Back at the Black Gate of the Wall, within the God of the Gate's divine realm, Dany revealed the nine-colored vortex in her sea of consciousness together with the second soul of the halo in order to break free from the tornado's restraint.
Upon seeing it, the Gate God cried out in surprise: "The Song of Ice and Fire."
What He meant by "the Song of Ice and Fire" was not those two meditation techniques.
In fact, the ultimate goal of the nine-colored vortex is to condense the Song of Fire, while the halo's second soul is the Song of Wind. At least at that moment, neither had the slightest connection to ice.
Yet fire alone comes in many forms: the fire of mortals, wildfire, dragonflame, the fire of the earth's core, and the true fire of the sun.
(In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, these flames increase in power in this order. This is why, during the Doom of Valyria, the dragons perished in the magma's blaze.)
In this fantasy universe where "life originates from fire and the world is born of fire," fire possesses another polarity: creation within fire — life itself.
Likewise, the world is destroyed by darkness and lies dead in ice. Beyond its elemental attribute, ice has another polarity: annihilation within frost — death.
This is the true meaning of "the Song of Ice and Fire": life and death in nature giving rise to love and hate among humankind, sweetness and bitterness, female and male, joy and sorrow, high summer and the bitter winter.(This is also why the author conceived a world with only two distinct seasons: summer and winter.)
And precisely this — the two possibilities of life and death — was what the Gate God saw in Dany.
The "power of life" within the nine-colored vortex came from her own innate gift.
The "annihilation and death" within the halo's second soul came from the White Walkers.
Let us not forget that her second soul has two major sources: the Green Seers' Spring of Green (Brynden and the Rat Cook) and the White Walkers' deathly ice.
On the surface, the Spring of Green and the deathly ice seem to merge perfectly, indistinguishable from each other.
But the reason for this phenomenon is not that they share the same attribute, but rather that they originate from the same divine being: the Gate God.
Tree roots and tree roots are originally one body. Perfect fusion is only natural.
But this is straying from the point.
The Gate God said that day that Dany only showed a faint beginning, a mere hint of "the Song of Ice and Fire," while still an infinite distance away from the real thing. It was highly likely that she would never take the final step in her lifetime.
Dany did not argue, but she remembered those words.
After becoming a demigod and confirming the divine nature of "creation within fire," she wanted to explore that ability.
There might truly be no hope for "annihilation through ice," but she did not want her innate technique to go to waste.
So after returning to Meereen, she trained her body and honed her swordsmanship by day, and spent most nights studying the Songs of Law.
And A-Fu and Big Fog became her primary experimental subjects for developing the divine nature of "creation within fire."
To be frank, Dany was indeed experimenting on two unfortunate little ones, but she sincerely wanted to bring them back to life as well.
In Dany's flame-filled palms, Big Fog lost chunks of memory. Eventually, Big Fog forgot her own name, then forgot Dany and A-Fu, and at last became an idiot— no, not even that. She became a blank sheet of paper.
Then, to Dany's astonishment, Big Fog could no longer maintain either her humanoid or raven form and burned down into a transparent ribbon of drifting light.
"Oh my gods!" Dany sensed it and cried out, "A-Fu, did you see that?"
"I saw it. You burned Big Fog away. There isn't even a trace of soul fluctuation left," A-Fu said, part fear, part anticipation, and mostly confusion.
"Of course there's no soul particle. This is a life imprint. The earliest trace of life, the universe's birth certificate." Dany's eyes shone with excitement and wonder.
Using the terminology of Eastern mythology, Big Fog had been refined by Dany until her soul scattered, leaving only a sliver of true spirit.
"What do we do now?" A-Fu asked.
"I'll give it a try."
The nine-colored vortex inhaled sharply and drew Big Fog's life imprint into itself.
Information from the life imprint began flowing into Dany's mind.
She was startled. This was a complete life imprint, but not in its original state.
It was as if the horns of a deer, the head of a camel, the eyes of a rabbit, the neck of a snake, the belly of a clam, the scales of a fish, the talons of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, and the ears of an ox had been cut out and pieced together into a new species — the true Chinese dragon.
Big Fog's life imprint was also assembled — fused from the essence of a Child of the Forest and a raven.
"That means the life imprint can be modified. So… can I perform secondary refinement?"
Could she reshape it into a completely new mythical life form?
For example, a battle angel?
Dany was thrilled.
She eagerly began experimenting, testing little by little, like a sculptor carving a massive transparent crystal with chisel and hammer.
After "clink, clank, bang, bang," she felt both delighted and disappointed.
She could change part of the imprint, but only the insignificant portions related to physical form.
In other words, a life imprint is originally a perfect, unified whole, untouchable — that is the law of the universe. But when the Children of the Forest created a second life within the raven, the will and nature remained unchanged while the form was recast.
The rule that life imprints cannot be altered was broken, but only with respect to form.
Thus, Dany could only make changes to Big Fog's physical characteristics.
"The Children of the Forest aren't ugly, but they aren't exactly beautiful either. How about…"
After much tinkering, Dany bestowed spirit upon Big Fog's life imprint again, hatching it into an entirely new soul.
While doing so, Dany used a small trick.
When Big Fog's soul burned, spiritual residue had leaked out. Dany had been saving it, and now she returned all of it to the imprint.
There is a famous philosophical paradox known as the Ship of Theseus.
A ship sailing at sea replaces any plank as soon as it begins to rot. When all of its functional parts are no longer the original ones, is that ship still the same ship?
If one uses the old parts removed from the ship to build another one, then which of the two ships is the real Ship of Theseus?
At this moment, Dany also had a question. If the Ship of Theseus were dismantled, and those planks were used to build a wooden tower, then what would that be?
"Mother Goddess, why has Mist become like this? She looks so ugly!"
The new Mist had successfully hatched from the life imprint, but when her soul image appeared before A'fu, the ignorant crow immediately screeched in shock.
"How is she ugly? Did you always think I was ugly?" Dany said, her face darkening.
Mist did not look like Dany, but she had changed from a Child of the Forest with doe-like skin into a little human beauty. She had large, hazy cat-like eyes, long eyelashes, a delicate oval face, refined features, skin that was pale and rosy, and a pair of translucent dragonfly wings.
A living flower fairy, a forest sprite.
A'fu hesitated. "This isn't a Child of the Forest."
"Isn't this what you said? She needs true rebirth."
A'fu fell silent for a moment. Then he pointed at Mist, who was staring blankly and looking around in confusion, and asked, "Why does she look like an idiot?"
"Isn't this what you said? She needs true rebirth. She hasn't even been born yet, so of course she looks like an infant."
A'fu went silent again, then asked, "But I can tell at a glance that she's Mist. The aura on her feels both familiar and unfamiliar."
"Is that so? That's wonderful!"
Dany was delighted. This proved that using the original spiritual essence to hatch a soul truly worked.
"Then can she be reborn?" A'fu asked expectantly.
"I'll try!"
Dany's expression grew solemn. She pressed her palms together as if holding a precious treasure.
With a boom, golden elemental fire leapt a foot high and then quickly shrank—nine inches, eight inches, seven inches. Before Dany could react, the flame suddenly went out with a soft pop.
Looking at the tiny, ethereal sprite in her palm, and sensing the real weight resting there, she froze, then burst into ecstatic joy. Mist's soul was absorbing the flame. Mist was reforging her body!
To prevent complications during Mist's rebirth, Dany surged with magic and increased the power output of her fire-gathering spell tenfold.
Boom, boom, boom! Flames shot four or five meters high, illuminating her expectant face in gold and red.
Gradually, Dany felt more and more weight in her hands.
Gradually, the two-foot-tall little figure turned from transparent to translucent, and then turned red like fire.
Next, white bones, pink muscles, and blue-green nerves began forming from the soles of her feet upward, spreading bit by bit like a 3D projection.
Dany was entranced, immersed in a wondrous state. Countless secrets of life flowed into her perception and memory. Her divine power of "Creation in Fire" surged wildly, and her nine-colored vortex began undergoing a qualitative change.
When the little sprite was covered in snowy, tender skin, grew a head of fluffy red hair, and unfurled a pair of flame-like, flickering dragonfly wings—when the sprite opened her eyes and looked timidly at Dany with pure, childlike trust—the ram-shaped egg deep in the Smoke Sea Trench was startled awake. Then it became furious, terrified beyond measure.
"Who? Who is it? Who has touched the Song of Fire again? Damn it, how can their level in the Song of Fire surpass mine by so much? Impossible!"
Up to this moment, Dany had only infused her nine-colored vortex with a trace of the aura of the Song of Fire—the aura belonging to the ram-egg.
The owner of the Song of Fire had not changed.
Now everything had changed.
If the will of the world were a critic, it would be the harshest and coldest opera reviewer.
Whenever someone sings a melody more beautiful than yours, it immediately discards the old and favors the new, stripping you of your place on the stage and giving it to that person.
You are replaced.
Once, R'hllor listened to the Song of Fire and learned it, becoming the Fire God.
Once, the ram-egg sang a version of the Song of Fire more beautiful (more perfect) than R'hllor's, replacing Him and becoming the one who voiced the fire harmony in the "Choir of the World's Songs."
Now, the Dragon Queen had grasped the strongest secret of the Song of Fire—the Creation of Fire. The ram-egg's identity as the "pillar singer of the Fire Song Choir" immediately became unstable.
Not only was the ram-egg alarmed, even the previous pillar of the Fire Song Choir sensed the upheaval within the Choir.
In the astral realm, in a divine kingdom infinitely distant from the material world, R'hllor gnashed His teeth:
"As I expected, a miracle has occurred in Daenerys.
Someone who can surpass the ram-egg in the laws of fire must come from His own descendants.
Valyrian blood… how much effort I spent to forge the divine lineage of fire.
If not for the ram-egg's betrayal, I would already have ascended to the Supreme God's throne. How could the world have fallen to what it is now?
And Daenerys… I arranged everything for her six thousand years ago. She should have followed the fate I ordained, replaced the ram-egg, helped me reclaim the Song of Fire, and completed my final restoration.
Where did it all go wrong? How was fate altered so drastically?
Was it the Greenseers? The Cold God?
Jon Snow, hmph. What belongs to Me is not so easily taken!"
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09