Chapter 222: The Touch of the Shadow's Child

The scorching sun blazed in the sky, flooding the world with light—white light from the sun, yellow light reflected off the desert, and an oppressive, searing glow. Dany, wearing a veiled hood, galloped across the vast desert on horseback.

The silk curtains of her headgear flapped in the wind as she exclaimed in delight, "Wow, this sand horse really has incredible endurance!"

Beneath her was a slender, short-haired gray horse, swift as the wind and light in its steps.

According to the old knight, this was a sand horse, a breed native to Dorne. It could run for two days and nights without tiring. Covering a thousand miles in a single day might be a stretch, but without a heavy load, most sand horses could travel up to five hundred kilometers daily.

Dany hadn't believed it at first. If such an extraordinary warhorse truly existed, every city-state in the world would be flocking to Dorne to breed them.

Yet, after over an hour of riding in the desert, she had no choice but to believe. The peculiar gait of sand horses granted them exceptional endurance in desert terrain.

How to put it? In the modern world, scientists had studied the tendon movement of ostrich feet to develop an exoskeleton device that allowed wearers to run faster and longer.

Similarly, the muscle structure and running style of sand horses created a comparable effect—though only in desert environments. On flat, muddy ground, their advantage might not be as pronounced.

"How about now?" Barristan scanned the surroundings keenly and asked, "Do you still feel like we're being watched?"

"Sigh, it's faint... At first, my spiritual intuition sensed something unusual, but the feeling wasn't very strong. If—"

If she hadn't entered her dragon-spirit state and pulled Blackfyre into her soul sea at the first moment, Dany might have thought that Dornish wine had a delayed kick, making her drunk and causing hallucinations!

"Not long after leaving Sunspear, that sense of being watched disappeared. It's strange—if they had discovered our identities, even if they didn't approach us directly, they should have sent someone to continue tracking us."

"In that case, we should leave Dorne as soon as possible. The people, clothing, and customs here are vastly different from the other six kingdoms. Oldtown, on the other hand, is crowded and diverse—we won't stand out as much there," the old knight suggested.

Dany nodded, summoned her two dragons, and abandoned the sand horses in the desert before continuing westward.

After more than two hours of flying, nearing dusk, they watched the setting sun sink into the desert from an altitude of three thousand meters. The vast land was bathed in an overwhelming red glow—so beautiful it was mesmerizing.

Dany had never seen such a breathtaking sunset, nor had she ever witnessed such a massive red sun. It felt as if, if Little White flew just a bit faster, they might catch up to that blazing sphere.

She suddenly had a ridiculous worry—what if they actually crashed into the sun?

The stunning scene left even the White Knight in awe. He shouted, "After witnessing such a sunset, I have no regrets in this life!"

Dany, equally exhilarated, spread her arms wide and called out, "This is just the beginning! We have a long journey ahead. We'll watch the sun rise and set in every corner of the world—the Summer Isles, Wyvern Point, Sothoryos, the Jade Sea, Yi Ti..."

She wasn't idle during the flight. While Barristan had to grip the leather straps extending from Blackfyre's neck to keep himself steady, Dany sprawled across Little White's back, shifting side to side without falling off. The dragon instinctively adjusted its posture, keeping her balanced at all times.

This left Dany with enough focus to do other things—like multitasking, enjoying the view while studying the "Blood Dragon's Frenzied Dance" she had obtained from the dead man, Lisbon.

Well... the name was something that guy had completely made up.

When Dany grasped the inheritance iron token and attempted to probe its runes with her mental energy, a "QR code" immediately imprinted itself into her mind.

Skillfully, she used meditative sorcery to decipher its contents:

Fire Control (Incomplete), designated for use by the collateral descendants of the Fourth Fire Peak's Miraris lineage. It was divided into three major realms:

Fire Magician – The ability to freely manipulate the shape of flames.

Flame Spirit – The ability to gather fire elements from nature to form rootless flames.

Lord of Flame Demons – The ability to convert other elements into fire elements, even igniting all high-energy elements.

Reading about the highest realm, Lord of Flame Demons, made Dany's heart race. Igniting all high-energy elements—what did that imply?

It meant that the mental energy, sorcery, and magic within extraordinary beings were also high-energy elements. If she wished, just a single glance could turn people like Tam, Lisbon, or Bu Cheng into blazing torches.

"Sigh, why is it incomplete?" Dany sighed in disappointment. The iron token only recorded the runes for the first two realms.

It made sense, though. The token didn't even contain the fundamental sorcery "password." Regardless of bloodline or sorcery talent, any fire mage could learn from it—it was specifically designed for collateral family members of the Fourth Fire Peak.

The process of drawing runes turned out to be far more difficult than Dany had imagined—harder even than when she first pioneered the Coordinate Technique for Ruin Sorcery from scratch.

Before leaving Volantis, she had been meticulously assembling the rune spell like building a house out of blocks, piece by piece forming a "QR code" spell.

The first realm alone contained nearly thirty thousand basic runes, though it didn't utilize all 108 symbols from the standard rune table—only thirty-two of them. Many runes appeared repeatedly, while a few only showed up once or twice.

Comparing it with the "Lisbon 64-Character Table" given to her by the fire mage, Dany discovered that seven of the runes had too low a repetition frequency, making Lisbon fail to recognize them. Instead, he mistakenly invented five additional runes.

After working for two days and nights, she had only just completed the full structure of the first realm by the time she arrived in Dorne that morning.

Now, as they flew toward Oldtown in the afternoon, she had begun restructuring the rune spell for the second realm.

Fifteen thousand base runes, utilizing eighty-two different symbols.

Lisbon almost got half of it wrong—no wonder he only managed to singe Tyrion's beard before becoming breathless and exhausting his magical power.

The second level of the technique consumed even more time. Dany tried for several hours and realized that completing it would take at least ten days.

Back then, it took her four days to grasp Qui Xian's "Coordinate Technique" and only two days to compose the runic script of the technique in her mind.

Although the Coordinate Technique had relatively fewer runes—fifteen thousand in total, with 24 basic runes—those runes were entirely unfamiliar to her. Without Tam's inheritance, Dany would have only been able to use them, not recite their incantations.

Hmm, reciting spells could reduce magical power consumption.

Magical incantations had a unique pronunciation—just because there were fifteen thousand runes didn't mean there were fifteen thousand corresponding sounds.

For example, in one-dimensional written languages like English, "understand" is a long word, but you wouldn't pronounce every single letter individually.

Two-dimensional rune language was even more "concise."

"Your Grace, something's happening!" Barristan suddenly shouted, pulling Dany out of her meditation.

"There's a White Knight below!" he said solemnly.

With no need to study magic runes, the old knight had been lying idly on a soft cushion, using a spyglass to observe the scenery below.

Having served as a Kingsguard for forty years, Barristan was extremely familiar with their attire. In the Dornish desert, a knight clad in white enamel armor and a pure white cloak was far too conspicuous.

"What's going on?" The two dragons began to slow down, circling near the clouds. Through Black's vision, Dany saw a group of riders galloping across the desert toward the Greenblood River.

There were six riders, mounted on sand steeds, both men and women. Apart from the White Knight in gleaming white armor and a white cloak, the others wore veils to shield themselves from the sun.

"There must be a royal among them! The smallest girl in the middle is most likely Princess Myrcella Baratheon," the old knight said confidently.

White Knights only served royalty, and there was only one Dornish royal sent by Tyrion—Princess Myrcella.

"Myrcella?" Dany frowned. What kind of storyline was this?

Could the White Knight be Jaime Lannister? Had he and the sellsword Bronn come to Dorne to rescue his daughter?

"They're about to cross—Seven save us!" The White Knight cried out in horror.

As the six riders reached the Greenblood River and pulled their horses to a stop, a group of armored warriors suddenly emerged from a raft house by the riverbank, armed with crossbows. Without much conversation, the White Knight immediately drew his sword and charged at the raft.

A gruesome scene unfolded. At such close range, the crossbow bolts nearly turned the Kingsguard's warhorse into a sieve.

Even so, the Kingsguard fought valiantly, managing to take down… well, two enemy soldiers before falling.

And then...

With a flash of a cold axe blade, the White Knight's arm was severed cleanly at the elbow. He barely had time to scream before the axe traced a beautiful arc, and his head—about the size of a cooking pot—splashed into the river, sending up a spray of water as blood gushed from his neck.

The entire fight lasted barely two minutes before a Kingsguard had met his end.

Well, the Seven might not welcome him, but perhaps he could reunite with Mad King Aerys and the Usurper Robert in hell.

"Ah!" Dany gasped softly.

The brutal death of the White Knight was shocking enough, but what happened next was even more astonishing.

Originally, all six riders had been surrounded by the ambush. The others seemed to be preparing to surrender, with only the White Knight charging ahead. But as the ambushers focused all their attention on the crazed Kingsguard, one of his supposed companions suddenly turned on them—drawing a sword and cutting down the unsuspecting Myrcella… if it really was her.

"What… what's going on?" Both Dany and Barristan were dumbfounded.

"That one's escaping. Let's cut him off ahead," the White Knight suggested.

"What if our identities are exposed?" Dany hesitated.

"Kill him!" Barristan said without a moment's doubt. "Only a beast would harm a little girl!"

Ser, mind your stance. You serve House Targaryen now, and that girl down there is a Lannister!

Though she inwardly scoffed, Dany thought for a moment and agreed with his suggestion.

"Ser, take off your glove," she called out.

"What for?"

"I'm not going down there."

"What do you mean?" The old knight was puzzled but still struggled to remove his lobster-scale gauntlet from his right hand.

"Raise your arm high," Dany instructed.

Looking utterly confused, the old knight lifted his right hand above his head.

"Whoosh—"

Little White suddenly accelerated, circling in the sky before flipping over as he passed behind Black. Almost belly-up, he swooped low over Barristan's head. In that fleeting moment, Dany, hanging upside down from the dragon's back, murmured a spell and gently tapped the old knight's right wrist.

Before she could fall, Little White twisted his body like a snake, flipping her back upright—executing the entire maneuver with acrobatic precision.

"Ow!"

Despite his years of battlefield experience and countless injuries, the old knight still clutched his wrist and let out a cry.

"What happened? It felt like my soul was scalded," he asked, bewildered.

"Heh, the Horse Lords are quite wise in their survival instincts—the best way to deal with a shadow child is to never let them touch you," Dany said with a cryptic smile before continuing, "Go down there, and you'll understand soon enough."

(End of Chapter)

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