#565 - Moya and the Past of the Goddess of Beauty
laugh……
BANG——
…
The lamps that ignited spontaneously without fire in the empty underground space lit up one by one as Aphrodite arrived.
Without pausing for a moment, the goddess of beauty continued to move forward. The door behind her also closed automatically, isolating the underground palace from the outside world.
Passing through the long and narrow corridor, there is a door at regular intervals on both sides of Aphrodite.
Occasionally, a few rustling sounds could be heard from it, like whispers or howling.
But the goddess of beauty ignored it and just kept moving forward.
After an unknown amount of time, the space in front of her suddenly opened up. Heat waves and dazzling red light rushed towards her, causing Aphrodite to mobilize some of her divine power to protect her body.
The next moment, an ancient altar made of huge stones appeared at the end of her sight. Near the altar, there was a foaming lava lake.
A blazing power emanated from it, and even some fragments of rules that were very different from the material world were hovering above it.
Without stopping, Aphrodite walked towards the lava lake. As if sensing her approach, the surface of the lake began to ripple slightly.
Amid a surge of foam, two creatures with animal hooves, bat wings, goat horns and long tails emerged, their charming and delicate faces full of fear and obedience.
"We are waiting to welcome His Highness——"
The voices were neat and clear, with a hint of charm hidden in them.
Looking at the scene in front of her, Aphrodite couldn't help but smile.
After countless failures, she finally came up with a result that barely satisfied her. Although it was still not perfect, it was the best she could do with her current abilities.
"There is nothing for you to do here, please leave first."
Speaking quietly, Aphrodite raised her hand and gave instructions to the two people who were nymphs born in the sea of flowers in front of her temple not long ago.
They are not needed here for the time being. After all, their abilities are not enough to understand my deeper secrets.
"Yes, Your Highness."
The fire flickered, and the two of them bowed together when they heard the words. Then the area in front of Aphrodite became empty, and there was no living creature other than the goddess of beauty.
Wow...
The goddess of beauty walked slowly forward with her fingers running across the ancient altar and a light sigh.
At this moment, looking at this place where she had been countless times, a glimmer of reminiscence flashed in Aphrodite's eyes.
When did she own this underground space? It must have been a long time ago, at least she couldn't remember the time.
She only remembered the beginning of everything, probably from the aftermath of Typhon's Rebellion.
The rampant and willful King of Demons failed to overthrow the rule of the King of Gods, but from that day on, the world, having witnessed the might of this supreme demon, inadvertently gained many more things, and Aphrodite was one of them.
That day, the goddess of beauty fled frantically in the face of the black wind that covered the sky and turned into a fish to avoid the attack of the demon king.
Ares was only concerned with escaping, and the gods who dared to fight him were no match for him. Even the God King who defeated the Earth Mother had his spine pulled out like a dead dog, unable to resist the powerful Demon King.
That was the day Aphrodite feared the most, and also the day she felt the most powerless, because her beauty, which she was so proud of, was meaningless in front of the majestic Demon King, like a piece of waste paper that no one cared about.
This fear lingered in her heart. Even after the God-King turned the tables and completely killed Typhon in the sea, she still couldn't recover.
So one evening after that day, Aphrodite tied her belt, put on her most grand makeup, and met Zeus in a corner of Mount Olympus.
In the entire Chaos world of gods and humans, he is the only one who has both sufficient power and a desire for beauty.
She told herself this, even though Zeus had never approached her actively, which made her doubt her beauty for a time; even though the King of Gods was not actually so invincible, he also defeated his opponents under the pretext of conspiracy... but no matter what, he was the winner after all.
And as a winner, you are qualified to pick the most beautiful flowers.
“…I succeeded, but I also failed.”
"It turns out that Zeus is not blind to my beauty. In front of the true beauty of this world, some people may be able to restrain their desires, but they will never be without desire."
"But he, Zeus, who could not escape even the young mortals, forcibly restrained his lust for my beauty... This was the most shameful insult to me, and I will never forget that day..."
"One day, I will make you regret your refusal."
A sarcastic smile inadvertently climbed onto his face, and he felt the coolness of the altar with his fingertips.
After that day, Aphrodite doubted herself for a long time in her own temple, and even went to the human world like a madman, trying to regain her former confidence in all kinds of men.
They can be kings and generals; they can also be commoners or even beggars.
It was unknown how long it had been until one day she woke up alone on a high mountain. Aphrodite looked at the sun in the sky, and like the goddess of beauty who had just woken up from a dream, she made up her mind.
In this world, no one else can be relied upon; only yourself can be relied upon.
She can use her beauty as a weapon, but it can never be her only weapon.
She must make a change...and when the goddess of beauty recalled the past, she was surprised to find that a road that few people in the world had discovered had actually been lying in her palm a long time ago.
Thanks to the sun god Helios, although he is no longer with us, Aphrodite still remembers the funny things he did to make the beauty laugh when they were sleeping in the same bed.
In addition to the secrets that the other party saw during his daily patrols of the sky, the goddess of beauty also heard a piece of news from Helios that she didn't know whether it was true or not.
Dramatic changes have taken place in Tartarus. It is no longer the chaotic prison of the gods. Instead, it has its own interface and creatures.
The sun god did not dare to investigate again, and Aphrodite did not dare to do so before the Typhon Rebellion, but now she had no choice but to do so.
So since then, one hero after another has been favored by the goddess of beauty due to various accidents, and they have vowed to bring back the secrets of the abyss for the gods.
They went forward one after another and used their lives to bring back important messages for the gods.
Until the last warrior was accidentally discovered by the great will wandering in the abyss interface. She noticed the special divine power in that tiny human at a glance, the divine power that represents "beauty" in the material world.
At that moment, the Great Will remembered the oath she had made when she woke up in Tartarus. She wanted to regain her past, the beauty and dignity that belonged to the gods. (See 3-136)
So, before Zeus and the five-colored dragon mothers, the first messenger between the abyss and the world was born on that day.
Carrying the special mark, the human hero returned to Aphrodite.
The goddess of beauty who received the "letter" did not treat him unfairly. She fulfilled his dream and allowed him to live out his short but glorious life in extreme satisfaction.
laugh……
Aphrodite's fingers paused on the patterns on the altar, and a flame ignited at her fingertips.
From a point, to a line, and finally covering the entire altar, in an instant, the faint firelight seemed to "ignite" the stone platform.
Immersed in memories, the goddess of beauty moved slowly and gracefully.
The stone platform lit up, and a vast and profound will seemed to be looking here at the attraction of the signpost.
Logically speaking, this kind of movement would inevitably cause turmoil on Mount Olympus and even attract the attention of Zeus.
But Aphrodite was not panicked at all. She had her own reasons for building the altar here instead of in the depths of the starry sky or the edge of the sea.
Because after learning about her situation, the great one of the abyss paid special attention to the so-called "Kingdom of God" of the Olympian pantheon.
With the help of this insider, the other party finally made a judgment - it was not the space-time kingdom opened up by Zeus, but the main body of the fragments of an alien interface.
There are even more than one such entity, and the abyss has also incorporated similar fragments.
So with her help, Aphrodite decisively chose to deal with the situation in the dark, and grafted a fragment of alien time and space salvaged from the abyss under her own temple.
At this moment, the underground palace where the goddess of beauty is located is actually inside this piece of debris, instead of actually digging a hole in the mountain of the sacred mountain.
Here, she received the will from the abyss and provided her own divine power. After so many years, Zeus still did not notice it.
"He is not Kronos. He does not have the divine authority over time and space. Asgard was not really created by himself, so he cannot discover you."
This is what the other party told her, and after years of verification, Aphrodite believed it without a doubt.
Maybe the other party really didn't discover it, or maybe they found some clues, but only regarded it as an adventure of the goddess of beauty in the outside world. They didn't expect that there would be such a secret in this fragment of time and space that is not even a fraction of the size of Asgard.
In short, inside the underground palace, the goddess of beauty moved her fingers again, injected her divine power into the altar, and the stone platform responded accordingly.
Time passed minute by minute, and at a certain moment, the connection between the abyss and this place was finally established.
A black vortex swirled above the stone platform. With a vibration of time and space, the laws of the abyss emerged from the opposite side.
The other side of the vortex leads directly to the depths of Tartarus. If such a link occurred directly within the material world, it would probably be locked in an instant by the laws of the world, and then suppressed and destroyed.
However, deep inside this tiny fragment of time and space, the rules of the outside world and here do not interoperate.
Although such broken fragments are destined to be destroyed over time due to their own weakness, similar fragments are not uncommon in the abyss.
The Great One of the Abyss also promised that if the power of this fragment was exhausted and damaged, she could send a few more.
"…Your Majesty, long time no see."
Aphrodite smiled and continued to inject her divine power as she had done every time before.
But this time, she knew she should be able to get a considerable reward.
Although the Amazon queen dared to betray him, perhaps it was her emotions that inadvertently converged with the laws of "love and beauty", leading to the solution of a problem that had troubled him for a long time.
And this difficult problem, after all, was not something she came up with for herself, but was done at the request of this great man.
"You should have received my 'work', how do you feel about it?"
"As you said before, the power of the abyss and the divine power of the material world are indeed mutually exclusive."
"When a true god enters the abyss, he will gradually lose control of the laws of the world as time goes by, and eventually the corresponding rules will become violent. When the demon god of the abyss enters the material world, he will lose the blessing of the laws of the interface, and even his own power will be suppressed."
"So the authority of 'Beauty' cannot permanently affect the Abyss Demon. At least I can't do it for a Demon God-level being, because there is an inherent conflict between the two."
"Even when it comes to ordinary demons, my power is only effective because I am much stronger than them, not because I can really violate this iron rule... But now, I may have found a common point between the two."
"Excluding spiritual love, I have always believed that physical desire is the part that best fits the law of chaos."
"From the results, I was right, but not completely right."
"The body and the spirit cannot be separated, they must correspond to each other. Therefore, only souls that have felt 'love' can be transformed into this special demon, unaffected by the power of the abyss and possessing a sufficiently 'beautiful' appearance."
"So this kind of demon may not be born through natural means...it can only be created by the fall of human beings."
For example, my followers... Aphrodite did not say this, but her followers do meet this requirement.
However, when she finished speaking, there was silence on the other side of the passage for a long time.
"...The living goddess of beauty, you have indeed successfully created a new kind of demon bloodline. If you were a creature of the abyss, I'm afraid Tartarus wouldn't mind granting you the position of a demon god."
"But what about me, what does this have to do with me?"
"Of course it does."
"Because as long as this new demon bloodline is recognized in the Abyss, my divine power will be able to barely create a body that can temporarily carry your will."
She behaved very politely, but Aphrodite was a little strange when it came to this.
In terms of operations in the high-level realms, this great one of the abyss is extremely powerful, and in many places the Goddess of Beauty doubts whether the real primordial god can do it, as if this great one is Tartarus himself.
But in other places, such as her own will... Aphrodite always felt that although the other party was stronger than herself, after careful observation, it seemed that he was not much stronger.
