The blood-red leaves that looked like human palms reflected the sky, and the bone-like branches grew in all directions, covering the earth like a dome.
A hundred young girls dressed in animal skins with small bronze scimitars hanging from their waists held hands and danced around the weirwood tree in a counterclockwise direction, chanting a high-pitched and rough sacrificial song in the ancient language.
Under the canopy, there were thousands of savages watching with solemn expressions. Most of them were dressed in animal skins and looked like the freemen from beyond the Great Wall.
Closer to the weirwood tree, there were dozens of warriors with bronze swords hanging from their waists and wearing bright yellow bronze armor. Beside them were women wearing simple linen clothes with tears in their eyes and sorrowful expressions.
Other than humans, there were other humanoids. There was a gray hairy giant with a short neck and a tilted head. There was also a group of people that Danny had never seen before. They had dark chestnut-colored skin, large ears, delicate features, and short squirrel-like stature.
Most of them had large golden eyes, but the five people standing at the front had green or red eyes.
Danny stared at them curiously. The five squirrel-people with green or red eyes suddenly turned their heads and looked at her in bewilderment.
It gave her a fright.
"What's wrong, Lord Prophet?" One of the warriors noticed the squirrel-people's strange behavior and approached to ask in a low voice.
He spoke in the ancient language.
It was a lean man in his early forties with a horse-face, brown hair, and a pair of deep gray eyes. Although there was also a bronze longsword hanging from his waist, his right hand was holding a wooden cane that had been rubbed until it was smooth and glossy.
"No, maybe it's an illusion," a red-eyed squirrel-person said uncertainly.
"No, I felt it too," another red-eyed squirrel-person said solemnly.
"We all felt it." The other three looked at each other and said in unison.
The squirrel-people were also speaking in the ancient language. Their voices had a strange calmness that seemed to be able to calm storms and tsunamis.
"Then, will there be a problem with the sacrifice?" the horse-faced man unconsciously tightened his grip on his cane and asked worriedly.
"No, Father will never change what he has promised," the five squirrel-people said in unison with solemn and pious expressions.
At this moment, the girl's song gradually entered the climax, and the huge human face carved on the trunk seemed to come to life, and the serious expression slowly became sad and helpless.
The woman in the front row could no longer hold it in and burst into tears.
As the sacrificial song was about to end, some of the young girls turned around to look at the woman. Then, a hundred young girls pulled out their small scimitars at the same time. The leaves on the blood-red palm suddenly rustled, and the old man on the tree trunk looked even more sorrowful.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk …" The singing stopped, and the girl immediately stabbed the dagger into her own heart. She stretched her arm forward, grabbing towards the direction of the tree trunk. With a happy and satisfied expression on her face, she fell to the ground.
Upon closer inspection, the corpses of the hundred girls formed a spiral pattern. However, the blood that flowed out of their hearts did not flow freely. Like spring water entering the dry desert, the brown soil on the ground hungrily sucked up every drop of blood that fell.
There wasn't even a small pool of blood on the ground.
"Sob, sob, sob …" The woman wept sorrowfully. The bronze-armored men did not feel good either. Their eyes were red and swollen, and they were trying their best not to show their grief.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak …"
A strange thing happened. A spore grew from the tree face's glabella, and in a few seconds, it grew into a new branch the length of an arm.
"Hualala!" The thousands of onlookers, whether they were commoners or nobles, humans, giants, or squirrelmen, all knelt on the ground with pious expressions.
Five red-eyed or green-eyed squirrelmen took the lead and sang a sacred and solemn song. The rest followed suit.
The song was sacred, but the content was simple. It was mostly about praising the mountains, lakes, seas, earth, sky, wind, fire, sun, and moon …
After the song ended, everyone stood up. A green-eyed squirrelman turned his head and swept his gaze across the faces of the dozens of bronze-armored swordsmen. Finally, his gaze fixed on the long-faced man with a cane.
"'City Builder' Brandon Stark, go." The squirrelman sighed.
The long-faced man did not decline, nor did he decline. He left his cane where it was, and with a sacred and solemn expression, he walked past the corpses of the young girls and came to the tree trunk that was as thick as ten people. He reached out his hand and broke the branch with seven or eight red spore between the old man's eyebrows.
He respectfully held the young branch with both hands, bowed, and retreated step by step.
"Boom — Ka, huff huff huff …" Suddenly, the gigantic weirwood shook, as if a gigantic palm had descended from the sky and slapped the treetop. Thousands of palm-shaped blood-colored leaves fell from the branches and danced in the air.
Like red snowflakes, the entire world was covered in red snow.
The weirwood was still the weirwood, and the human face was still the human face.
However, the tree was bare, as if the old man had lived for too long, and his hair was falling off strand by strand. The only branches left were just branches and tree trunks. From now on, there would be no new leaves or new spore growing.
The immortal weirwood was dead.
The human face was just a carving, and there was no longer a shred of holiness or majesty.
After that, the long-faced man, surrounded by thousands of people, trekked a long distance, crossing plains and swamps. He walked thousands, tens of thousands of miles to the north, and came to a land of ice and snow.
He knelt in the snow in front of a small lake, and the thousands of people behind him knelt as well. Under the lead of the squirrelmen, they chanted a sacred song praising the gods.
Brandon Stark took out the branch that was still fresh and tender and placed it gently on the ground.
"Rumble —" The earth rumbled.
The spores on the branch quickly grew new branches and inserted them into the ground. The branches that were as thick as a finger swelled to as thick as a bucket. They were densely packed, layer upon layer, and tangled into two earth dragons that drilled wildly into the ground in both the east and west directions.
In just five minutes, a fifteen-meter-wide and two-hundred-meter-tall tree trunk wall appeared between the North and the Great Wall, on the narrow continent that was five hundred kilometers wide.
Then, the giants and humans worked together to cut open the mountains and take stones, filling the tree trunk wall with boulders. It was like a construction worker pouring cement into a steel framework, and then repairing a brick wall according to the concrete framework.
Brandon Stark was not idle.
He walked through the tree trunk wall, explored the terrain in the mountains and canyons, and drew maps. Then, he instructed the giants to dig the soil and fill in the huge cornerstone to ensure that even in the complicated hilly terrain, the Great Wall had no blind spots or weaknesses.
After laying the foundation, he led thousands of squirrelmen to draw strange magic runes on the boulders and tree trunks. From then on, no other creatures could get close to the Great Wall.
Decades passed, and Stark died of old age. However, the work of building the Great Wall did not stop. The second Stark, Brandon's son, took the building blueprint left behind by his father and continued to instruct the giants and ancestors to mine boulders, fill in the tree trunks, draw magic runes, and strengthen the wall …
Generations of Stark died, and the tree trunks that served as the skeleton of the wall were gradually covered. The magnificent Great Wall of Stone was completed.
The giants and squirrelmen bid farewell to the ancestors. Some went to the Great Wall in the north, while others returned to their warm homes in the south.
Yes, home.
At that time, the Andals had not attacked yet. The Westeros were still the paradise of the ancestors and the squirrelmen — the children of the forest.
The ancestors who stayed put on black robes and were called the Night Watchers.
The Night Watchers did not stop building the city. They took Brandon's blueprint and dug out huge blocks of ice from the frozen river in the Haunted Forest, dragging them back to the Great Wall.
A few more centuries passed, and the Great Wall of Stone was covered with a thick layer of ice crystals. It had been like that for 8,000 years, until now …
"Rumble …" The Great Wall was shaking. The cracks spanned 500 kilometers, and huge blocks of ice fell everywhere.
The Great Wall was about to collapse.
"No!" Danny looked up at the sky and screamed. Her hair danced in the wind, and a clear green crystal flew out from between her eyebrows and returned to its original position.
It was like a heartbeat. Every once in a while, it would emit a sacred and majestic wave.
"Crack crack crack!" Sam of the Long Night Castle, Melisandre of the Dark Castle, Shireen of the East Sea Watch, and Patched Face were all shocked as they watched the palm-sized ice crystal slowly heal …
Other than the faint black cracks, the Great Wall was almost no different from before.
The Night Watchers, Savages, and Deer Association on the Great Wall felt like they were in a dream.
"Under the Great Wall, the wind has stopped. The silly queen has put the baby back. Oh, oh, oh, silly, silly, I know, I know …" Anger flashed across the patched face's eyes as he sang cheerfully.
.....
"Phew …" Danny breathed heavily. She looked at the green crystal floating in the air with longing and fear. She asked, "What is it?"
"My song, the Song of Wind." She did not know if it was an illusion, but the old and majestic voice of the Door God had a touch of gentleness.
In fact, even the tone of his voice had changed.
Danny was enlightened. She took one last look at the green crystal and turned her head away. After a long time, she finally got rid of the huge greed in her heart and tried to calm herself down.
She heaved a sigh of relief and asked, "Why can I have it? Isn't it your song? "
"You saw it. I died 8,000 years ago," the Door God said lightly.
"That weirwood is your original body? You are the old god, the weirwood tree spirit? "Danny was shocked.
"Old god …" The Door God sighed. "I am the old god, but the old god is not just me. Billions of years ago, before the gods appeared, I was rooted in this land. I witnessed the formation of mountains and rivers, the birth of life …
I also listened to the Song of Wind that surrounded this world. It brought me the information of the world, so that I was no longer alone.
Long ago, when I learned that song, I heard the voices of other singers. Then, we sang together. The world flourished, and the next era began. "
Danny was speechless. After a long silence, she asked, "What is this era?"
"The era after the singers, the era before you."
"The children of the forest?"
"The children of the forest …" The Door God's voice had a touch of nostalgia and disappointment. He sighed. "Those children did not compete with the world. They only lived in this land. The world is so big. There are more colorful lives in other places. "
"What's with the deviant ghosts? Who is the Frost God? "Danny asked again.
"You will understand after you experience it," the Door God said slowly. "Leave. You already know the secret of the world."
"I still want to know more. My head is full of questions," Danny said.
The Door God seemed to choke. He paused and said helplessly, "I don't have the energy to answer you. Also, when you took the Song of Wind, the evil thing that had been suppressed under the Great Wall escaped. Your friends are in danger. "
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