Chapter 945 — The Rift in Time and Space
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Those "verses" were neither sound nor text; they surfaced all at once like some kind of "thought" rising directly within the mind—a direct infusion of information, a kind of "meta-experience" beyond the reach of any of humanity's several senses. And with such "meta-experiences"... Gaoyang was not unfamiliar.
Even the verses themselves were something he knew quite well.
He had come into contact with the Voyagers' relics more than once. The first two encounters had both involved the Eternal Slate: the first time, he had learned from the information the Slate carried the battle reports of the ancient god-slaying war; the second time, the information he obtained from the Eternal Slate was precisely those strange, obscure, and meaning-laden "verses" from just now!
In an instant, his gaze locked onto the glowing region at the base of the Eternal Storm. He sensed that something connected to the Voyagers' legacy was establishing a link with him—something that had likely lain dormant at the storm's heart for countless years. He strained to focus his attention, trying to stabilize that faint, flickering connection. Yet just as he was on the verge of making progress, Metzen's cry of alarm suddenly came from ahead:
"Ah—what in the..."
With that short, sharp cry, the great dragon, which had been attempting to skim past the storm's center at a steep angle, abruptly began to descend. Metzen seemed to have been seized all at once by some immense force, and she plunged at a perilous angle headlong toward the lower reaches of the storm—toward the direction where the cyclone was at its most violent, most chaotic, most dangerous!
"Waaah!!" Amber shrieked on the spot, leaping a full meter into the air. "What's going on, what's going on... Hey, don't drop! Don't drop!!"
"I don't know! I can't control it!" Metzen shouted from the front. She was fighting with all her strength to hold her flight posture, yet some invisible force kept dragging her downward—and before that force, the mighty dragon was as helpless as a bird. In the blink of an eye she had dropped to a very dangerous altitude. "I can't hold it! I can't keep my balance... Everyone hold on tight! We're going to hit the sea!"
"This isn't what you said when we set out!" Amber hopped in place and yelled, then immediately rushed to the nearest nexus terminal—she pried open the cover panel with astonishing speed, wrenched out the recording crystal plate set in the terminal's base, and, cursing loudly all the while, clutched the data-bearing plate tightly to her chest. Then she turned and charged toward Gaoyang, shouting as she ran, "Help, help, help, help..."
Gaoyang reached out to catch Amber as she leaped toward him, while out of the corner of his eye he saw Virodai already spreading her hands, summoning powerful holy light to weave a barrier against the impact. He saw the dragon's wings swept backward in the storm, the chaotic, furious airstreams lashing the rain against Metzen's faltering shield, and the endless lightning weaving into sheets in the distance, illuminating the dark outlines deep within the cloud masses—and illuminating some bizarre, uncanny spectacle in the direction of the storm's eye—
And there his normal sight abruptly ended.
A chaotic flood of light and shadow rushed at his face, filling his vision like a shattered mirror. With both his sight and his spiritual perception severely disrupted, he could not make out any change in his surroundings at all. He only felt that he had passed through a kind of "dividing line"—a boundary like a curtain of water, carrying a chill that pierced into the soul—and once he had crossed it, the whole world fell suddenly silent.