Fifteen kilometers northwest of Meereen, along the sea-facing rocky cliffs, there was a crude yet deep stone cave carved out from a crack in the rock wall.
"Take off your clothes."
Under the dim yellow oil lamp, three parts impatience and four parts indifference showed on Jeni's delicate, beautiful face.
"What?" Prince Leo widened his single eye. The look of lust and infatuation on his face instantly turned into shock, mixed with a tiny hint of anticipation and a tiny flicker of delight.
"Here? With people coming and going…"
He said so with his mouth, yet his movements were extraordinarily quick. In just a few motions, he had stripped off his exquisite blue velvet coat and thin calfskin fitted trousers.
Soon, even his undergarments and boots were removed. Covering his vital parts, he stood stark naked before Jeni.
Even with his uncle and two attendants standing nearby, the one-eyed dwarf who had been staring at Jeni's face and chest could not restrain himself from lifting his little head, before shamefully lowering his big head.
"My apologies, Lady Jeni." The Long-Nosed King looked flustered, his face piled with apologetic smiles. "Leo is young and ignorant. This really is… troubling you."
As he spoke, he shot the bastard a vicious glare. Do you even know what kind of person she is? Truly reckless beyond belief!
Of course the dwarf knew who Jeni was. Unfortunately, beauty was justice, and Jeni was simply too just.
It was instinct. He could not control it!
Just as the atmosphere grew oppressive and everyone felt uneasy, fearing that Jeni might erupt in sorcery and deal with the filthy little man before her, she suddenly blushed. The coldness in her sky-blue eyes melted like a frozen lake thawing under the warm breeze of early spring, becoming moist and alluring.
What shocked them even more was that she licked her full, rosy lips.
This was enough to take a man's life.
The one-eyed dwarf had no choice but to clench his buttocks, bend at the waist, and bow deeply in salute.
In the midst of the inexplicable awkwardness, Jeni suddenly asked, "Is he a direct descendant of Old Valyria?"
The Long-Nosed King froze for a moment before realizing that High Priestess Jeni was addressing him.
"Our House of the Isle of Elephants has been passed down for thousands of years. Several generations have married into high Valyrian nobility, even into direct lines of the Fourteen Flames. Leo's maternal family is the same.
"But after hundreds of years, we can no longer be considered direct descendants," he said, thoroughly puzzled.
If a noble possessed not the slightest trace of Valyrian blood, there were only two possibilities. Either the family's foundations were shallow and they had risen only recently, mere upstarts. Or their status was too low, leaving them unqualified to marry into great houses.
Valyria ruled the world for six thousand years and did not confine itself to the Valyrian Peninsula alone.
In fact, its drive for expansion was extremely strong. It often used collateral branches to marry into local great noble houses, thereby securing dominion over those lands.
Westeros, of course, was an exception. It had hundreds of noble houses with histories spanning tens of thousands of years, yet Valyrian blood only began to spread there at an extremely slow pace after Aegon's Conquest.
Jeni stared at the dwarf with keen interest and said softly, "The Valyrian blood within Leo is extremely concentrated and very high-grade. It is very…"
Very heart-stirring, making one salivate.
The Long-Nosed King rubbed his large nose and said with absolute certainty, "He is my son. Of that, there can be no doubt."
"Perhaps it is atavism," Jeni guessed.
"What? What are you talking about? What high-grade Valyrian blood?" The one-eyed dwarf listened in confusion, and even his raised little head drooped dejectedly.
"Child, you have awakened high-grade pure Valyrian blood," the Long-Nosed King said with a smile.
"But I don't have…" The one-eyed dwarf grew even more bewildered.
He could recite his family genealogy for five hundred years back, and he was absolutely certain there was not a single Valyrian among them.
The Targaryens had always cherished their bloodline. Most of it stayed within the family. Even when it was shared outside, as long as the Targaryen on the Iron Throne was not a fool, they would try to marry into houses of high status but low power.
So where did his high-grade Valyrian blood come from?Could it be the Dragon Queen's blood sorcery?
As these doubts churned, the dwarf suddenly felt a cool sensation at his brow. His focus snapped back, and he saw Jeni standing before him, clad in a pure white priestess robe trimmed with gold, holding a small purple-black crystal etched with blood-like patterns.
A glass candle.
She pressed the glass candle against his brow.
Then the dwarf felt a warm current slowly spread downward from the top of his head, all the way to the soles of his feet, as if he were being hung upside down and immersed headfirst into a pool of warm water.
However, compared to the comfort and relaxation of a hot spring, the warmth brought by the glass candle filled him with tension and dread. It felt as though a burly man had forcibly pried open his tightly closed legs and was roughly examining his body.
After seven or eight such cycles, whatever lingering lascivious thoughts the dwarf had toward Jeni vanished completely.
Fear took their place.
Jeni then withdrew the glass candle, nodded in satisfaction, and said with a seductive smile, "Very good. After suffering a few losses, Daenerys has finally behaved herself and stopped tampering with the prisoners."
"Suffered a few losses?"
The dwarf muttered in confusion. Then his pupils suddenly contracted, and a shiver ran through his heart. Seven hells. I wasn't the first.
Well, if we are talking about spies, he really was the first, but the practice of adulterating things had happened several times before.
One prisoner had even borne a soul mark. Yet Jeni still discovered it and countered with a reversed 'True Soul-Annihilating Strike,' instantly turning the 'Twin Wonders of Volantis' into nothing more than a Volantene bigwig.
Mm. Back then, among those who accompanied the Dragon Queen to the Transcendent Gathering were Old Black Wood and Rib-Man Pogba, together known as the Twin Supremes of Volantis. Now only Pogba remains. The "Twin Supremes" have become a thing of the past.
Uh, why Old Black Wood?
Obviously, the Dragon Queen understood deeply the principle that a gentleman does not stand beneath a dangerous wall. If someone had to do it, she would send a subordinate instead.
"I originally planned to have you stay in the outer cavern. But now…" Jenny extended her slender jade-like fingers and lifted the dwarf's chin.
Seeing his single eye and large nose, a trace of disdain surfaced in her lake-blue eyes. When she lowered her gaze and saw that thing of his, she smiled in satisfaction.
"Get dressed and come find me."
After leaving those words, she resumed her cold, stern expression and led her two attendants out of the stone cave.
"Uncle, what does High Priestess Jenny mean?" the dwarf asked pitifully, looking at his new father.
"Lady Jenny is still unmarried and the only legitimate bloodline of House Baleris. She has to pass on the lineage eventually. You are in your prime and still unwed. You are well-matched and made for each other!"
As he spoke, the Long-Nosed King grew excited. He slapped his son hard on the shoulder and laughed loudly. "Leo, you are in luck!"
"Uncle, you are joking, right?" The dwarf's red nose turned pale with fright.
"Didn't you see it just now?" The Long-Nosed King leaned close to his son's ear and whispered with a lewd grin. "The moment she sensed the pure blood in you, she went into heat on the spot. Heh heh."
The Long-Nosed King had actually guessed right.
Originally, Jenny had only come, rather impatiently and out of respect for him, to check whether Prince Leo carried any magical marks. It was not that she doubted Leo's identity, but that she feared he might be hiding some magical artifact of the Dragon Queen.
For example, Aunt May often used rubies as magical tools. Wearing a gem she gifted could allow one to disguise themselves as another person.
There were illusion-type gems, as well as gems for detoxification, curses, tracking, and other functions.
Jenny worried that Leo might be carrying something similar. Yet when his clothes were stripped off and the distinctly masculine scent reached her nose, it unexpectedly triggered an urge to mate.
It was like female animals secreting pheromones that spread through the air, which male beasts smell and then rush over to mate.
This was an animal instinct shaped by natural selection.
Jenny also possessed the instinct to obtain and merge high-grade Valyrian bloodlines, to continue and optimize the next generation of purebloods.
What stimulated Jenny's mating instinct was not male hormones, but high-level Valyrian blood.
As the Long-Nosed King said, for the direct line of House Baleris to continue, Jenny would inevitably have to marry.
Previously, the person she had chosen was Benny.
This had nothing to do with emotion. Balerion simply needed offspring. Without pureblood descendants like those of Jenny and Benny, whom would the being sealed deep in the ocean trench choose as an avatar?
Back in Valyria's heyday, the dwarf's bloodline would not have amounted to much.
But now, with purebloods in decline, even a two-headed monster like Benny, cursed by high-energy magical factors, had become a once-in-a-thousand breeding candidate. The dwarf, as the Dragon Queen's close kin, was far superior to Benny.
So it was hardly surprising that Jenny took a liking to him.
"But I do not want this!" the dwarf wailed.
"Lady Jenny is of noble status, immensely powerful, and extraordinarily beautiful. Why would you be unwilling?" the Long-Nosed King asked in confusion.
"I… I am afraid just looking at her," the dwarf said, trembling.
"But earlier you even raised your head. You truly have my style!" the Long-Nosed King said with a lecherous grin.
"I was not afraid before. But all of a sudden, I became afraid," the dwarf replied honestly.
"Hm." The Long-Nosed King pondered for a moment and speculated. "Perhaps when she used soul-detection magic, your will was suppressed.
"This kind of thing does not happen to you alone. You will get used to it…"
By the end, however, his tone was no longer so certain. How does one get used to it?
The longer one is in contact with Jenny, the more awe she inspires.
"A mismatch," the Long-Nosed King sighed, then continued persuading him. "We are guaranteed to win this time. After killing Daenerys, restoring the glory of Valyria may be impossible, but Jenny can at least become the king of Slaver's Bay.
"Didn't you say fortunes rise and fall over thirty years?If you marry her, your prospects are better than being king of Elephant Isle.
"Everyone in the Longfang Palace will no longer dare gossip about you. They will only envy, resent, and hate you, yet be powerless to do anything."
Hearing this, the dwarf immediately thought of his mission and asked curiously, "Uncle, you always say we are guaranteed to win, but why? Our camp is bombarded every day, and it seems we have no power to fight back."
"Heh heh. Come with me. Once you see the true trump card of our allied forces, you will be as confident as I am."
With a mysterious smile, the Long-Nosed King grabbed his son and led him deeper into the cliffside caves.
One day later, fifteen kilometers southeast of Meereen, inside a massive cavern five hundred meters below the surface.
The one-eyed dwarf rode on horseback along a "goat-intestine path" five meters wide and five meters high. Ahead, intermittent dark red light flickered, accompanied by scorching air mixed with the smell of sulfur.
"Well?" the Long-Nosed King laughed loudly.
The dwarf murmured, "If nothing unexpected happens, we really are guaranteed to win. The foundations of the Valyrian remnants are terrifying."
The Dragon Queen had not guessed wrong. All the elephant troops were underground. The allied forces had used dragon worms to construct an underground palace so vast and complex that it exceeded ordinary imagination. But she could never have imagined that it would be this deep, that there would be so many dragon worms, or that they would be so enormous.
Sorry. The chapter title of today's first chapter was wrong. It should have been Chapter 700, but it was mistakenly written as Chapter 670. The content can still be edited, but the chapter title cannot. Please bear with it.
(End of chapter)
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