Chapter 179 Reta Runes

In fact, Hao Ren was no longer surprised to find Reta runes in all sorts of strange places. These ancient and mysterious alien texts seemed to appear anywhere that had anything to do with aliens or lost history. If they didn't appear so rarely in the mortal world, and if the Demon Hunters and human church forces didn't control them, perhaps these runes with mysterious power could even become a part of human civilization today, or even change the form of human civilization—but in the end, they were still buried in the dust of history, which was perhaps a good thing for human civilization.

After all, these things weren't very suitable for human use, and anything related to the Dream Plane… Hao Ren always felt wasn't very safe.

On the wall at the corner of the corridor, a large area of Reta runes was densely written, occupying almost an entire megalithic slab more than three meters high and two meters wide. Vivian went up to the front to begin deciphering the runes, and Hao Ren took the opportunity to have the data terminal share his vision and record all the text on the wall.

Reta runes were a hieroglyphic script of a previous civilization on the Dream Plane, widely used in the central part of what is now the Kingdom of Holleta, but there was not only this one script in ancient times on the Dream Plane. According to previous investigations of the Dream Plane and Vivian's memories of the mythological era of Earth, there were several other scripts at the same time as the Reta runes, used by several more important alien races—these users should correspond to the various magic kingdoms of the previous civilization on the Dream Plane—and the Reta runes were the only one of these scripts that carried special power. Therefore, Hao Ren guessed that these runes should have had special usage requirements even during the previous civilization of the Dream Plane and the mythological era of Earth. They were mostly used in ritual places such as sacrifices and spellcasting, and these symbols were basically not seen in places unrelated to these.

Now, the runes in the temple, filling an entire wall, made him particularly interested.

"The grammar is strange… it doesn't seem to be for spellcasting, but just to record some things," Vivian murmured to herself, stroking the uneven carvings. There was still weathering in this alien space, but the degree was much lighter than in the surface world. Most of the things in the temple, including these texts, were still well preserved. "The architectural style at the time had the habit of carving the deeds of the owner of a house and the introduction of the house into stone slabs and embedding them in the house, but this is the first time I've seen such a narrative slab carved with Reta runes. This place must be very important. Wait a minute, I've found the starting point for reading and the short sentence rhythm."

The biggest difference between Reta runes and normal text was that its writing and interpretation methods were very strange. Its reading starting point was not in the first sentence of a passage, but somewhere in the middle of the passage, and the passage as a whole was divided into many short sentences. The "rhythm" of these short sentences could help the reader determine where the starting point was. This cumbersome and strange reading method made it troublesome to use, and its efficiency was very low for simply writing deeds, but it happened to conform to the grammar required for various mysterious rituals. Vivian pointed to the middle of a passage and slowly interpreted the text before and after it: "...Ancient things, things of origin, stored deep in the long hall. Entrusted to the obsidian hounds for protection, outsiders must not trespass... The hall of scholars should remain sealed and always connected to the long hall, archives... This section is incomprehensible. The following is... The mission of interpreting this thing is entrusted to Athena, be sure to find its origin, perhaps to reorganize the order, or to suppress all uncleanliness..."

As Vivian read, she quickly skipped over a large section of meaningless nonsense in the middle, and finally found the text explaining the function of this temple at the end of the passage: "Storage, research institute, archive of records, and... uh, prison?"

"What the heck is this mess?" Lily stretched out her claws and scratched the wall. "Why couldn't the ancients speak properly?"

"It means this place stores something," Hao Ren grabbed Lily's ears and lifted her up to stop the girl from harming the cultural relics. "And it seems that the wisdom goddess Athena was arranged to study that thing here back then..."

"It also mentions the words 'origin' and 'ancient'," Vivian pondered, pinching her chin. "To make those old guys think of it as 'origin' and 'ancient'… this thing is of great significance. Landlord, have you thought of anything?"

The corners of Hao Ren's mouth curled up slightly: "I think we've found the right place. It's very likely related to the aliens' old home. But there's one thing I don't understand... Don't the aliens have no memory of 'that side'? How does it look like Zeus and his family are actually studying where they came from? They have to know that they weren't originally from Earth before they become curious about their place of origin, right?"

"I'm not sure what's going on, but in the period before Mount Olympus fell into chaos at the end of the mythological era, the 'gods' on this mountain were indeed a bit strange," Vivian frowned and tried hard to search her memory. "I remember that Zeus was very anxious for a while, and Athena was often nowhere to be seen. A month before a group of infidels, led by Demon Hunters, attacked the power center of Mount Olympus, Zeus's family held a strange all-night feast. At that time, the situation was already not good. The feeling they gave people at the banquet was like giving up treatment. Um, and I also remember that when I went to find Hera, she kept talking distractedly, and finally reminded me to find a place to start sleeping, because 'the world will soon be in chaos, and everything is destined'."

Hao Ren asked curiously, "And then?"

"Then their whole family was killed," Vivian spread her hands. "The Demon Hunters were ruthless. They didn't even let go of their dog. They even dragged Cerberus out of the palace from the ground and boiled it. When I arrived at the scene, I saw a pile of huge dog bones."

Lily was scratching at the cracks in the wall next to her, studying how the temple was pieced together. When she heard this, her tail immediately puffed up, looking like she had just heard a ghost story.

Hao Ren: "..."

Hesperide felt strange listening to them discussing these things: "What are you guys muttering about? I don't understand."

Vivian waved her hand and walked away: "It's nothing to do with you. It's all about things from ancient times. I'll tell you when I get a chance."

Jean didn't pay attention to things he didn't understand. This standard vampire only focused on the temple and the power here: "How strong were the Olympus gods back then? Could their source of power be related to the thing they were studying?"

"They are a branch of the Thunder Giants, belonging to the 'small species' of Thunder Giants whose size is close to humans. They have powerful magical powers and a natural affinity for the elements," Vivian said, turning her head to look at Jean. "Are you still interested in the power here? I told you, it's probably not a good thing."

Jean said with a straight face: "Thank you for your warning, but I think I should make my own judgment. Even if you are an elder, you shouldn't interfere too much with other families. Let us bear the consequences ourselves."

Vivian chuckled: "Heh, for the sake of power? You haven't made any progress at all. But whatever, there are many people who are courting death. I can't control them all. I can only remind you."

"Lord Vivian, Lord Vivian!" Hesperide immediately came up from the side. "Can I also study it a little..."

"No!" Vivian glared. "I can't control him (referring to Jean), but can't I control you?"

Then Hesperide ran to the back of the line and sulked.

"According to what the runes say, there should be a storage room and a research area inside the temple, and these places are connected to a long hall," Hao Ren had completed the scanning of the temple. He found that there were complex energy flows in the temple, and there were more than one energy concentration point. Several places suspected of being energy sources were hidden in the layers of megalithic walls. He felt that he needed to find an entrance. "Where is the long hall?"

"It's right ahead." Jean pointed to the end of the corridor. Faint light could be seen coming from ahead.

Everyone hurried to speed up their pace. After running out of the deep and long corridor, a spacious space filled with peculiar white light appeared in front of them.

This was a quite spacious hall, rectangular as a whole. Two rows of magnificent white stone pillars were arranged on both sides of the hall, leaning against the walls. On the walls between the stone pillars, ancient reliefs depicting battle scenes and parade scenes could be seen. In addition to these two rows of stone pillars, there were no extra pillars in the hall. The center was completely empty, appearing exceptionally open.

The entire space was filled with soft white light, but it was unknown where the light came from.

However, Hao Ren's sight was not attracted by the magnificent stone pillars and reliefs around him. He stared blankly at a huge sculpture at the end of the hall, completely forgetting to look at anything else.

It was a white stone sculpture, exquisite, gorgeous, and lifelike.

It was a sculpture of Vivian.