# 1854
Chapter 1854: The Sword in the Stone
"So rankings are meaningless. Si Xiaonan's potential cannot be measured by pure combat power." Lina said calmly.
"When I first met her, I knew she was different from the other representatives... It's not that she was the only one who harbored murderous intent toward the god she represented, but she was the only one actually plotting to kill Loki.
Later, she succeeded. She killed Loki and became the new God of Mischief. She then founded the [Hidden Gods] within the Mist, and her legend has become immortalized among the [Ten Preceptors]...
However, four years ago, she suddenly came to me and said she was going to do something. After that, she had me take her place and manage the entire [Hidden Gods]."
"You mean she actively had you take her spot?"
"That's right. She used 'mischief' to create a fake law of trickery in the world, made Fenrir obey my commands, and arranged two trusted confidants around me in advance. This allowed me to successfully deceive everyone else, and then she ran off to Mount Olympus, saying she was going undercover...
Then the Moon erupted in divine war, and I never saw her again."
Lina glanced at Lin Qiye. "Aren't you Si Xiaonan's former comrade? You should know more inside information than I do."
Lin Qiye was silent for a moment, then nodded.
"I see..."
So Lina was a substitute prepared by Si Xiaonan before she went undercover at Olympus. But the great battle that followed forced her to remain permanently in the Tushita Palace, and after that, Lina had been disguising herself as Si Xiaonan and controlling [Hidden Gods] all this time.
"Over these four years, no one noticed anything wrong?" Lin Qiye asked again.
Hearing this, Lina's expression darkened as she slowly said, "Of course there were... At the beginning, no one suspected me. After all, the might of the 'Goddess of Mischief' was deeply etched into their hearts. Everything they had was brought to them by Si Xiaonan.
But as time went on, I never made another move and always wore a mask, so naturally it invited suspicion...
Starting from last year, the voices of doubt within [Hidden Gods] grew louder and louder. In the end, I could only reveal my identity. Although the confidants testified that I was the [Hidden Gods] leader chosen by Si Xiaonan, I was after all just human, and they didn't trust me.
After that, while they didn't openly move against me, they had long stripped me of real power... Otherwise, why do you think I came here alone?"
Hearing this, Lin Qiye understood the full context. He thought for a moment and said,
"No wonder [Hidden Gods] has been making small moves against Great Xia lately... It seems that without Si Xiaonan, [Hidden Gods] is no longer the [Hidden Gods] of old."
After finishing, Lin Qiye looked at Fenrir lying on the ground. The blow from number 22 had been too terrifying. Although Fenrir had survived with his sturdy bones, he probably wouldn't last much longer.
Lin Qiye waved his fingers, and two summoning arrays opened from nothingness. Two "Mysteries" wearing deep cyan nurse uniforms appeared before him and respectfully said:
"Director, hello~"
"En, thank you for treating it."
These two "Mysteries" were employees of the hospital's medical office. Their abilities were all related to healing. While they weren't very good at healing humans, handling simple wound treatment for the magic wolf Fenrir should be no problem.
Seeing this, Lina furrowed her brow slightly. "Why are you helping me? [Hidden Gods] and Great Xia should be enemies now, right?"
"[Hidden Gods] may be Great Xia's enemy, but you are not." Lin Qiye said calmly. "Fenrir is Si Xiaonan's mount, and you are her chosen successor. In any case, I can't just leave you two to die here."
Lina harrumphed but said nothing.
"By the way, how did you get here?" Lin Qiye asked, as if suddenly remembering.
Lina hesitated for a moment, then extended her hand and gripped the ice beneath her feet.
On the empty ice surface, a mysterious long sword suddenly appeared. Most of this sword was buried underground, with only a section of the hilt exposed to the air. Around this hilt, densely packed boulders were stacked together, as if burying it within the crevices of stone.
"This is..." Lin Qiye frowned as he looked at this sword that existed between reality and illusion, puzzled.
"This is a divine artifact given to me by King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone." Lina pointed to the hilt. "It's extremely sensitive to the perception of time. When I held the hilt, I sensed the flow of time in this place... To avoid the pursuit of [Divine Desire Paradise], I delved deep into this place."
"Sword in the Stone?"
Lin Qiye curiously examined this mysterious long sword embedded in the ground. From the aura it emanated, this was undoubtedly a Supreme God artifact of English mythology. But... this sword thrust into the ground actually had the power to sense time?
He reached out to touch the hilt of the Sword in the Stone, but was stopped by Lina's hand. The latter said in a low voice:
"Besides King Arthur and myself, no one can move the Sword in the Stone... If you don't want to be corroded into a skeleton, you'd better not touch it casually."
Lin Qiye naturally wouldn't try again. After pulling his hand back, he asked:
"Then can you describe what the Temporal Maze looked like when you held this sword and sensed it?"
Lina frowned, contemplating seriously for a long while.
"It's... like an inverted pyramid."
"Pyramid?"
"Not in appearance, but from the perspective of time's flow, it's an inverted pyramid." Lina sketched on the ice surface with her finger. "The further down you go, the smaller the pyramid's footprint becomes, but the further back in time. From my perception, the very bottom of this pyramid is about one hundred years away from the outside world."
One hundred years?
That wasn't the time when the Gate of Truth shattered and the Mist shrouded the world, was it?
In other words, the end of this Temporal Maze, the very bottom of the inverted pyramid, should be where the Gate of Truth's remnants are located... Only by reaching that moment over a hundred years ago, when the Mist was released, could one find the remnants of the Gate of Truth.
So when Wang Mian saw the Gate of Truth, he had actually already reached the end of the Temporal Maze?
Deserving of the God of Time indeed... Lin Qiye thought to himself.
Lina pointed to the inverted pyramid on the ground and continued:
"The entrance to the maze is at the first and topmost level of this inverted pyramid, and also the most fractured layer.
At this level, every step takes you into a different moment in time. Because the time here is too fragmented, the shards are small, but the time differences between them aren't too large. Between each shard, there's probably only a few days' difference.
But the deeper you go, the closer you get to the pyramid's base, the more complete time becomes. At that point, every time shard you pass through represents time measured in 'years'..."