The Land of Always Winter.
The wind here had no sound; the snow here had no warmth.
Lynn's group, or perhaps it should be called a silent army of the dead, was walking on this white wasteland abandoned even by the gods.
Walking at the very front were Lynn and the Night King.
Myranda followed closely behind Lynn. The thick bear-fur cloak she wore could not withstand the chill that penetrated into her marrow.
This was not simple cold.
This was a deathly stillness originating from the end of the world, an absolute zero capable of draining the vitality of any living thing.
Even she, who had lived in the North all year round, found it hard to resist this cold.
Every time she breathed, she felt her lungs being pierced by the ice crystals floating in the air.
If not for the faint warmth radiating from Lynn protecting her, she had no doubt she would have frozen stiff the instant she stepped onto this land!
Behind them was the endless sea of death.
Thousands upon thousands of wights, with incredibly disorganized steps, followed them, leaving a black trail stretching to the horizon on this immutable snowfield.
After walking for who knows how long, the Night King stopped.
He didn't look back, just raised that arm and pointed ahead.
Lynn looked in the direction he pointed.
A bottomless giant rift valley, like a hideous scar on the earth, lay across their path.
The rift was miles wide, its length invisible to the eye, as if splitting the entire Land of Always Winter in two.
An aura of death so thick it almost condensed into substance rushed up from the depths of the rift.
That aura was so pure, so ancient, that even the army of wights behind Lynn showed a trace of imperceptible unrest.
Myranda walked to the edge of the rift and looked down.
Just one glance, and she slammed her hand over her mouth, her stomach churning, her face instantly turning paler than the snow beneath her feet.
That was no naturally formed rift.
That was a... pit.
A giant corpse pit piled up with countless bodies!
Corpses, endless corpses.
They were stacked layer upon layer, forming an inverted mountain range.
On the topmost layer were newly dead wildlings, their flesh still retaining some elasticity, the expressions on their faces frozen in the final moment before death.
Some terrified, some confused, some unwilling.
Further down were long-rotted remains, flesh mixed with tattered furs and rusted weapons.
Even further down were dense white bones.
Those skeletons, long eroded by the winds of time to fragility, still maintained human shapes, packed densely like an ant colony.
Mixed among them were some enormous skeletons belonging to ancient giants.
This was simply a disconnected history of Westeros written in death.
From the Dawn Age to the Andal Invasion, then to the establishment of the Targaryen Dynasty...
For thousands of years, all living beings who died north of the Wall, whether wildlings, Night's Watchmen, or Children of the Forest, their final destination was here.
"This..."
Myranda's voice was dry. She wanted to find a word to describe the scene before her, but found her language so poor.
Hell.
This was true hell.
No.
Hell seemed merciful in front of this!
Just then, an ancient and weary thought slowly surfaced in Lynn's mind.
The thought had no sound, just fragmented yet clear images.
Generations of Night Kings stood in the wind and snow, dragging bodies of wildlings to the edge of the rift, then pushing them down.
Day after day, year after year.
They were like the most diligent farmers, sowing seeds of death on this barren land.
And like the greediest misers, carefully hiding every piece of "wealth" they collected into this huge treasury.
They possessed the world's largest stock of "raw materials," but suffered from a lack of efficient "processing" methods.
They didn't have a near-cheating system like Lynn, nor the meditation secret art of the Three-Eyed Raven.
Generations of Night Kings could only rely on their meager spiritual power, gnawing like ants at a big tree, converting these corpses bit by bit.
Eight thousand years.
They spent a full eight thousand years to accumulate that army of the dead capable of flattening Westeros or even the whole world.
But now, the control of this army of millions of dead changed hands with a snap of Lynn's fingers.
[These...]
[Are all yours.]
The Night King's thought carried a relief like handing over a will.
He casually gave the savings of all Night Kings over eight thousand years, his life's work, to Lynn as a gift.
Lynn looked at the Night King beside him, then at the treasure mountain of death beneath his feet, and suddenly found it somewhat amusing.
Brynden, this guy... was truly an honest man.
No, he should say an honest ghost.
He just helped him solve a common enemy, and he directly gave away his entire fortune.
If this were in his previous life, he would definitely be the type who helped count the money after being sold.
However, Lynn really liked this gift. The Night King showed no hostility, and he didn't want to screw the Night King over.
Lynn walked to the edge of the rift, opening his arms as if to embrace the whole world.
He didn't chant ancient spells, nor did he make any exaggerated movements.
He just closed his eyes.
Then, his will, like a stone thrown into a calm lake, spread out toward that bottomless mountain of corpses.
HUM—!!!
A ring of eerie blue light exploded outward with Lynn's body as the center!
Where the ring touched, space seemed to freeze.
Immediately after, the bottom of the entire giant corpse pit lit up.
Countless pairs of eerie blue eyes opened one after another in that bottomless darkness.
Like stars falling into the abyss, they gathered into a brilliant and cold galaxy!
Crack... Crack, crack...
That was the sound of bones rubbing together.
The sound of joints frozen for a thousand years moving again.
The sound of countless dead awakening from eternal slumber!
The sound grew louder, denser, finally converging into a terrifying symphony enough to make heaven and earth tremble!
ROAR—!!!
A roar not sounding human erupted from the deepest part of the corpse pit!
Followed by a second, a third...
Thousands upon thousands, even millions of roars merged into a visible sound wave, soaring into the sky!
Even the ten-thousand-year unchanging grey of the sky was torn open by the impact of this sound wave!
Myranda was forced back repeatedly by the wave, covering her ears tightly, feeling her eardrums about to shatter.
She looked in horror at the mountain of corpses "coming alive" beneath her feet.
She saw stiff arms reaching out from the piles of bodies.
She saw incomplete skeletons crawling up from the bones of their companions.
Like an ant colony, they climbed madly up the nearly vertical rock walls!
They trampled each other, tore at each other, just to reach their monarch faster!
That wasn't resurrection.
That was a... blowout of the undead!
But this undead blowout didn't last too long.
Lynn's face suddenly went pale!
A drop of dark red blood slowly flowed from his nostril.
Followed by a second, a third...
His spiritual power, like a water bag pierced with a billion holes, was leaking madly!
He overestimated himself, and underestimated the terrifying foundation death had accumulated on this land for eight thousand years!
He forcibly interrupted the ice magic.
That terrifying sound wave capable of changing the color of heaven and earth, after climbing to its extreme peak, began to fall back slowly.
Deep in the rift, the light of that just-lit eerie blue galaxy dimmed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Countless dead who had just awakened from slumber froze with arms extended in mid-air, their climbing motions coming to an abrupt halt.
In that instant just now, he tried to awaken all the dead in the entire corpse pit.
With over eight thousand years of accumulation, the corpses here, were there millions?
Tens of millions?
Even hundreds of millions?
This simply couldn't be estimated with numbers.
With his current spiritual power, wanting to convert them all into controllable wights was nothing short of a pipe dream.
Lynn slowly withdrew his will.
The eerie blue halo shrouding the entire corpse pit vanished instantly.
Everything returned to dead silence.
As if that earth-shattering undead riot just now was merely an illusion.
"Phew..."
Lynn exhaled a long breath of white mist, feeling deep exhaustion.
However, there was no dejection in his eyes; instead, they shone with the excitement of discovering a new continent.
Although this attempt failed, it wasn't without harvest.
The wights he successfully awakened numbered at least in the hundreds of thousands.
These hundreds of thousands of fresh troops were currently climbing up from all directions of the rift, merging into the already despairingly massive army of the dead behind him.
Expanding the scale of this sea of death several times over.
More importantly, he found an inexhaustible source of soldiers.
A... undead treasury belonging only to him.
Given enough time, he was confident he could turn this place into his starting point for conquering the world.
[Follow me.]
The Night King's ancient and weary thought interrupted Lynn's musing.
He turned around, driving the undead warhorse beneath him toward the deeper parts of the Land of Always Winter.
Lynn didn't hesitate, taking Myranda to follow.
The undead army behind them waited in place.
Lynn and the Night King came before a "tree."
It was a weirwood tree.
A weirwood so huge it defied description.
Its canopy blotted out the sun, as if to shroud the sky of the entire Land of Always Winter in its shadow.
But it wasn't a living tree.
The entire tree, from roots to branches, was encased in a layer of ice crystals emitting eerie blue light.
Those ice crystals were no ordinary matter; they contained a pure, extreme law of ice.
As if this tree was the concrete embodiment of the concept of "cold" in this world.
The Great Other's Treasure Tree.
This name naturally surfaced in Lynn's mind.
Why?
Because he had eaten from it.
And having eaten only a part, he mastered part of the ice authority, and all his attributes increased by ten points.
If he could eat the whole tree, he didn't know how strong he would become.
The Night King dismounted under the tree.
He didn't look at Lynn again, just walked slowly to the massive trunk, reached out, and gently stroked the cold bark.
His movements were light, gentle, like caressing a long-lost lover.
Then, leaning against the trunk, he slowly sat down.
His eerie blue eyes that had burned for thousands of years dimmed at this moment.
But Lynn could feel that his consciousness didn't dissipate.
Instead, in a peculiar way, it merged with this giant Great Other's Treasure Tree.
He went home.
This avenger cursed by the Three-Eyed Raven, bearing thousands of years of hatred and loneliness, after witnessing his enemy turn to dust, finally returned to his starting point, which was also his end.
[Go.]
The Night King's thought sounded in Lynn's mind for the last time.
In that voice was an unprecedented calm and relief.
[There is nothing left here for you.]
[Remember my words, young man.]
[Ice, Fire, Thunder, Silence, Life...]
[Do not try to collect all authorities.]
[When all divine halos are added to you, you will no longer be yourself.]
[This world cannot bear an... omniscient and omnipotent monster.]
[That would be a disaster more terrifying than the Long Night.]
[I will watch here, waiting for your return.]
With that, the thought fell completely silent, never to be heard again.
Lynn stood in place, silent for a long time.
He looked at the figure leaning under the tree, already merged with the ice, then looked up at this heaven-supporting Great Other's Treasure Tree.
Authority...
Monster...
This honest ghost gave him such an important warning at the very end.
Perhaps, gathering these things would cause a terrible disaster?
Lynn chuckled softly.
He certainly wouldn't become some omniscient and omnipotent monster.
He just wanted to be the sole ruler of this world.
That was all.
However, he noted the Night King's warning.
Right now, he couldn't consume this tree anyway.
In his current state, if he truly faced a god, he didn't know what would happen...
Wait until he became stronger later.
Anyway, with the Night King who could kill a dragon with one javelin guarding here, it should be safe.
"Let's go."
Lynn turned around, not looking back again.
Myranda took a deep look at the giant tree emitting an aura of holiness and deathly stillness, then quickly followed Lynn's steps.
The massive army of the dead, following their new King, turned around and slowly marched south, toward the giant wall that had separated life and death for eight thousand years.
...
The return journey was longer than the arrival.
Lynn didn't choose to return to Castle Black by the original route.
He led this unprecedentedly large undead army, enough to make any human army despair, in a huge circle.
Finally arriving at the eastern segment of the Wall, at an outpost abandoned for centuries.
Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
The walls here were dilapidated, the harbor sealed by thick ice.
But for Lynn's necromantic army, these were not problems.
He just moved a thought.
Tens of thousands of wights, like the most diligent worker ants, began using their stiff claws and teeth to dig ice, move stones, and repair the walls.
Lynn planned to make this the temporary base for his undead legion.
This was closest to the Bay of Seals; he could attack Braavos to the east, or march south to King's Landing.
He wanted to establish a true "King in the North" stronghold here.
A terrifying fortress hidden at the end of the world, known to no one.
Myranda stood on the ruined wall, looking at the "construction site" below that was in full swing yet dead silent, feeling as if she were in an absurd dream.
These monsters that once terrified the entire North were now the most obedient, efficient laborers under her master's hand.
They knew no fatigue, feared no death, had no complaints.
She had no doubt that with one order from Lynn, they could turn this Eastwatch, abandoned for centuries, into a fortress stronger than the Red Keep in King's Landing within three days.
After settling things, Lynn also returned to his Dragonstone.
Now that the affairs of the North had come to a close, it was time to go to Essos to see Daenerys.
He planned to rest for a month or two first.
Even an iron man needed rest.
He could also complete the "canning" production during this time, and use Greensight to check for any movements in King's Landing.
If those people could be stable, then he could set off for Essos.
Slaver's Bay there was not yet liberated, waiting for a dragon to solve it.
Just then, the sound of wings flapping came from the distant sky.
Myranda looked up alertly, only to find it was just a seemingly ordinary crow.
Lynn raised his eyelids.
The crow's body suddenly stiffened, as if grabbed by an invisible giant hand, falling involuntarily toward Lynn.
Lynn reached out, accurately catching the shivering crow in his palm.
He untied a small parchment scroll from the crow's leg.
Unrolling the scroll, there were only a few lines.
The handwriting was elegant, carrying a unique fragrance.
[Lord Lynn, for your eyes only:]
[The Rose of Highgarden is coming to the North.]
[She wants to see you.]
[Beware the rose's thorns, but beware the gardener's shears even more.]
[Your loyal, Lianna.]
Lianna?
Lynn's eyebrow raised slightly.
This little pawn he planted beside Joffrey was becoming more and more capable.
The Rose of Highgarden... Margaery Tyrell.
That ambitious, skillful woman.
What was she coming to the North for?
A playful arc curled on Lynn's lips.
Interesting.
He just finished a war, and someone in the south couldn't wait to stick their face out.
The gardener's shears must refer to that calculating "Queen of Thorns," Lady Olenna.
What game were this old and young pair playing?
Lynn rubbed the parchment in his hand, turning it to dust instantly.
He raised his head, casting his gaze toward the distant south.
He seemed to see a magnificent ship flying the banner of a golden rose, riding the wind and waves, sailing toward White Harbor.
Fine.
Since you want to play, I'll play with you properly.
It just so happened he had long wanted to see how lovely this famous Rose of Highgarden really was...