Chapter 397 Zeus: Strong flavor, no need for more salt!
In an underground maze, in a dark cave.
Surprisingly, he survived...
Hearing the tremors coming from all around them gradually fading away, the Argonauts, who felt they had survived a calamity, slumped beside the dark stone wall, gasping for breath.
"It's not easy to find you."
A low voice came from the darkness, and a tall shadow in the corner took off his black robe, revealing a rough and resolute face in the dim light of fluorite.
"Prometheus?" Chiron asked tentatively.
"Yes, it's me." The tall and strong man nodded slightly.
Upon hearing this, the Argonauts all looked sideways and could not help but stand in awe of the man before them.
Prometheus, the fire thief, the creator of the original human beings, the prophetic god who brought fire and light, and the guide for human civilization to reach its current stage.
In a sense, these heroes who have some human blood flowing in their veins are the descendants of the people before them.
After hearing the expected answer, Chiron was completely relieved.
At the beginning of the expedition, he and a few others including Hercules were told by the goddess of wisdom Athena:
Once the plan to raid the Titan Temple is launched, there will be someone in the underground maze to pick them up.
And that guide was the legendary fire thief Prometheus.
Just now, this person took action at the critical moment and used fire to repel the attack of the demonized sacred tree.
Therefore, Chiron vaguely guessed his true identity, and he made a prompt decision and followed him with the Argonauts who were in trouble.
Fortunately, the bet was right.
Prometheus looked at the chaotic and injured Argonauts around him and comforted them in a deep voice: "Don't worry, it's safe here for the time being. You should take a good rest first."
Chiron nodded, stood up, and together with the God of Medicine and Medea, they distributed the recovery and healing potions they carried with them to the weak or injured companions nearby to help them recover as soon as possible.
Hercules, the most powerful fighter, walked among the crowd and asked about the casualties of the expeditionary force.
But the final statistical results are not optimistic.
After passing through more than fifty light gates and fighting countless waves of enemies, the seven or eight God-Blood Guards brought in by King Admetus of Thessaly had all been killed in battle, and the Argo expeditionary force of fifty people composed entirely of God-Blood heroes had also lost more than a dozen people.
What made Hercules even more unacceptable was that they paid such a heavy sacrifice but didn't even touch the shadow of the Titan Temple.
In anger, Hercules punched into the solid stone wall and turned to look at the guide who had just met them.
"What the hell is going on? Why have we been walking for so long and it seems like we're just going in circles?"
"Spatial power..."
Prometheus replied in a deep voice, explaining patiently.
"Kronos is a god king who is proficient in space manipulation. In order to hide his weaknesses, the [Throne] and [Crown], he has transformed the entire underground world into a complex space maze. If an outsider accidentally breaks in, each time he passes through the light gate, it will cause a space change. Therefore, without a special guide, you may not be able to find the deepest Titan Temple until you die."
“I can’t find the Titan Temple until I die? Is that so exaggerated?”
Jason, who had just taken a dose of energy potion, jumped up upon hearing this and questioned with a look of disbelief on his face.
Prometheus raised his hand slightly and threw a bronze hexahedron from his sleeve to Jason:
"Take a look at this first."
Jason looked down at the regular hexahedron in his hand and found that its structure was very strange.
The six sides are painted in different colors, and each side is evenly divided into nine grids, which can be twisted at will to form different patterns.
Jason fiddled with it for a few times and asked curiously.
"What's this?"
"The current spatial model of the entire underground maze was made by me casually."
Prometheus answered in a deep voice, then looked at Jason in front of him with a faint smile.
"If you can solve it, it means you have understood the changing rules of the underground maze, and then cracked the operating rules of the entire space spell, and thus opened the way to the Titan Temple."
"How do you solve it?"
"Just make it the same color on all six sides."
“This is easy!”
Upon hearing this, Jason confidently twisted the bronze hexahedron in his hand, ready to show off his skills to the god of prophecy and foresight, and see his wit and talent.
Once, twice, three times...
Ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times...
A full half hour passed. Jason looked at the bronze hexahedron with six different sides in his hand. The confidence on his face had long since disappeared, replaced by a deep sense of doubt and more and more sweat on his forehead.
Katniss, who was somewhat displeased with Jason, snorted coldly while holding her spear.
"Can you do it or not? If not, let me do it!"
"What's the hurry? Let me try again."
Jason retorted with his neck stiffened, while continuing to work hard on the bronze hexahedron in his hand, and at the same time he did not forget to pull Prometheus beside him to support him.
"Maybe if I try a few more times I'll be able to do it, right?"
Prometheus in the shadows crossed his arms, smiled faintly and nodded.
"Well, at your current speed of three rotations per second, not counting repetitions, you will only need about 454.2 billion years to rotate all the variations of this thing and restore any one of the 20 billion combinations, including the six sides of the same color."
"How much?"
Jason was stunned when he heard this, and could hardly believe his ears. He turned his head in surprise and asked Prometheus for confirmation.
"454.2 billion years..." Prometheus reiterated, and added, "Of course, this is only if you are lucky enough and there is no repetition."
"454.2 billion years? What a joke!" Jason almost threw away the bronze hexahedron in his hand, his face full of disbelief.
Prometheus shrugged helplessly and answered frankly: "No way. According to my calculations, this thing has about 432.5 trillion states. If you want to randomly restore it to six sides of the same color by moving it randomly, it will take at least 400 billion years."
"Hiss~~" Jason gasped with a green face when he heard this. He threw the hot thing back into Prometheus' arms and said with a sad face, "There's no need to wait for this thing to be untied. I'm afraid our bones will be rotten to ashes. Why are we still fighting for the Titan Temple?"
"If you know the correct solution, you can save some time."
"how long?"
"alright."
As soon as he finished speaking, Prometheus stopped what he was doing and spread out his palms. The bronze hexahedron had been restored to its original state with six sides of the same color.
Jason's eyes bulged as he looked up at the calm and composed prophet in front of him, his face full of shock.
“How many times did you turn around?”
"Twenty times."
Prometheus answered truthfully and explained in a deep voice.
"I spent a lot of time figuring it out and calculating it, and twenty times is basically the maximum number of steps for the fastest recovery."
"How did you do that? Teach me~!"
Jason's eyes lit up when he heard this. He immediately rushed forward, grabbed Prometheus' arm tightly, and asked for advice with a shameless face.
If he can solve this space maze created by the God-King Kronos himself and lead the Argonauts to find the way to the Titan Temple, he will surely become an epic figure in this expedition!
Prometheus was not stingy and directly took out a stack of parchment scrolls filled with characters from the magic circle diagram and gave the restoration techniques he had summarized to Jason who came for advice.
However, when Jason took the manuscript and looked at it, his expectant expression suddenly collapsed.
He could understand these characters individually, but when they were combined together, he was sweating profusely. Even with a simple explanation of the composition, he was still confused.
Obviously, I am not cut out for that.
In desperation, Jason had to give up his heroic dream of achieving great things and instead handed the bronze hexahedron and the manuscript to Chiron, who was known as a sage, in an attempt to let the teacher restore the dignity of his student.
But Chiron fumbled for a while, finally shook his head helplessly, and returned the thing directly to Prometheus.
"If I had enough time, I might be able to learn slowly, but I'm afraid I don't have the opportunity now."
Is none of that okay?
If it was Athena and that kid who came, there might still be a chance.
Prometheus took back the manuscript and the bronze hexahedron, and a barely perceptible gloom flashed in his eyes.
In fact, it is just as the prophet had predicted.
If Loen was really there, he would be able to recognize at a glance that the space maze model in Prometheus's hand was actually a third-order Rubik's Cube.
The restoration techniques on the parchment are also consistent with the future seven-step restoration method of the three-order Rubik's Cube.
At this time, Hercules, who had calmed down, walked forward, looked at the bronze Rubik's Cube in Prometheus' hand, and asked the doubts in his heart.
"Speaking of which, how did the underground world become like this? I remember that when I broke into here last time, there was no such thing."
Prometheus answered helplessly: "Because this space maze surrounding the Titan Temple was only built two days ago. I have been studying its operating rules recently, and only now have I managed to find a solution to this thing."
On the second day after the truce on the Thessalian front, he went to the Ares Mountain to keep his appointment and made an oath with several people on the Ares Mountain, promising them to lead the Argo expeditionary force and jointly destroy the Titan Temple.
For this reason, after returning to the nest of the giants, he took the opportunity to advise Kronos, encouraging the Titan King to fix the [throne] and [crown] underground to hide his own weaknesses.
Although Kronos adopted his strategy, he did not completely trust him and secretly added an insurance for his [throne] and [crown].
By the time he noticed the changes in the underground world, it was too late to warn the people in the Ares Mountain. He could only try to find the answer himself so that he could lead them out of here safely when he met the Argo Expeditionary Force.
Unfortunately, after the Argo expeditionary force came in, they had to keep moving because of the pursuit and blockade by monsters and giants.
Although Prometheus left marks in every spatial unit and simulated the spatial model of the entire underground maze, it took him a lot of time to find the way to meet up with the Argo expedition in the chaos.
The Argo expeditionary force also lost a lot of manpower.
After figuring out the whole story, Chiron couldn't help but frown.
"How did Kronos come up with this wonderful space construction technique?"
As the son of Cronus, Chiron more or less understood the nature of his old father.
When did the cruel and warlike Titan God King have such a diligent spirit of research? He actually used his spatial power to create a problem that even a Centaur sage like him could not solve.
Prometheus sneered and shook his head:
"Of course your father is not that smart. Someone secretly provided him with the construction plan of this space maze."
"who?"
"Pandora!"
As Youyou uttered the answer, a rare coldness flashed in Prometheus' eyes.
Speaking of which, he and the Witch of Disaster are old enemies.
At the beginning, after imprisoning him, the creator of mankind, on an excuse, Zeus gathered the power of the Olympian gods and created a rare artifact called Pandora's Box, which he gave to mankind in the Golden Age as a gift to ease the conflict between humans and gods and demonstrate his magnanimity and kindness.
On the surface, this thing can absorb negative forces such as evil desires, pain, disasters, diseases, etc. in the world, purify human body and mind, and bring them a pure and beautiful world.
But in fact, the disasters absorbed by Pandora's Box did not disappear, but accumulated in the box, giving birth to a monster that would destroy human civilization.
Back then, his foolish brother Epimetheus blindly believed in the kindness released by Zeus, did not listen to his advice, and chose to accept this gift with evil intentions. As a result, the birth of the witch of disaster Pandora was born, and the tribe he had worked so hard to protect was destroyed.
Pandora, a person with all talents, this is a name full of beautiful meanings.
However, although she was blessed by the twelve Olympian gods from the day she was born, she was also constantly watered and nourished by the evil desires accumulated by mankind for thousands of years, and eventually grew into a humanoid weapon specifically created to target human civilization.
Disaster and death are her food, destruction and killing are her mission.
Since this thing came into the world, the civilizations of the golden, silver and bronze ages have been directly or indirectly destroyed by it.
Perhaps because of excessive killing, she aroused the displeasure of the three goddesses of fate. After Pandora destroyed the Bronze Clan, Zeus sealed her back into the magic box and sank it into the deep sea.
However, it now seems that the Olympian God King secretly fished this capable general out of the deep sea in order to suppress the rapidly developing human civilization on earth.
This escalating battle between the giants, which has gradually deviated from the trajectory of fate, is probably fanned by the Witch of Disaster.
The real mastermind behind the scenes is undoubtedly the just and merciful God-King Zeus.
Under fate, everyone is a pawn of the God of Destiny.
(End of this chapter)
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