At the time, I thought she was just an apparition, but then I noticed her eyes followed my every movement, which was quite unnerving.

But later, when I went into her shop, the old woman was gone. I never expected to see her suddenly appear here.

"Who are you?" I asked almost without thinking.

The old woman shot me a dismissive look and said in a thin, sharp voice, "You don't need to know who I am. Just follow me."

Hearing her repeatedly urge me to follow, I became confused, wondering where this old woman intended to lead me.

Despite my inner doubts, when this old woman took my hand, I felt a sense of firmness and strong trustworthiness emanating from her grip.

And so, I followed her forward involuntarily.

But after taking a few steps, I looked back and said, "My friend is still up there. I can't just leave her. Even if she's a corpse, I need to see her one last time to be at ease."

The old woman didn't turn back; she just tugged my arm forward and snapped her fingers at the large white dog.

The big white dog then used its long snout to nudge Long Jia, helping her onto its back, and then trotted after us, carrying her.

After walking another few dozen meters, we turned a corner into an alley, and the old woman finally stopped, turning to me and saying, "Don't think those were just a bunch of crabs. Look over there, and over there."

The old woman pointed her withered finger toward several spots in the sky, asking me to look.

So I saw that in the directions she indicated, even through the thick layers of mist, faint white glows could be discerned hovering in the air.

My head immediately swam with confusion. Could it be that the oval, luminous objects I saw before were actually so numerous?

"See? These are all fragments of that thing's spiritual body. If we had stayed in that place for much longer, something much worse would have happened very quickly."

I was about to ask her what that "thing" was, but the thought of Liang Qian's death drained my spirit, and I remained silent, staring at the pavilion shrouded in mist in the distance.

Truthfully, I should be much more heartbroken than I am now. The deaths of Da Xiong and Liang Qian should have been enough to drive me to mental collapse.

But I knew clearly in my heart that even though they died, I met them again in Lop Nur later. And even in the recently departed Chokotchidiban Village, I had spent a long time with them.

I don't know if the current situation is an illusion caused by temporal dislocation or if Da Xiong and Liang Qian were somehow resurrected after death, but I knew they likely wouldn't just vanish from my life.

As I pondered these thoughts, looking at everything before me, I felt that everything was intensely real.

In the end, whether I feared reality or illusion had become difficult to determine.

I continued silently behind the old woman through several narrow alleys, turning I don't know how many corners, until we arrived at the very crossroads where I first met her.

I followed her toward the shop, but as we reached the entrance, something suddenly struck me, and I told the old woman, "No, I can't go with you. I have to go back now. I need to get to Poseidon's temple to find the passage back to normal time."

"Poseidon's temple?" The old woman looked at me with a questioning gaze.

I nodded and said, "Yes."

She frowned and said, "Although I don't know what you mean by 'crossing over,' you really shouldn't go there. This island is where the ancestors of the Yayu people once lived. They were once incredibly prosperous. At that time, the leaders of the Deban Kingdom numbered four, and all four possessed immortal bodies, referred to as True Gods. They wielded supernatural divine power. Those orbs of light we just saw are one of these True Gods, one capable of controlling dense fog and death. The temple you speak of, Poseidon's, houses another entity, one who can command all marine life. Those grotesque-faced crabs we just encountered were his messengers. He already killed your friend—do you intend to walk right into death?"

I frowned slightly, thinking of the four major deities in Greek mythology. I had already encountered a desiccated corpse resembling Poseidon. And this entity controlling fog and death—could it be the other Olympian god, Hades? It made sense that Long Jia's shamanistic answer was 'hell,' as Hades is indeed the God of the Dead in Greek mythology.

Realizing this, I turned to the old woman and said, "So, that means the other two so-called True Gods—one must be Zeus, who controls lightning, and the other the goddess of the dawn, Athena?"

The old woman seemed momentarily surprised and slowly remarked, "Correct. How do you know so much?"

I managed an awkward, slightly helpless smile, realizing that the ancestors of the Deban Kingdom had apparently plagiarized Greek mythology.

However, after witnessing the strangeness of Hades, I wondered if perhaps all of Greek mythology was actually true.

Sorting through my chaotic thoughts, another question surfaced, and I asked the old woman, "You said these four True Gods were immortal and deathless, but why did the Deban Kingdom, despite having such powerful rulers, eventually collapse?"

The old woman glanced at me, rubbed her lower back, and walked into the shop, settling behind the counter. She said, "That's simple. Because the True Gods are imperishable, but their subjects are made of flesh and blood. When disaster strikes, these gods can only save themselves. Or perhaps, the very existence of these deities is itself a disaster. When all the subjects die off, and only the rulers remain, the nation ceases to exist. Only these ghost-like rulers linger here."

What she said wasn't profound, yet I somehow failed to grasp the full implication.

But the old woman fell silent, apparently unwilling to explain further, merely saying languidly, "If you are still wandering the streets tonight, you are sure to die without a burial place, just like your friend. You had best stay here for the night. It's not that I want to save you; it's just for the sake of that young girl. After all, I've met her once before."

The young girl she referred to was Long Jia.

"Come on, the fog outside is getting thicker. If we don't leave now, those crabs should catch up with us soon." Saying this, the old woman moved a mechanism beneath the counter, and the entire building shuddered, slowly beginning to descend.

I nervously steadied myself against a wall, watching the floor slowly recede as the surroundings plunged into darkness.

It turned out the entire shop was a massive elevator!