"Boom!" Dahei did not enter the Seven Gods state. He used only his own magic power and spewed out a blood-red dragon flame as thick as a water bucket and twenty meters long.
Like a welding torch, the dragon flame slowly swept through the cracks of the Wall. The searing heat evaporated the remaining ice on the surface of the wall, and great billows of white steam rose, forming a massive dark cloud.
Unfortunately, aside from scorching a road-wide blackened mark on the surface of the enormous stone wall, it caused no further damage.
Well, even a dragon as powerful as Balerion the Black Dread, when breathing fire on the "fragile" Harrenhal, only roasted the people inside the castle and did not bring the walls down.
Dany patted Dahei's neck, signaling him to stop wasting effort, and complained, "This is ridiculous. The screenwriters should be dragged off and fed to the White Walkers."
But the next moment, Dany's pupils shrank. On the charred rock surface scorched by Dahei's dragon flame, dark red magical patterns actually lit up.
If this had been before the Long Night, in broad daylight, Dany would most likely have ignored those faint, phosphorescent dark-red runes.
But now, with the sky darkened and the world dim, that faint glow stood out clearly, like fireflies on a summer night.
"Did dragonfire activate the formation inside the Wall?" Dany leapt down from Dahei's back and drifted lightly onto the cracked summit of the Wall. She closed her eyes and released her spiritual power to sense the formations within.
Gradually, the confusion on her face turned into sudden realization. "So that's it. It's because I repaired the Wall's formations and recharged them last time!"
Back then, when Dany first came to the Wall, she accidentally encountered the Black Gate, unexpectedly obtained the Wind's Song of the Gate Guardian, and underwent the Gate Guardian's trial.
The trial was like this: the Wind's Song had no master. Whoever touched it and merged their spiritual power into it would automatically gain control of it. At the same time, the Wind's Song was the core of the Wall's formations. Once it was lost, the Wall would begin to collapse.
So the question was this: could the person who obtained the Wind's Song give up true god–level power that placed the entire world within their grasp?
Dany yearned intensely for power, yet she struggled fiercely for only a brief instant before immediately handing the Wind's Song back.
Her behavior greatly satisfied the Gate Guardian. Given her sacred nature and her talent for comprehending the embryonic form of "The Song of Ice and Fire," the Gate Guardian quietly chose her as the heir to the legacy at that time, though Dany herself did not know it.
Back then, she also used her own power to repair the damaged formations inside the Wall. Dany listened to the Gate Guardian's Wind's Song, and her consciousness traveled back eight thousand years, witnessing the entire forging process of the Wall. As a result, she knew all the formations within the Wall and the laws governing their operation.
After that, she contributed all the magic power of herself, Dahei, and Xiaobai to mend the cracks on the Wall's surface and recharge the formations beneath it.
From then on, the formations inside the Wall were sustained by two kinds of magic power. One came from the Gate Guardian, and the other came from Dany, Dahei, and Xiaobai.
The Horn of Winter targeted the Gate Guardian, much like an antivirus patch targeting a specific virus.
Once the horn was blown, the Gate Guardian was annihilated, and the formations powered by the Gate Guardian's divine strength naturally collapsed.
However, the formations repaired by Dany, as well as those operating on the magic power of herself and the dragons, remained.
More than a year had passed. The magic power Dany left behind must have dwindled greatly. After the Wall collapsed, the rate of consumption increased even faster. Perhaps in a few more days, she would no longer be able to sense even the slightest trace of her own magic within the Wall.
But the Wall had only collapsed yesterday. There was still some of her magic power present. That portion sustained the damaged formations inside the Wall, and thus could absorb magic of the same origin from Dahei's dragon flame.
"It seems possible to repair it." Dany placed her right hand on the stone wall, sensing the operation of the formations within. Her expression was hesitant.
If the Wall had not yet collapsed, she would not have hesitated at all. She would have immediately repaired the formations and afterward likely needed to recharge them regularly to keep them operating normally.
But now that more than thirty kilometers of the Wall had fallen and the White Walkers had already passed through, was there any need to repair it anymore?
"There's no need."
Dany sighed, stood up, and leapt into the air. The fiery wings behind her flashed briefly before vanishing as she landed perfectly on Dahei's back as he flew slowly past below.
"Hmm, maybe this time there will be a different effect." Dany tilted her head and glanced at the Wall riddled with cracks, a strange smile curling at the corner of her lips.
"Hiss—boom!" Dahei circled around and once again faced the Wall head-on. The dragon flame, like a welding torch in the hands of a god, cut into the greatest "steel plate" between heaven and earth.
This time, Dany merged her spiritual power into the dragon flame. Its shape did not change, nor did its raw power, but the magic within the flame began to frenziedly destroy the formations inside the Wall.
Boom. Crack. Rumble.
Wherever the dragon flame swept past, the wall split apart, and massive chunks of ice and rock crashed to the ground.
Did this count as a perfect cosplay of that Night King from Game of Thrones, the one who traveled thousands of miles just to deliver himself?
"Hahaha." Thinking of this, an inexplicable sense of amusement arose in Dany's heart, and she threw her head back and laughed.
"Whoosh." Suddenly, from the high skies to the west came the sound of leathery wings beating the air, mixed with many human cries of alarm.
Dany looked up and saw a group of wyverns flying in from the west, skimming along the inner wall of the Wall.
The wyvern riders all wore windproof helmets, making their faces indistinct, but each rider bore a large and striking blazing red heart emblem on their chest.
So these are the Second Stag's wyvern riders?
Tsk tsk. Thirty wyverns in total. The Ragged Prince's peach really is impressively large.
Just as Dany was wondering why the Second Stag had come here, a grinding roar burst forth from the shadow dragon at the front. "So you're the one who burned down the Wall. You are the King of the White Walkers with a noble heart entangled in sin!"
"Form up!" Pockmarked Richard on the Second Stag's left shouted loudly. "Gain altitude and surround the White Walker King!"
Then the group of wyvern riders clumsily urged their mounts upward and formed a chaotic, hole-riddled encirclement.
"Get lost." The dragon soul entered her body. In the Dragon Queen's eyes flashed the brilliant reflection of sword-like light.
The next moment, thirty wyverns let out mournful screeches. Twenty-nine wyvern riders clutched their heads and howled in agony. The encirclement fell into even greater chaos, and some wyverns flew crookedly, crashing into the collapsed Wall.
Er Lu felt as if a sharp sword had been driven into his brain and twisted once around. The pain was unbearable, yet his will was strong. He forcibly endured it and even had his own wyvern bear part of the damage from the "Divine Sword: Soul Suppression" strike.
"White Walker King, Daenerys, I'll fight you to the death!" he roared. With that, he drew the Hero's Red Sword from his waist and drove his shadow wyvern, far smaller than the big black dragon, into a diving attack toward Dany.
"You really never learn your lesson. I warned you long ago to remember to bring Melisandre when you go out."
Dany muttered this under her breath. Then her gaze flashed again, and the wyvern charging toward the big black dragon let out a wail. Like a crippled airplane, it slid down toward the ground.
"Boom, hiss…" The thick snow greatly cushioned the impact of the fall. The wyvern carved a trench more than twenty meters long through the snow before coming to a stop amid pained cries.
Er Lu was thrown so hard that he was dizzy and disoriented, and the red sword slipped from his hand.
Glancing at the wyverns in the sky that now dared not advance, Dany smiled faintly and had the big black dragon land on a massive boulder beside Er Lu.
"Didn't you notice? Ever since you met the red-robed woman, your fate has been bound to hers.
"As long as she isn't by your side, you almost always lose every battle.
"If you had brought Melisandre today, you wouldn't have been wiped out by a single, simple soul shock," she said casually, as if chatting, to Er Lu as he staggered to his feet.
"Are you the White Walker King?" he shouted resentfully.
"Is your brain broken?" Dany burst out laughing.
Er Lu waved toward the sky, stopping the wyverns that were eager to try and preparing to bomb Dany.
Yes, among Er Lu's wyvern legion, some wyverns carried fire oil bombs, while others had bundles of green wildfire bombs piled on their backs.
It was precisely because she saw the equipment of the wyvern legion that Dany did not strike with lethal force. Clearly, Er Lu had not come to ambush her, but to hunt the White Walker King.
"You were destroying the Wall earlier, laughing like a madman," Er Lu glared at Dany and said through clenched teeth.
"So what?" Dany replied, somewhat awkwardly.
"I thought you were the White Walker King. Are you or are you not?" Er Lu's eyes blazed with fury. "Did you bring down the Wall? Or are you working together with the White Walker King?"
"Sigh, that's why I said you should have brought Melisandre."
Dany sighed, feeling pity for Er Lu. He did not even recognize the White Walker King, yet he rushed out with a group of followers to hunt one down.
Er Lu trudged through waist-deep snow, stumbling step by step, and with great difficulty managed to retrieve his red sword.
"You were destroying the Wall just now, and you were laughing smugly." Holding the red sword, Er Lu inexplicably felt a bit more confidence rise in his heart. The prophecy said that he would wield the red sword to defeat the White Walker King.
"I wasn't laughing. It's windy here. You heard wrong," Dany flatly denied.
Er Lu remained doubtful. Indeed, beyond the Wall, the north wind howled like ghosts crying. Just now, it really did seem like that kind of ghostly wail.
"You rode a dragon and burned down the Wall," he added.
"That's exactly why you should have brought Melisandre!"
Er Lu ground his teeth. "Don't change the subject. Are you cooperating with the White Walker King for the Iron Throne?"
Dany waved her hand in obvious disgust. "Let the White Walker King sit on the Iron Throne if they want! You muggle, you can't sense magical fluctuations or recognize the glow of magic runes. How would you know that I was just inspecting the damaged magical formations inside the Wall?"
"Inspecting magical formations? The Wall has already collapsed. How could you inspect the internal formations?" Er Lu asked skeptically.
"If I wanted to kill you, or all of you, it would be like killing chickens. Would you lie to a chicken you could crush at any time?" Dany mocked him bluntly.
Er Lu's face turned iron-gray, as if he might grind through his own gums.
At the same time, however, most of his suspicion toward Dany dissipated. He himself would not bother lying to a chicken.
Dany softened her tone and asked curiously, "So why did you come here?"
Er Lu stared at her for a long while before saying dejectedly, "Yesterday the Wall collapsed. Melisandre sensed it. She told me that the White Walker King has already led an army into the North, and a great calamity is imminent."
"So she had you come challenge the White Walker King and end the Long Night?" Dany asked oddly.
Er Lu shook his head, his tone complex. "I am the rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms, the protector of the entire realm. Protecting Westeros is my duty. No matter what, I cannot allow the White Walkers to enter the Seven Kingdoms.
"Ending the White Walker King before they bring devastation to the people of the Seven Kingdoms is the best choice."
In truth, the Red Woman had also urged him to sacrifice Shireen in order to resurrect the magic dragon Vhagar. He had quarreled fiercely with her over it, and when he set out with the wyvern legion, he felt too awkward to call for the red-robed woman.
"You should have brought the red-robed woman," Dany said more gently. "With her present, even if you were unfortunate enough to encounter the White Walker King, before being completely wiped out, you could at least inflict some damage. Then your sacrifice wouldn't be in vain."
Er Lu clenched his jaw tightly. The muscles in his cheeks twitched uncontrollably, and it seemed as if beams of death were shooting from his wide-open eyes.
(End of chapter)
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