Chapter 1242 — The Freebie

Countless conjectures surfaced in Gao Yang's mind all at once—about the sentinel mentioned in the Book of Vild, about that faintly unsettling warning—yet no matter how he reasoned them through, every hypothesis ultimately lacked a crucial, decisive thread of evidence; in the end, all his deliberation amounted to nothing more than spinning his own head in circles.

"Vild said he knew nothing about this 'sentinel'?" Once roused from his brooding, Gao Yang could not help turning to Amber and confirming it one more time.

"That's what he said," Amber nodded. "In fact, he doesn't even know what's written in his own 'book.' If I hadn't suddenly taken it into my head to open it and have a look, he wouldn't have realized he could be opened at all—I'd say there's definitely something wrong with his mental state too. Like Maggie mentioned, Mojin's memories have plenty of gaps, and now it looks like Mojin probably suffers from something similar."

"...Do you think the thing that split Mojin Vild might be that 'sentinel'?" Gao Yang thought for a moment, then spoke up abruptly. "Let's suppose the sentinel is some dangerous entity of tremendous power we don't yet understand, and Mojin Vild brushed against it by sheer mischance during one of his adventures. That caused his split, and left in Vild's memory a powerful impression: 'Beware the sentinel.' But later, for reasons unknown, that portion of his memory vanished, leaving only a warning in the book—one that even he himself does not understand..."

Amber nodded along as she listened, and the moment he finished she said, "You know what, I was guessing the same thing... Plenty of stories are written that way, aren't they? Adventurers run into an ancient evil spirit, pay a terrible price, and leave behind a message warning those who come after—while losing their own memories in the process. I hear playwrights make the protagonist lose his memory whenever they can't write their way out of a plot corner..."

At the first half of Amber's sentence, Gao Yang felt rather comforted—it was genuinely gratifying, he thought, that the Scourge of All Creation's view aligned with his own—but then came the second half, and he immediately felt like a fool for having trusted Amber's mouth at all. He shook his head, struggled to shake off the interference this shadow-assault goose had inflicted on his train of thought, and his expression turned serious again. "Be that as it may, since you received that warning inside the shadow divine realm, this matter has to be taken seriously. I'll have Hedy arrange people to comb through every kind of text and see whether we can turn up any clues about the sentinel... And I'll also need to sound out Enya. As the oldest deity in this world, She surely knows more than you or I..."

Hearing Gao Song's arrangements, Amber wore a thoughtful look and suddenly muttered to herself, "Actually, there's one thing I'm quite curious about... Was that warning in the 'book' really written for us? Or rather... was it written only for us?"

Gao Yang's brow furrowed at once. "What do you mean by that?"

"My entering the shadow divine realm was a complete accident—and afterward meeting Vild, opening that book, and seeing the warning inside, that was even more unforeseeable. Under normal circumstances, how would any mortal end up in a divine realm that's been cut off from the mortal world for over a million years, and open a book that looks off from the very first glance? So... was the warning recorded in that book really meant for mortals to read?"

Amber's sudden question left Gao Yang dumbstruck as well, and only then did he realize there really was a blind spot in their thinking—the warning had been seen by Amber only through coincidence, and the warning itself never specified whom it was addressed to, yet he and Amber, driven by sheer mental inertia, had instinctively assumed it was written for mortals... Was that judgment accurate?

Considering that the "book" filled with warnings had been lying in the Lady of Night's divine realm all along, Gao Yang suddenly felt that the possible truth behind this matter was all the more chilling.

And as more unsettling possibilities suddenly churned up in his mind, his attention could not help but settle on Amber, who had just been through such an extraordinary experience. "Speaking of your entering the shadow divine realm... that must have shaken you quite a bit, hasn't it?"

"Huh?" Amber seemed not to have expected Gao Yang to suddenly steer the topic toward her, and she blanked for a moment; only two or three seconds later did she react. "Are you... worried about me?"

"Obviously. You've been shouting that you're the Shadow Chosen for years now, and you've always called yourself quite the devout one in ordinary times—then suddenly you take a stroll through the shadow divine realm... You didn't meet the Lady of Night Herself face to face, granted, but is your mental state really all right?" Gao Song's gaze rested on Amber; his tone carried the same teasing as always, but deep in his eyes there was genuine concern. "Whether or not you really are the Shadow Chosen, an experience like that is no small matter for a believer..."

Amber blinked her eyes. In the past, at a moment like this she would have immediately rushed to rebut Gao Yang's doubts about her being the Shadow Chosen and her devout attitude, but this time, contrary to custom, she did not hurry to speak. Instead she quietly thought for a few seconds, and in those amber-colored eyes there seemed to turn an exceedingly grave expression—and that attitude seemed only to confirm Gao Song's worry: this fellow who called herself the Shadow Chosen really had taken a stroll through the shadow divine realm, and the shock had been considerable.

But just as Gao Yang could not help wanting to say something more, Amber suddenly lifted her head, and a smile appeared on her face—pure, warm, and bright, the kind that rarely ever showed there.

"I'm not torn up about it anymore."

"Huh?" Gao Cen didn't react for a moment. "You're not torn up about it anymore?"

"I really was torn up about it. Don't let my carefree manner fool you—in private there's plenty I agonize over. But this time, actually going to the Lady of Night's divine realm... I discovered something, something I never expected," Amber said with a smile, and for some reason an atmosphere of effortless relief hung about her, a breath that had never appeared on her before. "I discovered... that what my faith points toward may not be the Lady of Night at all..."

Gao Yang had never imagined he would hear this, and he was struck dumb. "What your faith points toward isn't the Lady of Night?"

"That's right, it isn't Her. I don't know how to explain this... because according to the research of the Divine Authority Council, a mortal's faith should never show this kind of 'deviation.' But given how extremely peculiar the state of faith in the shadow domain is, maybe I've simply run into a low-probability event," Amber exhaled, speaking as she went. "I sensed Her presence in the Lady of Night's divine realm, and it felt completely different from the voice I once 'heard.' I suspect... that the 'Goddess of Shadow' I have believed in all along is someone else—a high-ranking, unimaginable existence of whom we know nothing."

Gao Yang froze, staring at Amber, who was still smiling; after a long while he could not help glaring as he broke the silence. "And you can still smile about this? Doesn't this make it even more serious?! If your faith pointed to the Lady of Night, at least we'd know who's been answering your prayers. Now you're telling me you believe in some existence whose nature you don't even know—if you told Kamael this, he'd light up half the city on the spot, do you believe that?"