Chapter 586 Flowers in the Mirror
"Golden Age… So there are still people alive from back then…"
"Prince Prometheus, do you know anything about the Golden Humans that the Goddess of the Magic Web mentioned?"
In reality, by the side of the long-dried-up pond.
The stones Hecate and Selene had sat on were long gone, and the crystal-clear pond water was now only filled with withered branches and dead leaves.
Before Heracles, the traces of the past reappeared, but he could not see the true forms of the two goddesses; instead, there were only halos imbued with different rules.
Evidently, even if it wasn't Great Divine Power, and Hecate of the Bronze Age had only recently ascended to godhood, not even having stepped into the domain of Great Divine Power, the true forms of gods were still difficult to reflect so easily.
Through the shadows of the past, the few observers could only see the interaction between the two light figures and some blurry, distorted voices.
"…I don't know. Regarding the King of the Golden Age, I only remember that he knew he had received divine revelation in a dream, and he was Chaos's first created human."
"Perhaps it was because the gods put more effort into creating him, or perhaps because as the first 'human,' he mysteriously received the favor of destiny. In any case, he possessed a longer lifespan than his peers."
"But no matter how long the Life, it cannot conceal the essence of a mortal. Under absolute power, his Life was difficult to preserve… I always thought he had died at the turn of the era, I didn't expect him to be alive today."
Before The Great Flood stirred up by the trident arrived, Prometheus had already been taken away as a criminal, so he did not witness the battle between the sea god's son and humanity.
Therefore, the First Awakener could not answer Heracles' question.
"His name is Koen, that's one of the few impressions I have of him."
"Just as the Goddess of the Magic Web said, he, like every Golden Human, was a paragon of integrity and kindness."
"Other than that, I have nothing more to say."
"I see."
Nodding slowly, though slightly regretful, the Great Hero accepted it.
Indeed, the existence of Golden Humans was quite unfamiliar to the current Olympus Gods; they had basically not lived in that era.
Saying no more, Heracles continued to focus on the shadow of the past.
The Golden Age was just a minor interlude that had little to do with him; the entrance to the Spirit Realm was what he truly sought.
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By the pond from an unknown time ago, the Moon Goddess and Hecate stayed there for over several months.
Under the guidance of the Goddess of the Magic Web, an ancient wooden house, taking over ten thousand years to build, reappeared in the world, and then, with her superb skill, once again vanished beneath complex enigmas.
During this period, a god once transformed into a breeze and lingered here, but ultimately returned empty-handed amidst the intertwining of the Magic Net's strings.
The two goddesses thus lived in a humble abode here, reminiscing about the previous era.
Time flowed, and several more months quickly passed.
On this day, a joyful cheer echoed from the wooden house.
Her figure flickered, and ripples spread through the void.
In an instant, Hecate put down the half-roasted lucky wild game in her hand and appeared beside Selene.
As soon as she entered the house, soft moonlight illuminated all directions, and a brilliant white phantom moon appeared behind the goddess.
With just one glance, Hecate knew that Selene had achieved a breakthrough in her Meditationpractice, even resonating with a certain lunar phase in the Spirit Realm.
No, not just one, but almost all of them.
As a born Moon Goddess, Selene's affinity for the domain of the moon was unmatched since birth…
"Oh dear—"
Slowly opening her eyes, Selene was about to get up and share the joy of her successful breakthrough with her friend, but unexpectedly, she directly bumped into Hecate's face.
Rolling on the ground, the Moon Goddess looked up indignantly, then resigned herself under Hecate's innocent gaze.
A moment later, on another ancient path not far from the wooden house.
Overgrown with weeds and dense with bushes, there was no trace of a road left.
Hecate pulled Selene all the way here, but she didn't say what she was going to do.
Only when the Moon Goddess stood obediently beside her, after a moment of silence, did she carefully draw a circle on the ground.
In an instant, within the circle, time seemed to begin flowing backward.
Plants flourished and withered, eventually turning into seeds; the soil became moist, then dried up again.
Day after day, year after year.
In the blink of an eye, the time sequence here seemed to have reversed tens of thousands of years.
Gradually, a small footprint and an indentation where someone had lain down appeared here. In addition, there was also a mark where a hard object had pressed down.
"What is this?"
Selene asked.
"This is where I once fell—look, that footprint and the lying mark are mine."
"I tripped over a hard thing here and fell… Then, I took that bad thing that tripped me back!"
Pointing at the marks on the ground, Hecate said in a seemingly lighthearted manner.
She stepped forward two paces, placing her foot on the past footprint and her hand on the indented mark.
"This is an exit, an exit that perhaps didn't originally exist."
"But when I picked it up here, this exit came into being."
"You have meditated more than once, and behind this entrance is the place you saw during your past Meditations."
"There are many paths to the Spirit Realm in this world, but most of them only go as far as the first layer, few can reach the second, and it's absolutely impossible to go beyond the third layer."
"Only a few exceptions, which were born for certain special reasons, have remained ever since; only they can travel to the depths of the Spirit Realm."
"Go in from here and find a Spirit Moon most closely connected to you… Selene, you only have one chance to choose!"
The voice was not loud; in Hecate's palm, a point of light appeared, eventually covering the entire mark.
The next moment, a silver crack appeared before their eyes, and the red-dressed girl reached out and pulled the crack open to a width sufficient for two people to pass through.
In an instant, an extremely dense Spirituality aura emanated from the other side of the crack, invigorating the Moon Goddess's spirit.
Looking at the crack before her, Selene felt a bit at a loss.
"Me…?" Pointing to herself, the Moon Goddess hesitantly asked, "Go inside and choose a moon?"
"That's right, it's just that you might have an extra job after this—hmm, I suggest you find a Nymph who is willing to believe in you, promote her to be your attendant, and then bestow Divinity upon her, letting her work for you."
"After all, you are the true Moon Goddess, not like those guys who take a portion of their Divinityto forge artifacts."
"As long as you wish, the moon in your hands is as easy to control as an arm, with absolutely no possibility of deviating from its orbit."
Nodding her chin, Hecate looked at the still-hesitant Selene, then directly stepped back, pushing her towards the shimmering silver crack.
With a gasp, the Moon Goddess immediately fell to the other side of the crack, and Hecatefollowed her in.
As the two entered, the crack restored itself, and everything returned to its original state.
Only the shadow on the ground shifted slightly, recording the passage of time here.
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In reality, by the nameless pond.
The reflected image of the past had not yet ended. Heracles watched as the two halos entered a heavily 'pixelated' place, then disappeared.
Just like a real script, the time in the image would often flow faster in unimportant places and slow down in crucial ones.
In a blink of an eye, the two halos emerged from the 'pixelated' area and returned to reality.
Very clearly, the silver-white light figure seemed to have become much stronger than before, with a brilliant moonlight almost constantly surrounding her.
And watching this scene, the Great Hero had an intuition.
With the entry of that Moon Goddess, it seemed that both the Spirit Realm and she herself had gained some kind of enhancement in the domain of the moon.
No… this wasn't an enhancement, but a completion.
It was as if things that were originally separate had finally become one, and some wonderful reaction was happening at this moment… They complemented each other, achieving a function where one plus one was greater than two.
Nothing could be more perfectly suited to each other, and perhaps from this moment on, Selenewas truly the 'God of the moon' in the real sense.
As for before that, her title as Moon Goddess was simply undeserved.
Unfounded conjectures flashed through his mind, and in the image, Hecate's actions continued.
Returning to the human world from the crack, the Goddess of the Magic Web looked back at the mark on the ground.
She hesitated for a moment, then finally displayed her magic, shifting the pond where she had previously stayed over.
The mark intruded into the water, just as it had been buried in the sand in the past.
Powerful enigmas once shimmered above this place, but Hecate did not allow the Magic Net's strings to completely cover it.
She merely took out a book from her person, a book that appeared equally 'pixelated' to Heraclesand Prometheus.
As she flipped through the pages, a projection of something was summoned.
An extremely terrifying spatial locking effect permanently sealed this trace within itself.
And when the Goddess of the Magic Web completed all of this, she stepped back a few paces, allowing Selene to also place a seal here.
The Moon Goddess didn't know what to do; she thought for a long time, and finally hid the summoned projection in the reflection of the bright moon in the pond, where it could only be seen at the right time, in the right place, and from the right angle.
Having completed all preparations, Hecate seemed to no longer wish to remain here.
She waved her hand, summoning the chariot that was supposed to be pulling the bright moon across the Sky, and left the remains of this ancient sacred mountain with the Moon Goddess.
By the dried-up pond, the image ended.
Turning his gaze to the dried-up pond beside him, Heracles knew that this was where everything had happened in the past.
"So that's how it is."
"The correct passage has been hidden; it's concealed within the 'moon in the water'."
"And now there's no water here, so naturally, no matter how much you search, you won't find any trace of it."
After a slight pause, the Great Hero asked Prometheus to create a stream of water here to fill the pond.
The First Awakener did not refuse; holy power surged in his palm, and a divine spell was effortlessly cast by the hand of a true god.
Soon, the dried-up pond was full again, and Heracles watched the Sky, waiting for the 'correct time' to arrive.
…
Two days quickly passed. On this day, standing in the position where Selene had once stood.
When the bright moon overhead reached a specific angle, the Great Hero looked down into the moon's reflection in the pond.
the moon in the Sky and the moon in the water faced each other from afar, and in the ethereal realm, a certain lock seemed to have been opened.
The next moment, the object summoned by the Goddess of the Magic Web and hidden by the Moon Goddess in the reflection appeared… Looking at the moon's reflection on the water, Heracles was somewhat speechless.
"What is that?"
Ender asked.
At the same time, only one person could see what was there.
The Great Hero did not know how to respond to this; he merely turned slightly, vacating his position.
"I don't know how to describe it either… You see for yourself."
Leaping from his pocket, the puppet looked at the object in the moon's reflection from mid-air.
Immediately, it saw itself within it.
But after only a moment of shock, Ender recognized it.
"A mirror? A mirror with a flower sealed inside?"
"No, that's not a flower, that's a portal, but the space around it is distorted, so it looks like a flower to the naked eye…"
"Heh heh, moon in the water, flower in the mirror. I didn't expect these two goddesses to have such artistic flair."
"But Heracles, it seems you are truly out of luck with it now—you cannot bypass her seal, and in the human world, I cannot help you with divine power."
"Take a trace of its aura; that's the only thing you can do. The shadow of sprall's mirror, to break through the spatial barrier it creates in the human world, only it itself has the possibility of doing so."
The divine artifact rumored to symbolize the domain of Space, since the disappearance of the second-generation God King, no god or divine artifact in the world has been able to stand alongside it in this domain.
Although Ender knew that this divine artifact's proportion in the entire Chaos Space domain was definitely not high, there was no second Space god in the human world.
From beginning to end, the world had never truly bestowed the Authority of time and space upon the gods; otherwise, even back in the First Era, if Cronus could truly master more than seventy percent of Chaos's spatial and temporal essence, he would have been a well-deserved Great Divine Power, perhaps only Tartarus could rival him.
However, for tens of thousands of years, apart from the abyss gaining much of the Authority of Space due to the influx of mixed foreign energies, no other god had received such an honor.
Even the other Primordial God were the same; they only passively possessed some spatial power as their domains expanded.
"It might be the correct passage, but Heracles, it is definitely not meant for you now."
Prometheus said, having also personally looked at the mirror in the moon's reflection.
"You wish to go to the Myriad Spirit Realm, to invoke the souls of the dead before the Well of Reincarnation… According to the book of purgatory, there is also a projection of sprall's mirrorthere."
"Only when you can find it will you be able to open this 'correct' path—if everything is as you foresee, and you truly pass through here in the future."
"As for now… you probably won't succeed."
Nodding slightly, the Great Hero believed their words.
However, he still personally experimented to see if he could truly touch the seemingly close portal.
However, the result was just as the two had said: the moon in the water, the flower in the mirror, seemingly within reach, but in reality, under the influence of the Authority of Space, the distance between Heracles and them was like heaven and earth.
"Alright… As expected, only another Authority can contend with Authority."
"Gods might still be restricted in the human world, but artifacts are much less restricted."
Slowly shaking his head, the Great Hero stepped back.
As Ender said, he absorbed a trace of the divine artifact's aura.
This was a guide, capable of pointing him in the right direction in the future… Standing still by the pond, time continued to flow.
Soon, the moon shifted.
This path, leading directly to the depths of the Spirit Realm, was once again buried within this ancient ruin.