"Caw—caw!" The crow, formally named Fu Jin but commonly called A-Fu, let out a cry at the bat spirit.
The bat spirit stared at the crow with its compound eyes for a moment, then replied with a rising and falling cadence.
"Your Majesty, it is surprised to encounter a Child of the Forest here. It also questions you, asking why you helped the gorilla attack it."
"Questions me?"
Dany sneered. "What is it that it thinks it can question me? And why does it even know the Children of the Forest? Also, why would the gorilla target it?"
A moment later, A-Fu said, "Before It ascended into a glorious and immortal deity, It once traveled across the Prime Material Plane.
It crossed the Dorn Arm, reached the Land of the Setting Sun, and interacted with the sincere and kind Children of the Forest.
The hateful chimpanzee tried to seize Its cave. Before today, they had already fought many times."
Dany frowned. Why was A-Fu so lacking in awareness, siding so openly with outsiders?
"A-Fu, mind your tone and your stance."
A-Fu blinked and said, "I'm only translating the original Source Tongue truthfully."
"Forget it."
Dany sighed helplessly. "Did it say the Prime Material Plane?"
"Of course."
"Isn't this the Prime Material Plane?"
"I'm not sure. Let me ask."
After exchanging a few brief words in the Source Tongue with the bat spirit, the crow exclaimed, "It says only a very small part of the Sothros continent belongs to the Prime Material Plane. The rest—boundless and immeasurable—are all Otherworlds that fell as the world declined."
Before Dany could ask, A-Fu quickly explained, "This great Otherworld Deity's theory is quite novel; I've never heard anything like it.
It says many subsidiary small worlds surround the Prime Material World, just like countless stars surround the sun.
Unfortunately, since the birth of the world, the Prime Material World has been descending.
The outer Otherworlds lost their foundation and collapsed into star-like fragments, falling toward the Prime Material Plane, eventually forming this Sothros continent with its divergent laws."
"You heard Mother Goddess mention Otherworlds…" Dany suddenly stopped.
Wasn't the Cold God the fusion of an Other God and the Black Gate God?
Back then, the Three-Eyed Crow described the Other God as being outside the world, yet still belonging to it.
It did sound somewhat similar to the bat spirit's explanation.
If there really were star-like Otherworlds orbiting the main world, then long ago, the world of A Song of Ice and Fire must have been quite high-level—not necessarily in power, but certainly in potential.
Who knew whether its true gods were simply incompetent, or if something else went wrong? A promising seedling somehow grew into a rotten fruit—the world kept declining, like raising turtles in a pot, sinking deeper until it was on the verge of entering a true age of declining magic.
"Which parts belong to the Prime Material Plane, and which are fallen Otherworlds?" Dany asked.
After inquiring, A-Fu said, "It says you will understand once you walk through the land yourself. Even though Otherworlds have fallen into the Prime Material Plane, one can still sense subtle differences in their laws by feeling the Sea of Magic."
Dany nodded gently. That was indeed true.
"Ask it this: what race was it originally, and why did it end up like this?"
"It was once human, with milky-white skin, long green hair, slender limbs, and a beauty that could outshine the sun. It says that in her youth, even you would have seemed like a morning glory before a lily."
Dany's smile turned cold. "She's looking for death."
A-Fu hurried to explain, "Your Majesty, it means no offense. In the grammar of the Source Tongue, this is simply praise for one's own appearance.
But the Common Tongue contains very strong notions of right and wrong—like you humans, who habitually judge your own kind in terms of good and bad. That caused an issue in my translation."
Dany frowned as she tried to understand, still puzzled, but she nodded and let the matter go.
"Continue. What is her name?"
"Her name is 'The Third Rhyme of the Butterfly's Dance Among Emerald Forests and Blossoming Seas of Color—'"
"What?" Dany almost made a dumbfounded face.
"That's how the Source Tongue is," A-Fu said.
Dany sighed. Her violet eyes darkened with mist, and a string of dreamy black bubbles emerged from her pupils, drifting before her.
"Caw." Another large crow formed from the illusory bubbles and landed on her empty left shoulder.
"Big Fog, you translate. A-Fu, tell her."
"Your Majesty, the fairy's name is Caiyi. She was born 500,000 years ago. Her race had the skin of the Qohorik milk-folk, the refined beauty of the Valyrians, the green hair of the Tyroshi, and the tall, strong build of the Andals.
By human standards, they were a very elegant and noble race.
However, humans cannot speak the Source Tongue, so like the Children of the Forest, she belongs to an ancient lineage.
Long before Caiyi was born, her Otherworld had already fallen.
This canyon and the cave beyond it were the last sanctuary of her people.
She became what she is now because, during her travels through the Prime Material Plane, she learned some blood magic.
She needed great power to protect her people, and thus ended up like this."
Dany nodded in satisfaction. Big Fog's translations were indeed better than A-Fu's.
"This fairy is clearly not one of the Painted Men. How did she become their ancestral deity?" she asked.
"Caw!" Big Fog cried toward the bat spirit.
The old woman inside the shell-like head suddenly twisted into a terrifying grimace. Her previously melodic Source Tongue turned from honeyed song into a venom-dripping curse.
Big Fog translated, "The Painted Men are vermin on the Sothros continent. They devoured nearly every lost race that came from Otherworlds.
Her people were also destroyed by the Painted Men, so she seeks revenge.
For hundreds of thousands of years, she has constantly driven the Painted Men within the canyon to fight those nearby.
Within several hundred miles, there were once Painted tribes numbering over ten thousand. Now, only this tiny village of a few hundred remains.
If not for her needing their faith to sustain her life, she would have already exterminated them all."
A vengeance that lasted hundreds of thousands of years only managed to wipe out the wildlings within a few hundred miles. That efficiency…
Dany wanted to complain, then remembered that the striped people lived in more than one place. Perhaps over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, other tribes from different regions had continually migrated into this area.
"Enough," Dany waved at the great ape. "Let it go."
She badly needed divinity and ectoplasm to raise her dragons, that was true, but she had not abandoned her own principles or her code of conduct.
Evil gods and demons should certainly be eradicated on sight. But this bat spirit was clearly a pitiful creature. It had only harmed the wildlings nearby and had no intention of provoking anyone else.
And this conflict had been started by Kong in the first place.
"Roar—" Kong shook his head forcefully in refusal.
"You tried to seize someone else's territory. And you think you're in the right?"
Dany shouted angrily and pinched Kong's "head."
"Aw—" The great ape instantly flung the bat spirit aside, then fell to the ground, rolling and howling.
Once freed, the bat spirit immediately bowed to Dany and muttered words of gratitude.
"Ho ho—" After recovering, Kong stood up. He first whimpered pitifully at Dany, then roared angrily at the bat spirit before striding toward the stone cave behind them.
Dany thought the brute planned to forcefully occupy the creature's home and refuse to leave, so she prepared to discipline him again.
Sensing her intention, Kong stopped at the cave entrance and waved at Dany, howling nonstop.
"What's in the cave?" Dany asked, puzzled.
"Ho ho!" Kong grew even more frantic, stomping as he shouted at her.
Dany glanced at the bat spirit's wrinkled, unreadable face and said, "Afu, go take a look inside."
As soon as she spoke, Dahei's danger sense suddenly spiked. Dany, connected to his dragon soul, noticed at once. But before she could react, the clam-like shell on the bat spirit's neck snapped open, revealing its full naked body.
BOOM!
A blast erupted from inside the shell.
Milky-white mist surged out with the air current, sweeping rapidly toward Dany and Dahei.
"Roar—" Dahei was no pushover. Almost at the exact moment of the mutation, he shot a column of dragonfire like a water jet straight at the bat spirit.
The dragonfire burned a path through the white mist and struck directly into the open shell on the bat spirit's neck.
Dany instinctively unleashed a soul-destroying strike in her four-fold dragon-soul state. "You—"
She had only gotten halfway through the words "You dare" when the white mist enveloped her.
The soul-destroying strike had taken effect, but her attack was aimed at the bat spirit, forming a cone-shaped soul shockwave. Within the cone, every "particle" of the white mist detonated and was annihilated.
Unfortunately, the mist covered a wide area. On Dany's left and right, above and below, and behind her, fog rolled in just like the swarm of vampire bats from before.
As soon as the mist touched her skin, Dany sensed something wrong. Something was forcing its way into her skin, burrowing into her muscles and blood vessels, spreading rapidly throughout her body.
Her strength and blood drained quickly, and her mind began to blur.
"What the hell is this?" Dany was startled but not panicked. The next moment, her purple eyes flashed red, and blazing flames erupted from within her, burning every cell of her body and boiling every drop of blood in her veins.
At the same time, she pulled Dahei into her mindscape. In her five-fold dragon-soul state, she unleashed a soul-calming strike on her own body.
The soulwave flowed like clear water, washing over her soul and vessel.
The Dragon Queen became like a light bulb that had suddenly been switched on, and its power kept rising. Her body shone with golden-red light from the inside out, and flames spurted from her seven orifices.
"Caw caw caw!" The two ravens flapped desperately as they fled.
"Kill it!" Reuniting Dahei's soul with his body, Dany gave the furious order.
Struck head-on by her soul-destroying strike and blasted by Dahei's dragonfire, the bat spirit—who had shot into the sky like a rocket—was now engulfed in flames, shaking as it plummeted.
"Roar—boom boom boom!"
Dahei bellowed and lunged forward, clamping his jaws onto the bat spirit's shell-covered head. His smith-red dragonfire lit the entire canyon with a ghastly glow.
"Screeeee—"
The bat spirit's head was pinned, but its burning body and wings thrashed wildly as a soul-rending shriek rose from within it.
But soon the sound weakened and faded away, leaving only the stench of charred flesh and the Dragon Queen's simmering rage filling the canyon floor.
"Caw caw, Your Majesty, save me…"
"Caw caw, Your Majesty, it hurts so much!"
The two ravens had also been affected. Their feathers fell off like dying morning-glory vines sprayed with herbicide, revealing rotten, blood-colored skin as they tumbled onto the wall.
"Sigh… no saving you. Abandon the raven bodies." Dany sat cross-legged on the dragon's back, helpless.
Her own condition was poor. The flames had burned her underclothes, inner lining, and outer robe, leaving her exposed and covered in soot, looking quite miserable.
Worse still, the bat spirit's breath carried parasites, and the miasma itself was laced with various viruses.
She really should have followed Fahai's example and destroyed every monster on sight.
But she remembered that the True Tongue could not lie. How had the bat spirit managed to deceive her using the True Tongue?
(End of chapter)
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