"I'm not listening! I won't listen! I don't believe you! None of this is real! None of it could possibly happen!" Bella looked like the heroine of a Qiong Yao melodrama, her face full of despair as though the news had completely shattered her worldview.
Juno and Minerva felt as if they had each taken a vicious punch to the stomach. You don't believe us? Then why the hell did you spend all that time talking to us? If you didn't believe it, you should've said so sooner!
Jupiter's expression remained normal. He sighed again and again, believing Bella had simply received too much information in too short a time and could not accept it emotionally yet.
He liked Bella as an audience member. A young man named Connor had once entered the Synch Nexus as well, but that fellow had been impatient. He exchanged only a couple of sentences with Juno before rushing away, and Jupiter never even had a chance to appear.
This Mentor of the Brotherhood was much better. Steady and composed! That was Jupiter's assessment of Bella.
"We will answer your summons again, but remember: you do not have much time left." Jupiter dismissed the holographic projections with Juno and Minerva and left the distorted point in time.
Bella's expression gradually returned to normal.
The Isu had plenty of secrets, but unfortunately the quality was still a little lacking. Bella figured that if the Living Tribunal sat down and chatted with her for two hours, she would walk out able to beat Dormammu senseless! Then it would be a bruised and swollen Dormammu bargaining with her...
She did not abandon the distorted point in time known as the Synch Nexus. If she got another chance, she could come back and chat with her old Isu buddy. One wanted to talk, the other wanted to listen. Everyone got what they wanted.
Still, this point in time was not safe. Meeting once or twice was fine, but too many visits would make it extremely easy for her to be assimilated by the river of time.
It was an extradimensional space rooted in bloodline yet independent of time, something the Isu had forcibly opened through technological means. Its spatial structure was not stable.
Bella carefully examined the space. It had certain similarities to the dimensional space she used as storage through her Spirit Traveler ability.
She immediately returned to the original point in time. Ignoring the Assassins' strange looks, she began absorbing this extradimensional space.
Using her own dimensional space as the foundation, she absorbed the essence of the distorted point in time. In genre terms, she had just switched from the portable-space route to the chat-room route.
Countless speckled fragments poured out of the void. Ten bundles of pale-white thread emerged from Bella's fingertips. The threads spread like a woven net, continually dismantling and sorting the distorted point in time before turning it into nourishment for her own space to absorb.
She used magic from the Book of the Vishanti to strip away the power inside the distorted point in time little by little.
The Book of the Vishanti did not contain a single offensive spell, but it had to be said that its techniques for defense, transference, protection, and similar fields had been developed to an extreme.
The Book of the Vishanti could only be described as broad and profound. Even with Bella's current magical ability, which was already approaching the seventh circle, she could understand only a little over ten percent of the book, not even twenty percent.
It took about half an hour for Bella to completely absorb the distinctive qualities and energy of the distorted point in time, transforming her own dimensional space into an extradimensional space independent of time.
From now on, when she had nothing else to do, she could not only chat with old buddy Jupiter and learn Isu secrets, but also use this space to observe time and what lay outside it.
She wanted to know the secrets within time, and she wanted to see what was happening outside time too. That was more or less the situation...
"Mentor, we found a huge gate of light."
"Let's go. We'll take a look together."
Everyone arrived before a massive doorway filled with numerous golden lines of light.
Bella thought briefly, then gestured to the Russian girl beside her. Galina Voronina immediately handed her a cyan ornament.
This was the key to the Grand Temple. Bella had previously sent the Russian girl to retrieve it specifically from the grave of the legendary Assassin Connor Kenway.
The key was shaped like a pendant. Its front bore an ouroboros symbol representing an infinite cycle, while the back was engraved with a star chart that included the twelve signs of the zodiac.
"Everyone, step back." Bella placed the key into the depression at the center of the gate of light. The great door trembled slightly, but after they waited for a while, it still did not open.
"It seems to be missing some energy. We may need to search the nearby halls for clues." Brotherhood hacker Shaun Hastings offered his opinion.
Bella studied the gate of light several times, then shook her head firmly.
Were these designers insane? They put the key for the door at Point A, the energy source at Point B, and after that they would probably make you go to Point C to stare at a mural before you could figure out the sequence for opening it! Did opening a door in your house really need to be this much trouble? This was pure torment!
She reached out and made a pulling motion. The distorted point in time she had wrecked earlier still contained a little residual energy. Before that damaged space could be completely swallowed by time, she drew out another portion of its power.
They were all Isu technological products, so their energy was compatible.
The energy from the distorted point in time entered the gate of light and formed a circuit through the Grand Temple key. The doorway, covered in countless golden lines, slowly opened.
The inner hall was extremely spacious and empty. The only thing inside was a waist-high pedestal of pure metal at the very center.
Bella recognized it at a glance. This was the pedestal Jupiter had told her about, the one that could stop the solar flare in 2012. Inside it should be that strange weapon—the Eye.
The Assassins were completely baffled. None of them knew why the ancient Isu had gone to the trouble of building a special inner hall like this.
"You all go outside first. I'm going to scan the room with an Apple of Eden." Bella had installed one Apple of Eden at the temple entrance and now took out another.
The Apple of Eden's energy rays were extremely lethal to people with low concentrations of Isu blood. The Assassins all knew that, so they withdrew from the inner hall together.
The Apple of Eden's energy rays not only covered the entire inner hall, but also blocked the Assassins' view.
Amid the interweaving light and shadow, the outline of a woman slowly emerged.
To Bella, this was simply Juno, whom she had seen moments ago—the queen of the gods in Roman mythology. Less than ten minutes had passed since their last conversation. To Juno, however, this was a reunion seventy-five thousand years later.
"What incredible technology. You stored your consciousness inside a machine?" Bella thought this was far more advanced than HYDRA's method of preserving Zola. Juno could still project herself now, complete with mannerisms and expressions. She looked almost exactly like a living person.
Without Jupiter and Minerva beside her, Juno stopped concealing her true nature. The way she looked at Bella carried an unmistakable air of superiority.
Her expression alone was enough to show how arrogant she was. Bella could read some Transformers' thoughts, but there was no way she could read the inner world of a holographic projection. There were far too many layers between them.
Bella looked at Juno, and Juno studied her in return. Both sides fell silent at the same time.