Chapter 892 — Face to Face

Hearing Gao Song's words, Hedy immediately wore an expression of nervous worry: "Ancestor, this could be dangerous."

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing—and this isn't the first time I've dealt with something like this," Gao Yang nodded to Hedy. "There are some things I must confirm."

Seeing the calm yet indisputable look in her ancestor's eyes, Hedy could only swallow the words in her heart and take a step back.

Kamael, meanwhile, nodded to Gao Yan, rose, and drifted over to a control console beside the isolation wall, where he began channeling magic into the ancient runes.

Verodai, holding the platinum-white scepter, regarded Gao Yang with calm, deep eyes: "Would you mind telling us exactly what it is you want to confirm?"

"Three thousand years ago, the White Star fell, and the God of Nature vanished from the divine seat. Around the same period, a meteor shower struck the northern reaches of the Gondor Empire at Vipranton, and a great mass of 'fragments from beyond the sky' crashed down upon the earth... Yet for all these years, no one has connected these two events, because scholars lack the crucial evidence, and they know nothing of the secrets between the gods and the starry sky," Gao Yang said, looking up beyond the barrier, unhurried. "Seven hundred years ago, I obtained one of the Vipranton 'meteorites.' It became what is now widely known as the Guardian's Shield... In the course of communing with this 'starry legacy,' I glimpsed certain memories from ancient times.

"The fall of the God of Nature was connected to an impact that occurred outside the planet. The Vipranton meteor shower, and the wreckage around the Giant Deer Amon, are all products of that impact—and the most suspicious part... is that the entire collision was deliberately caused by Amon. This god... committed suicide."

As Gao Yang's words fell, even the ever-calm and detached Verodai's eyes went wide in an instant; Amber and Hedy gasped aloud. Then, from beyond the isolation wall, came Kamael's voice: "The barrier can be crossed now, Your Majesty."

"Wait here," Gao Lan said, then strode toward the slowly rippling energy barrier.

After passing through that nearly transparent energy barrier, the chaos, oppression, and eeriness unique to the Shadow Realm surged in from every direction. Gao Yang stepped out of the Defiance Fortress's solid, ancient corridor and onto that shattered land, formed from countless floating boulders linked together. A thousand years ago, its builders had laid a path across these boulders—using alloy frames, chains, and gangways—leading to the corpse of the Giant Deer Amon, and Gao Yang walked along this path, unhurried, toward the front.

The corpse of the God of Nature floated like a hill wreathed in white light at the far end of his vision.

Churning "clouds" of chaos shrouded this gloomy world; sinister, pitch-black shadows like lightning darted among the clouds. Enormous boulders, freed from the bonds of gravity, tumbled and drifted at the edges of this shattered land and in the skies even farther away. Only the space around the Giant Deer Amon—perhaps influenced by residual divine power, or perhaps because the ancient systems of the Defiance Fortress still functioned—maintained its basic stability, those floating boulders and the entire "courtyard" environment included.

Gao Yang came to within a few meters of the God of Nature—given the latter's immense size, that white-glowing body now stood before him like a wall. He tilted his head back, gazing at the lowered head of the Giant Deer Amon. That lifeless head was bound round with a great mass of chains, and between its flesh and blood were embedded and pierced unknown metals. The chains had been left by the people of Gondor; the unknown metals... were likely remnants of the firmament, and fragments of some kind of space warship.

"Now I'm curious..." Gao Yang murmured, as if to himself, sizing up the giant deer's head. "Are you really dead?"

As expected, the Giant Deer Amon made no response.

Gao Song paused, then shook his head: "I don't know your purpose, nor what plan you had back then. But if you think the time is right, we can talk now—if there's anything you want to discuss with me."

The divine corpse before him still lay quietly there, yet Gao Yang did not mind. He merely wore a faint smile, recalling as he spoke unhurriedly: "Thinking back now, I once heard a mysterious voice within the Defiance Fortress. That voice once asked me whether I was ready... I once took it for a hallucination, but now it seems I did not mishear."

"So quiet now?" After a moment of silence, Gao Yang lifted his head and looked at the Giant Deer Amon's tightly shut eyes, speaking as if casually. "But that collision of yours back then made quite a 'racket.' The space station that once sat above the equator—the debris from its explosion even fell into the northern temperate zone."

The slow-flowing white light shrouding the Giant Deer Amon's body suddenly stilled for an instant, at a magnitude imperceptible to the naked eye—and then, without warning, those eyes that had always been tightly closed slowly opened.

A pair of enormous eyes, as if condensed from pure light, gazed quietly at Gao Yang—and they were so vast that Hedy and the others, still behind the safety barrier in the distance, could see it clearly as well. Amber nearly leaped from her skin on the spot; Verodai instantly raised the platinum-white scepter in his hand. Yet just before they could act and sound the alarm, Gao Yang—his back to them—suddenly raised a hand and waved once, signaling them to hold still.

With his back to the Defiance Fortress, Gao Yang could not see how Hedy and the others were faring, but he could guess that all of them must have been startled. So he gave the signal at once, to set the others' minds at ease for the time being.

Only then did he meet the Giant Deer Amon's gaze and shrug: "You gave me a fright."

"You gave me a fright." An ethereal, holy voice, as if passing directly into the soul, also sounded in Gao Yang's mind.

The voice came so perfectly in sync that for a moment Gao Cen was almost unsure whether the God of Nature was expressing sentiment or simply parroting him back—and the next second he felt considerable admiration for himself, because to have such a flippant thought surface in his mind at a time like this was really quite an achievement.

Having used that flippant thought to fend off the momentary tension and keep a calm, composed front, Gao Yang finally nodded: "So you were feigning death after all—the fall of the God of Nature was a deception."

"No, the fall of the God of Nature was no deception," the ethereal voice echoed in Gao Yang's mind—a rather eerie sight, for the Giant Deer Amon's entire body remained firmly bound in place, and even with its eyes open it merely gazed quietly at Gao Yang; only its voice kept coming, giving Gao Yang the feeling of conversing with a ghost lodged within a corpse. "The God of Nature is dead. All that lies here is Amon."

Gao Shao frowned at once: "What does that mean?"

Amon did not answer at once. Instead, gazing quietly at Gao Yang, it asked: "How do you know about the space station and that impact?"

"We all have our secrets—and my source of information should be the least important of them all," Gao Dai said. "What matters is that I already know these things, and that I am standing here."

"...You cannot be an ordinary human," Amon said suddenly, after a few seconds of silence.

Gao Yang raised an eyebrow: "Why do you say that?"

"An ordinary human could not stand before me as you do—even in my present state, an ordinary mortal standing this close without protection could not remain unharmed," Amon said. "And an ordinary person would not have your resolve, nor your lack of both reverence and fear toward a god."

"...I'll admit, I may be a little bit special," Gao Yang nodded frankly. "But does that matter?"