Chapter 1234 — News from Afar

"Anyway, after that the native water elementals suddenly restrained themselves. They seemed to have seen reality all at once, or perhaps they had decided that this endless war benefited neither side—in short, they were finally willing to stop fighting, and that Elemental Sovereign by the name of Gluguno took the initiative to signal his intent to negotiate..." Tyr seemed to know what Gao Yang was thinking, and her recollection had reached its end. "We of course agreed at once—sirens never liked fighting to begin with, and besides, we were in the wrong in the end. There was nothing to be done about it; we didn't want our ship to come falling down, after all..."

Gao Yang had always felt it impossible that the Sovereign of Water could be named something as bizarre as "Gluguno," but by now he had no strength left to keep arguing with this deep-sea salt fish.

And it was at this moment that a familiar presence suddenly came from nearby, interrupting his thoughts and also interrupting the increasingly strange direction his conversation with Tyr had taken.

Gao Yang raised his head toward the source of the presence and saw a dim, twisted shadow abruptly surface in the air under the afternoon sun. The shadow spread open like a curtain, and Amber's figure lightly leaped out from within, landing on the ground and in two or three bounds coming to a stop before him.

"What's going on?" He looked at the half-elf curiously, noting that her expression was actually somewhat serious. "You look very serious."

"Word has come from Talrond," Amber said, and with her first words Gao Yang snapped fully awake from his somewhat languid state. "Two messages—one from Grand Consul Victoria, one from Hragor, leader of the dragons."

Gao Yang at once sat up straight on the bench, ignoring Tyr, who had begun dozing at his side, and spoke quickly: "Victoria's first."

"Yes," Amber nodded. "Victoria sent Maggie to carry the message—she has already reached the adventurers' town of New Agondo and confirmed that the 'Adventurer Mojin' there is indeed the Wilder ancestor who vanished six hundred years ago. She reports that Mojin Wilder's condition is extremely abnormal; it is highly likely he has encountered a divine relic, and may even now be pursued by the power of an ancient god..."

"An ancient god?" Gao Yang had not expected the matter to leap straight into the realm of gods, and his expression turned exceedingly grave. He looked into Amber's eyes. "Where has another ancient god come from? Which ancient god?"

Amber's expression at once became somewhat strange, as though this matter held a special meaning for her, but after a brief struggle she shook her head and set her stray thoughts aside for the moment: "The Goddess of Shadow, the Lady of Night—the shadow transcendents of today still hold that She is the sovereign of shadow power and the guardian of nightfall, but according to Lady Enya, this god has been missing ever since the Voyagers departed in that year..."

She seemed a little hesitant when she spoke the title "Lady of Night"; plainly this one, who had always called herself "Chosen of the Night," was still somewhat earnest when facing her own "faith." And Gao Yang knew that with the establishment of the Divine Council, and as the veil of the gods' mystery was gradually lifted, this "Chosen of the Night" (self-proclaimed) would sometimes fall into such conflicts—but he knew too that in this matter Amber did not need anyone's help.

Gods have the fates of gods; men have the busyness of men.

After a moment of quiet, he asked: "So Mojin is being pursued by the power of the 'Lady of Night'—what exactly is the situation?"

"Mojin Wilder has several times drawn near a realm suspected to be the divine kingdom of Shadow in his dreams, and in those dreams he has come into contact with his own 'other projection.' From a mystical standpoint, this is a sign of being gradually drawn into the 'other realm,'" Amber said at once. "And after his most recent 'dream entry,' Mojin even brought certain things back from 'over there.' Victoria believes this may indicate that a material connection has already formed between Mojin and the Lady of Night's divine kingdom..."

Amber told Gao Yang plainly and fully the intelligence she had just received, and at the end mentioned that Maggie had already set out from Northport and was at that moment on the road to the imperial capital with a "sample"; at dragonflight speed, that sample might reach Cecil Palace as early as tonight.

"Grand Consul Victoria hopes we can take that sample to Lady Enya for examination," Amber said at last. "The dragon gods are ancient gods of the same age as the Lady of Night. Though Lady Enya, strictly speaking, is no longer one of the original dragon gods, she may still be able to recognize the Lady of Night's power in those 'samples,' and perhaps even find a way to temporarily sever this connection."

"Of course," Gao Yang nodded at once. "She needn't ask—I would have sent that 'sample' to Enya in any case. After all, she is one of the high advisors of the Divine Council now. What else? What did Hragor have to say?"

Amber thought briefly, her expression growing more serious: "Hragor's side... mentions that conditions at the Tower of the Reverse Tide may have changed, and that this matter may well be connected to Mojin Wilder."

This time Gao Yang stood straight up from the bench, eyes wide: "The Tower of the Reverse Tide has changed?!"

"It cannot be confirmed yet—at least from recent monitoring records there seems to be no change over there, but the dragon leadership suspects the change occurred inside the Tower of the Reverse Tide, and occurred long ago," Amber said, nodding. "In short, they suspect that something went wrong with Mojin Wilder in the Tower of the Reverse Tide that year, and that the dragon god of the time, affected by the power of the Voyagers, failed to discover it in time, ultimately bringing about Mojin's present strange condition..."

Amber carefully set out the intelligence that had come from Talrond, and Gao Yang listened without missing a word, yet the more he heard the more his head swelled. He could not help raising a hand to press his somewhat throbbing forehead, and out of the corner of his eye he inadvertently caught sight of Tyr, already sprawled on the stone and snoring away, and a certain feeling welled up in him—

A moment ago he had been discussing things that made the corner of one's mouth twitch with this deep-sea salt fish; how had the topic turned so serious the very next moment?

"Looks like I'll have to talk to Enya about this too," he could only sigh in the end, forcing his attention onto the matter at hand. "Though I doubt she knows much more about it than we do... Against the suppressing power of the Voyagers' relics, a 'god' like her is targeted far too severely."

As for the "sample" Maggie had brought back from Tarlond, Gao Yang did not have long to wait—just as Amber had judged, that very evening the special "sample" was delivered to Gao Yang's desk.

The bright mana crystal lamp lit the study spread with a velvet carpet. Maggie set a small mithril box—layered with protective runes and fitted with two mechanism locks—upon the desk, and as a succession of soft clicks came from between the box's runic structure and its mechanical locks, the thing contained within was at last revealed before Gao Yang and Amber.

A layer of pitch-black velvet lined the bottom of the box, and against that backdrop, deep as the night sky, a few grains of grayish-white sand stood out with particular sharpness.

(End of this chapter)

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