Chapter 399: You Found a Divine Seal

"Little Black, little Black, don't be afraid, we've come to save you." Tina, her face filled with anguish, leaned close to the black horse, hugging its neck in an attempt to soothe it.

The black horse shook its neck but ignored her.

"What's wrong? Why won't you answer me? It's me, your master. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—I ran off just now, I was too scared. I'll make it up to you when we get back: bean-stirred alfalfa, how's that?" Tina pleaded.

The black horse still paid no attention.

Ang jumped into the pit and stared at the horse's broken leg.

Huanmian said to Du Luo Ken: "You didn't do it? A skeleton? Holy magic?"

Du Luo Ken asked calmly: "Is there a problem?"

They still understood too little about this world, so they had to seize every opportunity to glean useful information indirectly.

For instance, Huanmian's reaction could indirectly confirm Abbott's claim—how common are Holy Skeletons in this world?

Huanmian's reaction clearly indicated they were rare, yet his words confirmed he had at least heard of them: "That's a Holy Skeleton? How did you end up with the Church of Light? Aren't you a sorcerer?"

Du Luo Ken asked: "Is that not allowed?"

Huanmian replied: "It's not forbidden, but the Church of Light is extremely exclusive—they label all who don't believe in Light as heretics and apostates. That you're mixed up with them surprises me."

Du Luo Ken's mind stirred, and he changed the subject: "What about you? Which side are you on?"

"Us? We have no side. I'm a follower of Young Lady Tina, a assassin. Young Lady Tina is an eighth-level mage of the Fire Carnelian Magic Tower." Huanmian said.

After some casual chatter, Du Luo Ken gleaned a fair amount of information through indirect questioning.

This world is currently dominated by the Undead Empire; the Sorcerer Alliance has been driven into the Star Burst Array in the sky, and the Church of Light has retreated to remote corners.

But the Undead Empire's governance is too lax—almost negligent. Though enemies with the Sorcerer Alliance, it imposes no restrictions on the sorcerer profession: anyone can learn it, and no undead being bothers to interfere.

On the contrary, human administrators in some regions would sometimes take measures to curry favor with the high-ranking officials of the Undead Empire, but once they realized that cracking down on warlocks brought them no benefits, such measures became increasingly rare.

Not only sorcerers, but all open and inclusive professions and religions can flourish within the Undead Empire's territories—only exclusionary organizations like the Church of Light face severe suppression.

The Undead Empire rejects them, and sorcerers reject them too—so Huanmian was puzzled why Du Luo Ken, a sorcerer, was associating with a Holy Skeleton of the Church of Light.

"After being suppressed so often, their Holy Skeletons simply stopped resurrecting—they wander around as mere bone frames, calling themselves Holy Skeletons, so they won't attract attacks from low-level undead." Huanmian said.

By this point, Ang had already healed the black horse's broken leg—the process was simple: sever the nerves, realign the fracture, then cast Holy Light.

The black horse snorted, stood up with a rustle, stomped its hooves, and its eyes filled with surprise.

Du Luo Ken couldn't help saying: "Your mistress's horse is quite sentient?"

Huanmian replied proudly: "Of course—it carries dragon blood, a dragon-beast with considerable intelligence."

Du Luo Ken gave him a strange look.

"What? Did I smear my face?" Huanmian puzzledly touched his own face.

"What's wrong with dragon blood? Hmph." Du Luo Ken shook his head.

After confirming its hooves were fine, the black horse affectionately nudged Ang, leaning its head to lick him.

Ang pushed it away with distaste.

Tina stared in astonishment at the horse and Ang—her Little Black was usually aloof and never so affectionate toward outsiders; even she, who had fed it since it was young, never received such treatment. Could it be because this skeleton saved it?

"Little Black, Little Black, come back." Tina called.

The black horse glanced at her, then trotted in small steps to Ang's other side, adopting an "I don't know you" posture.

"Little Black? Little Black! Little Black, if you don't come over, I'm not taking you back!" Tina stamped her foot in anger.

The black horse stared at the sky, pretending not to hear—if Tina tried to lead it, it dodged around Ang.

Everyone understood the horse's meaning. Huanmian stepped forward to advise: "Young Lady Tina, it's clear that from the moment you abandoned it and fled, it made up its mind. Let it go."

"No! I raised it—it's my dragon-beast. No matter what, it's coming back with me today!" Tina snapped, her magic surging.

Ang's gaze immediately locked onto her.

Again, Huanmian clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged her away.

"You dare cover my mouth? You dare offend me?"

"Oh, Young Lady Tina, use your head! Don't you see they don't care about you at all? They've seen you cast your eighth-level Meteor Fall—they know your power. They don't even respect an eighth-level mage; don't stir up trouble. If conflict breaks out, we might not make it back."

"W-Will they… kill me?"

"Young Lady Tina, how can you call it killing? There won't even be a corpse—only a disappearance. Don't provoke them. I can't gauge their strength. Just last night, that Mr. Du Luo Ken locked onto me—I, an assassin, couldn't even move a muscle in front of him."

"But… but… my Little Black."

"Sigh. Maybe you broke its heart. It doesn't recognize you anymore. What now? Try talking to it again? Promise it more mares? Or even a dragon-beast? Convince it back—but no violence."

"Fine." Tina reluctantly accepted reality, walked over, made promises, and paid the price of securing her a beautiful dragon-beast mare to finally coax it back.

Huanmian reluctantly pulled out his private savings to pay for the healing.

Tina mounted Little Black and turned to Du Luo Ken: "Regardless, thank you for your help. I don't know what you have to do with the Church of Light, but there's a piece of news you might find interesting: forty kilometers in this direction lies a Godfall Site. Recently, something strange has happened—it's changed."

The Godfall Site was where the Star Burst Array had struck the earth, shattering all the gods.

Some gods exploded into fragments; for centuries afterward, people still occasionally found equipment, divine bodies, and shards of divine essence, drawing treasure hunters and fortune-seekers.

Tina had come here because she'd heard of the Godfall Site's anomaly.

But after speaking, she noticed Du Luo Ken showed no reaction, and couldn't help asking: "The Godfall Site has changed—aren't you curious?"

Du Luo Ken realized his reaction had been too flat and quickly feigned astonishment: "I'm so shocked I didn't react! It really changed? Thank you for the tip—we'll head there right away."

Once Tina, satisfied, rode off, Du Luo Ken grumbled: "What's so interesting about a Godfall Site? If I open my Little Yellow Book, I can pull out several living divine essences."

The Little Yellow Book, silent until now, grumbled back: "Maybe you really should go. Didn't you hear it was 'recently' changed? It's definitely connected to our arrival."

…

Not long after Tina left, the residents who had fled the Desert Town began returning, only to find it occupied by undead creatures—leaving them bewildered.

Undead creatures not forming a flood won't attack ordinary people, but when their numbers grow too large, death aura accumulates, gradually making the land unsuitable for living beings.

The death-accumulated soil accelerates dehydration and toughening of flesh and skin, turning people stiff and zombie-like.

The residents sighed heavily, hurriedly gathered usable items, and placed them on door panels, preparing to drag them away.

Duroken went over to ask, "Where are you preparing to go?"

"Sigh, where else could we go? The nearest town is God Fall Town, forty kilometers from here. Hopefully they'll take us in." an elderly resident said with a sigh.

Duroken's heart stirred, and he stepped back to say quietly, "Perfect, we'll follow along and see what's going on. If possible, I'll buy some materials to build a teleportation array and see if I can construct one that connects to the main plane. Oh right, my lord, just grab another handful of soul crystals for me and I can recover to my full state."

Seeing Ange reached out and grabbed a handful of soul crystals for him.

Duroken had come over through a life-casket, so his soul hadn't been damaged — what was lost was his body's strength, but he was an alchemist and didn't rely on his body to make a living.

As long as his soul strength recovered, it wouldn't affect his casting of alchemy.

Hearing Duroken's words, Lord Nai Ge Li Si also secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Seeing Ange's power projection could only cast first-tier magic for the time being.

The strongest ultimate transformation couldn't be performed. If they ran into a powerful enemy, Seeing Ange could still retreat to his main body, but this little yellow book of his would have nowhere to run.

Duroken recovering his full strength also meant that they now had an Alchemy King covering them — wonderful.

Duroken took the soul crystals, suddenly flicked his hand in disgust: "Eww~" a ball of water mist was flung out by him.

The water mist was a bit dizzy, drifting this way and that, until Seeing Ange gathered it together and held it in his palm. From the water mist came the voice of the Water God Torm: "This... where is... huh? Such a far... place..."

"Hiss — Torm, can you remotely sense all the way here from the main plane?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si asked in shock.

Torm had an ability to sense pure water and transfer his consciousness within pure water. If that pure water had already merged with him into one mass, after separating, his sensing would be even easier.

But all of this was built on the condition that the distance wasn't too far. In a situation like this, Torm could actually still remotely sense?

"So far... so blurry, wait for me a moment, I'll transfer over. Huh? Why is there so little water? My lord, get me some more water." Torm seemed to have transferred over, speaking more and more fluently.

Seeing Ange condensed a water ball, purified it once more, and turned the ball of water-mist Torm into a blob of water.

Taking this opportunity, Lord Nai Ge Li Si asked, "What did you come over for?"

"Ugh, I'm about to die of annoyance. The little angel and little zombie look for my lord every day. If I don't help them find my lord, they pee on me, so I had no choice but to come find him." Torm complained.

Seeing Ange's consciousness retreated to his main body, sent a thought to the little angel and little zombie, then projected back over again.

Having resolved the danger of being peed on, Torm also breathed a great sigh of relief, and had the leisure to pay attention to the situation here: "My remote sensing found this place is super far away. Where is this?"

Lord Nai Ge Li Si replied, "Red Star, the place where that red star used to be. The star burst and the faith storm were released from here."

"Oh, I got it, let me take a look." After Torm finished speaking, the surface of the water ball actually began to tremble, bouncing up countless small water columns and rippling out in rings, as if shaken by infrasound magic.

After quite a while, it stopped and said, "I sense a lot of pure water, and the most is in that place up above."

A small hand condensed out of the water ball, pointing up at the star-burst magic array in the sky.

Duroken's eyes lit up. Lord Nai Ge Li Si actually had the same expression, but he was currently a book — he didn't even have eyes, so naturally couldn't "light up."

"Can you transfer over there? That's the enemy's main base. Transfer over and see what's going on." Lord Nai Ge Li Si said.

Torm shook his head: "No, there are a lot of prohibitions there, I almost got discovered."

"Ugh, why are you so useless? You keep getting discovered by people." Lord Nai Ge Li Si said.

Entering the Palace of Rest and being discovered by the Guardian Divine Emperor, barely getting out only to be discovered by Seeing Ange, and now the moment he poked his head out, he almost got discovered again.

He used to think Torm's ability to transfer through pure water, ignoring planar barriers, was amazing. Now it seemed nothing more than that.

"Let's go, let's go, Seeing Ange, let's head to God Fall Town to take a look. Oh right, Duroken, you mentioned buying materials to build a teleportation array — are you confident you can connect it to the main plane?" Lord Nai Ge Li Si asked.

Duroken said, "Just now I wasn't confident, but now I am. If even Torm can remotely sense and transfer over, a teleportation array should be no problem either. The question is how big a teleportation array to build? Best to go with the scale of a world transit station."

Lord Nai Ge Li Si immediately said, "That's way too much engineering work. Wouldn't it be better to just have Seeing Ange grab them over piece by piece — it'd be faster than you."

The group followed the residents of the former Desert Town toward God Fall Town. They walked along the edge of the desert until they reached a river, then followed the riverbank upstream. Soon they arrived at a lake, and on the lakeshore was God Fall Town.

The closer they got to God Fall Town, the more Seeing Ange sensed something. When he saw the lake, Seeing Ange suddenly squatted down, pressed his hand to the ground and pulled outward, and a ball of holy light was pulled out by him.

As this ball of light took shape, invisible specks of light from all directions surged toward him, and finally the ball of light condensed into the emblem of a sword slanting into a shield.

"Uh, you're not going to tell me you just picked up a divine seal, are you?"

PS: Let's see if I can restore full-attendance updates, begging for some votes to cheer myself up