sects resided.