Turbulent Waves

Before that hidden stretch of reef, the Prince of the Volcano Kingdom, one of the two men who had brought all of this about, stood frozen with shock and watched the Kingdom of God appear.

Unlike the people of the God-Descended City, he understood far better than anyone else exactly why all of this had happened.

With his own eyes he had watched the man kneel on the ground and pray to the Kingdom of God, and then its gate had appeared in the sky.

Not until it had all faded away did the prince finally lower his head.

"Heh heh!"

"Heh heh heh heh!"

He could not help but burst into wild laughter. "Hahahahaha."

"So that is how it is. That is truly how it is."

He held the Bone Book in his hands, his eyes fixed upon it and filled with hunger.

"To open the gate to the domain of the divine. Hidden inside this, of all things, is the secret to opening the very gate to the domain of the divine."

"Saint Tito, the great poet who wrote the Hymn of the King of Wisdom!"

"To think you sealed a secret like this away in dust for two hundred years."

The prince began reading from the very first page of the great poet's Final Chapter, Tito's Travelogue. Its contents ran from the moment the poet Tito met Queen Star and set down the Yinsai Epic, all the way through to the guidance he received from the Divine Messenger Polo.

Only then did the prince understand that the great poet's whole journey had been, of all things, to escort a divine artifact.

And it was precisely because of this that the divine had allowed him to pass through the gate of the Kingdom of God.

Trials. Baptism. A crossing of the Demon Abyss Kingdom at the side of a king.

He had set foot within the hall of the divine, and met the Mother of Life who commanded the Mother Conch of All Things, and the dream spirit who could conjure anything at all out of dreams.

Some of these stories the prince had heard before. Others he had never so much as heard of.

But as he read on toward the end, something changed.

It was the scene of the great poet as he was about to leave the Kingdom of God. The book read as follows.

【I asked the Divine Messenger, "Can we too come to possess power such as this? It could change the whole future of the Yinsai people."】

【"More than that."】

【"I could feel our very future was contained within it."】

【The Divine Messenger said, "Perhaps one day, when you set foot in the domain of the divine once more, God will bestow this power upon you as a gift."】

【"All things arise from God's grace. All things return to God's will."】

The prince's whole body shuddered at once. Something had suddenly occurred to him.

"Could it be!"

"Is this the secret the great poet left behind? Set foot in the domain of the divine once more, stand before the great god Yinsai, and the divine will bestow the power of dreams upon you?"

If the trilobite men could gain that dreamlike power, the power the dream spirit used to conjure all manner of miraculous creations, it would be enough to overturn every system now in place, and to reshape the entire fate of the Yinsai Kingdom.

He could feel that the whole secret lay hidden at the very end.

He read on, unable to wait, near mad with the need to know that final secret.

"How does one stand before the divine? How does one find the Kingdom of God? How does one pass through the gate into the world of the divine?"

But then, he sensed that something was wrong.

When he turned past this bone tablet, there was nothing more.

A page was missing.

And it was the single most crucial page of all.

The prince went blank for a moment, and then, all at once, plunged into a raving fury.

He seized the Bone Book and turned it over and over, searching, only to find that the final page simply was not there at all.

"Where is the last page?"

"Where is the final chapter?"

In the prince's mind there suddenly rose the image of the caravan leader's death, and the words the man had spoken to him.

"Perhaps that is exactly why I have reaped this bitter end."

Blood had spilled from his mouth, and he had worn a wretched smile as he said, "But it is fated. You will never have it either."

At last, he understood exactly what the man's words had meant.

To have everything and to lose everything, separated by no more than the thinnest of lines. That sensation made the prince's eyes flare red in an instant.

In his fury, the prince tore the man's remains to pieces, and still found nothing of what he was looking for.

"Damn it!"

"Damn it!"

"Damn it!"

Quietly, he traced back along the road the caravan leader had come by, searching every last corner.

Sadly for him, nowhere could he find the thing he wanted.

The administrative residence of the God-Descended City had once been a side hall of the palace of Yesael, the second King of Wisdom.

Its main body served as a traveling palace for Star Luo Queen, where she would sometimes stay during her tours of inspection.

At that very moment, a crowd of nobles and officials of the God-Descended City stood before the palace and then prostrated themselves toward the miracle that had just descended. Only once it had all faded did they rise to their feet again, every one of them overcome with excitement.

"A miracle has descended. A miracle has come down upon us here once again."

"Could the gate of the Kingdom of God truly have opened to us once more?"

"The Kingdom of God has appeared once more, amid the starlight of dawn. Perhaps this is the very sign that a new age is about to begin."

The nobles and officials fell to speculating, each imagination running further than the last.

They believed it a revelation from the divine, and more than that, a mark of favor.

But not one of them imagined that all of it came down to nothing more than this. Someone, by some means, had reached the spirit who guarded the gate to the Dream Kingdom.

The lord of the God-Descended City stood on a high place and spoke to them all.

"Report this to Her Majesty the queen at once. This is a gift from the divine to us, and a glory for our God-Descended City."

Everyone cheered and rejoiced. This was their glory, and it would become the very foundation of their return to the center of power.

But at that very moment, someone from outside the city brought word.

"My lord, Tito Town, outside the walls, has been attacked. An armed caravan of the Samo Kingdom. Every member of the Tito family is dead, and the whole castle has collapsed down into the ground."

The lord froze in shock. "What did you say?"

Soldiers surged into Tito Town, taking control of the once-thriving place and sealing off the Tito family's castle at the same time.

At the sight of this tragedy, the nobles of the God-Descended City who were present sighed and shook their heads, one after another.

"The main line of the Tito family is finished, utterly."

"And the line descended from the great poet Tito's second son, they say it too has died out without heirs."

"In that case, only the branch founded by the third son remains."

"The inheritance and title passed down through the saint's family, it seems, will fall to them now."

No small number of these officials found themselves envying the Tito family's side branch, who had suddenly inherited this glory fallen from the sky into their laps. The title of a saint's family was worth far more than any mere rank of nobility. Whichever kingdom one belonged to, it demanded the utmost reverence.

But watching this unfold, the lord of the God-Descended City was thinking of something else entirely.

Why had these people attacked the Tito family?

Why had the sky reflected a vision of the Kingdom of God?

And why, of all things, had the two events happened together, at exactly the same time?

Something occurred to the lord of the God-Descended City at once. "Could it be!"

"So the legend is true after all."

The lord at once ordered a thorough search of every corner, every last place, and even sent for a senior priest within the city who held rank equal to his own.

Had this been nothing more than a slaughter by a caravan out for wealth, he would only have mourned at the scene, and then, in his shock, put his main energies into hunting down the caravan and having it outlawed.

But this was entirely different now. He needed to know, with total clarity, every step of what had happened.

He meant to turn this place upside down, inside and out, to confirm what he suspected.

Priests of the Sky Temple stationed in the God-Descended City arrived, and swept their mental power beneath the ground. The illusion once laid down with Sun Cups, years before, had already been broken, and they sensed at once that something was wrong.

Before long they had dug their way down, and saw the cavern hollowed out below.

They saw the bodies, one after another.

More than that, they saw the great mass of Sun Cups still floating within it.

And there too, the ruined wreck that Queen Star and the Divine Messenger Polo had left behind.

The lord of the God-Descended City went pale as death, and his voice, when he spoke, came out warped and unrecognizable.

"Quickly!"

"Report this to Her Majesty the queen, now."

"Someone has stolen the great poet Tito's relics. They have seized the very gift the divine bestowed upon the Star Luo Kingdom."

The news, as though it had sprouted wings, sped swiftly across the wild and untamed land.

It skimmed over the pure waters of the Sacred Lake, and reached the Sky Temple, wreathed all about in white cloud.