Bella walked at the very front and did not spare the statues of the three chief deities so much as a glance. They were not gods at all.
There was a semicircular indentation at the center of the Grand Temple's doors. She took out the Apple of Eden and used the energy inside it to activate the many connections within the doors, completely opening the massive metal barrier.
Dust billowed and haze filled the air. As the doors slowly opened, a vast hall appeared before the Assassins.
"Ladies and gentlemen, stay close to me. Don't fall behind." She stepped inside first.
The Grand Temple had been built seventy-five thousand years ago, and no human had set foot here since.
The underground structure had long since been abandoned, yet the interior of the temple was remarkably clean. It could not be called spotless, and broken stones and collapsed pillars could occasionally be seen along the path, but the place did not feel dilapidated or ruined. It was almost as if someone had been cleaning it regularly all this time.
Bella said, "Doesn't look like there's much danger. Take some people and search the place. Notify me immediately if you find anything."
The Assassins spread out and began searching the underground temple like dutiful laborers.
Bella did not remain idle either. Her methods of searching were far more advanced than theirs.
Earlier, when the Brotherhood had used the Animus to read Desmond Miles's genetic memories, they had discovered an energy wavelength within them. It corresponded to a strange space that current technology could not explain, observe, calculate, or understand at all. Several Brotherhood scientists believed that this space existed independently within consciousness.
At the time, Bella had stopped Desmond Miles from investigating that strange space any further.
Now that she had made full preparations, she followed the coordinates left from before, pulled her consciousness away from the current point in time, and searched for that space with all her strength.
In the eyes of the Assassins, her figure began to flicker unpredictably. One second she was standing in the exact center of the temple, the next she had moved to a side hall, and the second after that she appeared by the entrance.
No one knew what she was doing, and she did not explain.
"Found it!" Bella needed no artifact to help her and no one's permission. She could even feel that the space outside time was resisting her, but out of sheer curiosity and a desire to uncover secrets, she forced her way inside anyway.
"Wow!" Looking at the dense golden threads filling the space, she could not help exclaiming in admiration. The Isu had used technological means, but there was still plenty here she could learn from. Merely looking at these golden threads, which shared the same origin as the Apple of Eden, gave her several preliminary ideas for distorting time.
There were so many golden threads packed so densely together that they completely obscured the substance that could be called the light source. Only then did Bella learn the name of this space: the ancient Isu had called it the Synch Nexus.
The region inside the Synch Nexus was dark, with no gravity and no air. Bella found it somewhat difficult to adapt at first.
She kept adjusting herself to the environment. Only after fully adapting to it did she look around. The place was utterly still, like outer space, without the slightest sound.
"I am the Mentor of the Brotherhood, here in response to your summons. In 1769, you left a message for Connor. Now I'm here, so you... why don't you come out and show yourselves?"
She was still being very polite and courteous.
This distorted point in time existed independently of time itself. Within this space, the concept of time did not exist. In other words, by using this place, one could converse with specific people across countless years.
The Cauldron of the Cosmos could only observe, while this place went a step further: conversation! A real conversation with someone separated from her by who knew how many years. For example, she could ask Zou Ji's wife whether Bella or Zou Ji was prettier.
If she was not worried about completely wrecking the timeline, she could even pull the Four Beauties, the Ten Great Femme Fatales, and everyone else together and create a group chat devoted entirely to showering one another with compliments...
While Bella's imagination ran wild, several Isu living seventy-five thousand years in the past were equally dumbfounded. They looked at one another, all asking the same question: who the hell was this person inside the Synch Nexus? This did not seem quite the same as the future they had observed before!
"Are you... Desmond? Desmond Miles?" asked a voice that was impossible to identify as male or female.
Bella answered with complete composure. "I'm Desmond's boss. He's away on a business trip for the next couple of days. I think it's more appropriate for us to speak directly."
Not Desmond? The Isu on the other end of the timeline did not really understand what she meant by a business trip either.
They all wore strange expressions. After discussing it among themselves, they still used individual holographic projections to meet Bella at this distorted point in time.
They were all typical Isu. Ordinary Isu stood two and a half meters tall, but to put themselves on equal footing with her, all three projections used human-sized bodies. The figure in the center was an elderly man wearing a Roman-style robe. This was Jupiter.
The woman to his left wore a long dress and was Juno. The woman to his right, also draped in a Roman-style robe, was Minerva.
According to Earth mythology, they were gods of the Roman pantheon. Jupiter was king of the gods, Juno was queen of the gods, and Minerva was the goddess of wisdom.
In reality, however, Bella had not encountered a single genuine Roman god so far. Kamar-Taj's records listed that pantheon as unknown, and the Ancient One had openly admitted that she had never encountered gods of the Roman pantheon either. Bella suspected the Romans had simply copied the Greek pantheon and pasted new identities over it.
The Roman pantheon did not exist, but Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva certainly did, because they had lived seventy-five thousand years ago. They were Isu—a group of precursors who had lived on Earth.
"According to our myths, all of you are gods... To be honest, I was somewhat looking forward to meeting you before. But now that I've seen you, I'm only disappointed. You aren't gods." Bella's opening remarks left the three Isu at a loss. Wasn't a future Mentor of the Brotherhood supposed to be especially respectful when meeting them? What was with this attitude?
Minerva, wearing an ancient Roman-style robe, said, "Gods? You... humans of the future like to give the name 'god' to anything unknown. That was never our intention... I don't think we need to discuss such pointless matters."
At present, Bella's main hope of condensing her Divine Body still lay with Paititi. She nodded. "You're right. It really is meaningless. Whatever you wanted to tell Desmond, you can tell me now."
Her bluntness left the three Isu silent again. In the end, the elderly man in the center, Jupiter, was the one who spoke.
"Do you know about the Toba Catastrophe?"
Bella immediately put on a solemn expression. "Please tell me about the Toba Catastrophe in detail. I'm extremely interested in it. The more detail you give me, the more Divine Power I can harvest... No, no. What I mean is, the more detail you give me, the greater our chances of defeating the catastrophe!"