Recently, nothing has been going smoothly for the Dragon Queen.
The capture of her grand nephew by the enemy was one thing. After all, that grand nephew had existed precisely to step on landmines, and she had done her best to save him. At the very least, Erlu did not dare to take his life, or so she believed.
But the loss of contact with the dwarf outside Meereen was truly frustrating. She had been waiting for his message to adjust her battle plans.
Before she could come up with a response, another upheaval occurred in King's Landing. The Big Sparrow died a miserable death under a wildfire charge.
This was completely unexpected. When she encountered the Big Sparrow again, she was utterly dumbfounded. How did this guy die again?
Well, the Big Sparrow was a saint with 250 points of piety. His soul broke free from the pull of the realm of death and voluntarily entered the Seven Gods' Heaven, the Pool of Faith of the Seven Gods, the seed of their divine kingdom.
After that, her grand nephew Aegon was truly gone for good.
His identity was exposed, and naturally he was no longer the Dragon Queen's nephew.
She missed the dwarf more and more. Despite his small stature, his survivability was extremely strong. He would definitely have been a sturdier, tougher shield than Aegon.
Finally, a bolt from the blue struck. The Long Night truly descended.
Like Mel, she also sensed the changes coming from beyond the Wall.
She was unsure how Mel felt, but in Dany's spiritual perception, at that moment it was as if the sun had been shot by an arrow, or slashed by a blade straight through its vital point, or poisoned by time itself, suddenly growing old and decaying.
In short, no matter the cause, the sun in the sky was nearing its end and was about to perish completely.
This was the sign of the Long Night's arrival.
As for the Night King…
Well, perhaps the distance was too great, or perhaps she lacked divination magic. She knew nothing at all and felt nothing.
To put it this way, the Long Night arrived first, and the Night King, who had been hiding somewhere unknown, went out for a stroll because of it. It was not that the Night King went out and the Long Night appeared alongside him.
Even the series of outrageous events in which Bran was hunted by the Night King, the five Stark siblings fused into a "mighty gourd doll," and then resisted the Green Seer's mark grinding down Bran's willpower, she knew none of it.
Later, when the Night King followed Arya's will and joined the "Stark family," launching a counterattack against the Green Seer's mark, Dany still sensed nothing.
It was not until the very final moment.
By then, Dany had already condensed the Song of the Wind. The birth of the first generation of Green Seers originated from the Children of the Forest who listened to the Song of the Wind of the Gate God.
It could be said that the Song of the Wind was the earliest source of the Green Seers.
Therefore, when the Green Seer's mark shattered, her perception was far clearer than Melisandre's.
At that moment, it felt as though the sky of Westeros had collapsed.
At that moment, she was both shocked and bewildered, and at the same time felt a kind of unexpected joy, like being struck on the head by a falling pie.
The Green Seer's mark had always been monopolized by successive Three-Eyed Ravens. No one else could even see it, or at least Dany had never sensed its existence.
She had condensed the Song of the Wind and had even advanced to become a demigod of wind.
Yet at this very moment, not only had it been touched by the enemy, it had even been shattered.
How could she not be shocked and confused?
But after the Green Seer's mark shattered, several fragments crossed thousands of miles and fell into her backyard, into the trunk of the weirwood tree there.
That trunk came from a Green Seer sanctuary. In the stone chamber where weirwood seeds grew, Dany sang a sacrificial hymn, and the trunk automatically detached itself from the roots.
The roots that bore the weirwood seeds belonged to the former Weirwood God, that is, the Gate God.
The fire elemental sprite Little Mist restored its vitality, and the trunk became a tree. Maege Mormont treated it as a heart tree and prayed devoutly, and the tree established a connection with Westeros. Every weirwood was like a signal tower, listening to information within a certain range through the wind.
Countless signal towers connected into an information network, overseen by Green Seers who had inherited the legacy.
The weirwood trunk in the pyramid garden of Meereen connecting to the "Green Seer information network" did not bring Dany much benefit.
At most, it allowed her to observe events occurring within ten meters around it through the weirwood.
For example, if Jiqi sat on the lawn in the afternoon cracking melon seeds, when Dany returned home at night, a single thought entering the weirwood trunk would let her see that act of "slacking off." If Jiqi was having fun in the swimming pool, Dany would not see it, because the pool was more than ten meters away from the trunk.
Even though the "signal tower" function of the weirwood trunk was weak, it still had a sliver of connection to Westeros's "forest of towers."
When the Green Seer's mark was shattered, the fragments did not vanish into thin air.
Or rather, the "Green Seer information network" existed in another dimension, the arboreal dimension, where the Green Seer's mark had always resided.
Now that it was broken, the fragments also scattered throughout the "arboreal dimension."
The sprouting weirwood trunk in Dany's backyard was also part of the "arboreal dimension of Westeros."
Moreover, because it originated from the roots of the Gate God, Dany's weirwood staff inherited a rich legacy, nearly one percent of the total mark fragments.
At that moment, the persimmon trees, apple trees, mango trees, as well as the flowers and grass in the garden all swayed together, joining in a cheerful chorus in the wind, according to the fire sprite Little Mist.
If anyone else were to come into contact with a mark formed by the superposition of countless Green Seer wills, no matter how strong their own will was, there was a ninety-nine percent chance their will would be assimilated.
But Dany was different. She was an expert at dealing with the wills of "evil gods."
With the control of the Three-Eyed Raven gone, and having traveled all the way to Meereen, thousands of miles from Westeros, what chance did those steel-stamp-like wills within the fragments have to resist?
Crushed, burned, and endowed with spirit, all of it was converted into nourishment and entered Dany's Song of the Wind soul fragment. When Dany advanced to become a demigod of wind, the former Green Seer ring's second soul had transformed into a band of wind.
The divinity of the Song of the Wind did not increase by much. This was something Dany had to comprehend on her own, much like eating pig brains might nourish the brain, but would never grant you a pig's experiences or insights.
In short, Dany and Bran used the Green Seer's mark in different ways. Dany "ate" it and absorbed the nutrients. Bran connected the pig brain directly to his own head, effectively adding an extra pig brain.
Overall, Bran's utilization rate was obviously higher. Dany's approach was a bit of a waste of a priceless resource, but it had no side effects and did not affect her own will.
However, pig brains were simply too nutritious. Dany's Wind Song soul fragment swelled a hundredfold in size, and she ate herself into a big, chubby mass in one go.
At this moment, her sea of consciousness was almost completely filled with all kinds of winds: breezes, gales, hurricanes, tornadoes, and more.
Her Wind Song soul fragment now bore some resemblance to the storm-filled divine domain of the Gate God from back then, forming the rudimentary outline of a Domain of the Wind God.
The surge in divine power was one aspect, but the benefit on the other side was even greater: Westeros "loved" her more.
Well, do not be fooled by the fact that Westeros is a filthy cesspit. It is the gateway of the world and carries extraordinary significance.
Otherwise, why does every Long Night begin in Westeros?Why do the Old Gods all gather there?
Westeros's "love," more precisely, was the favor of the "world consciousness of Westeros."
To put it more bluntly, the mark of the Greenseers was equivalent to Westeros's "Tablet of Creation," essentially a stripped-down controller of the Heavenly Way.
"The love of Westeros" brought Dany two benefits. First, when she was in Westeros, her cultivation speed increased. Second, she gained a vague, holistic perception of Westeros.
She could not be omniscient and omnipotent over Westeros like the Three-Eyed Raven, both because the "shares" she received were too few and because she did not merge with fragments of the Greenseer's Mark, but instead absorbed it through spirit endowment.
A woodcutting knife can chop firewood, but if it is melted down into iron and reforged into steel bars, those bars will certainly lose the knife's ability to chop wood.
The fragment absorbed by Dany was no longer the Greenseer's Mark, so it could not grant omniscience.
But Dany was, after all, the Mother of the Seven Gods.When she entered a dragon-spirit state with the Big Black Dragon, she could faintly sense the prayers offered by the devout believers of the Seven Gods.
Just like in the Seven Kingdoms at this moment, more than a hundred septons had already received the Mother's blessing during prayer.
Previously, the Seven Gods could listen anytime and anywhere only to the prayers of believers with piety above 200. There was no need to be in a sept, nor to face a statue of the Mother. They could respond in a limited way to true believers with piety above 10, but this required ancient great septs rich in the power of faith, and it also required the supplicant to pray sincerely while facing the Mother's statue.
Now it was different. After gaining a portion of "Westeros's love," when the Big Black Dragon entered a dragon-spirit state with Dany, their sensitivity to believers practically skyrocketed.
If the communication between the Seven Gods and their followers were likened to network data exchange, then previously the Big Black Dragon and the believers used a "telephone line plus modem" model. It was not only slow, but also outrageously expensive.
So expensive that Mother Dany could only bestow divine arts upon septons with piety above 200.
For example, the High Sparrow had a piety level of 250. He contributed 100 points of faith power to the Pool of Faith. Dany deducted 50 points and returned them to the Big Black Dragon, while the remaining 50 points were stored in the Pool of Faith under the High Sparrow's name.
When the High Sparrow needed to use divine arts, all 50 stored points were transmitted to him. He thought he had received 50 points, but in reality only 25 points were actually put to use, while the remaining 25 were consumed during transmission.
Not only was there loss when the gods bestowed divine arts upon believers, but even when believers prayed to the Seven Gods and offered faith power, there was loss as well.
When Dany received 100 points of faith power from the High Sparrow, it was entirely possible that he had actually contributed 120 points, with the remaining 20 lost in maintaining the channel of faith.
The High Sparrow was a Holy Son. Other believers' channels of faith were far "thinner" than his, with even greater losses. That was why Dany could only bestow blessings upon saints with piety above 200.
All of that belonged to the era of surfing the internet via telephone lines.
Now things had changed.
Having received the "favor of the Heavenly Way," the connection between the Seven Gods and their believers instantly leapt past 3G and entered the 4G era. Speed and efficiency increased by dozens of times, while costs dropped by the same magnitude.
Originally, in the Mother state joined with the Big Black Dragon, Dany's faith perception showed only a few hundred scattered red dots across the lands of the western sunset. Now, the red dots were densely packed, layered upon layer, with countless streams of information surging into the minds of the Seven Gods. All of them were believers' prayers.
What could not be sensed before could now be "live-streamed" anytime and anywhere in the 4G era.
The only problem was that there was too much information. Dany's human brain simply could not process it all, like ten thousand mosquitoes buzzing around her.
But the cries of her grand-nephew were far too mournful, far too despairing, and she was very familiar with him.
So she responded to her grand-nephew and established a connection of faith with him.
Amid the rolling flames, the grand-nephew saw the Holy Mother. By the Seven Gods above, the Holy Mother was so kind, so gentle, and even carried a faint sense of familiarity."Holy Mother, have mercy!" he wailed.
"Holy Mother, save me!" he begged.
Then Dany discovered with shock and fury that a familiar evil aura had wrapped itself around her dear grand-nephew.
It was R'hllor.
The Shadow Demon R'hllor was drawing out the power in his bloodline and polluting his soul.
That square-jawed Second Stag actually dared to sacrifice her adorable grand-nephew?Dany was enraged.
Fine, he was no longer her grand-nephew, but even if blood ties were gone, human ties still remained.
Well, to be precise, there had never been any blood ties to begin with. The exposure of the grand-nephew's identity did not affect Aunt Dany's affection for him at all, because she had never regarded him as family in the first place.
This was the 4G era. The speed and power of divine energy transmission had increased dozens of times. She felt no familial bond toward him, but for his sake, she was willing to waste a large amount of the Seven Gods' divine power.
(End of chapter)
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