Olivia was quite surprised by Chen Yu's arrival.
She was squatting in the nursery beside the flower pavilion, packing soil around a newly transplanted silver-leaf rose, when she spotted that familiar pale green slime hopping in from outside.
She stepped out of the nursery, waved to indicate that Tray Sir should float the freshly brewed black tea and several plates of pastries into the flower pavilion. After sitting down across from Chen Yu in the pavilion, she teased:
"Shouldn't our newly minted Legendary King have a mountain of government affairs to deal with? How do you have time to visit this frozen, snowy Winterhold?"
"Could it be that you miss me and Silver Sparrow?"
Silver Sparrow's phantom stood beside the flower pavilion's pillar. Hearing Olivia's words, she bowed slightly, her tone as serious as ever.
"Wherever the Gel Network exists, I am everywhere. The Master doesn't need to come all the way to visit me. If you need to know Miss Olivia's recent news, you can ask me directly at any time."
"You, this one..." Olivia helplessly reached up and slapped her forehead. "Selling me out in just a few words."
Chen Yu had already bounced onto the stone table in the flower pavilion, stuffing an entire blueberry cream cake into his mouth, his cheeks puffing out like a hamster stuffed with nuts.
"Chew chew chew... you know... this thing... chew chew... how is it this tasty."
As he digested, he squatted upright.
"Alright, actually, I came over because I have something to do. You two might not quite understand this, but I obtained some new power from my homeland. Maybe I can completely master the entire castle."
Olivia's hand, lifting her teacup for a sip, paused. She raised her eyes to look at the slime squatting on the table, smaller than her own vase, then gently placed the teacup back on the saucer.
"I didn't expect Your Majesty has already reached this step."
She sighed. "That's truly remarkable."
"You know about the Golden Core?" Chen Yu tilted his gel head.
"No. That word doesn't appear in any language I'm familiar with."
Olivia tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear, shifting her gaze from Chen Yu to the blizzard outside the flower pavilion.
"However, the stone carvings of the dragons record an old tale. The previous master of this castle casually swung his hand and created a giant mountain peak, crushing a black dragon that had offended him beneath it."
"Such transformational magic, which even dragons cannot comprehend, should be the new power you're talking about."
Chen Yu's small eyes lit up. Not just because Ancestor Cloud Cliff had left more traces in Zeyarila than he had imagined, but more importantly, because the dragons' stone carvings had clearly not been completely purged by the gods.
Those deliberately suppressed histories still survived in fragmented pieces among the oldest races of the continent.
The dragon forces lurking beneath the continent might be more vast than he had originally estimated, and this castle clearly occupied a special position in the cognition of the dragon race.
Olivia suddenly sighed, putting on a pitiful expression.
"Your Majesty wouldn't just take the castle away and kick me out, would he? This little one can't survive without that castle."
Silver Sparrow hadn't considered that issue.
The reason Olivia had been living there all along was precisely because her broken dragon body had to rely on some ancient protective mechanism within the castle to maintain stability.
If he refined the castle and stored it into his Divine Sense, Olivia's refuge would indeed become a problem.
But he still hadn't fully figured out how this castle actually sheltered an injured Silver Dragon.
He could only explain the relationship between Divine Sense and magic artifacts to Olivia as best he could, using the magical concepts of Zeyarila as an analogy.
"Divine Sense is essentially like a spellcaster's mental power, and a magic artifact is a magical item refined with Divine Sense, bound to the spellcaster's soul. It can be stored deep within consciousness. That should make sense to you, right?"
After listening, Olivia became serious. She tapped the porcelain edge of her teacup with her fingertip, her lashes lowered, thinking for a long while before speaking.
"In other words, what you call Divine Sense is very similar to the Astral Realm."
She paused, as if afraid Chen Yu might not understand, and deliberately added a simpler explanation:
"The Astral Realm, theoretically speaking, is a silver void where everything floats on a sea of consciousness."
"That void is woven from raw magic, chaotic thoughts, and the dreams of countless sleepers."
"Spatial distance, which the Material Plane relies on, loses much of its meaning there. Travelers usually don't move by flying, but through pure thought."
"Time also nearly stands still. You don't feel hunger, you don't age naturally. Before I found this castle, I spent a lot of time in the Astral Realm. Only..."
Her eyes dimmed slightly.
"It's quite dangerous there. The predators in the void are more terrifying than black dragons. Staying there, you could become their prey at any moment."
Chen Yu wobbled his gel.
Even an adult Silver Dragon found that place dangerous—that level of threat was no joke. The dangers beyond the Material Plane were higher than he had estimated.
Olivia didn't dwell on that dangerous topic for long. She continued speaking, her tone lightening.
"If that's the case, then perhaps Your Majesty doesn't need to worry about my refuge."
"This body of mine was already broken beyond repair. The injuries I suffered back then were too severe. I've only lasted this long thanks to the castle's protection. There's nothing regrettable about discarding this broken shell. If possible, I could lodge my dragon soul in your Divine Sense."
"If we encounter battle, I can emerge from your Divine Sense at any time, supporting you in my dragon soul form."
"Of course, without a physical body, I can only cast the dragons' inherited magic. Close-quarters biting and tearing are out of the question."
"But this requires sufficient trust between both parties. A dragon soul lodging in the consciousness of another being... even in the history of the Silver Dragon clan, there are very few precedents."
Chen Yu squatted on the stone table, his small eyes looking at her seriously for a long moment, then said frankly:
"No, lady, this is entirely up to you."
"I have absolute control over what I store in my Divine Sense. That means you must absolutely trust me."
Olivia was stunned for a moment, then smiled. She stood up, gathered her silver dress, and slightly bent her knee toward the slime on the table—who wasn't even as tall as her knee—performing a formal curtsey.
"My King, I am willing to pledge my loyalty to you."
She still had words hidden in the latter half, unspoken.
The Silver Dragon clan was one of the oldest dragon lineages on this continent. If any Silver Dragon's soul was controlled by another, it would mean that person would bear the enmity of the entire Silver Dragon clan. The Silver Dragons would not sit idly by while one of their own was turned into a puppet.
She treated this bottom line as an unspoken understanding, no need to make it explicit at this moment.
More importantly, she had lived a very long time, seen far too many people. The ones she could trust, she could tell at a glance.
She had witnessed everything this King had done. In her judgment, he was a ruler worthy of trust.
If she could follow him, perhaps one day in the future, she might even regain her body.
"Thank you for your trust." Chen Yu wobbled his gel, then bounced off the stone table and hopped onto the grass outside the flower pavilion.
Olivia and Silver Sparrow followed behind him. A gust of wind blew, lifting Olivia's golden hair. The silver-leaf roses around the flower pavilion swayed gently in the breeze.
It was as if something was about to happen.
"Please begin, Your Majesty." Olivia made a "please" gesture. "I want to witness this ancient power."
Silver Sparrow also bowed slightly. "Silver Sparrow is always ready to become your sharpest weapon, following the Master on campaigns far and wide."
Chen Yu wobbled his gel in response, then turned to face the entire castle.
He took a deep breath. His Divine Sense surged forth.
From the grass to the tallest tower of the castle, from every ancient secret rune carved into the walls to the reinforcement formations that had slumbered for centuries beneath the foundation—his Divine Sense, like an invisible tide, silently and rapidly enveloped the entire levitating castle.
Olivia saw the grass beneath her feet begin to tremble. Then the entire castle shuddered.
It had been stranded on this snowfield for so long that the accumulated snow around it had piled higher than the castle's base.
But now, those thick snowdrifts were crumbling away from the base's edges, one block after another, crashing onto the snowfield below with dull, rumbling booms.
The entire castle trembled and moved. The anchor chains extending in all directions were retracted into the fortress. It had regained its freedom.
The slime residents of Winterhold were hopping along the snowy streets. Hearing the commotion, they all looked up at the same time.
A few blue slime cubs, digging tunnels in the snowdrifts, poked their heads out of the snow pits. Their small eyes reflected the silver castle slowly rising, and they let out a cry.
"Wow, the castle is flying!"
Soon, more and more slimes poked their heads out from their houses, staring at this historic scene.
"As expected..." Olivia stood at the edge of the castle, watching the snowfield ground growing farther and farther below. Her golden hair was whipped backward by the cold high-altitude wind. "You and that person indeed come from the same place."
Chen Yu could no longer hear her words.
He sank his entire consciousness deep into the castle, blocking out all external sounds—the wind, Olivia's sighs—at the periphery of his awareness.
His gel body emitted a square inch of golden light, reflecting the silhouette of a round Golden Core.
This golden light, like living flame, flowed from Chen Yu's body down along the grass to the castle's main walls.
Countless golden patterns derived from the light, like vines woven from threads of radiance, rapidly climbed and spread across the silver-gray stone walls, burrowing into every corner of the castle's interior.
A force was turning the entire castle ethereal, making it shrink continuously.
A layer of soft white light surfaced on Olivia's silver dragon body, wrapping her entire form into a semi-transparent silver silhouette.
Then that silhouette slowly unfolded from its human shape, revealing the original form of the Silver Dragon: a long, elegant neck, a streamlined torso, and silver-scaled wings folded against her sides.
The dragon soul completely detached from the physical body, turning into a stream of silver light that flew into the castle, shrinking along with it.
And her abandoned physical body, losing the support of the dragon soul, plummeted from the air.
During its fall, the human form could no longer be maintained, gradually reverting to a Silver Dragon.
The massive Silver Dragon corpse crashed into the snowfield. The splashing snow waves blotted out the sky and sun. Before the snow dust had even fully settled, mana began to gather on its own. Layer after layer of ice crystals grew from deep within the snowpack, encasing the dragon corpse within.
The ice surface grew thicker and thicker, until finally, the entire dragon body was completely sealed beneath the snowfield. Through the crystal-clear ice layer, those silver scales could still be seen refracting tiny fragments of silver light in the dim glow.
The castle continued to shrink.
From the most conspicuous building on the entire snowfield, it shrank to smaller than a slime. Finally, it became a cake-sized silver phantom, orbited around him one last time, then—with a whoosh—dove straight into his gel.
Chen Yu slowly opened his small eyes and asked, "Do you feel any discomfort?"
From within his mind came Olivia's lighthearted response, her tone quite novel.
"What a wonderful feeling. The castle is still functioning, but looking outside, it feels like being back in the Astral Realm."
"So this is Divine Sense. Truly interesting."
Chen Yu floated in midair, thinking.
Since Olivia had chosen to trust him, lodging her dragon soul within his Divine Sense, she had naturally become his important companion from this moment on.
Perhaps he could take her to Xu Xuan Heaven for a visit. Maybe, from her perspective, they could uncover many secrets he had been overlooking all along.
Using the marvelous ability to hide within Divine Sense via a magic artifact, in theory, he should be able to smuggle her across.
Just as he was thinking this, the light retracted, and he descended from the air.
But before he even landed, he heard a dense fluttering of wings coming from the direction of Winterhold, mixed with the sharp screeches of gargoyles.
Yano was at the front, spreading his wings as he dove down from the city, followed by an entire squad of fully armed gargoyle guards.
His sword was already drawn. His eyes scanned the surroundings with an aura of being ready to tear any intruder to shreds at a moment's notice. Then he saw that familiar figure floating in the air.
Yano was startled at first. Then, remembering something, he hurriedly sheathed his sword and scratched the back of his head, his eyes full of confusion.
"Boss? What are you doing here?"
"The whole city was shaking just now. That castle up in the sky suddenly started glowing and shrinking. I thought we had an enemy."
Chen Yu wobbled his gel. "I took the castle away."
"Have the mage corps maintain the Fissure's stability. Since the castle's anchor chains have been retracted, it might disturb the Fissure's balance. Tell them to stay alert and report any anomalies to me immediately."
"Sure thing."
Although Yano was very curious about how such a huge castle had disappeared, the Fissure was more important right now.
If the Fissure here were to collapse and disappear because of this, then Floating Winterhold would be forever trapped in the Elemental Plane. That was definitely not a good thing.
He flew back in a hurry, probably to gather the mages.
Chen Yu withdrew his gaze and closed his small eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, he had already returned to the southern sea, thousands of miles away from Guanshan Island. The salty sea breeze, mixed with the high-noon sunlight, rushed toward him. In Xu Xuan Heaven, the blazing sun was directly overhead.