Chapter 1024 — Not Pierced Through
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Above the fortress cluster of Winterhold, shrouded beneath that uncanny starry sky, several grey-painted dragoon craft cruised at low speed under cover of night, dim rune-lights glimmering sluggishly at a few corners of each vessel and blending into the stars behind them, so that this scouting flight seemed like specters gliding unseen through the dark.
One of the craft cautiously dropped altitude, the crystal apparatus fixed beneath its flank flickering faintly; the precisely calibrated mechanism pointed down at the distant earth, and the crystal's surface mirrored the white-hot panorama of the battlefield far away.
An iron-grey giant was trampling flat the last line of defense at the mountain's foot, its vast, breath-stealing bulk already crisscrossed with wounds, great clouds of rust-like mist spewing from the seams of its armor and tangling with the lava flowing across the land and the surging arcane turbulence in the air into a vast structure like a cloak — a cloak draped behind the giant, and wherever it passed the earth became scorched waste.
The images monitored by the aerial scouts were relayed rearward through high-capacity arcane-web hubs distributed along the battlefield's edge and temporary relay nodes carried by ground units, and after crossing the long front line they were at last presented before Gao Yang.
Winterwolf Keep, command center. Gao Yang stood with his fellow commanders before the great sand-table apparatus and the arcane-web projection; the sound arriving from the distant battlefield was distorted and accompanied by crackling static: "...the God of War can be observed to have suffered rather severe wounds... but not enough to halt His movements. Typhon's ground units have taken heavy losses and have been breached through to Winterhold's final defensive line. Our own ground forces have likewise been affected, but the main formations remain intact."
"So the God of War really has been provoked by the Typhonites..." Watching the furious, terrifying giant displayed on the screen, Gao Yang could not help murmuring, "Even as a mad god, He still shows such a clear emotional shift as 'anger'..."
"Why doesn't He simply attack Winterhold itself?" Amber frowned. "He's already destroyed so much along the way, and nothing seems able to withstand His frontal assault. However strong the main city's defenses are, they can't be much different... yet the God of War shows no will to strike directly."
"That means something inside Winterhold currently draws Him more strongly — something that can make a mad god, in his clouded state, still retain a shred of reason." Gao Yang spoke gravely, and as he did he turned his head slightly to glance at Lady Dylan standing quietly not far off — this woman who called herself "heartless" had stood there in silence like a statue the whole time, plainly uninterested in revealing any further secrets concerning her master to the Cecilfolk here.
Still, Gao Yang had no intention of prying anything more out of Lady Dylan; and besides... even if she said nothing, he could more or less guess what it was in Winterhold that attracted that maddened God of War.
The uncanny starry sky covering the whole Winterhold region, and the peculiar aura seeping faintly from deep within it, could not be hidden; a single glance was enough for Gao Yang to judge that this was something connected to divine power — the God of War was clearly making for the source of that divine power. And within the Typhon camp, the one thing directly tied to divine power, manifesting in a form connected to the stars, and at the same time entangled in countless threads with the Augustus family... was a single thing.
That "Eye of God curse" which had endured for over two hundred years, originating in an ancient age.
"Luo Yan... I hope you know what you're doing..." Gao Yang let out a soft sigh, as though speaking to himself. "I hadn't planned on dealing with two out-of-control gods at once..."