What shocked Lo Quen even more was seeing the Old God manifest at the moment Varys was castrated, planting the seed that later drove Varys to support the Blackfyre cause and pushing him toward Westeros to sow chaos.
Even more damning, the Old God had hinted to Rhaegar that the dragon has three heads, prompting him to abandon Princess Elia, who could no longer bear children, and choose Lyanna instead—setting the stage for catastrophe.
In the end, the Old God had been relentlessly tormenting Aerys II on a mental level, stuffing his dreams with endless nightmares, slowly turning him from a sane king into a madman.
...
All of this left Lo Quen deeply shaken.
The Old God was truly a damned stirrer of filth.
What angered him even more, however, was realizing that as early as the moment he was reborn into this world, he had already drawn the attention of these two ancient beings.
In particular, the Old God who wielded the Green Sight had informed the Drowned God about Lo Quen, setting their plans into motion.
Though weakened and unable to wield their former peak power to eliminate Lo Quen outright, they had instead woven a web of conspiracies against him from the shadows.
The ruins of Valyria became a crucial node in their design.
After the Drowned God had once incited the slaves and indirectly caused the Doom of Valyria in ages past, the shadow of its power never truly left that cursed land.
It controlled the chimeras driven mad by magical mutations, along with other horrific monsters that prowled the ruins.
More importantly, remnants of weirwood trees still remained there.
These weirwoods became natural anchor points, allowing the Old God to remotely sense and partially influence the Valyrian region.
Seeing this, Lo Quen suddenly recalled what Janice had told him when he first arrived in Tyria: Valyria practiced religious freedom, with many temples, and even deities of the forest walkers were worshipped there.
The forest walkers, also known as the Yvvelon, were a mysterious race dwelling in the deep forests of northern Essos.
In his previous life, some had speculated that the Children of the Forest might be a branch of the forest walkers that migrated to Westeros.
If that conjecture was true, then the presence of weirwoods capable of resonating with greenseer power in the ruins of Valyria made perfect sense.
They were precisely the medium through which the Old God could exert influence from afar.
Using these anchors, the two ancient gods' plan against Lo Quen began to unfold.
The memory scenes shifted rapidly as Lo Quen continued watching.
...
In a bustling harbor, he saw a sharp-eyed sorcerer standing before Gerion Lannister.
In a low, seductive whisper, the sorcerer repeatedly murmured to Gerion, whose eyes were slowly turning vacant:
"Beware those around you… they will kill you in the ruins of Valyria… they will take your treasure…"
As if bewitched, Gerion muttered those words again and again.
...
The scene shifted to the scorched earth of Valyria.
A massive purple monstrosity with an astonishing wingspan spread its wings and let out a piercing screech, decisively leaving the Fourteen Flames behind as it chased after the retreating figures of Lo Quen and his companions through the dead forest.
This was the Old God issuing a direct kill order to the mutated beast through the weirwood anchor.
...
The scene shifted again, this time to a dark underground space.
On the surface of a black stone that radiated an ominous aura, an image was reflected.
A man who closely resembled Lo Quen wielded a flaming longsword, thrusting it through a kneeling woman.
Standing beside the black stone was the very blood mage who would later attempt to kill Lo Quen in Tyria.
His face was filled with shock and a twisted, fanatical fervor.
Clearly, he was witnessing the "prophecy" the Old God wanted him to see.
...
Immediately afterward...
In the withered forests of Valyria, an overwhelming tide of scale-and-claw monsters poured out from every corner of the ruins, surging toward the distant colossal city of Tyria.
This was the Old God responding to the Drowned God's command to spread chaos, while also deliberately creating trouble for Lo Quen, even hoping to kill him by proxy.
...
At last, the vision froze deeper within Valyria's devastated heart. From volcanic fissures belching thick smoke, countless flying monsters of even more grotesque forms slowly crawled out, spread their wings, and took flight in the direction Lo Quen and his companions had fled...
Then everything came to an abrupt halt.
All the clues, all the lingering questions, snapped together in that instant.
"The Old God!"
A surge of icy fury rose in Lo Quen's heart.
So it was him all along.
From the very beginning, it had been this rotten soul, hiding in the shadows and colluding with the Drowned God, orchestrating schemes again and again, laying traps, and repeatedly trying to put him to death. He had served as the vanguard and executioner for that fallen Drowned God.
Every mystery now had its answer.
Gerion Lannister's frenzied slaughter was the seed of suspicion and madness planted by the Old God through the Bloodmage's words.
The relentless pursuit of the purple monstrous bird was a direct kill order issued by the Old God through the weirwood anchor.
The Bloodmage's firm belief that he was Azor Ahai, and his attempt at possession, were false prophecies carefully woven by the Old God through black stone or dreams.
The scale-clawed legion bearing down on Tyria was a monster tide driven by the Old God against him.
The monster ambush during his escape was likewise the Old God's final strike.
A smile colder than ice spread across Lo Quen's face.
This damned Old God was cut from the same cloth as the Drowned God.
He continued reading the final fragments of the Old God's memories.
It turned out that after the layered schemes in Valyria failed to eliminate Lo Quen, the Old God had been rebuked by the Drowned God for the immense drain on his magic.
In his desperation to gain more means of prolonging his life, he had even offered up another vessel he had set his sights on, Euron Greyjoy, who had already shown signs of skinchanger talent and possessed a mind steeped in madness.
The Drowned God took an interest in Euron's bottomless insanity and hunger for power, believing he would better serve the plan to drown the world.
At the same time, the Old God handed the symbolic Dark Sister over to the Others, either as a gesture of appeasement or to stir even greater chaos.
In the end, the Drowned God forgave the Old God's temporary failure and granted him additional methods to extend his life. Yet deep down, the Old God had grown wary of this older, more fickle ally.
Thus, he meticulously planned his escape. He feigned imminent death, lured Bran, who possessed immense greenseer potential, beyond the Wall, and successfully seized this younger body.
After that, when Lo Quen arrived beyond the Wall, he deliberately staged a final entrustment, pretending to perish completely while actually retreating into the shadows of the world, intending to watch Lo Quen and the Drowned God clash from afar.
Until now, when Lo Quen, whose power had become truly invincible, dragged him out from his deepest hiding place and erased him entirely.
All of it, however, vanished like a bubble with the Old God's death.
Both the Old God and the Drowned God, those two conspirators bound by shared ambition, were executed one by one by Lo Quen.
The faint dragon spirit within the Old God flowed into Lo Quen's body.
At this point, power gained from an Old One of this level was almost negligible to him.