"Blowing the Horn of Winter can indeed destroy the magical formations inside the Wall. But Joramun only stopped the formations from operating that time, mainly to remove the Night King's control over the Wall.
The Night King was never the true King of the Others. After losing the Wall's protection, he was easily captured alive by the Northerners and the Free Folk," the Gate God said.
Now Dany finally understood why the Wall collapsed. Yet she still had doubts."Why didn't they destroy the horn afterward?"
"Sigh… must I even answer that? Have you forgotten how Mance Rayder scoured every hill and grave mound searching for the Horn of Winter?After the Wall was built, the Free Folk and the Northmen were no longer one people of the same nation," the Gate God replied with a bitter smile.
Dany could only smile bitterly at that.
The Wall had originally been a bulwark against the Others, built jointly by the Free Folk and the North. Yet for thousands of years after, the Night's Watch used it to stop the Free Folk from coming south. The Horn of Winter was forged to protect the Wall, and yet the Free Folk used it to threaten the Wall's destruction, and then the Wall truly fell.
No matter how noble an intention may be at the beginning, humanity always finds a way to steer the outcome toward the worst possibility.
"How did the Horn of Winter end up in the hands of the King of the Others? What was the Three-Eyed Raven doing? Why did he not see it coming, or stop it?" she asked again.
"Do you believe in destiny?" the Gate God countered.
"I will not bow to any destiny forced upon me by man or god," Dany declared firmly.
"You do not believe in fate, but destiny exists all the same. Compared to mortals, the green seers are nearly omniscient and omnipotent, as though they rule destiny. Yet on a higher plane, they too are bound by fate."
"No one can escape destiny. If you leap out of a small river of fate, you simply fall into a broader, greater river," he said solemnly.
"Then I will keep leaping—out of small rivers and large rivers. Where there is a river, there is a bank. One day, I will stand on the shore and look down upon the river that binds all living beings," Dany replied with utter confidence.
The Gate God smiled thoughtfully. "When you finally reach the bank and see clearly the direction of the river below, it is highly likely that you will fall immediately into another river of destiny—one you prepared for yourself."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Dany frowned.
"You will understand when the time comes. Words cannot explain it clearly. Now time grows short, so let me introduce the legacy I leave behind."
"The Winds of the World not only record the messages in the wind. The wind itself contains the history of the world's changes over billions of years.
Surely you have noticed that once you enter the Song of Wind, your cultivation of fire magic becomes far more efficient?"
Dany nodded. "It feels like I'm listening to the language of the world. Whether I train magic or practice martial arts, I enter the Song of Wind."
"The Winds of the World have gathered all manner of winds, from the dawn of the world to the end of the last age. The information riding the winds comes from every era and epoch. Every wind I have ever heard, you can hear as well."
"The Winds of the World are practically a holy land for cultivation!"
Dany's eyes sparkled as joy flooded her face.
"I did not create them for cultivation," the Gate God said helplessly.
"Fine. I will continue your work. From now on, whenever I encounter a wind that 'sounds good,' I will gather it into the Winds of the World," Dany promised.
She wondered privately whether flatulence counted as wind and if the Gate God had ever collected divine gas that moved him emotionally.
Her mind had slipped into a strange direction.
"As you like," the Gate God sighed, then continued. "Fire has the ultimate essence of creation. The Song of Wind has its own unique essence. You were born with the gift of hatching dragons, and I was born with the gift of traveling the river of time."
"Traveling the river of time? That is unbelievable!" Dany exclaimed.
The Gate God dismissed her surprise. "My true form is a weirwood. Have you ever seen a weirwood that ages and dies?A living weirwood tree will not die, and its wood does not rot with the passage of time.
In this world, everything—material, spiritual, or bound by law—changes within the river of time. Only weirwood is exempt.
You have entered a heart tree before. Was it not easy for you to cross the river of time and witness past and future events?"
"I wanted to see more, but the Three-Eyed Raven told me that place belonged to them," Dany grumbled.
The Gate God ignored that and went on calmly. "The ultimate meaning of wind I comprehended was space. Combined with my talent for time, it evolved into a divine art of time-space.
You have passed through the Black Gate and have seen the spatial gate linking Eastwatch and Meereen.
In fact, even earlier, a dark god attempted to seize my divine kingdom by force. I banished him into a rift between time and space.
Unless fate intervenes, he will never return to the physical world."
"Are you planning to teach me time and space magic?" Dany asked eagerly.
"No. I intend to give you my talent. How much of the time-space laws you comprehend will depend entirely on your own ability."
At that, Dany hesitated.
The gift was too great. She was starting to suspect some hidden scheme.
Just like when she negotiated with the Free Folk years ago.
The Dragon Queen offered such generous terms that she herself felt she was paying almost nothing, because she truly had little desire for gold dragons.
Yet every Free Folk warrior believed they were getting the better end of the deal, grew uneasy, suspected a trap, and dared not sign the treaty.
"How do you give your talent to me?" she asked.
"You are now half-divine, even having usurped the seat of the Seven. Do you not understand the art of sacrifice?"
"You mean you are going to sacrifice yourself to me?" Dany's mouth twitched.
"More or less."
Dany frowned. "Those other gods earlier—could they seize your talent by force?"
"Could Balerion steal your talent?" the Gate God asked.
If he could not, that monster would not still be chasing her endlessly.
Dany fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Is the Green Spring—the one that makes Old Gods' followers skinchangers—inside your divine kingdom?"
She did not dare accept the Gate God's talent, but the Green Spring could undeniably strengthen her soul.
"What do you think the Green Spring is?" the Gate God replied.
Dany thought for a moment and said, "You once told me that you do not need the power of faith from the Old Gods' followers, and that you instead convert it all into 'talents' and give it back to the believers.
The Green Spring should be like the Pool of Faith of the Seven Gods, a place where belief in the Old Gods converges."
"Since you understand this, why do you still want the Green Spring? Clearly, it belongs to the greenseers."
At that point, the Gate God suddenly let out a sigh. With a complicated tone, he said, "Dany, my moment has come. Farewell."
A low humming sound followed. The cyan star in Dany's sea of consciousness trembled a few times and stopped rotating. In that instant, she completely lost all perception of the Gate God.
"Gate God, Gate God?" she called softly.
Within the cyan star, the strand of spiritual power that belonged to her became more distinct and clearer than ever.
Dany had a feeling that she had truly gained ownership of the stardot.
Then she tried to let the ring of wind carry that cyan stardot upward.
There was no resistance at all. Her consciousness entered it: a cyan void, cyan winds, gentle breezes, light winds, strong winds, hurricanes, tornadoes, divided into many layers according to their strength.
It was much like the scene she had seen after entering the Black Gate back then.
That day, she had only seen tornadoes. They dragged her downward, and she struggled with all her might, expending enormous effort before she finally entered the uppermost Wind Song space.
Now, it was as if she had returned to the Seven Gods' faith space within the Great Black One. She could control everything here.
With a single thought, she arrived in a space filled with countless floating cyan points of light. One cyan point radiated a majestic and sacred fluctuation of law.
It was the Wind Song that Dany had once touched, possessed, and ultimately given up, the Wind Song belonging to the Gate God.
Within that cyan point of light was also a strand of her own will.
"It seems to be about ten percent smaller than before." Holding that strip of clear radiance, Dany pondered quietly.
For every bit her Wind Song grew, the Gate God's diminished by the same amount. In the end, when she could sing a complete Wind Song, this cluster of the Gate God's "old Wind Song" would disappear entirely.
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, Your Majesty." A series of calls seemed to come from beyond the heavens, pulling Dany, who had been immersed in the spiritual space, back to reality.
She opened her eyes to see Eamon, Jiqi, Barristan, and the others standing seven or eight meters away, looking at her anxiously.
"I'm fine," Dany said, sweeping her gaze around. More than a hundred Unsullied in Valyrian steel armor still surrounded her tightly at the center. "Disperse. The crisis is over."
The Unsullied said nothing. They sheathed their swords, slung their shields onto their backs, saluted Dany, and under Grey Worm's command quickly withdrew to one side.
Ten or so guards remained to watch the garden, while the rest returned to the lower level.
"The crisis is over. Are we still dancing or not?" Jiqi asked eagerly, her black-and-white almond eyes wide with anticipation.
Dany shot her a glare. "You still feel like dancing? Do you even know what just happened?"
Jiqi pouted and retreated in disappointment.
"What happened just now? A strange scene suddenly appeared in the sky, like a mirage, showing the landscape of another region," Old Eamon asked nervously.
"The Wall collapsed," Dany said, dropping a bombshell right away.
"What?" Eamon was dumbfounded.
Old Barristan reacted first, crying out in shock. "Your Majesty, you said the Wall collapsed? The Wall in Westeros?"
Dany nodded and gave a general account of what had just happened.
She did not go into detail about the Gate God's legacy.
But when she finished, the scene fell into dead silence. Old Eamon, Old Barristan, and the others all stood with their mouths agape, their eyes vacant as they stared at Dany.
"What?" Dany was baffled by their stares.
"A Horn of Winter that can blow down the Wall?" The shock in Old Barristan's eyes faded, replaced instead by doubt.
"The Lord of Light, the Drowned God, the Storm God, the Three-Eyed Raven, the Night King, the chief god of the Old Gods, and more than a dozen dark evil gods, Dany. Have you been drinking too much?" Old Eamon asked with concern as he looked at Dany's flushed cheeks.
The heaviness on Dany's face vanished. She pressed her forehead helplessly. "You don't believe me?"
"I do!" Jiqi, who had been listening with great interest, quickly raised her hand. "Khaleesi, I believe whatever you say.
But finish the story! What exactly is the treasure of the God of the Wall that everyone was fighting over?"
Dany could not be bothered with her. She turned to Old Barristan and asked, "How did the search around Meereen go? What about allied casualties?"
"We barely cleared the ground within ten kilometers. A hundred thousand allied troops drowned, and about fifty thousand survived."
As he said this, the old knight's lips were trembling.
"Sigh, too few died!" Dany said, not bothering to hide the regret on her face.
"What?" Barristan nearly fell out of his chair.
By the gods' mercy, he had fought wars his entire life, including great continental conflicts like the War of the Ninepenny Kings, yet the total number of deaths in all his wars combined was not even half of a hundred thousand.
And yet the Dragon Queen thought not enough people had died?
"Your Majesty, have you been drinking too much?" Old Barristan now shared the same suspicion as Eamon.
(End of chapter)
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