But Norton’s smile soon faded.
He pushed open the metal gates before him and walked towards a deeper, dark passage within the estate, with Shiayar following silently.
Norton led the way, walking leisurely through the passage. They occasionally passed gates equipped with arcane warning arrays.
However, each time Norton would take out a token-like object from his bosom and deactivate the crimson warning arrays.
They proceeded downward, passing through one sealed gate after another, forged from thick bronze and fine iron. With each gate, Norton had to use a different token or insignia, changing them seven or eight times in succession.
Norton finally stopped when Shiayar’s mental perception indicated they were now over thirty meters beneath the surface.
What came into view was a dim, gloomy square.
An immense array, easily dozens of meters in length and breadth and drawn with pale golden divine patterns, occupied the entire surface of the square.
As soon as Shiayar entered, he sensed an indescribable, majestic authority flickering uncertainly beneath the square’s mysterious sealing array.
This was the Brunestadt family’s greatest secret: deep beneath the estate’s foundations, a living Ancient God Half-Body was sealed.
"This is the Sealing Place of Twilight."
Norton stood straight, his aged eyes shining with fervent light.
"Such a magnificent being represents a realm above the Legendary, a supreme Divine Realm that no one has ever touched since the dawn of records.
"Yet, faced with such an opportunity, both the Legendary powerful pros who came to assist and the Family Head chose only to seal it away, as if fleeing from it.
"And all this simply because they feared that researching the Deities would lead to uncontrollable consequences, possibly affecting the innocent civilians nearby.
"How cowardly! How laughable!
"If the lives of millions of lowly commoners can be exchanged for the crowning of a king, then it is worth it.
"In this world where the strong prey upon the weak, only by ruthlessly extracting nourishment from those below can one ascend to the pinnacle!
"History is written by the victors. Once you become the only winner in the world, everyone will revere you as a saint, no matter how many bones you’ve stepped on along the way!"
Norton took a deep breath, his aged face regaining its tranquility. "Let’s begin," he said.
Shiayar nodded. "Yes." He slowly walked to a corner of the array.
Then, he gently placed the young girl from his bosom onto the array’s focal point, outlined by the pale golden divine patterns.
Shiayar stepped back, out of the sealing array’s range.
Without hesitation, Norton stepped into another focal point of the array.
The moment he stood firm, dim yellow divine lights emerged one after another from beneath his feet.
This sealing array had been set up by a Legendary Beastmaster and several Titled Rank Beastmasters.
Theoretically, unless a Legendary being of the same caliber descended, there was no possibility of it being broken by external forces.
But as the saying goes, external enemies are easier to defend against than internal traitors.
After spending more than a decade planning in the shadows, Norton, as the acting Family Head, had long mastered every critical point and detail of this sealing array.
So now, having found Silvia, the only key, Twilight’s seal was broken.
It was not, as the evil followers imagined, a matter of forcibly breaking the seal with overwhelmingly powerful external force to allow Twilight’s glory to reappear among mankind.
Instead, following the steps meticulously designed by Norton, the long-sealed Divine Power merely permeated out at an extremely slow rate.
Then, after purification, it gradually flowed into Norton’s body.
A dim yellow halo rose bit by bit around Norton, but his eyes remained clear.
Under Norton’s control, this Twilight Divine Power didn’t brutally turn brainwashed evil followers and Pet Beasts into madmen who only knew how to praise Twilight; instead, it gently transformed his body.
His aura fluctuated, steadily climbing higher and higher.
A look of ecstasy appeared on Norton’s aged face.
His decade-long plan had not gone wrong. He truly had embarked on the Path of Godhood Ascension.
Even though the being sealed beneath the ground was not a complete deity, only a half-body of the Ancient God of Twilight.
And due to the long sealing, its grand Divine Power had also dwindled over time, to not even a tenth of what it was at the time of the Godly Descent.
Even after absorbing all the Divine Power sealed beneath the Azure Garden Royal Capital, Norton could, at best, only reach the Legendary level.
However, unlike ordinary Legendaries, this was indeed real, albeit incomplete, divine Authority.
Given time, as long as he gathered the Power of Faith over long years to fill the gaps in that incomplete Authority—
then he could surpass the Legendary rank and truly reach the Divine Realm.
Familiar fluctuations of power stirred Silvia from her deep Eternal Slumber.
She opened her eyes on the cold ground and looked around.
The Twilight Divine Power she was all too familiar with surged wildly around her. She also saw Norton, his face ecstatic and eyes closed, as he received the transformation from the Twilight Divine Power.
Silvia understood everything in an instant.
Elder Norton... So he’s the one behind this betrayal? To be honest, I used to have a fairly good impression of him.