Chapter 1263 — Behind the Veil

The truth, hidden in the crevices of the real world, invisible to the naked eye.

When Gao You saw those dancing shadows, his first reaction was not actually so profound—he simply assumed it was some kind of optical concealment, some illusion masking certain realities within the tower. But that simple thought lasted less than a tenth of a second before he abruptly realized something—

Of the three people present, he himself was a Legendary Knight, Mo Jin was a Legendary Mage, and Amber, though not strong in combat, was a suspected Shadow God-Chosen—a "Shadow Grandmaster" capable of stealing authority from the Night Lady's divine realm. What caliber of optical concealment or illusion spell could possibly fool all three of them at once?!

This was no optical illusion. At the very least, a power of the Miracle Domain was entrenched here! Certain research findings from the Theological Council and knowledge he had gained from several retired deities rapidly surfaced in Gao Yang's mind, and he immediately concluded that something capable of interfering with reality itself was concealing the true state of this tower.

Amber reacted in an instant, snapping her head up to look at the sky above. Her eyes did not, like the protagonists of some bard's tale, suddenly "flash with insight" and pierce through those hidden veils—yet some vague intuition still rose from the depths of her heart. Along with the rapid churning of her thoughts, she unconsciously raised both hands, hesitating over whether she should summon powers that might point toward the gods.

This was the Tower of the Countercurrent Tide. Recklessly invoking power beyond the mortal domain might provoke unexpected changes.

But wasn't the current situation itself already an unexpected change?

Amber steeled herself in an instant, both hands sweeping high. An invisible gale instantly swept through the center of the hall, and within that swift gray-white current, shadow dust materialized out of thin air, caught up by the wind and spreading wildly throughout the entire hall.

Gao Yang watched those abruptly appearing and rapidly expanding shadow dust motes, then turned to Amber in sheer astonishment. "Since when did this ability of yours become so powerful?"

"I... I don't know either..." Amber looked rather bewildered herself, frantically trying to control the shadow dust flying everywhere as she spoke rapidly. "I just wanted to summon a bit of dust up there to see if its 'infectious' nature could break through those invisible things... I have no idea why so much suddenly came out!"

As she spoke, Amber had already swiftly closed the "channel" for summoning shadow dust, but the dust that had already poured out still formed a massive gray-white "dust storm" above the hall. She did her utmost to control its flow, guiding it to spiral through the upper reaches of the hall. Gao Yang, meanwhile, had his eyes wide open, watching those gray-white streams rampage through the air above—and in the next second, he and Mo Jin both drew a sharp breath.

The gray-white wind-driven sand swept across the hall's ceiling, slicing through those hidden "veils" like a brutal, unreasonable blade storm. The ceiling and surrounding areas, which had previously appeared perfectly normal, rapidly revealed their true appearance. Large patches of severe corrosion, contamination, and even scars left by some parasitic structure piercing through were laid bare before the three of them. Black marks spread from the highest point of the wall all the way to the center of the ceiling, and many withered, dead things—impossible to tell whether animal or plant—clung to and coiled around the transport passage above. The traces of corruption were shocking to behold—but what was even more shocking was something else entirely:

A massive fissure, running through the entire ceiling of the hall.

The fissure was not imprinted on the walls or ceiling of the hall, but floated abruptly in midair, as though space itself had opened a wound. Its two ends pierced through the tower's outer walls without damaging their structure, passing through like a phantom. Its top touched the ceiling of the hall, while its bottom presented a crooked, jagged, hideous shape!

And deep within that hideous, enormous fissure, azure radiance could be seen slowly surging like rippling water. Though no power could be felt leaking from it, merely seeing that bright, pure radiance made Gao Yang feel as though he could sense how saturated with pure and powerful magical energy the "world" on the other side of the fissure must be.

The shadow dust began to gradually recede, and the invisible wind within the hall slowly subsided as well. Yet the destroyed "veils" did not regenerate—the unsettling true scene revealed on the hall's ceiling remained clearly visible to all. Those traces of erosion and the massive fissure spanning the space above occupied nearly a third of the hall's height, but below them... the rest of the hall's interior remained in a normal state.

Clearly, the area near the ceiling was exactly where "something" had once been entrenched.

Amber tilted her head back, her eyes slowly widening. After standing dumbstruck for who knew how long, this slow-on-the-uptake shadow assault goose finally squeezed a cry from her throat: "Oh ma... Mother of—this is huge!!"

"What is that thing?!" Mo Jin's gaze, however, had landed on the fissure brimming with blue radiance. He had never seen anything like it, but his instincts as a mage made him sense something from it. "That fissure..."

"...The deep-blue leyline network, probably," Gao Yang's unusually grave voice came from beside him. "It's my first time seeing it too, but I don't think I'm wrong."

"The deep-blue leyline network?" A fresh layer of confusion surfaced on Mo Jin's face. "And what is that?"

"It's complicated to explain. You can think of it as the energy circulation system inside this planet—it overlaps with the material world like the planet's shadow, running through all the planar layers of our world. And it has an 'upwelling source' exposed to the real world—you should be somewhat familiar with this one... it was once called the Deep Blue Well," Gao Yang said slowly, his voice low and grave. He sighed faintly at the end. "Looks like we're in trouble..."

As if to prove the "trouble" Gao Yang had spoken of, no sooner had his words fallen than the magic-net terminal at Amber's waist suddenly emitted a series of urgent buzzing sounds. The moment the communication connected, Gao Yang heard Byron's voice ring out from the other end: "Your Majesty, has something happened on your end?"

"We're safe, but we've discovered some unsettling things," Gao Yang said in a low voice, then immediately frowned. "How did you know? What's happening on your end?"

As he spoke, he vaguely heard some commotion from the other side of the communication device—Metzen's and Noretta's voices mixed in, along with the ruckus of the wyrmlings. Many people seemed to be scrambling about.

"The two wyrmlings suddenly started causing a huge fuss just now," before Byron could speak, Asha'lena's voice cut in abruptly from the other end. "They were screaming toward the tower like they'd gone mad, flapping desperately as if they wanted to fly over there. It took us a great deal of effort to barely hold them back, but they're still carrying on..."

The wyrmlings suddenly causing a fuss?