Chapter 1021 — Annihilation Force
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Amber said she had "caught" a Typhonite outside the castle.
In truth, "caught" was hardly the right word — the woman had appeared openly before the castle guards, declared who she was, and walked into the great hall in perfect cooperation.
A tall woman with long black hair, dressed in the fine black attire of a senior lady's maid, was brought before Gao Yang. He was certain he had never laid eyes on her anywhere, yet he knew that anyone who appeared before him at such a critical hour could not be ordinary — even if she looked like nothing more than a palace maid.
"She appeared out of nowhere in front of the guards and said she had been sent by Luo Yan Augustus and wanted to see you," Amber reported from the side. "She seems to have walked straight through the entire blockade..."
Gao Yang nodded and looked at the black-haired woman. "What is your name?"
"Dai Lan. I serve the Augustus family as a lady's maid," the woman said, fixing Gao Yang with an utterly calm gaze. "My master sent me to see you."
For someone who called herself a maid, her manner was far too detached and relaxed, and even Gao Yang could not help but feel curious — but what he was more curious about was the errand she carried. "What did Luo Yan send you to do?"
"Nothing," said the woman who called herself Dai Lan, calmly. "My master instructed me to appear before you. The rest is for you to judge."
"Nothing..." Gao Yang's pupils contracted slightly. He seemed to grasp something, but then his brow furrowed as he stared at her. "So you are the 'signal' Luo Yan Augustus has released to me... but this is still too risky. Even if you do nothing at all, this signal is too risky..."
"It does not matter," Dai Lan shook her head calmly. "So long as I say nothing superfluous, I will not enter the gods' sight — because I have no heart."
"No heart?" Gao Yang regarded her with some bewilderment, but just as he was about to ask something more, a low humming sound, like thunder rolling through distant clouds, came suddenly from high in the eastern sky, cutting off his next words and drawing every eye — the officers near the windows instinctively looked up toward the sound, and then the change in the space between heaven and earth over Winterhold unfolded before them all.
Beam after beam of light tore through the gloom of the blizzard. Beneath the weird canopy of stars, with the main peak of Winterhold at their center, the summits of more than a dozen mountains raised pillars of magical flame that pierced heaven and earth; that mighty magic shredded the gathered clouds, churned the edges of the blizzard, and burst again and again into wide-ranging lightning high in the air — and at the feet of those peaks, across the vast plains and hills, a "great net" woven of magical meridians was lighting up bit by bit!
Amber gazed at that radiance from afar, and at last, from the tracks along which the glowing meridians stretched, she made out something — those were the Typhonites' barracks massed along the defense line! It was the great net formed by linking the encampments of those hundreds of thousands of transcendents!
Her eyes went wide, and she whipped her head around to tell Gao Yang what she had found, but before she could speak, a violent flash burst from the distance: among the dozen or so peaks whose beams had kindled, one beam suddenly swelled to twice its size, a brilliant orb of light rose from it and raced skyward along the beam, and after a delay of only a few seconds the orb pierced once more through the clouds already torn to rags, plunging at a near-vertical angle toward the mass of storm at the center of the plain — toward the place where the God of War had descended!