Chapter 892 — Face to Face
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Hearing Gao Song's words, Hedy immediately wore an expression of nervous worry: "Ancestor, this could be dangerous."
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing—and this isn't the first time I've dealt with something like this," Gao Yang nodded to Hedy. "There are some things I must confirm."
Seeing the calm yet indisputable look in her ancestor's eyes, Hedy could only swallow the words in her heart and take a step back.
Kamael, meanwhile, nodded to Gao Yan, rose, and drifted over to a control console beside the isolation wall, where he began channeling magic into the ancient runes.
Verodai, holding the platinum-white scepter, regarded Gao Yang with calm, deep eyes: "Would you mind telling us exactly what it is you want to confirm?"
"Three thousand years ago, the White Star fell, and the God of Nature vanished from the divine seat. Around the same period, a meteor shower struck the northern reaches of the Gondor Empire at Vipranton, and a great mass of 'fragments from beyond the sky' crashed down upon the earth... Yet for all these years, no one has connected these two events, because scholars lack the crucial evidence, and they know nothing of the secrets between the gods and the starry sky," Gao Yang said, looking up beyond the barrier, unhurried. "Seven hundred years ago, I obtained one of the Vipranton 'meteorites.' It became what is now widely known as the Guardian's Shield... In the course of communing with this 'starry legacy,' I glimpsed certain memories from ancient times.
"The fall of the God of Nature was connected to an impact that occurred outside the planet. The Vipranton meteor shower, and the wreckage around the Giant Deer Amon, are all products of that impact—and the most suspicious part... is that the entire collision was deliberately caused by Amon. This god... committed suicide."
As Gao Yang's words fell, even the ever-calm and detached Verodai's eyes went wide in an instant; Amber and Hedy gasped aloud. Then, from beyond the isolation wall, came Kamael's voice: "The barrier can be crossed now, Your Majesty."
"Wait here," Gao Lan said, then strode toward the slowly rippling energy barrier.
After passing through that nearly transparent energy barrier, the chaos, oppression, and eeriness unique to the Shadow Realm surged in from every direction. Gao Yang stepped out of the Defiance Fortress's solid, ancient corridor and onto that shattered land, formed from countless floating boulders linked together. A thousand years ago, its builders had laid a path across these boulders—using alloy frames, chains, and gangways—leading to the corpse of the Giant Deer Amon, and Gao Yang walked along this path, unhurried, toward the front.
The corpse of the God of Nature floated like a hill wreathed in white light at the far end of his vision.
Churning "clouds" of chaos shrouded this gloomy world; sinister, pitch-black shadows like lightning darted among the clouds. Enormous boulders, freed from the bonds of gravity, tumbled and drifted at the edges of this shattered land and in the skies even farther away. Only the space around the Giant Deer Amon—perhaps influenced by residual divine power, or perhaps because the ancient systems of the Defiance Fortress still functioned—maintained its basic stability, those floating boulders and the entire "courtyard" environment included.
Gao Yang came to within a few meters of the God of Nature—given the latter's immense size, that white-glowing body now stood before him like a wall. He tilted his head back, gazing at the lowered head of the Giant Deer Amon. That lifeless head was bound round with a great mass of chains, and between its flesh and blood were embedded and pierced unknown metals. The chains had been left by the people of Gondor; the unknown metals... were likely remnants of the firmament, and fragments of some kind of space warship.
"Now I'm curious..." Gao Yang murmured, as if to himself, sizing up the giant deer's head. "Are you really dead?"