In Hercules's memory vision, time had been forever frozen in a spring thousands of years ago, somewhere on the Hellenic Peninsula. The hero who had completed the Twelve Labors washed the blood from his body there and gazed up at the towering Mount Olympus, pondering the path ahead. At that moment, he had yet to reach the end of his tragic life. It was the last time he would stand on his homeland's soil in human form. The next time he returned, fragments of Olympus falling from the sky would have already scorched the entire land to ashes.
That was why his memory had stopped here. At this moment, he had already lost much, but he still possessed much as well. His homelands above and below the heavens were still intact, his father still sat upon his throne, and he had yet to plunge into the vortex of the world of gods—he was still human.
At least, he considered himself human.
"I never liked Olympus." Hercules stood shoulder to shoulder with Hao Ren atop a boulder, arms folded across his chest as he looked up at the Mount Olympus of his memories. Part of the mountain had already blurred away; that was Hera's domain. "Gods are cruel. I don't know how people of your era understand and imagine the Mythical Era, but you can make your guesses as vicious as possible. Hera once mocked my father. Her exact words were, 'This man is addicted to copulating with his own livestock.' In fact, most of the 'gods' on Mount Olympus viewed humans that way. They were contradictory, too. They possessed unrivaled power, a hundred times stronger than the people on earth, yet they discovered that humans had faces just like theirs. That left them confused and enraged. The gods dissected countless