Chapter 1285 — All of the Same Proud House

Gao Yang nodded thoughtfully. Just then, Daniel, on the dragon's back, raised his head and glanced into the distance. The old mage's expression turned grave: "Everyone, I think... we've already seen that 'larger individual.'"

"Huh? What did you say—" Amber muttered instinctively, then looked up at the dark space beside them. The next second, her expression froze, her eyes wide as saucers. "What in the world is that thing!!!"

The colossal ancient ship finally completed its last attitude adjustment and deceleration, and ahead of it, the "home port" finally revealed its clear form before the uninvited guests. Gao Yang and Amber saw a man-made thing floating in the darkness, far larger in scale than the ship beneath their feet. Compared with the vessel underfoot, that thing truly deserved the name "Steel Land." Just how big was it exactly? The human eye could no longer judge; even the superhuman with the keenest sight could only see its iron-gray alloy surface extending endlessly into the darkness, swallowed by sparse distant lights and mysterious phantom glows. And at the edge of this true "Steel Land" was the "port" that connected with the ship—an irregular polygonal "docking belt" that precisely matched the ship's edge.

What made Amber cry out was not this "ancient megastructure" floating in the darkness, but the thing on that "port."

It was a tree—a giant tree that had been dead for who knew how many years, toppled upon the land, blotting out the sky. It lay there, its vast crown covering the entire port area and even many of the roads and facilities nearby. The leaves and many branches on its crown had long since dried up and vanished, but its remaining structure was still magnificent and splendid, even reminding one of a towering, tiered city. Most of its roots had broken—unable to pierce the Voyagers' sturdy alloy, they had crumbled into debris scattered across the port, carpeting the entire ground. The whole giant tree leaned and fell at the end of the port without the support of its roots, and a small portion of one side of its crown extended beyond the "megastructure"—precisely corresponding to the plant remains at the edge of the ship beneath their feet.

And among these enormous, astonishing ancient remains, patches of green could faintly be seen—plants that had grown fat on the nutrients of the remains, or perhaps... merely the "echoes" left after this colossal thing had died.

Meicen let out a low growl. Even a dragon who had lived through long ages could not help but exclaim at the sight: "I've truly never seen anything like this... The Great Tree of Solin really does seem a size smaller than it."

"This thing absolutely wasn't here from the start—the style doesn't even match," Amber judged swiftly. "It looks like it 'fell' here from somewhere else. No idea whether it was still alive when it fell—but it's obviously dead as a doornail now. And the ship beneath our feet just happened to dock where this giant tree died, so it 'carried' some of the remains onto its deck... Honestly, I think I've guessed what this thing is."

"It's not hard to guess. Amorn described to us more than once what his 'little courtyard' looked like back then," Gao Che said aloud. "At the center of his divine kingdom stood a giant tree called 'Reincarnation.' On its crown was a city called 'Life,' and its roots coiled like vines, and within the vines was entwined a great tomb called 'Death.' In fact, the Great Tree of Solin grew into the form you see precisely because it was influenced by the currents of thought generated by this mythological description. And what we're seeing now..."

He did not finish. Amber beside him knowingly supplied the second half: "Is most likely the original."

Then Amber paused before continuing: "When we get back, we can have a good chat with those two in the Courtyard of Defiance. First we found Milmina's home, and now we've seen Amorn's Tree of Reincarnation dead in the Voyagers' ruins... And judging from the traces at the scene, this tree practically crashed straight into this place."

"That's not the key. The key is why this tree is here... As the remains of a divine kingdom, how did it end up in the Voyagers' ruins? Did it drift here? Or was it brought here by the ship beneath our feet?" Gao Qi said in a low voice, brow furrowed. "Theoretically, this kind of collision shouldn't happen... Wait. Collision?"

He suddenly stopped, and in his mind's eye appeared a scene he had once seen in the monitoring logs from the Skyvault Station—

A giant deer wreathed in powerful energy and holy radiance charged from the planet's surface into space, resolutely hurling itself at the space station the Voyagers had left behind.

If this steel megastructure floating in the dark chaos corresponded to the Skyvault Station in space, and if Amorn and his divine kingdom corresponded... did that explain it?

When the deity's true body chose to ram the space station the Voyagers had left in space, the divine kingdom He left behind also crashed at the same moment into the "home port" the Voyagers had left in the deep sea. This precisely matched one of the Typhon technical experts' research conclusions about the gods: a deity and His divine kingdom are, in essence, two sides of the same whole.

The more Gao Yang thought about it, the more likely it seemed—and yet he could not shake a strange, complicated feeling in his heart. Amorn himself probably had no idea of any of this; he did not know what had happened to the divine kingdom he left behind when he rammed headlong into the Skyvault Station.

He did not even know of the existence of this ship cruising within the divine kingdom's domain, nor of the ship's home port.

As they spoke, the ancient ship had gradually drawn near the port ahead. The "Reincarnation Giant Tree" toppled upon the port pressed down heavily like an astonishing dark cloud, making everyone who witnessed it hold their breath. Meicen quietly lowered her altitude, carefully searching the ship's edge for a suitable landing spot, while Gao Yang pulled himself back from his musings and raised his head, eyes fixed on the direction of that steel megastructure.

Like the ancient ship, that steel megastructure also did not respond to the Voyager identification signal he released.

That thing... was a "hollow shell" on a far grander scale.

The giant dragon descended slowly at the edge of the ship, and almost at the same moment, a moderate tremor rose from beneath Metzen's feet; across the empty "world," the sound of some colossal locking mechanism engaging rang out.

The ship docked at the "home port."