"Idiot, I am bang!"
The monster let out an enraged roar, but before it could finish speaking, Big Black's tail lashed out like lightning once again, striking its bull head.
Dany immediately followed up with a rapid series of "Soul-Extinguishing Slashes," beating the monster until it swayed unsteadily, unable to speak.
"Quick, come and hold the demon down!" Richard waved to his men.
With a rush, six Flaming Red Heart Knights charged forward together.
"For glory! For R'hllor! (For the Lord of Light, for glory!)"
Shouting their slogans, the Flaming Red Heart Knights raised their round shields and pressed the monster down tightly so that it could not move. Then Sir Richard grinned viciously and once again drove his sword in.
"Ao—boom!"
As expected, the Valyrian steel sword was far more effective than an ordinary iron blade. The bull-headed monster let out a piercing howl, then its divine power erupted once more. A violent shockwave instantly blasted the seven Flaming Red Heart Knights pressing it down into the air.
"Blasphemy!" It threw back its head and roared in fury. A ring of black shadow, like a curtain of water, spread around its body. The terrifying divine power of shadow could not be suppressed even by Dany's Soul-Extinguishing Slash.
But Dany was not afraid of its evil magic.
With the authority of the Black Holy Mother upon her, she entered the Dragon Spirit state.
The next moment, boundless milky-white holy light radiated from Dany's body, spreading more than twenty meters. Nearby Night's Watchmen and Flaming Red Heart Knights suddenly felt a cool yet warm current flow through their pores and into their bodies, washing away fatigue, repairing wounds, clearing their minds, and strengthening their will.
For ordinary humans, large-scale holy healing was a positive buff, but when it fell upon the shadows surrounding the bull monster, it produced the violent sound of oil boiling in a blazing fire.
There was no doubt that the bull monster's true body was stronger than both the Dragon Queen and Big Black. The level of its divine power was higher, and its total divine power might not even be less than that of the Seven Gods. However, at this moment, the bull monster was merely an avatar of a shadow demon.
"Gods bless us!" Dany shouted. "Destroy the Cold God's servant!"
"The Seven bless us!" Big Bear, Garth, and the Unsullied shouted as they charged forward.
"The Dragon God bless us!" the centaur Quelo cried.
"The Red God bless us!" Sir Richard and the six Flaming Red Heart Knights were fired with emotion, howling as they leapt into the fray.
Once again, the bull monster's sharp claws carved deep marks into the surfaces of the steel shields. Yet with the shields pressed against its body and hundreds of people exerting force together, it could not move even an inch.
Once again, Sir Richard raised his demonic sword with a savage grin.
Once again, the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster let out a shrill wail.
This time, the cry was clearly much weaker than before. Even as it struggled with all its might, it could not break free from the crushing restraint of several hundred burly men.
"Hahaha, for the Lord of Light!" Sir Richard rode atop the scorpion tail, stabbing again and again. With every thrust, he laughed wildly and shouted, "For glory! For R'hllor!"
At last, the bull-headed serpent monster was completely drained.
It lay weakly in a pool of blood, unable to struggle. The shield-bearers stood up and withdrew. It could not rise again, allowing the Flaming Red Heart Knights to stab it to their hearts' content, while the Night's Watchmen happily swung their swords to hack at it.
Both of its eyes had been stabbed blind, and its nostrils, mouth, and ears had all been pierced through by Valyrian steel. As its divine power was exhausted, a Night's Watchman swung a dragon-tooth blade with all his strength and, for the first time, shattered the round scales.
"Ah, the monster's scales are broken!" he shouted in delight, then hacked again with force, cutting through the flesh.
In a short while, the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster was hacked into a bloody mess, like a basin of beef being prepared for meatballs.
However, with more than four hundred people taking turns hacking, all of them panting with exhaustion, the actual damage dealt was far inferior to the Flaming Red Heart Knights' blazing, sun-piercing strikes.
Its belly was completely emptied.
"All right, everyone step back. Let me burn the monster to ashes!"
Before the monster completely died, the Dragon Queen came over to clean up the battlefield.
"It's not completely dead yet." Richard wiped the hot sweat from his forehead and said unhappily, "I still want to cut off its head and personally end the monster's life."
"The monster was killed by you. All the honor goes to you, to all of you. I don't want any of it. It was you who saved me from the monster," the Dragon Queen said generously.
"Th-this doesn't seem quite right. Your Majesty also contributed greatly."
Hearing the Dragon Queen say this, an embarrassed expression appeared on Richard's pockmarked face instead.
Dany looked around at the incomplete corpses of fallen soldiers scattered across the snow and sighed. "There's nothing wrong with it. If you hadn't discovered the monster's weak point, who knows how many more people would have died."
Although the battle process was short and the bull monster was repeatedly restrained, its strength was too great, its claws too sharp, and it used evil sorcery one after another. In just the few breaths when it briefly lost control earlier, four or five dozen Night's Watchmen had already died.
If not for Dany's battlefield control, suppressing the monster's magic and mobility, the four or five hundred Night's Watchmen who had just crawled out of the tunnel here would not have been enough for it to slaughter.
In a one-on-one fight, even Dany would likely not have been its opponent, unless she could, like Sir Richard, keenly seize upon the monster's vulnerability.
"Your Majesty, what exactly is this monster?" Ulma asked in confusion.
As soon as he spoke, the soldiers around them who were sitting on the ground catching their breath all raised their heads, their curious gazes falling on the Dragon Queen.
"That is an evil god from the Land of Eternal Winter, a servant of the Cold God!" Whether or not the bull-headed monster was the shadow demon R'hllor, Dany immediately defined its identity.
This was the common enemy of all humanity, not a brutal battle that occurred because of me.
Right here, just two days ago, more than a dozen demon gods' projections or avatars had fought here over the Gate God's divine kingdom.
Then the Gate God opened a spatial gate, and all the demon gods knew that she had inherited its legacy.
Therefore, Dany guessed that the bull-headed monster must have been one of those dozen demon gods from that time.
Taking into account that He was immune to dragonfire and far surpassed her in the control of flame, there was only one possible candidate left: R'hllor.
Moreover, that bastard had just triggered a "bootleg apocalypse" in Oros, with the sole purpose of killing her.
His method of fighting at Eastwatch was also painfully obvious. He disguised Himself as a member of the Night's Watch hiding within the wormways, waited for her to come and rescue them, and then launched a sudden ambush to take her down.
It was even possible that yesterday, when Big Black roared across the land to warn those in the wormways, R'hllor was listening nearby and decided then to parasitize the body of a Night's Watchman within the tunnels.
"This is an evil god known as a 'Skin-Stealer.' It hid inside the body of Ser Shufu, devouring his soul, bones, and flesh, leaving behind only a human skin to wear."
"Hiss, so it was a Skin-Stealer. No wonder it's so terrifying!"
"An evil god, an evil god!"
"The long night is endless, danger lurks everywhere. With evil gods descending upon the world, may the Lord of Light protect us!"
Dany spoke utter nonsense with a straight face, yet everyone believed her. After all, the bull-headed monster had indeed crawled out of Shufu's body. Everyone had seen it with their own eyes.
"This kind of Skin-Stealer is almost impossible to guard against!" Big Bear said anxiously.
"Indeed. This time, we owe it to Onis·Kateblack for discovering Shufu's abnormality." Dany glanced around and asked curiously, "Where is Onis?"
"He's dead! Burned into meat slurry by the servants of the Cold God!" a Night's Watchman shouted back.
"Alas, may the Father forgive his sins in life, and may the Mother guide his soul to the heavens." Dany's face was full of compassion, and the kind lie flowed effortlessly from her lips.
"Your Majesty Daenerys, how does this servant of the Cold God compare to the Night King?" Ser Richard asked, both hopeful and afraid.
If the Night King were stronger than the bull monster, would his king still have hope of defeating Him?
If the Night King were weaker than the bull monster, then how would the one who slaughtered this bull-headed evil god compare to the savior himself?
"They each have their own strengths," Dany said with a frown, a trace of worry rising in her heart.
The Night King's defense and raw strength might not match that of the bull monster, but that did not mean his overall power was weaker. The logic was simple. If a single avatar of Shadow R'hllor could kill the Night King, why would He have spent thousands of years laying plans for the prophesied child?
Therefore, it was very likely that the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster was no match for the Night King.
Once she thought this through, it became truly terrifying.
And considering that the Night King was not alone, surrounded by hundreds of White Walkers and millions of wights, it was even more horrifying.
"The Night King and the Skin-Stealer are on the same level," Ser Richard said with a face full of wild joy. "Hahaha! The Lord of Light protects us. I killed a servant of the Cold God equal to the Night King!"
"Long live the Lord of Light! Long live Richard Hope!" The other six followers of the Red God raised their swords and shouted fervently.
"Hiss, hiss." The bull monster, hacked beyond recognition, spat out a mouthful of filthy blood. Its body twitched a few times, then it finally died.
Dany had long been waiting for this moment. A brilliant light flashed in her eyes as the Ring of Wind in her sea of consciousness split off a single thought, merged with Big Black's dragon spirit, and then flew out of her sea of consciousness into the void.
From a soul's-eye view, a divine soul resembling a black sun tore free from the bull monster's body, streaked across the sky as a black flash, and was about to leave Westeros and vanish into the Far East.
In the next instant, Dany's greenseer soul caught up to it, just as she had once chased the second life of the skinchanger Varamyr, just as she had pursued the dragon spirit of the red dragon Balerion.
She caught up with it without a word. Beneath her, Big Black opened his massive jaws and swallowed it in a single bite.
In the following moment, the rune array Dany had prepared in advance activated, immediately sealing the black sun and sending it into the divine realm of the Seven Gods for suppression.
Boom. The void trembled, and within the dark shadows of the eastern horizon, something like a demon god seemed to roar in furious rage.
Dany let out a cold smile as her soul returned to her sea of consciousness.
Boom!
"Smith," dragonfire hot enough to melt Valyrian steel, poured forth and completely engulfed the massive pit where the bull monster's corpse lay.
The dragonfire flowed like water, filling the pit and forming a lake of crimson flame.
Beneath the lake, the bull monster's blood, shattered scales, and purplish-black minced flesh burned together, transforming into black spiritual essence like a waterfall cascading from the nine heavens, along with a large amount of gray shadow divinity and fire divinity.
There was not a trace of light divinity. That meant it still could not be fully confirmed that He was the Lord of Light.
Dany set aside the fire divinity for now, planning to consume it herself once her Song of Fire made further progress. All of the shadow divinity and black spiritual essence were poured into Big Black's sea of consciousness.
Big Black reached completion. Once again, he activated the divine offices of the Seven Gods.
Dany hesitated.
In theory, she should have chosen "the Stranger" without a second thought.
The Stranger was the god of death worshiped by followers of the Seven, and should be able to control a portion of the authority of death.
But after today's assassination attempt by the bull monster, Dany realized another problem. She possessed Han's face-changing art, and evil gods also had special methods of concealment. Previously, she truly had not detected anything abnormal about Shufu.
"The Father represents justice. That justice must surely grant 'the Father's divine power' some special ability. Perhaps it could sense evil?"
Dany was filled with anticipation.
Yet she also understood that her expectations might not become reality.
Glancing at the Night's Watchmen who were sorrowfully gathering the bodies of their fallen comrades, Dany sighed. She could only hope that the Black Goat of Qohor would prove reliable.
She chose "the Stranger" for Big Black.
(End of Chapter)
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