Chapter 1027 — A Special Meeting
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
The great floor-to-ceiling windows facing the castle's west side, together with part of the wall, had been blasted open by some weapon. A howling cold wind poured in through the gap, and a Cecil flying craft of bizarre design rammed straight through that gap into the arcane hall, its metal shell, wing panels, and the base of its cone body striking showers of sparks across floor and walls the whole way, until it came to a stop before Luo Yan like a great beast charging recklessly—and he... was dumbstruck.
Then at last he made out what astonishing detail that bizarre Cecil craft possessed—on the machine's inverted-cone base was mounted a "container" more than two meters across, and inside it was steeped a living brain. In that brief instant he and the brain were "eye to eye." This ought to have been a chilling, even horrifying sight, yet he felt something rise up from within him, from somewhere unknown—a feeling of heartfelt kinship, as though bound by blood.
The next second, a strange humming came from inside the craft that "housed" the brain, and then rune-light kindled on the brain's surface and on certain mechanical structures of the craft. An invisible psychic field unfolded, and a long limb like a spider's jointed leg emerged from thin air and stabbed swiftly toward the divine eye, which was rapidly dissolving not far away.
Luo Yan instinctively looked toward that limb, but before he could make out what happened next, a blinding white light suddenly filled his entire vision.
A brief but intense vertigo struck, and Luo Yan realized his mind had been invaded—yet the intrusion stirred no sense of danger in him at all. After quickly adapting to the disorienting sensation of spatial displacement, the scene before him gradually steadied, and he found himself in an extraordinarily vast space.
An endless expanse of water stretched boundlessly across his view, its surface so calm it seemed a mirror; the sky was clear as washed glass, and against that azure backdrop floated thin clouds, together with countless symbols, formulas, and mechanical parts endlessly rotating and reassembling among them; platforms of all sizes and unknown purpose floated on the water in the distance, shrouded in blurred barriers so that no detail upon them could be seen.
This was the scene that met Luo Yan's eyes when he opened them.
A moment later he recovered from his astonishment and saw that a round table had appeared before him at some point, ringed by several high-backed chairs—pure white and plain, yet elegant in design. Two figures stood beside the table, apparently waiting for him.
When he made out the appearance of one of them, his pupils contracted instinctively—yet the next second his expression relaxed, more relaxed even than before.
Gao Yang Cecil—not in the least surprising.
Luo Yan stepped toward the round table. His feet trod upon the water's surface; he could clearly feel that what lay beneath was no solid ground, yet he did not sink in the slightest.
He came before Gao Yang Cecil, looked him up and down once, then swept his gaze around the surroundings before a faint smile appeared and he brought his eyes back. "So, should I address you here as Gao Yang Cecil, or as the Wanderer Beyond the Pale?"
"It seems the Long Twilight cultists you recruited have revealed a good deal of useful intelligence to you," Gao Yang said with a laugh, gesturing casually to a seat beside the round table. "Take a seat—everyone who comes here has a place."
"My thanks." Luo Yan nodded and sat down quite at his ease. Before him fine tea and refreshments at once appeared, and a teacup filled itself.
Gao Yang glanced at him in some surprise. "You don't look particularly surprised?"
"Now that this war against a god has come this far, there is truly so much that has exceeded what I expected at the outset," Luo Yan said calmly. "By comparison, the 'Wanderer Beyond the Pale' is at least something I have seen in the intelligence reports."