It wasn’t that Maria could perceive Annan’s presence directly.
[Winter Heart] did not offer that feature.
After listening carefully, Maria opened her eyes, “It’s really Annan!”
She “heard” Annan’s voice.
Indeed, auditory hearing — Maria could already hear Annan’s voice by the time Annan had gotten so close to her.
On paper, the Storm Tower was situated in the St. Felix Province, which was Nigel’s destination near the “Coldwind Fortress”.
In terms of distance measured in a straight line, it was less than 20 miles.
Of course, that calculation was more “theoretical”.
With that said, no one would be able to find the Storm Tower on the map.
The reason was simple.
The location of the Storm Tower was 3 kilometers above the exact location marked on the map.
It was unlike the Papal Kingdom, which was propped up by massive mushroom-shaped mountains and built high in the sky.
Instead, the Storm Tower hung in the empty spaces 3 kilometers above ground.
That was already close to the flight altitude of a civil aircraft.
Additionally, there was a gray-white translucent barrier, the Large Barrier Generator erected, which was also commonly known as the “urban barrier”.
Thus, ordinary people could not even notice it when they arrived at the coordinates of the Storm Tower.
Moreover, the Storm Tower had a different shape compared to the traditional “tower” like the Swamp’s Black Tower.
That was because the Storm Tower was upside down.
The spire faced down, and the bottom was at the top. At the top of the spire was a beam leading straight down to the wall of frost breath and many small barriers.
It appeared more like a spaceship than a “tower”.
Maria sat cross-legged at the top of Storm Tower without any protection, inverted.
Her long silver-white hair exuding a bluish hue, draped quietly to her waist. She appeared as if she had ignored the storm around her.
She wore her usual white tulle skirt and a hollowed-out silver crown on her head. Compared with the previous hunt on the defected wolf girl, the number of dragon scales on her body increased further.
In addition to her neck and ankles, silver-white dragon scales appeared outside her wrist, jawbone, and calf.
Two silver-white dragon horns protruded on her forehead.
But strangely, she was upside down like the Storm Tower, but her hair and long skirt did not hang down toward the ground. It looked like she and the tower were mirror images… like mirages.
Although she was completely exposed to the Old Grandmother’s frost breath, she was not engulfed by the Gray Mists.
It was not because she could avoid the Gray Mists but because the Gray Mists did not exist at this height anymore.
There were endless hurricanes entwined around the Storm Tower at the speed of reaching 200 kilometers per hour. If they were to descend to the ground, cities would be destroyed.
The hurricanes, like dragon’s roars, had even distorted the sky outside the barrier. The whorl-shaped hurricane went straight to the bottom of the inverted tower, providing energy for the wizard tower.
The Storm Tower, which could fly at will, must also stay in place to extract and digest the storm power that lingered in the sky.
The storm would multiply if the tower left this air space for a short while.
This was because the elemental power polluted the surrounding world. The core of this storm was no longer this world. Instead, it was “a small part of the immaterial world” that fit into the cracks of this world.
A high concentration of elemental power was corrosive to the reality of this place.
Just as elemental power could easily destroy material or energy defenses, Annan’s [Frost Sword] was fatal to the Bronze Rank and Silver Rank Transcender even before he advanced to become a transcender.
Ordinary things that did not have the elemental power could hardly resist any other elemental power.
If the concentration of the elemental power escalated, it would pollute an area and transform the surrounding into an environment suitable for its element.
The fourth-generation tower master of the Tower of Storm, Artaste Frostwhisper, was a formidable transcender.
She was revered as the Storm’s Eldest Daughter — the founder of the profession: “Daughter of the Storm”. She could fly from the westernmost side of the continent to the easternmost side in three breaths.
This feat was equivalent to flying from the Noah Kingdom to the Papal Kingdom.
She could destroy a town with one blow. In fact, that was the town of the elves, which was a city protected by curse energy.
She could also listen to the words coming from the wind and hear the conversation of a designated person at a distance of more than 30 miles. Not to mention she had other abilities like summoning the wind and rain, changing the weather, summoning lightning storms, and other abilities.
One day, she acquired the Book of Truth called “the Anthem of the Storm and Heart”.
Everyone thought she would become a Storm Deity. Some people had even built shrines for her in advance, and some were competing to be her pope.
But for some reason, such a powerful transcender had her ascendancy ritual fail.
It was an irreversible failure that directly led to her death. The Book of Truth she had compiled was also scattered back into the world. At the same time, Artasta did not even leave her soul behind. It was the kind of death that destroyed both the body and soul.
Before she died, the elemental power lost control. It was about to condense an infinitely increasing hurricane — Artasta’s sense of mission as the tower master made her send the Storm Tower up from the ground. It soared beyond the Great Barrier and was inverted in the sky. At the expense of her soul, she arranged the ritual to erect a core that used the power of the never-ending storm to replace the energy that typically came from the leylines as the wizard tower’s power supply.
The storm power was naturally incomparable to curse energy.
But after the end of the Third Era, the curse energy had become obsolete. The Storm Tower had become the only “main tower” that could activate all the abilities of the wizard tower of the old era.
Over the past few hundred years, the Storm Tower had deviated from its anchor point.
One of them was to end the Blood War.
The Daughter of the Storm of that generation brought the storm’s power to the sea surface. It was a storm that lasted seven days and six nights, forcing the hot-blooded to calm down.
Another time the Storm Tower was utilized was to destroy the Necromancer Alliance.
Every time the Storm Tower left its anchor point, the scale of the storm would increase tremendously. After leaving twice, it had doubled in size from the beginning. No one knew the limits of the Storm Tower. Thus, from the end of Blood War until now, the Storm Tower had never moved.
In the current state, the Large Barrier Generator of Austere-Winter Dukedom was built around the Storm Tower.
The unfortunate death of Storm’s Eldest Daughter was undeniably a time bomb to Austere-Winter Dukedom and even the whole world. Still, it could also exist as a steady stream of energy if used properly.
Those who could inherit the power of the Daughter of the Storm would immediately become a formidable Gold Rank transcender.
The qualification was simple: Edict Wizard, female, Silver Rank, and most importantly — possessed the divine blood.
Although it was not necessary to have the blood of the Old Grandmother, it must be the direct bloodline of the deities. Otherwise, human beings would be unable to withstand the elemental power infused into the body during the inheritance process.
Only the heirs of the deities could pass this damage to the ancestors and survive the trials of inheritance.
“Vasily Manning!” Maria opened her eyes. Her eyes were full of dissatisfaction.
Why was Annan coming to Austere-Winter, but I hadn’t been notified?
Didn’t Vasily say that Annan went to the Noah Kingdom? Didn’t he say that he would help Kafni inherit the throne?
Why did he come to Austere-Winter at this time?
She was unprepared!
She was still cultivating in the Storm Tower and could only leave at the end of the month.
Moreover, she had only been here for two days!
Maria immediately had a bad mood.
If she knew that Annan would be here this month, she wouldn’t return to Storm Tower.
The crackling lightning throbbed uneasily in her eyes. The moment Maria had a bad mood, her hair flew up. An uncontrollable storm spread rapidly around her with her at its center.
Vasily, just you wait!
Maria chose a person to blame without hesitation.
But what about Annan?
Of course, Annan couldn’t be wrong. He was a good boy, and he definitely had something to do when he came to Austere-Winter.
I just don’t know if Annan will leave within a month…
No, even if he leaves Austere-Winter Dukedom, I have to look for him!
I haven’t seen Annan for too long. After the maintenance work of the Storm Tower this time, I don’t have to come back for half a year. No matter where Annan is, I can go after him directly.
“Wait for me, Annan…” Maria muttered anxiously.