While Huron with his clan of riders embraced Bran in hot pursuit of Jon and the other three, Eddard and Joricho vigorously turned the other way, crossing the King's Highway and turning onto a path parallel to the King's Highway.
They would enter Winterfell through the North Gate, as the Godswood was near the North Gate, right next to the warm glass gardens. And Huron led the party through the South Gate, putting the horses back in the stables to make it easier for the young masters to enter the main castle from the schoolyard.
Half a day's horse journey, Cao Dali saw a towering round tower from afar, and when he got closer, he saw that the top of the round tower had already collapsed to the inside, crumbling, yet it was still the tallest building in Winterfell, and it was like an old stubborn giant that refused to fall down. The stone walls of the ruined tower bore the marks of a fire.
This is the ruined tower of Winterfell, destroyed in a fire brought on by lightning a hundred years ago. This wrecked tower will, in the near future, bear witness to the tragedy of Bran being pushed off it by Jaime Lannister and breaking his back and legs.
Cao Dali suddenly let out a muffled grunt.
Both Ed and Jory turned around and saw Cao Dali's pale face and glazed eyes.
"What's wrong?" Ed asked in a hushed voice.
"I have seen an image of this ruined tower in the shimmering light of a hallucination, and vaguely, a figure fell from it, though perhaps it was not a figure, or perhaps it was the shadow of a flying bird. When I saw this tower just now, the hallucination recurred, and I felt my eyes stinging and my chest vexed."
Ed's heart fluttered, he knew that Bran's favourite thing was to climb this wrecked tower and look out into the distance from it. This wrecked tower was originally a watchtower built by Stark's ancestors. It was just that it was never repaired after it was struck by lightning and caused a fire a hundred years ago.
Jory's heart was also stirred, this Will had been at the Jedi Wall for several years, naturally he didn't know that Bran liked to climb, and if his vision fragment was an oracle, it meant that Bran would be in danger if he came back to climb this wrecked tower.
Ed had never stopped Bran from climbing in Winterfell because he doted on him, but Lady Catelyn was very worried about Bran's missteps. Since the oracle had hinted that it was better to believe it than not, Bran had to be told not to climb the ruined tower recently for good.
Ed waited a little and said, "Will, are you better?" The icy tone was much milder.
Cao Dali didn't answer, just nodded.
Cao Dali liked Bran, Bran was too beautiful, that face was a perfect masterpiece, he didn't want Bran to fall off it again.
The three men entered the northern gate, and Cao Dali found that inside the tall wall was a moat about twenty metres wide, and across the moat, another wider wall.
A moat is sandwiched between the twin walls.
Cao Dali was the first time he came inside Winterfell.
In the past, when Will was a thief, he didn't come in here either, but just hung out in the Winter Shelter Town outside the South Gate. There were very few civilians living in the winter town in the summer, but in the winter, the whole town was packed with people.
The soldiers guarding the city had long since lowered the drawbridge, and Cao Dali followed Ed and Jory across the drawbridge, and found that the inner city wall was wider and thicker, just not as high as the outer wall.
Ed dismounted, Jory and Cao Dali followed, and a guard at the gate had already come to lead over the horses. On the right hand side is a large glass garden, approaching the garden door can feel the hot air inside. Inside the garden is planted with flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees, just like a small spring-like paradise. In the cold north, the glass garden is heated by a hot spring underground to keep the vegetables and flowers warm.
The level of civilisation that could produce glass still made Cao Dali's heart flutter. It seemed that the processes such as iron smelting and glass firing were still more mature in this fantasy world.
Past the glass gardens and entering through a large iron gate was the forest of sacred trees that covered the sky. An odour of rotting leaves and damp gloom wafted through the air, giving it an oppressive gloom.
Into the forest of God's wood, the light in front of the eyes are dim, overhead is the coiled and twisted branches and leaves of the tree trunks blocking the light, tall sentinel trees, oaks, the old iron tree, the black and brown cypress tree leaves are a dark green steel needle, the breeze will fall down, piercing in the human skin raw pain.
This was a world of separate trees, with no shortage of ten thousand year old trees. The huge trees were like a black wall.
The ancient woods were very quiet, and Cao Da Li felt as if he heard the sound of earthworms and other small insects wriggling under the thick rotting leaves.
Was it because his divine sense had become particularly strong after fusing two souls?
That might be possible!
After travelling through for a while, a small lake appeared in front of them, full of green moss, with a faint white mist drifting up above the green moss. Then there was a second small lake, and a third small lake that was steaming hot, the water in the lake was a hot spring. At the edge of the lake of the three heart-shaped hot springs, Cao Dali saw the mysterious heart tree that his heart had been fantasising about.
Looking up, the dense branches and leaves of the almost invisible heart tree, the whole tree branching endlessly, propped open as if it were a separate world. White bark that looks like human skin, five-fingered leaves that look like human palms, and in the middle of the huge trunk, a very long and ancient human face, about several metres high, with a pair of compassionate and silent huge eyes on the human face, Cao Dali paired up with those eyes, and his heart jumped.
He felt the silent and eternal life in those eyes, which seemed to have magic power, as if they wanted to suck his soul in. Cao Dali's spirit rose up in a trance, and his gaze sunk into the Heart Tree's eyes, which had a pair of grey-brown eyes looking at him in their pupils.
"My people, you possess a good strong soul." Cao Dali saw the mouth of the human face opening and closing, and his voice was old and desolate, as if it was slowly coming from the distant past.
Then, he felt himself float up and out of his body, towards one of the eyes of the heart tree. Cao Dali was horrified, and turned around, seeing himself standing dumbfounded, his eyes dull and confused, with Ed beside him praying on one leg, and Jory kneeling beside Ed, his head bowed and his eyes closed, chanting.
"My soul has been stripped out?" Cao Dali was shocked, but he couldn't control himself to float towards a giant eye, what did he see? Wind, rain, thunder and lightning appeared in the giant eye, countless giants appeared, several circling dragons appeared, strange people with green skin and plant tentacle like arms and legs appeared, these strange people were like plants+people, then he saw the foreign ghosts, blue-eyed frosty-bodied foreign ghosts, densely packed, the tentacles of the plant people were like vines curling around the foreign ghosts, the giants' war hammers swept across the sky and smashed the foreign ghosts into smithereens, the giants' dragons roared and flew, and the flames poured from the the sky poured into the horde of xenoblasts ...
This scene was something that was completely absent from Cao Dali's memory of this world.
"My child, this is the Battle of Dawn, and the final battle of the alliance of the First Men and the Sons of the Forest, the Giant Clan and the Gargoyles joining forces with the Fae. The land beneath your feet, beneath Winterfell, is buried with the skeletons of countless giants of the First Men Sons of the Forest and ancient dragons, and beneath the skeletons lies a great secret. The purpose of Winterfell being built here is to hide this secret, and those without exceptionally strong soul power cannot resist the pressure of the many shadowy spirits beneath the earth, and cannot enter the earth to break open this secret."
That ancient pale voice slowly, as if the ancient giant god's sigh before dying: "Child, you are the strongest soul power I have ever seen, I finally waited for you, but with your current soul power, to enter the ground to take out that great treasure but also can not be done yet, winter has come, don't struggle, child, enter my eyes, I can make your soul power become stronger. "
Cao Dali was horrified and changed: ''The trajectory of this fantastical and cruel world, did it all start to change because of his own appearance? I have strong soul power? Could it be because my soul is fused with Will's soul?"
Cao Dali drifted into the right eye of the heart tree without being able to do so.
The scene of flames flying in front of his eyes and dragons roaring as the Giant Forefathers and the Sons of the Forest dueled with the White Walkers changed, and Cao Dali floated in the blue sky, and saw the Giant Forefathers and the Sons of the Forest under his feet building a city under the command of one man, whom we all called Brandon Stark. The city walls, watchtowers (which are the remnants of the tower today), the main fort and other buildings were all completed one by one. Outside the moat, there were no walls.
The original walls outside the moat of Winterfell were added by descendants of the Starks. When Winterfell was built, there was only one wall, the current inner wall.
The scenery changed again, Cao Dali flew, like a giant humanoid bird, he flew into the air, flying towards the north. He came to the sky above the Great Wall of Extinction, the cold wind was piercing his bones, it was going to blow his transparent humanoid soul apart, Cao Da Li fought the cold wind like a sword with all his might, his soul power was getting stronger and stronger.
Yet the might of the icy cold of the heavens and earth was not something he could fight against after all. Just as his transparent humanoid soul was about to be blown apart, an invisible and qualitative warmth wrapped around him and brought him back to his senses. He looked down and the hundreds of miles of the 700-foot high Great Wall of Extinction was gone, and the burly man called Brandon Stark had reappeared, leading the giant race of the First Men, mining boulders, mixing them with ice, and building the Great Wall of Extinction, starting at both ends, with the help of the dragons.
It turns out that both the Great Wall of the Jedi and Winterfell were built by a man named Brandon Stark with the First Men, the Children of the Forest, the Giants, and with the help of the Gargoyles.
Brandon Stark, the Builder, is truly a remarkable hero for bringing together the First Men, the Giant Clan, the Sons of the Forest, and the Gargoyles to work together to build this Great Wall of Extinction.
It turns out that the giant dragons weren't brought over from the Narrow Sea by the Targaryen family either, and that giant dragons had long appeared on this continent during the Dawn Era.
Cao Dali's heart was relieved, the dragon race such a heavenly divine creature, the period of existence has been at least ten thousand years, naturally far from only a few hundred years of history of the Targaryen family can be compared.
Stark, the city builder of the Dawn Age, is just as capable of harnessing dragons, and the uniqueness of the Targaryen family, which is only a few hundred years old, being able to harness dragons because of a special bloodline, may not exist.