R'hllor paid a tremendous price, splitting off a portion of his divine soul and even granting the "destiny" of Azor Ahai to perfectly resurrect Jon.
Dany certainly would not be willing to sacrifice that much for someone like Richard. In truth, R'hllor had not sacrificed himself for Jon either; he had merely been "renovating" his own mortal vessel.
Then she thought of the "Song of Diamond Strength Rune."
At present, Dany had only one form of sorcery that could grant ordinary people extraordinary power: Divine Descent.
Tyrion's rune brand had been imprinted on his cervical spine and internal organs. So could the rune instead be branded onto the surface of Richard's soul?
The facts proved that it was indeed possible.
At least, it was 30 percent successful.
"Ahhh!"
On a wind-sheltered cliff, Richard suddenly opened his eyes. With a startled cry, he began gulping down great breaths of air.
"W-Where am I?" The sky was gray and overcast. The cold wind howled like ghosts, carrying powdery snowflakes through the air. For a brief moment, Richard stood stunned.
"The Whiteblade River Mountains."
Leaning against Little White's neck, Dany asked curiously, "How do you feel now?"
"Ah, Your Majesty Daenerys!" Richard turned his head and saw the familiar figure, crying out in surprise.
Then his earlier memories slowly returned. "I… I went to heaven. And now I've been resurrected?"
"Yes. You have been resurrected."
"Alas, why did you bring me back, Your Majesty? The Long Night is endless, danger lurks everywhere, the Others roam freely, evil gods wreak havoc. Life for mortals is too hard. I wanted to remain in heaven!" Richard said in frustration.
"You do not believe in the Seven, so you cannot remain in heaven. By rights, the Stranger should have taken you to be reborn in the cycle of reincarnation. But the Mother believed you carry a destiny, so she asked me to retrieve your body.
In the end, it was the Mother who resurrected you, not I." Dany's expression was solemn and dignified, though she was speaking utter nonsense.
"What destiny?" The pockmarked knight was puzzled, yet unable to conceal his excitement.
"Revenge!"
"Revenge against whom?" The knight's lips twitched, disappointment creeping into his heart.
If you hadn't tricked me into thinking that thing was a skin-walker monster, would I have ended up like this today?
Wait, no. My good friend Gaudi Falin devoted himself entirely to the Red God and still met no good end.
Looking at it that way, perhaps I truly should thank the Dragon Queen for giving me a chance to turn over a new leaf. I lived thirty-five years, and for the first thirty I believed in the Seven.
"It seems you understand." Seeing the change in his expression, Dany nodded with a smile. "R'hllor toyed with your faith. You should seek revenge. The Long Night stretches on and the Others roam freely. You must avenge the innocent dead. Evil gods ravage the world. You should uphold justice and slay demons, avenging the countless misguided but kind believers across the realm.
For yourself, for the Seven Kingdoms, for the entire world, you must become a vengeful spirit returning from hell, dragging all demons back into the abyss. That is the true meaning of a demon hunter!"
"Your Majesty, I came down from heaven. I am not a vengeful spirit. The High Sparrow even knighted me as a Holy Warrior!" the pockmarked knight protested.
"Hmph. Without the great Stranger's intervention, where would you be now if not in hell? Without the Mother's mercy, you would already have been tortured by R'hllor into the most miserable of vengeful spirits."
The knight froze. The Queen's words made a great deal of sense.
Without the Stranger and the Mother's help, he truly would have fallen into hell and become a vengeful spirit.
"What should I do?" Richard accepted the fate the Mother had arranged for him.
"How do you feel now? Are you cold? Hungry? Tired?" Dany asked.
"Huh, how strange. I've been lying on the ground for so long, yet I don't feel cold at all?" Richard hurriedly rolled over and climbed to his feet, touching his neck. There was a deep scar there.
He did not feel cold, yet the puffs of white vapor leaving his mouth proved he still had body heat.
"Sigh. The energy level of Divine Descent is still not high enough." Dany shook her head regretfully.
After Jon was resurrected, he immediately became a normal person again because R'hllor's divine soul was of true god-tier level, almost the highest magical energy Dany had encountered so far.
Divine Descent was similar to spirit possession, barely qualifying as extraordinary power. Its magical energy level was too low.
With a low magical energy level, the degree and efficiency of permeation were correspondingly poor.
One could use the half-life of radioactive substances to understand the changes in the negative spiritual matter within a resurrected body.
Polonium has a half-life of only two milliseconds, while uranium's half-life spans hundreds of millions or even billions of years.
Jon was probably like polonium. Richard was slightly better than uranium.
Thus Jon immediately became a normal person again. Richard only theoretically has the possibility of becoming normal, perhaps in five hundred years, one thousand years, five thousand years, or ten thousand years.
Who knows?
"What do you mean by the energy level not being high enough? And what is Divine Descent?" Richard asked in confusion.
"Are you still wearing your Golden Saint Armor?" Dany asked.
"Ah!" The pockmarked knight suddenly remembered that he had just become a Golden Saint and had received a set of Golden Saint Armor from the High Sparrow that had made Ser Quincy immensely envious.
"Huh? Where is my armor?" Lowering his head, he instead saw his familiar ancestral armor.
At this very moment, the large flaming red heart emblazoned on his chest made him extremely uncomfortable, as though a venomous snake were coiled around his body.
"The armor is worn upon your soul. I will teach you a spell to activate it."
As soon as Dany finished reciting the incantation, the pockmarked knight eagerly repeated it.
Nothing happened.
There was no change in the knight's appearance either.
"I felt a numb tingling run through my spine, and then it was gone," Richard said in confusion.
"That's because you don't have the divine power of the Seven within you. Only the divine power of the Seven can activate the holy armor. It's like a person without strength being unable to wield a weapon."
"How can I obtain the divine power of the Seven?" the pockmarked knight asked eagerly.
"Which of the Seven do you believe in?"
"The Warrior, the Mother, and the Stranger. I believe in all of them."
"Have you ever seen a septon of the Seven use healing magic? Just like them, you may pray to one of the gods, and then you will naturally understand what the divine power of the Seven is."
"I understand. From now on, I will follow Your Majesty and faithfully serve the Seven!" Richard said solemnly.
Having consecutively experienced R'hllor's hell and the heaven of the Seven, the pockmarked knight's faith suddenly became extremely firm.
His piety had already reached 66 points.
One must know that just last night he had still been a devout follower of R'hllor.
"Do not follow me. You are Stannis's bannerman. Betraying your liege is the same as breaking your oath. Both are among the gravest sins in the doctrine of the Seven," Dany said, shaking her head in refusal.
"But I… he believes in the evil god R'hllor!" the pockmarked knight said with a twisted expression.
"The Seven are broad in their tolerance. They do not reject other gods, nor do they care for formalism. The Seven represent truth, goodness, and beauty. As long as you strictly abide by the teachings of the Seven, it does not matter even if you wear flaming red heart armor every day."
As Saint Dany spoke, her face seemed to radiate a holy glow.
The pockmarked knight was somewhat persuaded.
"Does that mean I must continue living as before?" he asked with difficulty written across his face.
Dany shrugged casually. "How you live is your own affair. Every believer has their own life."
"Skree—"
"Ah, it's Ser Richard! He isn't dead at all!"
"Gods above, Richard, you're actually not dead?"
"Seven hells, Ser Richard, you… are you human, or a wight?"
That night, when Richard rode his wyvern back to Winterfell, it immediately caused a tremendous stir within the castle.
When Dany left, she had not informed anyone. When she returned with Big Black and Little White, she did not say what she had gone to do.
After parting ways with the Dragon Queen, Richard had remained on the mountaintop waiting for a long time. He had been waiting for his wyvern.
"How did you come back to life?" Jon asked in shock.
Others suspected that Richard might not have truly been beheaded by Saigon, but Jon had seen it with his own eyes. The corpse had been hung from a flagpole. How could it be fake?
"I… I had an indulgence. After I died, I went to heaven. But I did not originally believe in the Seven, so I could not remain in heaven. Then the Mother allowed me to return to life."
Facing the astonished King in the North, the puzzled Second Stag, the sharp-eyed Melisandre, and the incredulous knights of the Flaming Red Heart, Richard hesitated briefly before deciding to tell the truth.
Of course, he was not foolish enough to reveal every detail.
"An indulgence? Went to heaven?" Most followers of the Red God and of the Old Gods of the North were completely bewildered.
However, the other six among the "Seven Sons of the Sun," like Richard, had also received a "ticket to heaven" from the Dragon Queen and understood what their companion meant.
"By the Lord of Light, could it be that indulgences truly work? You went to the heaven of the Seven? Why didn't you go to R'hllor's kingdom?"
"Kingdom? Bah! A kingdom fit only for the Others. There is no paradise filled with wine and flesh, where each man is allotted eighteen maidens. R'hllor is an evil god!"
"Ah!" At these words, everyone's expressions changed drastically. They stared in horror at the pockmarked knight cursing aloud, as if he were a madman.
"Blasphemy! Richard, this is blasphemy!" shouted the bald Ser Craton Song, baring his mouthful of rotten brown teeth as he rebuked his resurrected companion.
"Song, listen to me. The Red God is not what you—"
The pockmarked knight, looking earnest and intending to persuade his companion to return from his misguided path, was interrupted by the calm yet unyielding voice of the Second Stag. "Richard, come with me. I have questions for you."
Richard glanced around at the furious knights of the Flaming Red Heart glaring at him, sighed, and silently followed the Second Stag out of the hall.
The onlookers were itching to hear more about the pockmarked knight's experience, but the atmosphere was clearly tense. They could only watch as the Second Stag led his subordinate away, then disperse in murmuring clusters.
Jon's heart stirred. He made his way to the queen's "temporary palace" on the eastern side of the guest castle.
"Your Majesty, it was you who resurrected Ser Richard, wasn't it?" he asked bluntly.
"That was the Mother's will."
"Sigh. With the great battle at Winterfell imminent, by taking Red God followers like this, aren't you undermining the united front against the Others?" Jon said with displeasure.
"Are you suggesting that Richard should have gone to R'hllor's hell? He sacrificed himself to help you cleanse your ranks."
"How would Ser Richard have gone to hell? Wasn't he devout?" Jon's eyes flickered.
Dany looked at him deeply. "That bull-headed, serpent-bodied creature at Eastwatch, you know of it as well? Who told you?"
"I…" Jon had intended to deny it, but under Dany's gaze, he could only sigh helplessly and lower his eyes. "Long ago, Bran warned me about the shadow demon's appearance and power. After all, I am R'hllor's target."
"Heh, you are quite fortunate to have a good brother. But since you know what Richard did, why question me for saving him?" Dany sneered repeatedly.
Jon's face twisted with conflict. "Sometimes sacrifices are unavoidable. It is not that I am cold and heartless. Your actions may very well provoke a war of the gods.
But the Others are already at our gates. We cannot afford internal strife. The greater good must come first."
Dany nodded in agreement. "I am the greater good. I care very much about the greater good."
Jon fell silent.
(End of Chapter)
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