Chapter 669 — Speculation and Clues

"I understand," Amber nodded, her slightly drooping ears perking up a little again. "Anyway, all that Virodai wants to do right now is redirect humanity's faith. I am night-chosen; my faith is not affected by that redirection. And if the worst should one day truly come... that would only prove she was right, and then I would have nothing left to hesitate about."

Just as Gao Yang knew her, when it came to matters requiring seriousness, this half-elf always had her resolve.

The Defiants and the gods...

Gao Yang sighed inwardly; the information he had heard today from Virodai—from Ophelia—had once again stirred ripples in his heart.

Those gods who truly existed in this world—what manner of beings were they, exactly? Were they guarding this world, or anticipating its destruction?

Even the Defiants could not explain the gods' contradictory nature, could not explain their behavior—seemingly steeped in chaos, yet at times full of reason and inclination—and could only start from the facts, preparing day after day, year after year, century after century, ready for the moment the gods revealed their malice.

As for the gods' true nature, Gao Yang actually had speculations of his own:

Perhaps those powerful beings were simply too far beyond mortal comprehension, no longer measurable by simple "good and evil"—for such notions as good and evil were merely concepts mortals had concocted, trapped within their own cognition.

The gods perhaps operated within some higher, more incomprehensible logical system; their acts of protecting or destroying the world had nothing to do with good or evil, but with some other reason.

The second possibility was even more chilling and unsettling:

Could the gods be insane?

Or rather, could they be a kind of "creature" that periodically lapsed into madness—when a certain "doomsday moment" arrived, all the gods would uncontrollably topple into insanity!

Those two legendary champions who had crossed the rift and returned half-mad—the words they left behind, "this is a countdown," in fact referred to the countdown of the gods' sanity...

If it was indeed this second possibility, then Verodai's current careful reformation of the Sunstar Church—his attempt to shield the "Mortal Bridge" without alarming the gods—was probably utterly meaningless: whether the gods would initiate the apocalypse had nothing to do with whether the Defiant had alarmed them; it depended solely on a countdown.

A countdown whose exact scale no one knew, one that could run out at any moment, and that was, in all likelihood, still ticking away right now.

The magic tide was capricious, laying waste to heaven and earth, yet at least the surveillance satellites hanging high in space could still give some degree of warning against it. But if that countdown to maintaining sanity truly existed... Gao Yang had absolutely no way to foresee it!

Just then, Amber's voice came from beside him, jolting Gao Yang out of his brooding: "Old Sticky Rice... your expression is a little scary."

Gao Yang lifted his head and temporarily suppressed the tangled thoughts in his mind: "No... it's nothing. Let's set this aside for now. Tell me about yourself—is there something you need?"

Amber hesitated for a moment, then finally revealed the original purpose of her visit today: "I found a lead."

"A lead?" Gao Yang didn't react at first, but then immediately understood what she meant. "You found a lead on Sally? Randolph?"

"He was a royal shadow guard, and one personally knighted by Francis II, holding a secret aristocratic title. That's why he had a noble title yet wasn't listed in the normal aristocratic genealogies," Amber said, and since she had already begun, she simply laid it all out. "His final mission was to go to the Dark Mountains to search for leads on the Gondor legacy, and the reason he got stranded in the Southern Region and sank to becoming a thief was that he defected."

Gao Yang: "..."

"Hold on, that's a lot of information. I need to sort it out," Gao Yang rubbed his temple and couldn't help muttering, "Why is it that everything today comes loaded with so much information..."

"These are the materials I found. You can read them while you sort things out," Amber said as she produced the roster and record files she had obtained from the Dark Raven. "I've already confirmed it—it really is my adoptive father. The name and appearance both match."

Gao Yang took the materials and pored over them carefully. There wasn't much content; after skipping over Sally? Randolph's early years, the rest could be read in a few minutes. As he read, he said, "He never mentioned his former identity and experiences to you?"

"No. I always thought he was a native of the Southern Region, a clumsy little thief... But thinking back on it today, his nose bridge was very high, and his eyes were a slightly lighter color. That's actually... a trait of Northerners..."

"This country is narrow north to south, so the physical differences between Northerners and Southerners are slight. You were young back then, so it's only natural you couldn't tell. And his identity as a defected shadow guard... really wasn't something suitable to tell a naive child," Gao Yang quickly finished reading the materials and set them aside. "He defected during the mission to the Dark Mountains to search for the Gondor legacy. That's a point of entry... Could it be that what he was looking for back then was the Defiant Fortress?"

"I don't know, and I can't figure it out either. Even if what he was looking for really was the Defiant Fortress, what about that was worth defecting over?"

"Yeah..." Gao Yang clasped his hands and rested them against his chin, his tone deep. "That really is the question..."