Chapter 953 — The "Chosen" Amber
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The Dragon God spoke with considerable seriousness, and there was not the slightest hint of jest in it—and naturally, a deity hardly had any need to joke with Amber about such a thing.
The radiant expression on Amber's face froze in an instant.
"See, I told you," Gaoyang could not help glancing at Amber and remarked offhandedly, "are you sure this whole 'Chosen of Shadow' self-image of yours isn't the result of one too many drinks?"
"No... that can't be!" Amber grew agitated at once, and even before the Dragon God she could not help raising her voice, "I really am a Chosen, I've been a Chosen for decades... I've even chatted with the Goddess, she taught me all sorts of things..."
Gaoyang felt torn between laughter and tears: "What did the Goddess teach you?"
"Tossing a wok, that sort of thing... and baking little pancakes..." Amber said at once, but barely half a sentence in her voice dropped, and grew softer and softer, "Of course it wasn't only that, of course... of course there were some really impressive things too..."
Gaoyang: "...?"
Even Gaoyang, possessor of the richest stock of nonsense in this age, found Amber's words increasingly absurd—he had never asked Amber in detail just what she had learned from that "Goddess of Shadow," and hearing it all at once now left him speechless for a good while. He was more and more convinced that Amber really had, after some severe bout of drinking, developed the delusion of being a Chosen of Shadow; after all, any normal person with even a couple of peanuts to nibble on would not have gotten that drunk...
Yet though Amber's voice was faint, the expression on her face never wavered.
"...Child, what you say is very... interesting," the Dragon God finally broke the silence as well. She looked at Amber with a peculiar expression—and what neither Gaoyang nor Virodai noticed was that her expression was not the scorn or denial of one who had heard something laughable, but carried a certain... scrutiny and observation. "But do you know? The Goddess of Shadow as I know her... could not possibly have raised any Chosen in the mortal world of this age. She cannot even reliably answer the faith of the mortal world—so do you think such a deity could possibly chat with you, or even teach you those wondrous... pieces of knowledge?"
Amber slowly widened her eyes, looking somewhat lost and at a loss; then her gaze turned to Gaoyang, and in that look there was even a trace of pleading—she still seemed very much to want to hold to the belief she had kept all along, but today she had met the most irrefutable, most powerful challenge of her life: a deity, a deity lingering in the mortal world, had told her to her face that what she had always believed in could not possibly be true.
Amber, always so cheerful, now seemed unable to be cheerful at all.
Gaoyang noticed the shift in Amber's mood. He hesitated, then patted her on the shoulder, and then suddenly frowned and looked at the Dragon God Enya: "You say the Goddess of Shadow cannot even reliably answer the faith of the mortal world?"
"The Loren Continent has countless sects, and the vast majority of mortals hold some faith—but have you ever heard of a Church of Shadow with a formed doctrine and a strict organization? Have you ever heard of Shadow cults on any scale, or Shadow priests preaching far and wide?"