Frigga: That's Right, He's Your Uncle!

After Lin Xu's sudden stunt, Red Skull's corpse plunged to the bottom of the cliff, taking Romeo's soul with it.

The other two people and one soul beside him were still in shock. From the moment Romeo's soul was blown up by the mountain wind to Lin Xu killing Red Skull and finally throwing him down, less than half a minute had passed.

And their hearts had raced and dipped along with it for that entire half minute.

Once he was done, Lin Xu looked at Juliet. Aside from sadness and reluctance to part, she showed no other signs.

"Still not working? Do I really have to ambush Thanos?"

Suddenly, a strange energy fluctuation came from the bottom of the cliff!

Lin Xu looked down and saw Romeo's soul emerge from Red Skull's body. His soul was slowly becoming solid, and an orange glow shone between his brows!

"What does this mean?"

Romeo soon flew up to the top of the cliff. Without a word of greeting, he rushed straight to Juliet.

Their foreheads touched, and something miraculous happened. Juliet's soul body also began to become solid.

After several hundred years, the star-crossed lovers embraced once again in physical form.

After they parted, Romeo took an orange-yellow gem from his forehead and handed it to Lin Xu. "Benefactor, I believe this is what you need."

As Romeo explained, Lin Xu and the others finally understood what had happened.

A soul for a soul was indeed the test set by the Soul Stone, but it wasn't as cruel as people thought. To the innocent Soul Stone, it was a gift.

The person sacrificed would replace Red Skull as the new guardian, but once the Soul Stone was taken away, no one else would be sacrificed unless someone returned it. In that case, the guardian would live on the mountain forever.

For tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of years, until the universe was destroyed.

Unless someone killed them along the way, just like Red Skull...

As for why there were two guardians this time, that came down to Lin Xu's stunt.

The first sacrifice had already succeeded, but Lin Xu killed Red Skull and sacrificed Romeo again before his transformation was complete... So Romeo used the energy from exploiting the bug to turn Juliet into a guardian too...

"Ahem, wasn't I just in a hurry?"

All things considered, the outcome this time was good in the end. They had the Soul Stone, Black Widow hadn't died, and Romeo and Juliet could spend the rest of their lives together on this sacred mountain.

Yeah, perfect!

Red Skull: ????

Meanwhile

By a twist of fate, Frigga still caught Thor red-handed, though this time he wasn't as disheveled as he'd been in the movie.

"Next time, leave this kind of sneaking around to your brother!"

"I wasn't sneaking around... I was just out for a walk..."

"You seem to have gotten a lot bigger?"

"Oh, yeah, I've been working out for the past two weeks."

"Really? Working out gave you all that fat? What happened to your eye?"

"Remember the Battle of Hela's Roots? A big blade struck me in the eye..."

"You're not the Thor I know, are you? The future must have put you through so much..."

With his cover blown, Thor finally couldn't hold back his tears. His voice grew choked, and gradually, he began telling Frigga what had happened to him in the future.

"...I started drinking heavily in New Asgard. Nothing that happened outside had anything to do with me..."

"And then?"

"Then my uncle, the one Father exiled, came back!"

"Who??"

"Fengxian Borsen, Grandfather's illegitimate son from an affair. His divine power comes from the same source as Father's, and he has a spear identical to Father's, as well as a pegasus!"

Frigga: ???

She racked her brains but couldn't figure out who he was. Foosh, what a strange name.

"Uncle is a very good person. He didn't resent Asgard for Father's exile, and he even took part in this plan."

Frigga: ...

"Also, he's really powerful. He can contact the lord of hell directly and even get souls from him..."

As Frigga listened, she increasingly felt something was wrong.

As Vanaheim's goddess of marriage, she was actually about the same age as Odin. She had already been the goddess of marriage before Bor died. Across all of Asgard, or rather, all of the Nine Realms, no person's or god's romantic history could escape her notice.

But she had never known that Bor had an illegitimate son.

Yet what Thor said afterward only deepened her doubts. Why would a god who could make Mephisto hand over souls directly, someone so powerful, pretend to be Thor's uncle? What did he want?

"You just said his powers and weapon were very much like your father's, and he also has a pegasus?"

"Yes!"

"What does the pegasus look like?"

"Let me think. Gray-gold, four legs, no wings, and a pair of deep blue antennae on its head. It looks a lot like the little pegasus Father raised himself, except that one's pure gray, with no gold..."

Frigga: That's freaking Grani!!! The golden inscriptions only appear when he's preparing for battle...

Now she understood completely. Her foolish son was still the same foolish son, tricked into accepting someone as his uncle.

Even so, she had no intention of exposing him. She didn't know why Odin had given the man his divine power, weapon, and warhorse. All she knew was that the man's appearance had brought a smile to Thor's face and given him a familial bond.

That was fine too. Thor would have it too hard over the next few years!

"About your uncle... Fengxian, we wronged him. From now on, listen to his advice more often, all right?"

"All right, Mother."

"Hey, Thor, I got it!" Rocket finally came rushing over!

Avengers Compound

As the Quantum Tunnel activated, the ten people and one bear who had taken part in the Time-Space Heist Plan returned one by one.

Almost at the same time, everyone else turned their eyes to Lin Xu's group. Seeing that all three were unharmed, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

"How'd it go, guys?" Rocket asked everyone, holding up the Aether in its container.

Rhodey held the Orb, Ant-Man carried Loki's Scepter, and Tony opened a vintage briefcase to reveal the Tesseract inside. Only Lin Xu and Doc Green held their stones in their bare hands.

As expected, Tony and Captain America had still gone to 1970.

Lin Xu looked at Nebula. Under the Eye of Agamotto's gaze, she seemed completely out of place in this universe. This was probably how the Ancient One had felt looking at Doc Green!

But Lin Xu didn't intend to expose her, nor did he intend to stop her.

Two reasons!

First: the good Nebula was still in 2014.

Second: when you played with time, time played with you too. If they didn't go through Thanos's counter-invasion, the superheroes of this universe might develop a dependency on it in the future.

If they traveled through time whenever they ran into something they couldn't handle, the universe would fall into chaos sooner or later!

Lin Xu: That's right, I'm calling myself out...