Inside the giant cavern dwelling of King Kong.
"What? In the past year, you've just been hiding in a cave, sleeping and hibernating? You didn't find a single evil god?"
The Dragon Queen was utterly furious. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled out Little King Kong (a fragment of King Kong's soul) from her faith space and squeezed it like a stress ball. The giant King Kong, who was prostrating himself on the ground, was rolled back and forth under the pressure, howling in pain.
The barbarians in the outer cave heard the commotion. Shocked and frightened, they craned their necks to look inside.
After letting King Kong howl for a quarter of an hour, Dany finally put Little King Kong away. The anger in her heart had not yet subsided, and her tone was extremely harsh.
"I don't care if it's nighttime now. I don't care how cold it is outside. I don't care where you'll find food.
But right now, immediately, get out of this cave. I'll give you one month. If you can't find two evil gods within a month, I'll eat you."
King Kong lay on the ground, gasping for breath. Hearing the message transmitted through the mental projection, his two basket-sized golden eyes began to well up with tears.
"You still dare to act pitiful?" Not only did Dany feel no sympathy, her anger flared even more. "Before the sun went out, there was at least half a year of good time. If you had worked properly and helped me find even ten or eight evil gods, things would be different. Instead, you hid in the cave and slept. Not only did I not pressure you, I would have even rewarded you.
Now your laziness has harmed yourself and dragged me down with you.
I always treated you as an important trump card, waiting for you to secretly search for evil gods on the continent of Sothoryos so I could quietly farm. But you wasted such precious farming time sleeping, and now you're crying!"
"If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have subdued that bat demon back then and let it eat you," Dany said. This time, she was not speaking in anger.
If she had known King Kong would be this lazy and slippery, she would have chosen a different subordinate.
The bat demon might have been ugly, but it had many offspring. Countless vampire bats could spread out and search for evil gods far more efficiently than King Kong.
"Roar, roar!" King Kong suddenly rolled over and sat up, facing the tiny Dany. He vigorously slapped his forehead.
"You've been cultivating all this time and not sleeping?" Dany was stunned. Her mental projection moved as if teleporting, arriving at King Kong's brow, where she tapped it with a finger.
Then she was shocked.
That fellow King Kong had actually developed divinity!
But he was not even a demigod.
"Strange. You're not a demigod, so how can you nurture so much Divinity of the Song of Strength?"
Dany was deeply puzzled. King Kong was like fertile soil. If one planted a portion of "Song of Strength" divinity in spring, ten portions could be harvested the next year.
In addition to the surging divinity, the "Song of Strength rune" within King Kong had also doubled, becoming more complex and more complete than before.
After recording the 2.0 version of King Kong's Song of Strength rune, Dany's expression softened somewhat.
"Tell me the truth. Is it because this cave has some special environment where sleeping allows you to grow divinity? Or have you been cultivating some secret technique I can't detect? Or did you obtain some kind of strange treasure?"
King Kong stood up from his cross-legged position and began jumping around on the stone slab where he usually slept.
At first glance, it was just an ordinary patch of ground close to the cave wall. Because King Kong often lay there to rest, it was smoother and cleaner than other places.
When Dany had first projected here, she saw King Kong snoring on that very spot.
After jumping around in the cave for a while, King Kong waved at Dany and strode outside.
Passing through a long, massive tunnel, they arrived at the outer cave, the same wide cavern where Dany had once discovered the temple ruins.
Now the temple had been rebuilt. By the stream, there were forty or fifty additional thatched huts.
Dany saw a group of somewhat familiar striped barbarians.
At the very least, she remembered the old priest who had once danced naked before her and then offered a human arm in blood sacrifice.
There were men and women, young and old, numbering more than three hundred.
When King Kong emerged, they were kneeling before the temple, offering prayers and sacrifices.
It was still that same old priest, performing rituals by the fire.
At first, Dany did not understand what was happening. But as she appeared, and as the pig-nosed striped man saw her, streams of faith power began flowing toward her.
Now that she was highly skilled in manipulating the power of faith, she immediately realized that the faith power of these striped people was merely ordinary energy to her, yet it was slowly increasing King Kong's divinity.
"What is the principle behind this?" Dany wondered.
"Hoh hoh, hoh hoh, hoh hoh!" The old priest looked at King Kong with fanatic devotion, shouting words filled with primitive power.
The surrounding striped barbarians also looked at King Kong with fervor, jumping and dancing around him while chanting the same words.
Though Dany did not understand their language, she could roughly sense the meaning: God of Strength!
They were calling King Kong the "God of Strength."
"Hoh hoh, hoh hoh!" King Kong stomped excitedly, striking a horse stance and pounding his chest with fists as large as train engines.
Boom, boom, boom!
The vast cavern, large enough to serve as a hangar, trembled slightly.
Afterward, the old priest used gestures and explanations to tell Dany everything that had happened over the past year.
When they were first captured by King Kong, there had only been around a hundred of them.
King Kong had killed the original bat-worshipping striped tribe to make space for them, so there was no question of cultural integration.
But while land is fixed, people are not.
Among the captured group, many still had family and friends in their original mountaintop village. Some secretly returned and brought their entire village over.
Originally, the village had over a thousand people. After King Kong's attack and the long journey, only a little over two hundred survived to reach this hidden paradise.
Later, the old striped priest discovered the abandoned temple in the outer cave. Being knowledgeable, he immediately realized that the deity once worshipped there was King Kong.
After finding sacrificial inscriptions to the "God King Kong" on an old stone slab (Dany had also seen it before, but she had thought it was just meaningless scribbles), the already extraordinary old priest immediately switched professions and became the high priest of the "Church of King Kong."
After carefully listening to the old priest recite the "King Kong Scripture," Dany looked at King Kong and said, "Your ancestors must have been quite powerful. Perhaps there was even a true god among them."
King Kong grinned and let out a rumbling laugh.
But then Dany shook her head. "It's a pity the descendants are unworthy. Lazy, incompetent, and lacking ambition, only able to muddle through life."
In the end, King Kong left the warm and comfortable cave, walking alone through the dark and freezing forest to search for traces of evil gods for the Dragon Queen.
However, Dany also granted him a great benefit: the Sword of the Warrior.
It was the same passive divine ability she had given to Randyll Tarly.
After helping Drogon activate the "Warrior" divine office, whenever Dany and the black dragon entered the Warrior state, they could access the battle experience of all devout swordsmen in Westeros over thousands of years.
Through comprehending the swordsmanship of countless warriors, Dany advanced to become a Sword God and grasped the divinity of the Sword God.
Now, she had transformed that warrior experience into divine techniques of different levels. Even the lowest level, "Sword of the Warrior," could only be granted to high-ranking clergy.
Yet King Kong had been granted the highest level of "Sword of the Warrior."
One day in the future, King Kong might carry an iron staff and guard the gates of a temple of the Seven Gods like a loyal hound.
Or perhaps he would carry an enormous iron sword, walking alone across the land, slaying demons and eliminating evil on behalf of the Seven Gods.
The surrounding forests would seem as small as grass beneath his feet. With a single swing of his sword, mountains would split and rivers would break.
Failing to obtain any clues about evil gods from King Kong, Dany turned her attention to her old acquaintance, Quaithe.
"What have you been up to recently?" Dany asked curiously, looking around.
Quaithe no longer lived in the underground palace. Her current residence was a two-story wooden house, simply furnished with a bed and a desk.
She still wore her red-lacquered wooden mask and a robe as dark as night.
When Dany arrived, she was reading by candlelight, with a stove burning dark red coals beside her.
Outside, the sky was dim, and the sounds of waves and a marketplace could be heard.
It seemed to be some seaside inn in Yi Ti.
After sizing Dany up, Quaithe said, "This is Yin, the capital of the Blue Dynasty, and the largest seaport on the Jade Sea.
If the sun had not gone out, you could stand on the balcony and look west to see the emperor's nine-layered palace complex, even larger than King's Landing."
Dany turned toward the northeast and smiled. "I can sense the 'presence' of a temple of the Seven Gods. The faith there is so weak that it's difficult even to manifest miracles."
"You should be content. Many evil god cults dream of stepping into the open but can only develop followers in secret."
After saying this, Quaithe added in amazement, "Your strength is growing so quickly. I can no longer see your figure in the River of Fate, nor can I hear your name."
"At the end of an era, when chaos begins, it is the perfect time for people like us to rise and seize destiny. Yet you hide here in Yi Ti, neither striving nor competing. Naturally, your progress is slow."
Quaithe was unconcerned. "At the transition between eras, aside from the Child of the Era, everyone else is cannon fodder. I still want to live to the next era.
If I lose my life, what use is advancing bravely?"
"Follow me, and you won't be in danger," Dany said confidently.
Quaithe's tone became strange. "You've been drawing a lot of attention lately. Even in Asshai of the Shadow Lands, among sorcerers and dark gods, you are a central topic. Everyone is discussing how to kill you."
Dany did not react with outrage. Instead, as if she had long expected it, she sighed. "I feel it too now. When I scheme against evil gods, they sense it. And now, I can almost feel the malice others have toward me."
That was why, when the Pale Maiden of Qarth had come to see her last time, she had not felt excited. Instead, she felt a sense of danger and immediately left Slaver's Bay.
"What is the driving force behind those monsters targeting me?" Dany asked curiously.
"Mainly, multiple gods have foreseen a 'Long Night of the Gods.' To them, you are like the Night King is to humanity."
"Isn't that a bit exaggerated?" Dany said with a bitter smile. "I'm busy fighting the Others every day. How would I have the time to bring about some Long Night of the Gods?"
Quaithe shrugged. "They also want to know what makes you so intolerant of them."
"Have they found a way to deal with me?" Dany asked again.
"More or less."
"What way?" Dany asked in surprise.
"Gather more forces and attack together." After a pause, Quaithe explained, "You cannot be dealt with through piecemeal tactics. They cannot allow themselves to become stepping stones for your growth.
They should contact all gods and mages in the world who are hostile to you, then recruit as many as possible who are willing to act against you. Gather all their strength and eliminate you in one decisive strike."
Dany's expression became conflicted. "Aren't my enemies a bit too smart? If everyone acts like this, how can a Child of the Era ever grow?"
"There's no helping it. There are precedents."
(End of Chapter)
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