"Bang! Bang! Bang!" With five consecutive shield strikes, the Dragon Queen's incredible speed combined with immense strength transformed into momentum against the Night King, sending him flying all the way to the castle gates, where he crashed down before a group of knights.
"Hold him down, chop him to pieces. I refuse to believe we can't kill him!" the Dragon Queen snarled through clenched teeth.
She stepped out of the wildfire. Her green velvet cloak had been burned away, yet her blue-and-white armor remained spotless and gleaming, as if it had never been scorched by the green flames.
"Kill him! Kill the Night King and end the Long Night!" the Big Bear roared, charging forward first. He pinned the Night King's sword-wielding right arm and swung his Valyrian steel blade down with all his strength.
It was like chopping at a wooden post.
"Kill the Night King! End the Long Night!" Old Barristan, Clinton, Quelo, Grey Worm, Jaime, and the others rushed in together. They pinned his legs, his feet, his arms, hacking wildly with their swords.
"Shriek!" The Night King opened his mouth, missing its front teeth, and let out a soul-freezing howl.
"Ahhhh!" The knights surrounding him bled from all seven orifices, their faces twisted in agony.
"You're already meat on the chopping block, and you still struggle!"
The dragon soul entered her body. Soul-Suppressing Strike.
The Night King's soul attack was interrupted. The souls of the soldiers besieging him felt as though they had taken a hot bath, their minds clearing once more.
"Thud!" The Dragon Queen stepped forward and thrust her sword toward his chest, aiming at the spot previously pierced by the red blade.
The sword tip snapped. The blade was too broad, the ice armor too thick. It would not go in.
"Ser, stab his heart," Dany ordered Old Barristan.
After a long moment—
"Your Majesty, the ice armor on the Night King is terrifying. We can't break it!" Frost coated Barristan from his sword arm to his visor, and his teeth chattered as he spoke.
This was no illusion. The power of ice throughout the North was converging upon the Night King.
Though several burly men held him down firmly with oak shields, a thick layer of pale blue ice armor rapidly formed over his body.
It looked much like the "fire armor" shield that Goat Egg had once condensed with fire magic at the Oros Magic Tower.
More terrifying still, the Night King's ice armor was like a black hole, plundering the vitality and heat from those around him.
Or perhaps he had become a white hole of ice, blasting the power of the Long Night outward in all directions.
Every strand of icy power behaved like a living creature, burrowing into the bodies of the living and greedily devouring their warmth and life.
Beneath the castle gates, because of the Night King, the area had become a frozen inferno.
A layer of frost even spread outward from where he lay, radiating in all directions.
"Damn it, my feet are frozen!" cried a knight near him in terror.
Visible to the naked eye, white frost crawled up from the soles of iron boots to the instep, the ankle, the calf.
Even the gray stone walls beside them grew a palm-thick layer of pale gray ice, which rapidly climbed upward.
The crowd lying atop the battlements, excitedly watching, cheering, and shouting encouragement, recoiled with shrieks as if they had touched red-hot iron.
Yet even as they tried to retreat, frost froze their feet and hands to the walls. The heat of their lives drained away like water released from a reservoir.
"Mother above, the Night King is going to freeze Winterfell! The Long Night truly was brought by the Others!"
Sansa, cradling her swollen belly, hurried toward the wildfire braziers with Theon and Jenny supporting her, seeking refuge from the tangible cold pressing in around them.
A tearing roar shook the air.
A tearing roar shook the air.
A tearing roar shook the air.
The three dragons perched upon the walls and tower tops moved. They threw back their heads and roared, spewing dragonflame of blazing white, molten gold, and blood red.
The three streams of dragonfire converged midair, then spread outward across a hundred-meter radius like a gigantic umbrella, covering the space above Winterfell's gates.
The umbrella's handle rested in the Dragon Queen's right hand.
In truth, it looked more like a massive mushroom.
The Fire-Forbidden Domain still lingered. She could not control it with the same precision as before, but roughly shaping the dragonflame into a mushroom form was still within her ability.
Under the dragonfire's coverage, blazing power and flame essence surged wildly. Sky, earth, walls, and men were dyed red by the scorching glow. The power of ice struggled and retreated, shrinking back to the Night King's surface, where it condensed into a dense, undispersed fog of frost around him.
The people regained their vitality once more.
But the tactic of "mincing dumpling filling" proved largely ineffective.
It was like the Valyrian archmage standing beside the magic tower. So long as no one exceeded the upper limit of the magic pump's fire-power output, no one could shatter the fiery shield around him.
The Long Night, especially the North ravaged by it, was the Night King's magic tower.
Power of ice surged in from every direction, constantly reinforcing the ice armor upon him.
Without the dragons, he truly could have turned all of Winterfell into an ice sculpture.
Crack!
Mormont stared in horror at his Valyrian steel sword, now missing a large chunk from its blade like a broken tooth. "My Valyrian steel shattered. How is this possible? His arm is harder than Valyrian steel? But earlier, Stannis—"
At this point, the Big Bear seemed to recall something and suddenly cried out in realization, "The hero's red sword! Only Lightbringer can kill the Night King!"
Jaime exhaled a thick plume of white breath and asked, "Your Grace Daenerys, where is Lightbringer? I seem to recall you saying the Night King shattered it?"
"Lightbringer is indeed broken."
"What? The Lightbringer prophesied to end the Long Night is broken? What do we do now? Without the red sword, we can't kill the Night King!" Those who knew the prophecy of Asshai fell into confusion.
Even those who had once doubted the prophecy of Asshai, after hacking at the Night King like butchers chopping vegetables for so long, now more or less understood Azor Ahai's anguish when he slew his wife to forge the blade.
Without Lightbringer, even if you capture the Night King, you still cannot kill him.
The Hound thrust an ironwood spear forcefully into the Night King's mouth while loudly cursing, "To hell with prophecy. Did any prophecy say the Night King would lie on the ground like a dead pig and let us stab him?"
That was indeed the truth.
According to the legends and the grand battle they had imagined, it should have been like the earlier clash between Stannis and the Night King, evenly matched, trading blows, thrilling and perilous.
It should not have been like the Dragon Queen beating her son, treating the Night King like a ball and kicking him around.
"If the Dragon Queen had a red sword, the Night King would be utterly vulnerable." As soon as they thought this, their expressions turned strange.
The legendary and sacred aura of Stannis's desperate duel with the Night King seemed to have diminished considerably.
Dany glanced around at the shivering soldiers surrounding the Night King amid the frigid aura and shouted reassuringly, "The White Walker cavalry has been wiped out in the wildfire. The Night King is now a turtle trapped in a jar, with no reinforcements and no escape.
"Nothing is truly unkillable. We have time. Even if we grind him down slowly, we can still grind him to death."
After speaking, she raised her right hand, and from the center of the dragonfire mushroom cloud above her head, a pillar of flame as thick as a bowl descended.
Like the stem of a giant umbrella-shaped mushroom, it aimed directly at the Night King's lower abdomen.
Like water from a firefighter's hose, the scorching dragonfire struck his lower abdomen, producing a sharp sizzling sound as large amounts of steam billowed up.
The soldiers pinning the Night King down could not help but turn their heads aside.
The Dragon Queen swung her broken sword, neither dodging the dragonfire nor the steam, and stabbed fiercely at the lower abdomen being blasted by the flames.
Thud, thud, thud. It was like beating a leather drum. The Night King's lower abdomen was the drum, emitting dull, tearing sounds.
The broken sword pierced the ice armor, leaving wound after wound on his lower abdomen, yet it could not penetrate into his organs. Fresh ice crystals immediately formed to block it.
Though the Night King groaned repeatedly in pain, he suffered no fatal wound.
Irritated, Dany lifted her iron boot and stomped hard toward the Night King's crotch.
Unexpectedly, this unintentional act of venting her anger had an exceptionally good effect.
Crack. The ice armor at his crotch shattered, leaving a heel-shaped dent.
"Aoo—" The Night King, eyes closed and teeth clenched as he endured the Hound's throat-piercing strike, let out an inhuman, muffled howl from deep within his chest.
Beside him, Ser Richard's eyes lit up. He laughed loudly. "So that's it. This ice lump is Benjen Stark. He has a weak point too!"
"Your Grace, let me try. Everyone, help me. Spread the Night King's legs!" He raised his imitation red sword high, his expression solemn.
Dany froze for a moment, understood his intention, shuddered, and stepped aside to make room for the demon hunter.
Grey Worm and Missandei, who were holding down the Night King's legs, did not quite understand but still endured the bone-chilling cold and pulled at his ankles.
"Activate the Saint Fighter armor," the Dragon Queen kindly reminded before Richard charged in.
"If you hadn't said so, I might have forgotten." Richard came to his senses, stepped back two paces, and looked incomparably devout. "The power of faith accumulated over four days can only sustain the holy armor for a few breaths, but a finishing strike does not require much time."
"What holy armor?" Jaime and the others looked bewildered.
"You weren't lying. You really brought down a set of Saint Fighter armor from heaven?" asked Clayton Song, one of the "Three Heroes of the Red Heart," his voice uncertain.
"Saint Fighter? What kind of fighter is that?"
"Armor brought down from heaven? He's clearly wearing his old ancestral iron armor."
Those around him were confused, casting strange looks at the Flaming Red Heart warrior.
"Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon!"
Richard chanted the incantation. A golden seven-pointed star lit up on his forehead as the warrior's divine power and the Holy Mother's sacred healing art poured into his body.
"World-Honored Stranger!"
The "Divine Descent" rune branded upon his soul was activated. Golden light surged from deep within his soul, radiating outward.
"Prajna Seven Gods!"
The divine power of the Warrior of the Seven Gods circulated within the Divine Descent rune. Richard's muscles swelled as if inflated, and his bones crackled as they stretched and expanded.
Such a violent transformation would inevitably cause tremendous damage to the body, yet the Holy Mother's divine power immediately followed, repairing it.
"Prajna Bama Hum—Om!"
Divine power seeped through flesh and into armor, then condensed upon Richard's surface into a pale golden suit of armor: bull's head, serpent deity, scorpion's tail, tiger claws.
The counterfeit Golden Saint Fighter, Taurus R'hllor!
"Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon, World-Honored Stranger, Prajna Seven Gods, Prajna Bama Hum!"
Richard's originally coarse voice suddenly became grand and sacred, like thunder echoing through an empty valley, deafening those around him. It felt as though heaven and earth themselves trembled within the thunderous roar.
"Seven Gods, Richard has turned into a giant!"
"Gods above, what is this power? It's so strong."
"Lord of Light above, Richard has become…" Ser Song's expression twisted.
After the pockmarked knight's sun-piercing strike, the red priestess had begun spreading the doctrine and image of Shadow Demon R'hllor among the Flaming Red Heart knights.
While the others were utterly shocked by the demon hunter's transformation, the Dragon Queen was not entirely satisfied. Even without charging a handling fee, Richard's power of faith was still somewhat insufficient; the duration was too short.
The holy armor's outward form was actually divine power itself. With too little divine power, its color and texture naturally appeared somewhat illusory.
Not solid enough.
However, it was sufficient for a sun-piercing strike.
But if the Night King were truly pierced to death, how would history record it in the future?
The Dragon Queen's face showed conflicted worry as she began to fret over imagined troubles.
"Demon, meet your death!"
(End of Chapter)
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