No one outside the Black Lantern Ring knew anything about what had happened inside. Even Renzo, the owner of the Black Lantern Ring, was confused and had no idea what the villain had done.
But at least the expression on his face remained unchanged. He glanced indifferently at the remaining four gods, like a master of this world looking down on everything beneath him.
How ridiculous! Of the majestic Nine Pillars, only four remained. The others had all died violent deaths, and their enormous corpses had not even been preserved. Just as they had once killed mortal slaves, they had casually slapped them to death, then turned around and happily enjoyed the food and pleasures they had taken from them.
Wherever there was a cause, there was an effect. The killings they had once inflicted had finally come back to them.
Renzo didn't actually think they had been wrong from their own perspective. How could a superior god be expected to cherish the lives of countless mortals? There would never be an end to the number of those mortals, so they could be treated as little toys to pass the time, adding a touch of bloodshed to their long, monotonous lives.
They were not the same kind of being.
Was it simply because of strength that humans had risen to become the dominant species on Earth? Every beast was physically stronger than a human. Their claws could easily tear open a person's abdomen. Their ferocious pupils gleamed with hunger and bloodlust, their mouths full of fangs opening eagerly as they tore into flesh and dragged out bright-red organs, while the victim could only watch helplessly as the light gradually faded from their eyes, life disappearing amid unbearable pain.
Humans were fragile creatures. They had been that way from birth.
Yet throughout the long course of history, humans had gradually become the masters of the Earth. Even though those beasts still possessed the strength to tear a human apart, they were driven deep into the forests. Great predators could only threaten their enemies with fangs and claws, and in the end, some would lie in pools of blood surrounded by human corpses, spears and stone blades embedded in their bodies.
The reason humans became dominant was their enormous population, strong reproductive capacity, vast numbers, and remarkable intelligence. These advantages allowed them to advance step by step along the path of evolution, gradually developing social structures and systems of order. They learned to reason, create and use tools, and control fire. With those advances came ambition and the practice of hunting other species.
Giant elephants, tigers, bison, insects... countless creatures became human food. People cheered when they killed these animals, raised their weapons high, and butchered the carcasses. They put pieces into their mouths and ate them, or slowly cooked them over fire, smiling with satisfaction.
They were not the same kind of being. They were natural enemies.
This had been true throughout history, and traces of it still existed in modern society.
Between countries, regions, families, and even individuals, conflicts arose as people competed for survival and resources, sometimes treating one another as enemies and trying to seize what the other possessed.
Why were the Inhumans driven to the Moon? Why did mutants end up facing extermination?
Although their names contained the word "human," they were different from ordinary humans. Differences could become grounds for conflict, and once two sides became enemies, neither could easily afford to retreat.
These gods had much the same relationship with humans. Gods did not care about human lives, just as humans did not usually consider the lives of livestock when they sat down to eat. To the gods, mortals were simply another form of life beneath them.
In the eyes of a god, there was often little difference between humans and animals.
Renzo was no longer the soft-hearted boy who had first traveled through time. Humans could be cunning, greedy, and hopeless... and gods could be no different.
If they were enemies, then fighting with everything they had and destroying one another might be the most straightforward outcome.
"Where is Khonsu?" the man asked. His purpose in coming here was to rescue Khonsu. He didn't want Mark to die because of a god's mistake. Mark was a hero, and a hero shouldn't be forced to suffer that kind of fate.
There was silence. The gods were still immersed in the sudden disappearance of Osiris and Nephthys. Their breaths seemed to catch in their throats, as though even oxygen could no longer exist in the universe. There was no sound, no light...
Their bodies had been reduced to ashes, scattered and sucked into that extremely sinister little ring.
"I'll ask again... where is Khonsu?"
The purple light of the Power Stone transformed into four enormous, razor-sharp swords that hovered above the heads of the remaining gods. They were so sharp that the slightest movement seemed capable of severing them. Renzo felt no pity for the heads of these powerful gods. When he had stepped onto this land, there had been no living creatures in the surrounding villages or desert.
He didn't believe the villagers had received advance warning and fled. The probability was about the same as Thanos and Thor getting married.
"We don't know..." Nut's trembling voice rang out. She didn't want to die. She hadn't lived long enough. She could feel the cold murderous aura of the purple sword hovering above her head, a blade that could kill her at any moment.
It was the kind of feeling that made her finally understand what her victims must have felt when she and the other gods casually struck mortal slaves dead.
"Khonsu was taken away by Anubis. Anubis wasn't contaminated by Chaos. He wanted to save Khonsu."
Nut told him everything she knew. The Nine Pillars could not be rescued. They had been sealed. But Khonsu hadn't been. He had given Mark a great deal of power, allowing him to transform into a shadow and appear in the streets with a white crow skull and a three-meter-long scythe, while everyone around him seemed unable to see anything unusual and simply continued with their daily lives.
"Do gods help each other, too?"
Renzo's opinion of Anubis changed slightly. There was no single supreme god-king in the Egyptian pantheon. For Anubis to do this for a god with whom he had no particularly close relationship suggested that his compassion and sense of justice had gone further than Renzo expected.
Renzo didn't believe the God of Death's purpose was simply to save someone. There had to be another motive.
Gods were not a group of beings who selflessly helped one another. Their greed was well known throughout the universe.
"Anubis..." Renzo whispered the name softly.
He was familiar with the name not only from his previous life. Anubis was also one of the foreign gods he knew well. The name of the God of Death was as famous as Odin and Zeus.
The four gods didn't dare act rashly. They quietly waited for the killer in front of them to make his next move. As for whether he would let them go...
They didn't believe it themselves.
From the conversation between this man and the witch, it was clear that the two had a close relationship. The witch had defeated them all with ease. Even now, they couldn't believe it, like a pod of killer whales being slaughtered on the open sea by a teenage fisherman standing on a dilapidated raft.
That was the second time they had felt powerless.
And this time...
It was the third.
"GO!"
Set instantly raised a cloud of yellow sand. This was a desert, and he was the god of the desert. In theory, he should have been able to exert his greatest strength here.
In fact, that was exactly what happened.
Set was the fastest among the four gods.
The storm swept up the yellow sand and rushed into the sky. The entire desert seemed to overturn as countless grains of sand surged with the wind. The desert god named Set disappeared from Egypt in the blink of an eye.
He succeeded.
But the other gods were not so fortunate.
The commotion Set created was so great that it instantly awakened the monster who had been meditating. He raised his head and looked around. The gods were preparing to use their own abilities to escape this place, even though it was the land they had inhabited for tens of thousands of years, the place where they had been born.
To survive, they were willing to travel far away, just as Odin and Zeus had moved Asgard and Olympus into the depths of the universe.
Geb, the god of the Earth, sank into the desert. Although this man who often carried a goose on his head was Set's father, Set had clearly not inherited his father's ability to escape.
He was the husband of Nut and the father of the four Pillar Gods: Set, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys.
What was tragic was that three of his children had died at the hands of this human, yet his fear only grew stronger.
Damn it! Damn it!
Geb cursed angrily, terrified by the enemy's power, just as he had been when facing the gods who had descended from the universe tens of thousands of years ago. The enormous body of the enemy, more than ten thousand meters tall, was more than a hundred times his size. Every step the giant took shattered the earth, terrifying even the god who ruled over it.
Why? Why? Why did these people never leave him alone?
Geb couldn't understand why such powerful enemies always seemed determined to fight on Earth. They destroyed the land every time they battled. Why couldn't they go to the sea or the sky instead? The ground always suffered the most damage in every battle.
Saiyans, Ultraman, Godzilla, and others...
Geb really wanted to complain. If they were powerful enough to fight on such a scale, why did they always have to come to Earth? Wouldn't an uninhabited planet somewhere in the universe be a better battlefield?
But he had no chance.
The purple energy swallowed his body, sending him, like his son and daughters, into the underworld to join his family.
Nut followed in her husband's footsteps, completely breaking the old curse that the God of the Sky and the God of the Earth could never meet. They ended up in the underworld, where perhaps they could finally live together as husband and wife, with their children running around them.
At least, that was what Renzo thought.
Tefnut's body had been cut in half, and the tiny green figure stood on her head.
"The Egyptian pantheon is really simple. What age are you, Grandmother?"
Such tiny feet ruthlessly stomped on her head, yet she had no intention of resisting.
"You said you would let us go!" Tefnut shouted angrily, condemning the mortal for his despicable and false promise.
"I never said the words 'let you go.' From beginning to end, that was only your own wishful thinking. It's like a revolving door before death. In your mind, you recall things you can no longer distinguish—the real and the unreal, the stories that once existed."
Renzo leaned down and moved close to the ear that was larger than his entire body. If he wasn't careful, he could have fallen straight into the filthy ear canal.
"They say inbreeding can reduce intelligence. It seems the evidence is pretty convincing," Renzo said playfully. "Where is Anubis's temple? How was he resurrected?"
"You have to ask that despicable witch!" Tefnut shouted angrily.
She knew she couldn't escape. The words spilling from her mouth became increasingly vicious as she hurled ancient Egyptian curses at him. Fortunately, Renzo didn't understand the language, otherwise Tefnut would have had to endure another round of torment.
Tefnut finally gave in. Under the illumination of the Mind Stone, no one could lie. Her thoughts and intentions were laid completely bare, exposing everything she had tried to conceal.
Renzo finally obtained the information he wanted and gave this "grandmother" a quick death.
He had been raised by his grandmother when he was young.
...
Temple of the Moon
Khonsu was imprisoned in his own palace, with dozens of thick chains piercing his pale, skeletal body. His gray robe was riddled with holes. His long, crow-like beak weakly struck the ground as wisps of red mist rose from his body.
Chaos power constantly surged across his surface, while dark-red lines spread over the white moon markings on his body, giving him an eerie appearance.
Anubis sat upon the throne of the Moon God.
This was the same pyramid that Mark had accidentally entered a few years ago. The opening in the tower was still clearly visible. Mark had entered through it and left through it as well.
It was practically a dog door.
The wolf-headed god looked indifferently at the white crow kneeling on the ground. His glossy black hair accentuated his imposing appearance. He was one of the most famous gods in Egypt, and also one of the most indifferent.
Khonsu cried bitterly and begged for mercy, pleading with the God of Death not to take his life. Suddenly, his pleas turned into curses.
"Gods should not judge other gods!"
Then he began babbling incoherently, sometimes speaking English, sometimes ancient Egyptian, his words becoming increasingly chaotic.
"Let me go... please! I can give you the Moon Temple! Or find you a representative. You must want to see the outside world, too!"
Khonsu spoke in panic. His body kept leaning forward, stretching the chains that pierced through him until they clattered loudly.
These thick chains had originally been used to restrain the Griffin. A single chain could tightly bind the body of a giant beast, yet now dozens of them bound the body of a god.
Khonsu was extremely cunning, more cunning than almost any other god. With his relatively weak strength and clever mind, he might not have been the strongest among the Egyptian gods, but he had certainly been one of the best at turning circumstances to his advantage.
But now he had been consumed by Chaos magic, and Mark, on the other end of their link, had also gone insane.
In the past, only the avatar had been crazy.
Now both the god and his avatar were.
Anubis couldn't let him kill mortals...
Or rather...
He couldn't let him kill mortals yet.
The wolf-headed god finally revealed a strange smile.
He was the God of Death. The duty of the God of Death was to usher the dead into the afterlife. And just now, he had learned that the god who ruled the underworld and the guardian of the dead were both subject to death.
Those divine duties would naturally fall into the hands of the Jackal.
He needed a killing machine now.
A killing machine that could improve his performance...
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