Gabriel had already known this when they were in the Plumera Kingdom. It was Scholar Fu.
Nicomedus, however, shocked her again. He was the white-haired master she had seen several times before at Oswyn's maternal home, the Valley of Divine Healers, and the one who had helped her awaken the bloodline of the Holy Spirit.
Elara stared at him in disbelief. You… Oswyn's master… wasn't he supposed to be only around three hundred years old? So he was a hidden powerhouse too?
Nicomedus looked at her without much surprise on his face. His gentle smile held the same nostalgia, anticipation and respect as Winslow's.
So it was truly you. Back then, I had thought the karmic bond between us was formed when you helped me resolve the Puppet Soldiers, but I didn't expect our connection to run this deep. Nicomedus welcomes the return of his master.
As he spoke, Nicomedus knelt in salute toward Elara, his posture exactly like Winslow's earlier.
Gabriel also knelt, saluting as well. Among the five, he had spent the longest time by Elara's side.
Lastly, Emeraldo knelt too. But even while kneeling, he never took his eyes off Elara. His abyss-like obsidian eyes were fixed on her, as if trying to see through every part of her and recall the appearance of their former master.
Now that everyone had appeared, Winslow took a step back, and with the others, formed the shape of a five-pointed star around her.
We are all here. Let us now return the power that our master once sealed within us, and help her retrieve her sealed memories.
As Winslow finished speaking, all five raised their hands toward her. Gentle but radiant auras emerged from within their bodies and slowly flowed toward Elara.
The moment Elara came into contact with these light auras, a strange sense of familiarity swept over her. At the same time, her System was automatically activated. But it wasn't the usual lively system that often chatted with her. Instead, it was the mechanical voice that only appeared when her attributes advanced.
Elara felt like she was dreaming.
In the dream, time rewound slowly. From the outbreak of the Puppet Soldiers, back to the northern campaign, then further back to her journey south to Plumera County where she consolidated her power, overthrew Lord Gregory's tyranny and ascended the throne, and finally, all the way back to the time she had just arrived in this world and was maneuvering against Lord Gregory, Captain Yang and the others in Plumera City.
The memory didn't stop there. Like a reversed video, the recollections continued to rewind.
Elara saw the moment she had just arrived in this world, shocked by the sight of seven or eight naked men on the bed.
Further back, it was no longer this world. She saw herself in the 21st century, in the CEO's office of the Xia Corporation.
Looking at the long-missed Xia Corporation building and office, Elara was stunned.
The memories she had buried deep after coming to this world slowly surfaced along with this playback.
She watched herself go from a decisive CEO to a doctoral student at the family university.
She saw her strict but loving parents, her energetic grandparents, and her two closest friends and personal secretaries who had been with her since she was twelve. She also saw many friends from the business world...
As her memories rapidly rewound, Elara experienced her entire life from a perspective she had never had before, and emotions welled up within her.
Time kept rewinding until it reached when Elara was about five years old. Then suddenly, her memories shifted. The scene changed.
She was back in the time-space of the Plumera Kingdom again, now as a four- or five-year-old girl.
Elara froze instantly.
Her memories before the age of five… how were they in the Plumera Kingdom?
The Plumera Kingdom in this unfamiliar memory was both similar and different from the one she had known.
The imperial palace was the same old structure, but the people inside were different from when Elara first arrived.
The kingdom appeared more prosperous than when she had come. The corrupt officials weren't as arrogant either. At least she didn't see Lord Gregory in the palace.
She only saw her younger self dressed in the royal court's clothing, held lovingly in the arms of a woman who looked almost identical to her modern mother.
The woman adored her. She rocked her gently for a while, then leaned down to whisper something in her ear. Her younger self's face lit up with surprise. She wriggled free from the woman's arms and, under the woman's fond and amused gaze, ran eagerly toward the palace gate.
Outside the gate stood a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old youth with a refined and gentle appearance, waiting.
Elara's gaze followed her younger self as she ran and watched as she leapt joyfully into the youth's arms. The youth caught her with ease and then looked up...
Elara's eyes trembled slightly. That young man's features were almost a perfect match to Commander Shu.
The young boy still looked a bit inexperienced, but his presence already showed calmness and composure. His body was still healthy, not at all like how Commander Shu looks now, barely hanging on to life.
Elara watched her younger self sneaking into her mother's hall to steal healing ointment, then sneaking into the boy's quarters, climbing onto his bed, sitting on him, and pulling off his clothes to apply the ointment and erase the slave mark.
She saw herself standing up for him when he had just arrived at the imperial palace and was bullied in secret by other palace attendants. She also saw a moment when she was even younger, and her mother asked if she wanted this boy, and she reached out to hold his hand.
She saw how, after the boy was brought to the palace, he never left her side, caring for her in every detail of her life, becoming her little tutor. Then, in the chaotic power struggles of the Plumera Kingdom, he worked with Vanesa, slowly gaining control over the kingdom's forces.
As the Plumera Kingdom declined, he protected her, and finally, at Vanesa's request, willingly swallowed the blood gu to become her first and strongest blood puppet. Eventually, he became her uncle in name only, with no blood relation.
These scenes felt unfamiliar, but watching them now, they brought a strange sense of familiarity... As if she had lived through them before, only forgotten about them. Elara remembered how Commander Shu had acted strangely when they first met, like he had never seen her as an enemy.
She also thought of how weak his body is now, and the connection to the blood gu inside him. She used to believe all of this had nothing to do with her. But it turns out she had been deeply tied to this world long ago... ties that she had forgotten.
Time continued to move backward. She saw herself growing smaller and smaller, wearing tiny palace clothes. Eventually, she returned to when she was a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, held by Vanesa.
Even further back, Vanesa lay in the Empress's palace, clutching the bed curtains and screaming in pain as she gave birth to her. She really was the Plumera Kingdom's eldest princess, born into this world.
Elara suddenly recalled that when she first arrived in this world, the System mentioned that she originally belonged here. But back then, having just come from the 21st century with no memories, she thought the System was just saying that to comfort her, so she ignored it.
Even after seeing her own birth, the memories still didn't stop rewinding. Time suddenly sped up, rushing through what seemed like thousands of years in an instant. After an unknown stretch, the scene brightened again, but everything had completely changed.
Elara saw a woman who looked exactly like her, wearing an unfamiliar high-tech combat suit. She sat inside a towering mech that stood several hundred meters tall, moving skillfully as she crushed massive, disgusting insect beasts all around her.
Each insect beast was also hundreds of meters tall, as big as skyscrapers. They crowded in front of the mech, blocking its path and fiercely protecting the giant, hideous hive behind them that looked like it could block out the sky.
From inside the hive, countless insect beasts flew out quickly, clearly trying to attack the woman's mech. But before they could get within a hundred meters of her, they were stopped and eliminated by five powerful beasts.
A fierce Emeraldo, a soaring Salvatore, a nine-headed human-shaped Gabriel, a snow spirit named Winslow that covered the ground in ice, and a healing white beast named Nicomedus.
These five figures that she had just seen in the Divine Attendant Palace now appeared in her memory, fighting beside her, tearing through the swarm of insects together.
When Elara turned her eyes to the five figures, she finally saw the world behind the battlefield. It was not the high-tech future world she had imagined, but an ancient, primal era.
However, the sky of this world seemed torn by something, like a massive black hole. From it, broken starships and corpses of giant beasts fell like meteors across the land.
Around the edges of the black hole, black clouds and thunder gathered as if the sky itself had been enraged. Thunder roared, shaking the earth as if shouting at the invaders who had broken into this world.
With every flash of thunder, a wave of glowing light spread from the storm, crashing down on both sides of the battle.
That light had a powerful suppressing force. Whether it was the woman inside the mech and her spirit beasts or the massive wave of insects, every time the light struck, Elara could clearly feel all of them growing much weaker.