Chapter 357
The blood-red leaves like human palms reflect the red sky, and the branches like bones grow on all sides, like a dome covering the earth.
Hundreds of Maidens, wearing animal skins and hanging small bronze machetes at their waists, held hands with holy expressions, danced counterclockwise around the trunk of Weirwood, and sang high-pitched and rough ancient sacrificial songs.
Under the canopy, there are thousands of Wildlings watching with awe, most of them dressed in animal skins and dressed like the men, women and children of the Beyond the Wall Free Folk team.
Only in front of Weirwood, there are dozens of warriors with bronze swords on their waists and bright yellow bronze armor. All around them are simple linen cloths, tears in the corners of their eyes, and sad expressions. women.
In addition to humans, there are other humanoids. There are long gray giants with short necks and heads leaning forward, and a group of people Dany has never seen before: deep maroon skin, big ears, beautiful features , as small as a squirrel.
Most of them have big golden eyes, but the five in the front have green or red eyes.
Dany stared at them curiously, and the five green-eyed or red-eyed Squirrelmen suddenly turned their heads in unison, looking towards her in disbelief.
She was startled.
"What, Lord Prophet?" One of the warriors noticed Squirrelmen's strangeness and approached and asked in a low voice.
It is an old saying.
It was a lean man in his early forties, with a horse face, brown hair and deep grey eyes. Although he also had a bronze long sword hanging from his waist, his right hand held a smooth Weirwood cane.
"No, maybe hallucinations," a red-eyed Squirrelmen said uncertainly.
"No, I feel it too," said another red-eyed Squirrelmen seriously.
"We all felt it." The other three looked at each other and said together.
Squirrelmen also speak the old sayings, with an eerie peace in their voice that seems to calm storms and tsunamis.
"Then, will there be a problem with Priest?" The horse-faced man unconsciously clenched his cane and asked worriedly.
"No, what the father promised will never change." The five Squirrelmen said in unison, their expressions solemn and pious.
At this moment, Maiden's song gradually entered a climax, the huge human face carved on the trunk seemed to come alive, and the serious expression gradually became sad and helpless.
The woman in the front row couldn't hold it any longer and burst into tears.
A sacrificial song was about to end. Some Maiden looked back at the woman, and then a hundred Flower Maiden pulled out the small scimitars around their waists. The blood-colored palms and leaves suddenly crash-banged. The old man's face became even more sad.
"chi chi chi chi chi..." The singing stopped, Maiden immediately stabbed the dagger into oneself's heart, stretched out his arms and grabbed towards the tree trunk, with happiness and satisfaction on his face look, crooked to the ground.
On closer inspection, the corpses of hundreds of Maiden were neatly combined into a pattern of anti-spiral vortex. The blood flowing from their hearts did not flow freely, like spring water melting into the dry desert, and the brown soil on the ground thirsty sucked every drop of blood that fell.
There was not even a small pool of blood on the ground.
"wu wu wu..." The women cried out in grief, and the men in bronze armor felt uncomfortable, their eyes were red and swollen.
"zhi zhi zhi..."
A strange thing happened, a spore was born on the eyebrow of the tree's face, and an arm grew within a few tens of seconds Long young shoots.
"crash-bang!" Thousands of onlookers, whether civilians or nobles, human beings, Giants, and Squirrelmen, all knelt on the ground with pious expressions.
Five red- or green-eyed Squirrelmen take the lead and sing sacred and solemn hymns, and the rest sing along.
The song is sacred and the content is brief, roughly singing the praises of the mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, the earth, the sky, the wind and fire, the sun and the moon...
When the song is over, everyone gets up and a The green-eyed Squirrelmen turned his head and swept one after another on the faces of dozens of bronze armored Swordsman, and finally, his eyes were fixed on the long-faced cane man.
"Brandon Stark the Builder, go." Squirrelmen sighed.
The long-faced man did not refuse, nor did he show any humility. He left the stick where he was, and with a solemn and solemn expression, crossed Maiden's corpse and came to the thick tree trunk, where the ten people hugged each other, extended the hand, and put the old man's face The branch between the eyebrows with seven or eight tender red spores was broken.
He held the twigs in both hands respectfully and stepped back.
"Boom-ka, huhuhu..." Suddenly, the huge Weirwood vibrated, as if a giant palm had descended from the sky, slapping on the canopy, thousands of palm-like palms. The blood-colored leaves fell from the branches and flew in the sky.
Like red snowflakes, Heaven and Earth are shrouded in red snow.
Weirwood is still the same Weirwood, and the human face is still the same human face.
But the tree is bare, like an old man living too old, his hair falls off one by one, and the only branches and trunks left are just branches and trunks. From now on, no new leaves and new spores will grow. out.
Weirwood of Eternal and Undying, dead.
The human face is just a sculpture, and there is no trace of holiness and majesty.
Afterwards, the long-faced man, surrounded by thousands of people, made a long journey, crossed the plains and marsh, traveled thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles to the north, and came to a land of ice and snow.
He knelt down in the snow in front of a small lake, followed by thousands of others on his knees, singing the sacred hymn of Spiritual God, led by the Squirrelmen.
Brandon Stark took the still-tender branch and placed it gently on the ground.
"Rumble—" The earth roared.
The spores on the branches quickly grow new branches, insert into the earth, the branches with thick fingers swell to the size of a bucket, densely packed, layer upon layer, tangled into two earth dragons, in the east and west directions Crazy drilling in the ground.
In just five minutes, between North and beyond the wall, on a narrow continent of 500 kilometers wide, a tree trunk city wall of 15 meters wide and 200 meters high appeared.
Then, Giant joined forces with humans to quarry rocks and fill the city wall with boulders. It's like a construction worker pouring cement into the steel frame, and then repairing the brick wall according to the concrete frame.
Brandon Stark is not idle.
He walks all over the city wall, explores the terrain and draws maps in the mountain range and canyons. Then instruct Giant to dig dirt and fill in huge foundation stones to ensure Wall has no dead spots or weak spots, even in complex hilly terrain.
Laying the foundation, he led thousands of Squirrelmen to draw strange Magic glyphs on boulders and tree trunks. Since then, no alien creatures have come close to Wall.
Several decades passed, Stark died of old age, but the work of building Wall did not stop, the second Stark, the son of Brandon, took the building blueprint left by father, and continued to command Giant and First Men to mine Rock, fill in the trunk, draw Magic glyph, reinforce the city wall...
Generation of Stark died, the city wall gradually covered all the tree trunks as skeleton, and the magnificent megalithic Wall was built.
Giant bid farewell to First Men with Squirrelmen, some went to the north beyond the wall, and some returned to their warm hometown in the south.
Yes, hometown.
At that time, the Andals hadn't called, and Westeros was still the land of the First Men and the Squirrelmen, the Children of the Forest.
The First Men who remained were put on black robes and they were called Night's Watch.
Night's Watch didn't stop building the city, they took Brandon's blueprint, dug huge blocks of ice from the frozen river in Haunted Forest, and dragged them back to the Wall.
In the past few centuries, the boulder city wall was covered with a thick layer of ice crystals, and that appearance has been maintained for eight thousand years, until this time...
" Rumbling..." The Wall vibrated, cracks spanning five hundred kilometers and huge chunks of ice falling everywhere.
Wall is collapsing.
"no! ”Dany roared towards the sky, hair fluttered, a glittering and translucent azure crystal flew out from between her eyebrows and returned to its original position.
Like a heartbeat, every once in a while, it sends out a wave of divine majesty.
"ka ka ka!" Nightfort's Sam, Castle Black's Melisandre, Eastwatch's Shireen, Patchface, were all shocked to see the palm-sized ice crystals slowly heal...
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Except for the vague black crack, the Wall is almost indistinguishable from before.
Night's Watch, Wildlings, Stag Party on the Wall are like a dream.
"Wall down, the wind stopped, the fool Queen put the treasure back, ao ao ao, fool, fool, I know, I know..." Patchface's eyes were full of anger. Flickering, singing happily.
...
"huhuhu..." Dany gasped, looking eagerly and fearfully at the azure crystal suspended in the void, and asked: " What is it?"
"My song, Song of Wind." I don't know if it was an illusion or not, there was a touch of softness in the old and majestic voice of Gate God.
In fact, He even changed his tone.
Dany was stunned, took one last look at the azure crystal, and turned his head resolutely. After a long time, she cut off the big greed in her heart, trying to make oneself calm down.
She breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "Why can I get it? Isn't it your song?"
"You see, eight thousand years ago, I was dead. "Gate God indifferently said.
"Is that Weirwood your body? Are you the Old Gods, Weirwood Dryad?" Dany was shocked.
"Old Gods..." Gate God sighed, "I am Old Gods, but Old Gods are not just me. Hundreds of millions of years ago, before Gods even appeared, I planted Rooted in this land, witnessing the formation of mountains and rivers, and the birth of life...
I have been listening to the Song of Wind that surrounds this world, which brings me the information of the world and makes me no longer Lonely.
It’s a long time ago, and when I learned that song too, I heard other singers singing. Then, we sang together, the world was prosperous, and the next era began.”
Dany was shocked beyond words, silent for a long time, and groaned: "The next era, what is it?"
"The era after the singer, the era before you."
"Children of the Forest?"
"Children of the Forest..." There was a hint of nostalgia in Gate God's voice, a hint of disappointment, and sighed: "Those children have nothing to do with the world, only Living in this continent. The world is so big, and there is more colorful life elsewhere."
"What's up with the Others? Who is Cold God?" Dany asked again.
"You will understand naturally after you have experienced it." Gate God said slowly: "Leave, you already know the secrets of the world."
"I want to know more, Questions fill my head," Dany said.
Gate God seemed to be choked, paused, and then helplessly said: "I don't have the extra power to respond to you. Also, when you took Song of Wind away, Wall, who has been suppressed all the time, The evil creatures under him have escaped, and your partner is in danger."