That night.
Winterfell, the guest keep.
Unsullied guards stood watch outside the door and along the corridors. Even though she was in the same building as the Two Stags, Dany could have slept peacefully, yet she did not sleep.
After becoming a demigod, her rest time had decreased from seven hours a day to one hour, or even half an hour.
When calm and without heavy consumption of magic or physical strength, she could even go for days and nights without resting.
Even as her rest time was reduced again and again, Dany still felt there was not enough time.
Because aside from being a queen, she was also a cultivator.
"Caw, caw, caw." A shadow fell over her violet eyes. The darkness condensed into dense black "ink," seeping from her eyelids, drifting in midair, and gathering into a large black crow.
"I'm a little scared," the large black crow cawed.
"What's there to be afraid of? It'll be over soon."
"Apple and Sesame screamed so miserably," the crow said.
"One must endure the bitterest hardships to rise above others. Look how beautiful Apple has become." Dany blinked again. A red glow flashed in her eyes, and a streak of red fiery mist flew out. The mist burst softly, revealing a silver-haired little sprite with an apple-like face.
"Mother Goddess, why did you call me? Big Sister Mist is teaching me the language of trees!" the two-foot-tall, apple-faced little sprite said with a pout.
Like Little Mist, she had a pair of dragonfly wings made of flowing flame-light, though her appearance, hair color, and clothes were different.
"Gensheng said you screamed miserably and looked so pitiful," Dany said with a chuckle as she pinched Apple's little cheek.
After recruiting two hundred crows from Bran, she immediately burned their physical crow bodies to ash, leaving only their spirits stored in the Faith of the Seven space.
Now she was like an old man in the park playing with iron walnuts. Whenever she had free time, she would flip her right hand, scoop out a crow spirit, and begin burning it, making them wail in agony with mournful, piercing cries.
However, the crow bodies were already destroyed. What was being burned were spirits. Ordinary people could not see spirits, nor could they hear the sounds of souls.
Nearly a week had passed. Dany had burned a total of twenty-five crows into life imprints, then reforged those imprints and allowed them to be reborn as flame-element sprites.
Yes, Little Mist now had twenty-five more members of her race.
Each time she burned a new crow spirit, Dany carefully observed it. If it had a fire-element affinity, the crow's resistance to fire would be extremely high.
For example, Little Mist took only a few hours to be burned from a complete soul into a life imprint.
Another example was A-Fu. It took half a month of burning before he was barely reduced to a life imprint. Because he was neither fire nor wind aligned, Dany had no way to reincarnate him as an elemental sprite.
Since producing sprites of other elemental types was too difficult, Dany prioritized selecting all the fire sprites.
That was how she managed to produce twenty-five little sprites in just a few days.
Each time a fire sprite was created, Dany's divine nature of creation within fire increased significantly. In just a few days, her Song of Fire progressed from 5 percent to 17 percent. In other words, Sheep Egg had recently lost nearly one-tenth of the Song of Fire.
The Song of Fire was like shares in a company. For every bit Dany gained, Sheep Egg lost an equal amount.
Once this process began, it was almost irreversible. The fact that Dany could seize Sheep Egg's Song of Fire itself proved one thing: her Song of Fire was of a higher order than His.
And the will of the world was exceedingly "indifferent," allowing only the stronger to laugh while ignoring the wailing of the old.
"Oh, lucky you. Gensheng, you're a fire sprite," Dany said to the wailing crow within the flames in her palm.
"Ah, it hurts so much! I'm in agony!" Gensheng cawed loudly.
Yet his cries were filled with abundant soul power, and his crow form remained intact.
"Burn a few more times. Once your brain gets scorched into mush, it won't hurt anymore," Dany said with a smile, offering comfort.
"Ow, my brain feels a little mushy. It seems like I'm rapidly forgetting my past memories," Gensheng said in terror.
"That's normal. Memories are shackles. A long life has left your soul weary and aged. You will begin a carefree new life, full of curiosity toward everything," Dany said.
"Oh, I really am very tired. That's why I came to you," Gensheng was no longer afraid and stopped cawing. Instead, with a calm mindset, he tried his best to feel the final pain that belonged to "Gensheng."
After a long while, just as Gensheng was about to forget his own name, he suddenly asked anxiously, "Can I still be called 'Gensheng' after I'm reborn?"
"No, all fire sprites must be named after fruits."
"But Little Mist, she—"
"Little Mist is the big sister. She has special privileges."
"But they've already picked all the fruit names," Gensheng said, aggrieved.
"Hehe, there are thousands upon thousands of fruits in the world, more than enough for all you crows. How about you take the name 'Durian'? No one's used Durian yet," Dany suggested.
"."
There was no response, because Gensheng had already forgotten who he was, burned into a "simpleton."
"Since you don't object, then you'll be called 'Durian,'" Dany said to herself.
Life imprints recorded information about gender, but could that information be changed?
Suppose a male skinchanger died and entered the body of a female crow. Clearly, the crow's body already manifested as female, so the skinchanger's second life would be female.
At that moment, when his life imprint fused with the crow, the gender information had already changed.
And Dany could only "fine-tune" the parts of the life imprint that had already been altered, such as form-related information.
She had changed the form of the Children of the Forest into humans, and now she could even fine-tune a crow's form into that of a phoenix. She could not change it into a dragon, as the difference in physical form between a crow and a dragon was far too great.
If a Child of the Forest began a second life within a crow of the opposite sex, the gender information would already have changed, and Dany could naturally fine-tune the gender as well.
If a Child of the Forest began a second life within a crow of the same sex, the gender information would remain unchanged, and Dany would be unable to make the newborn sprite change sex.
Of the twenty-five newly born fire sprites, women made up eighty percent.
Not long after, Gensheng, a male Child of the Forest, also became the female sprite Durian.
Well, Gensheng had begun a new life in a female crow, so his gender information had already changed.
"Sigh, the progress is getting slower and slower," Dany sighed helplessly as she sensed the faint increase in divinity.
When Little Mist was born, the Song of Fire instantly broke through from 0 to 2 percent. After burning the dwarf and imprinting him with the divine mark "God Descends," it increased by nearly another 3 percent. When she burned twenty-five fire sprites, the increase grew smaller and smaller. By the time Durian was born, the entire process brought only a 0.1 percent increase.
"Maybe the benefits of creating fire sprites have already reached their limit. Only by creating spirits other than fire-element ones through Creation in Fire, such as wind spirits, can there be a greater increase. Or perhaps I should swallow part of Lamb Egg's divine soul again?" Dany frowned in thought.
Devouring Lamb Egg's divine soul could increase fire-aspected divinity and grant certain special fire-related talents.
However, Lamb Egg itself did not possess the divinity of Creation in Fire, and Dany's Song of Fire was aligned with Creation in Fire. Therefore, devouring Lamb Egg could not make her Song of Fire grow directly.
But that did not mean devouring Lamb Egg was useless for the growth of the Song of Fire. Lamb Egg was also a holy spirit and, like Dany, possessed special talents.
Seizing its talents and fire-aspected divinity could help Dany better comprehend the Song of Fire.
For example, before devouring Lamb Egg, letting Durian be reborn could increase the Song of Fire by 0.1 percent. After swallowing Lamb Egg entirely, rebirthing a fire elemental spirit might raise the Song of Fire by 0.2 percent, or even more?
It was like conducting the same physical experiment on light diffraction. Compared to Einstein, an ordinary college student would obviously gain far less insight.
Divinity, divine offices, and even the Song of Fire, put plainly, were all forms of "mastery of knowledge."
Burning crows and creating sprites was equivalent to conducting experimental research to acquire knowledge.
After tossing Durian into her sea of consciousness and having Little Mist teach the new little sister, Dany continued burning crows.
Just as she burned a non-fire-aspected crow until its form was on the verge of collapse, Big Black suddenly took the initiative to merge dragon spirit and dragon soul with her, entering the Stranger state. A layer of hazy black shadow enveloped Dany's figure.
She transformed into the Stranger and entered the world of death.
Then the scenery before her eyes rapidly shifted, as if she had suddenly entered faster-than-light travel. In just an instant, the gray-and-white Winterfell turned into the fog-shrouded city of Qahor?
Dany quickly understood what had happened.
"Oh, no!" In the gray-and-white, deathly silent world, Ser Richard was bound by black shadow chains. He struggled desperately, wailing miserably.
"No, it shouldn't be like this. It can't be like this! You are not the Lord of Light. The Lord of Light is not you, not you!"
"Ke-ke-ke." What answered him was a mocking laugh that made souls tremble in terror.
The shadow chains extended endlessly eastward, crossing a great river surging with gray mist. On the other side of the river, at the end of the chains, a massive monster loomed faintly in the darkness, laughing ferociously.
One could vaguely make out that the monster had the horns of a ram, the head of an ox, the body of a serpent, the tail of a scorpion, and the claws of a tiger.
The end of the shadow chains binding Richard was firmly wrapped around its furry arm.
It kept dragging him closer.
"That's right. Your faith is in me. Where there is fire, there is shadow. I am the first flame, the first light, and I am also the shadow cast by the first firelight."
"Ke-ke-ke. I am the Demon of Shadow, the dark god of darkness, Shadow Demon Rakhlo!"
The monster laughed coldly, and the entire world of death seemed to tremble with its laughter.
"As my follower, you do not even know my form. You deserve death ten thousand times over!"
"As my follower, you dared commit such an act of blasphemy against me."
The monster's bovine face twisted, revealing curved fangs lined with barbs, and its thunderous voice pronounced judgment. "Your sins cannot be redeemed even by ten thousand deaths! I will first roast you on demonic flames for one hundred thousand years, then throw you to the lust demons to be toyed with for another one hundred thousand years, then immerse you in the pool of rotting corpses for one hundred thousand years, then—"
"No, Holy Mother, have mercy!" Amid the cruel judgment of the evil god, the muddle-headed pockmarked knight suddenly shuddered and woke up. He immediately cried out to the heavens, "Holy Mother, have mercy! I have indulgences, Holy Mother, have pity! I was wrong, I was wrong! I will never believe in foreign evil gods again!
Holy Mother, please have mercy on this lost little lamb!"
"Holy Mother? Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga." The shadow demon laughed mockingly. "From the moment you committed the crime of blasphemy, my curse has followed you like a shadow.
Before you died, I had already cast my gaze upon you. At the instant of your death, your soul automatically came to my domain.
This is my kingdom of death. I am the ruler here. No one can save you! Your fate has already been sealed!"
"Caw, caw, caw." In the gray-and-white world of death, a flock of black crows suddenly flew in.
The world of death had only gray and white. Even the red light flickering in the crows' eyes was stained with a layer of gray.
One by one, the crows landed on the shadow chains between Richard and the bull-headed monster.
"Who is it? Who dares intrude into my divine domain?"
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09