This sacred and resplendent scene stunned the three cultivators who had intruded into the Seven Stars Tower secret realm.
"Th-that is what?" Wu Quji stammered, struck speechless by shock.
The old priestess presiding before the altar was already brimming with turbid tears, crying out in agitation: "The Dragon God has taken His seat! After a thousand years, we behold the Dragon God's seat once more! The divine favor will not fade—the God-Shaded Land shall endure forever!"
Qinghua, Qishu, Qing Bazhi, and Jiuye each reacted differently, but all were overcome with emotion.
And within Jiang Wang's heart, a stormy sea was surging.
It was clearly the star Yuheng shifting its position, intersecting with the light of the altar to form a throne.
So why call it the Dragon God taking His seat?
What was the relationship between the Dragon God and Yuheng?
Had the Dragon God occupied Yuheng and become a star? Or had Yuheng manifested and given birth to the Dragon God?
His curiosity grew ever keener—just what was the origin of the Dragon God of the God-Shaded Land?
Was it truly the progenitor of the dragon race?
Or perhaps one of the dragons who had not perished in the Ancient Era?
Did dragons truly exist once? Were those records accurate?
If they had indeed existed, then why had the dragons vanished?
What secrets had been extinguished in the Ancient Era?
How many hidden truths had sunk forever into the long river of history?
Countless questions seethed in Jiang Wang's heart, and he wanted to ask Jiang Yan—but ever since entering the God-Shaded Land, Jiang Yan had given no response whatsoever.
According to Jiang Wang's conjecture, it was probably because the God-Shaded Land was connected to that mysterious "Dragon God," and since Jiang Yan was entangled with the White Bone Sovereign, he had to hide deep within the Nether Candle while in the God-Shaded Land. Or perhaps the God-Shaded Land itself possessed a means of perceiving "anomalies" within a person's body, forcing Jiang Yan into silence...
But whichever it was, Jiang Yan's silence was no bad thing.
In truth, once he left the God-Shaded Land, Jiang Wang would not be handing these questions over to Jiang Yan to answer either.
Because these were "experiences" that belonged to him alone—knowledge he possessed that Jiang Yan did not. With such a gap in knowledge already existing between them, he was unwilling to share this kind of "experience." For such unique experiences were part of the accumulation he needed to fill in that "gap."
It was foreseeable that he and Jiang Yan still had a long standoff ahead of them—before Jiang Yan seized the body of the White Bone Path's dao heir and departed on his own, or before Jiang Wang "expelled" him. Neither side could afford to relax. Neither he, nor Jiang Yan.
After the Dragon God took His seat, the whole bearing of the old priestess lifted at once.
Sweeping away her aged lethargy, she smiled radiantly: "Please, all three of you, step onto the altar."
"What for? Going to sacrifice us to heaven?" Wu Quji asked bluntly.
The old woman's smile grew somewhat strained: "Only to verify whether you were summoned here by the Dragon God, whether you are messengers of the Dragon God."
Qing Bazhi shot him a vicious glare. If it weren't for the fact that they had just witnessed the Dragon God taking His seat—if these born devotees were not still steeped in their emotion—Wu Quji would probably have taken another beating right then.
They were already in the God-Shaded Land, had already come to the altar of trees, had beheld with their own eyes the miracle of the Dragon God taking His seat. What choice did they have?
Jiang Wang stepped forward in a single stride and was the first to mount the altar.
Su Qi followed close behind. His features were refined and his voice gravelly, but his temperament was decisive enough.
Wu Quji hesitated for a moment, but in the end he lowered his head under Qing Bazhi's fierce glare. After stepping onto the altar, he looked rather listless.
The three of them took up positions in a triangle.
And the priestess once more began her murmured incantations.
Amid calm, unease, and expectation, the so-called "verification" of the Dragon God's messengers began.
Time passed.
Constant and unchanging, time passed.
The dazzling spectacle they had imagined never appeared. Everything was utterly still.
The wood-grain of the altar did not change. The six trees supporting the altar did not change.
Only the "Dragon God's seat" in the faraway sky abruptly vanished.
"Well, what was the point of all that pomp and ceremony, when none of us turns out to be a messenger of the Dragon God?" Wu Quji grumbled.
Jiang Wang felt a flicker of inexplicable disappointment too. Did the gains of the Forest-Sea Source World not lie here after all?
At that moment, the old priestess walked over to Qinghua, who stood with eyes closed, and trembling, leaned close to her ear, as though listening to something Qinghua was saying.
Jiang Wang's heart stirred.
The Holy Maiden of Qing could communicate with the Dragon God?
And it was Su Qi's low, rough voice that put the question into words: "Is the Holy Maiden conveying the Dragon God's divine decree to the priestess?"
"Is she talking? I thought she was a mute—all she ever says is ehh, ehh." That was Wu Quji's voice.
A chill wind swept up around them at once.
Below the altar, Qishu, Qing Bazhi, and Jiuye all turned gazes that could kill.
Jiang Wang was profoundly curious how this prized disciple of the Golden Needle Gate had managed to survive unscathed all the way to now.
Cursing these holy-clan warriors to their faces might not even earn him trouble, but calling the Holy Maiden of Qing a mute right in front of them... a beating was absolutely unavoidable.
"The Holy Maiden can only catch fragments of the divine decree, blurred and incomplete. It takes this old one to interpret them," the priestess said.
The one who received the decree and the one who interpreted it were kept separate—doubtless a method of preventing divine authority from slipping away. But judging by how Qinghua obeyed the old priestess's every word, that restraint was as good as none at all...
Jiang Wang pondered silently. Having only recently escaped the whirlpool of Linzi, it was hard for him to think through any problem without weighing schemes of power.
The priestess then turned her head and looked at him: "The verification is complete. You are a messenger of the Dragon God."
Qinghua, eyes still closed, once more leaned to her ear, lips moving.
The priestess looked at Su Qi: "You too are a messenger of the Dragon God."
Qinghua spoke another sentence.
The priestess said: "You are all messengers of the Dragon God."
Wu Quji had already felt the murderous aura from Qishu and the others earlier, and he was still a little weak-kneed with fear, but he muttered his complaint all the same: "What is this? Why is it so half-hearted when it gets to me?"
Jiang Wang thought, so anyone brought into this world by the starlight summoning of Seven Stars Tower counted as a so-called messenger of the Dragon God.
He only wondered what kind of relationship existed between the "Dragon God" worshipped by the holy clan and Seven Stars Tower.
Had this "Dragon God" borrowed the starlight summoning of the Seven Stars Tower secret realm? Or had the Seven Stars Tower secret realm borrowed the power of this "Dragon God"? Or was it some manner of cooperation?
Just how many secrets were hidden within the Forest-Sea Source World?
"And besides that, what else has the Dragon God conveyed?"
Jiang Wang's question cut straight to the heart of the matter.
The old priestess had said before that once their identities as the Dragon God's messengers were confirmed, they would receive guidance.
The old priestess listened intently for a while, then said: "Resolve the plight of the God-Shaded Land, and you will be able to leave this place, to continue your journey—or to go home."
To continue the journey—or to go home!
Without a doubt, whether or not this "Dragon God" was real, the decree it had passed down unmistakably pointed to the path by which these outside cultivators could leave the Forest-Sea Source World.
In other words, it had told them the way to complete their exploration of the Seven Stars Tower secret realm.
"So then." Jiang Wang leapt down from the altar and asked: "What is the plight of the God-Shaded Land?"
Su Qi and Wu Quji dropped down one after the other, waiting for the priestess's answer.
"That matter must be told from long, long ago," the old woman said. "Back then, we..."
Just as the priestess was about to sink into a long account, suddenly, Jiang Wang heard a sound.
A sound that was cold and sinister, shrill with terror.
That sound... was strange and yet familiar.
It was the third sound Jiang Wang had heard since entering the Forest-Sea Source World.
The third sound, beyond the crunch of dead branches underfoot and the wind moving through the leaves.
And yet it was also the first—the first sound to come from a living thing!
Jiang Wang had assumed it was merely one of the unknown dangers beyond the God-Shaded Land.
But now, that sound had carried into the God-Shaded Land.
And every single one of the holy-clan warriors present went pale with alarm, taut with tension!
Above all, the Holy Maiden Qinghua—her lovely face drained utterly white.
As if even here before the altar of trees, even having just witnessed the miracle of the Dragon God taking His seat,
not one shred of safety could be granted her!