Once upon a time there was a greedy snake

"understood."

The four priests, along with old Bhutto, all nodded.

So it turns out they wanted to take back everything that belonged to them. If they had said that earlier, everything would have been clear.

"You need to get more people involved..."

To make sure this fledgling team understood his meaning more clearly, Du Yi added another sentence.

"With more people involved, it will be easier to find mammoths, do you understand?"

"understood."

The four priests, along with old Bhutto, all five of them nodded.

The fact that such a goal required them to mobilize even more people made the four priests realize almost immediately that the ancient serpent wanted to use this goal to expand its influence.

The advantages of being priests were on full display at this moment. Even though the ancient serpent in front of them didn't say anything explicitly, they had already fully understood its subtext.

"And they deliberately made us look for something that doesn't even exist... Doesn't that mean that we can do anything as long as we use this as an excuse?"

The four priests once again fully experienced the evil of the ancient serpent; even they themselves hadn't expected that such a method could exist.

So they decided to double down on the effort.

We must make the scene as grand as possible, ideally attracting the attention of the sun god.

As long as the sun god in the north watches over this place, everything will be alright.

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 that pecks at a corpse—there could be no more ominous sign than this.

"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.

Chapter 132 In the Name of the Sun God

In order to nip the danger in the bud, High Priest Nacht made extremely thorough preparations.

Strong warriors, wielding bronze swords and spears, would fight enemy warriors and protect the priests behind them with shields.

The priests who went to war also wore amulets symbolizing the gods and held scepters. They would invoke all kinds of extraordinary powers to annihilate all evil.

As for the last one... it was Nacht himself.

Although he wouldn't necessarily rush to the front lines and die, his command from the front lines was already tantamount to a personal campaign.

Even a lion must exert its full strength to hunt a rabbit!

Recalling this ancient proverb, Nacht immediately launched a powerful counterattack.

For the warriors who worshipped the sun god, it was extremely easy to march south, since they were in the upper reaches of the river, while those who worshipped the serpent god lived in the lower reaches. This meant that they didn't even need to exert any extra effort; they could simply go downstream and conquer that region.

Such a large-scale mobilization could not possibly be kept secret, so Nacht also sent a letter directly to the lower reaches of the river as a declaration of war.

"I am Naht, priest of the Sun God! The kingdom that worships the serpent god has blasphemed against the divine with wicked rituals, challenging the might of the Sun God. The Sun God has bestowed upon me the mission of protection; his light is my sword, his grace my armor. Now, for the glory of the god, I raise my army to punish! All who offend the Sun God will be destroyed!"

A manifesto is something like this; it's simply a pretext for taking action.

However, when the proclamation traveled south and reached the hands of the four priests, they noticed something amiss.

"Nacht? How could it be him?"

The four priests looked at each other, speechless for a long time.

They were aware of Nacht's reputation; he was the chief high priest of Heliopolis, and could even be considered the foremost being below the gods.

But that's where the problem lies.

The first person below the gods is still just a human. It wasn't a god who made the move; it was just the high priest who came... Even if the high priest is indeed very strong, can he really defeat that evil ancient serpent?

"It seems we'll need to take action."

The four priests exchanged glances, all feeling the weight of their responsibilities.

Yes, that's why they endured humiliation and worked for that ancient serpent—wasn't this the day they were waiting for?

The time to toil in darkness is over; it is time to serve the light.

"However... let's not rush to expose ourselves."

While the other three were about to rise up in rebellion, the priest leader wearing the crown of snake fangs remained sufficiently cautious.

This also calmed down the other three priests.

That's definitely not something they can rush to reveal. Although they have a certain status with the Ancient Serpent, it doesn't mean they really have the strength to contend with it. If they reveal their thoughts at this time, they might be immediately crushed to death by the Ancient Serpent, which is right next to them.

Openly opposing them won't get you anywhere.

On the contrary, they were able to perform better by staying by the side of this ancient snake.

"After all, given our current positions... it would be incredibly easy for us to mess things up."

With this in mind, the four priests quickly began their work.

Since the hastily assembled team lacked any generals, the four of them had no choice but to lead the troops themselves—which was exactly what they wanted, since only by controlling the military could they start to mess things up.

Just like now, the priest who received the snake's blood and was in charge of agriculture actually led troops into battle, and all the archers who were good at shooting arrows were under his command—but judging from this sparse rain of arrows, it was probably not enough to kill a single person.

"Just shoot a couple of arrows now and then, just to make a harassing gesture."

The priest in charge of agriculture thought to himself that he had done his job well.

But in the eyes of Nacht, the chief priest in the opposite camp, it was not like that at all.

"What's wrong with the other side? How can they play such a disgusting style of combat?"

Nacht had been driven to the brink of nausea these past few days by the unreasonable barrage of arrows. If these arrows could actually kill, he would accept it, but what was with all these occasional bursts of arrows?

During the march, arrows were shot; during meals, arrows were shot; and just when the soldiers were about to rest, arrows were shot again. Every time the warriors raised their shields to defend against the upcoming rain of arrows, those damned archers would suddenly fall silent.

The expected rain of arrows never came, yet it seemed as if they would fall from mid-air at any moment.

Once was fine, twice was still bearable, but after several days, the soldiers were not eating or sleeping well, and they were all exhausted.

"These snake worshippers are truly insidious. It seems the evil of the ancient times is indeed real... So whose general is he?"