In the western sky, a bright star emerged from the lingering glow of sunset, heralding the approach of night. The mountains flanking the Sorna River valley began to darken.
When Lucian arrived at the designated hidden cave, El, Francis, and Jacob were already waiting. After taking a wide detour to shake off the pursuing False Gods and priests, they had somehow still beaten him there.
"Leviathan, why so late?" Jacob, his face framed by a white beard, asked in a low voice while simultaneously channeling a Divine Art to check whether anyone had been trailing Lucian.
El and Francis also turned toward him with questions. This location wasn't far from Husum, and "Leviathan" had leapt into the river and departed the moment the Moon God Ashin appeared — no need to evade any pursuit from False Gods and priests. So why had he arrived after all three of them?
Lucian replied without any urgency: "After I jumped into the Sorna River, I was caught in the tidal surge triggered by Moon God Ashin. I couldn't swim out of the city smoothly, which cost me quite a bit of time."
"Mm." Jacob nodded. He hadn't detected anyone following them either, so he relaxed.
El's face was slightly pale, but a smile lingered at the corners of his lips — he looked thoroughly pleased with himself. "Though we failed to kill Moon God Ashin this time, we successfully stripped Him of His divinity and deterred the other False Gods. You all did well, and I shall reward you handsomely!"
"It is our honor," Jacob replied promptly.
At that moment, Francis produced a small laurel box from inside his coat, filling the cave with a faint, delicate fragrance. A subtle aura of Divine Arts emanated from it.
This was the box El had given to him and Jacob for collecting Moon God Ashin's divinity. Without it, "mortals" could neither perceive the divine glow nor touch it, let alone gather it.
"Great God of Resurrection, Abundance, and Redemption — this is the divinity of Moon God Ashin." To Lucian's mild surprise, Francis handed the "divine glow" over to El without any fuss.
El accepted the box crafted from laurel wood with a hint of eagerness and opened it right there in front of Lucian and Jacob. Immediately, streams of cold, clear radiance like spilled moonlight poured forth — icy, cool, and refreshing.
Without concealing his curiosity, Lucian focused intently on examining what this divinity truly was.
Inside the wooden box, tiny fragments resembling miniature silver moons hovered between substance and void, as if belonging to some distant, untouchable realm one could never truly approach. And within each silver moon fragment, many shifting, indistinct things seemed to drift — lending them an ineffably sacred air.
These fragments floated motionless inside the box as though they had died, occasionally exhibiting faint contractions and expansions.
"Why does it look so familiar..." The moment Lucian saw Moon God Ashin's divine glow, a powerful sense of familiarity washed over him. His memories stirred as he tried hard to recall where he had seen something like it.
"Stand guard for me," El commanded in a low, urgent tone. If not for his worry that "Leviathan" might have attracted enemies like the Lord of War, he would have long since lost control of his impulses. He needed only to absorb this serene, quiet moon divinity that symbolized immortality — and his power would be restored, his divine domain consolidated and expanded!
"Yes!" Francis and Lucian watched El absorb the divinity, their gazes burning with intensity.
A layer of serene, timeless radiance suddenly enveloped El's right hand. It carried the sensation of deathly slumber, yet also evoked the quiet corner of the soul. With this glow surrounding his hand, he reached into the wooden box and grasped the floating silver moon fragments.
Under El's command, the tiny fragments began to converge, gradually coalescing into a silver-white sphere of light — like a miniature silver moon.
The sphere pulsed and contracted like a heart — vast, profound, solitary, and sacred, gazing down upon the earth with the same impassive, unchanging aloofness as the true silver moon across the ages.
Lucian's mouth fell slightly open as familiar memories surged forth like a tidal wave!
In the reflection of the Necromantic Realm within the Sphinx Tomb — the rust-and-blood-stained orb floating above Fenks's coffin...
In the inner sanctum of the Sun King's underground palace — the pale, translucent orb resting in Thanos's statue's outstretched palm...
Scene after scene, frozen like stills from a film — so vivid and so staggering. Though they differed in color and detail, that lofty, untouchable, unknowable, ever-shifting, ineffably sacred essence was utterly identical!
A flash of inspiration struck Lucian. He seemed to grasp something — perhaps a sliver of mystery behind the gods and the Ancient Devils. But almost immediately, deeper doubts rose within him: the Silver Moon Etana had existed far longer than any living being, and the Ancient Hell and Abyss had existed just as long. Where had they come from? The Seven Great Ancient Devils also differed vastly from the False Gods and true gods in both existence and manifestation — why was that?
Had he fallen into a cognitive trap?
"It seems the secrets of the Necromantic Realm run even deeper than I imagined," Lucian mused inwardly, then raised a small question: "Did I see this Moon God's 'divinity' because I'm wearing the Crown of the Sun, or because of the laurel box?"
The silver-white sphere slowly merged into the radiance enveloping El's right hand, causing it to glow with a gradually intensifying cold luster.
El's face twisted and contorted, as though this was an extraordinarily painful process.