Once upon a time there was a greedy snake.

Chapter 131 The Ancient Evil Sleeping Underground

Upper reaches of the great river, in the north, Sun City.

The city was originally named "Heliopolis," meaning "the eternal dwelling place of the gods," and only clergy who had received the blessings of the gods were qualified to live there.

This is a reward, and also to enable them to better serve the gods.

Being closer to the gods makes it easier to hear their teachings.

Just like it is now.

As the first rays of sunlight touched the ground, the current High Priest Nakht painfully opened his eyes—not because he had endured any ascetic practices the previous night, but because he had a long-awaited nightmare.

In his dream, Nacht felt as if his consciousness had fallen into a deep vortex, and his soul seemed to have left his body. In that chaos, a gaping maw was about to swallow him whole.

This also caused Nacht, who was startled awake from his dream, to break out in a cold sweat.

Dreams are an important channel for communication between gods and mortals, and the content of dreams has a sacred revelatory meaning. To dream in the Holy City is almost equivalent to divine revelation itself—except that this dream is extremely ominous, almost foreshadowing the impending disaster.

"That shouldn't be the case... Wasn't everything going smoothly?"

Reflecting on recent events, Nacht couldn't figure out where this disaster would occur.

The labor service went smoothly; the believers were working diligently. The colossus project also proceeded without problems; the stone quarrying was proceeding normally. As for the campaign against the lower reaches of the river… that was even less of a problem.

The cobra goddess worshipped by those people in the south hasn't bestowed any divine favor in ages. To put it bluntly, she's practically dead. The priests who made their way over there encountered almost no resistance before seizing the local temples and erecting statues of the sun god in various places.

Everything went smoothly, and there was nothing that could go wrong.

Where exactly will this ominous premonition occur?

"Perhaps I should interpret this oracle in more detail..."

Thinking this, Nacht had already arrived in the temple gardens.

The garden was home to many animals, making it an ideal place for priests to receive divine messages—all living beings were messengers of divine will, and experienced priests could even grasp the true meaning of divine will simply by observing the behavior of animals.

Right now, Nacht is observing a scarab beetle that is busily rolling a ball of dung, gripping it tightly with its forelegs as it crawls forward with all its might.

This made Nacht hold his breath and stare intently at the scarab's every move.

In Nacht's view, the scarab was walking in a straight line, and in the priest's interpretation, such a straight line without any twists and turns was undoubtedly the most auspicious sign.

"Isn't this fine?"

Nacht became increasingly puzzled.

"Could it be that the dream actually had no explanation..."

Snap——

Just as Nacht was distracted, a sharp beak suddenly pecked at the scarab beetle.

Immediately afterwards, a pitch-black raven, cawing loudly, flew away into the distance with the scarab beetle in its beak.

"This……"

Nacht immediately broke out in a sweat.

fierce.

Big bad.

The scarab beetle, a symbol of the sun god, being carried away by a crow pecking at a corpse—nothing could be more ominous a sign. "In other words, things are likely to take a turn for the worse..."

Nacht probably already knew how things were going, but he still didn't understand where things were going to go wrong.

So that very night, Nacht climbed to the top of the temple tower.

The towering top of the tower is the best place to observe the stars, and after carefully taking out the bronze astrolabe, Nacht began to observe the vast starry sky.

The boundless starry sky is not only a manifestation of divine will, but also a reflection of the future.

Holding up the astrolabe in his hand, Nacht carefully observed the positions and trajectories of the stars in the sky. Different stars represented different meanings, secret knowledge that only priests who had achieved mastery of their arts could access.

"The stars are all in their own places, so there doesn't seem to be a problem..."

The words had barely left his mouth when Nacht's eyes narrowed.

In his line of sight, the three stars on Orion's Belt were shimmering with an unusual light.

This was a harbinger of war, or even an extremely brutal war—it was at this point that Nacht finally identified the problem.

"The problem lies in the south."

Nacht's face darkened.

The only place where there is fighting right now is in the lower reaches of the river. Although the real war has not yet begun, the priests of the sun god have already gone there as the vanguard—clearly, something must have happened that he is unaware of.

So, in search of the final answer, Nacht returned to the temple.

In the underground chamber of the temple, Nacht carefully took out a pottery jar. Inside the jar were stones collected by the chief priests of successive generations, each stone naturally bearing symbols representing the gods.

These naturally formed sacred objects can further reveal the revelations of the gods, but only priests with profound spiritual practice can perceive the true meaning of the gods within those abstract symbols and complex information.

"Great Sun God, please tell me..."

As he said this, Nacht closed his eyes and reached his hand into the pottery jar.

There were three stones in total, which he took out.

The first stone has dark green scars, like the gnarled roots of an ancient tree. A petrified beetle is perched on the top of the tree, its antennae curled up and its wings covered with honeycomb-like holes. Just one look is enough to feel the vicissitudes of time.

The second stone, covered in a dark red scab-like stain, had an uneven surface that faintly outlined a pattern of a giant snake coiled around a mutilated human figure. The snake opened its massive mouth, revealing sharp fangs, and even just holding it in one's hand, one could feel the evil aura emanating from it.

The third stone, however, was covered with a grayish-white stone shell, within which were clear scarab beetle patterns. Although encased inside the shell, they were still clearly visible, and judging from their powerful posture, they seemed ready to burst out of the shell at any moment.

"An ancient evil slumbering beneath the earth has awakened... Will the primordial chaos devour everything?"

Through these three stones imbued with divine meaning, Nacht quickly deciphered a message that sent chills down his spine.

If the divination goes wrong only once, that's fine; if it goes wrong twice, it's still within his understanding.

However, four consecutive divinations, performed in different ways, all pointed to the occurrence of disaster...

"We have to be quick! Otherwise, things might get complicated!"

Nacht made a decisive decision to nip the impending danger in the bud.

So, the day after the divination, the Northern Kingdom began to gather its forces and march south.

(End of this chapter)