Chapter 1 The Statue

A huge statue stood silently in the long hall. Hao Ren stared at it for a good ten seconds before turning his head, not entirely sure, and saying, "Is that you?"

Vivian was even more puzzled. "...It looks a bit like me, but I don't remember the Olympus family commissioning a statue of me. They're pretty strict about that sort of thing."

However, Hesperian and Jean were even more surprised than Hao Ren and Vivian. They had explored this space with the survey team more than once, but neither of them remembered such a statue being here. Hesperian grabbed her hair and asked Jean, "Old stubborn, was this thing here last time we came?"

Jean shook his head vigorously. "No, definitely not. I wouldn't miss something that big right in front of my eyes. The long hall was empty last time."

"So, this statue just appeared?" Hao Ren looked at the baffling scene in disbelief and quickly ran to the statue to examine it closely. It was a statue four or five meters tall, which was quite rare in ancient Greek sculpture that usually portrayed full-body figures in realistic proportions. It was exquisitely crafted, lifelike, and, except for the lack of color, almost identical to Vivian herself. The Vivian in the statue stood with her hands down, expressionless, which was another unusual feature: ancient Greek sculptures usually used various movements to show the figure's characteristics, rarely with such a bland and stiff pose.

But the most striking thing was that the Vivian in the statue was wearing a bizarre outfit, wide and gorgeous, like some kind of dress with special religious significance. Its collar was high, and its body was covered with intricate lace and decorative patterns, which didn't look like ancient Greek clothes at all.

Forget ancient Greece... even if this outfit were thrown into an online game, it would cost at least twenty years of membership to get a set. Hao Ren suspected that the lace on the collar alone was at least +13. You wouldn't dare wear this on the street except for religious ceremonies, right? It would easily fly away if the wind exceeded level six...

If Hao Ren wasn't so familiar with Vivian's face, he wouldn't have readily believed that this dignified statue, dressed like a lifetime member of a domestic web game, was the same poor ghost he knew who poured oil by the gram when frying an egg. He nudged Vivian's arm with his elbow. "You have no memory of this at all?"

"Of course, I have no memory," Vivian was also shocked by the outfit. "If I had such an outfit back then... would I still have to mooch off people all day?"

Vivian's words made Hao Ren feel sad, so he quickly comforted her, "Let bygones be bygones. We won't live that kind of hard life in the future..."

At this moment, Becky walked around the base of the statue, and with her mercenary instinct, began to look for possible hidden mechanisms. She found that the base of the statue was slightly different in color from the surrounding ground, and she stepped forward and gently scraped it with her small dagger. "This doesn't seem to be stone... look at this powder, it's like some kind of quick-setting artificial material."

Hao Ren stepped forward and touched it, finding his hand covered with a layer of fine, stone-like powder. The real texture of the statue was much softer than it looked. He remembered that this statue wasn't here the last time Hesperian came, so he made a bold guess: "Could it be that someone rushed to make this and put it here in the last two days? Hesperian, when was the last time you were here?"

Hesperian didn't want to get closer to Hao Ren, but she still had to answer his question. "Last time was four days ago. That time difference is about right, but your guess is unreliable—the key to the entrance of the ruins is in the hands of me and the old stubborn. The two of us have to work together to open the door. Who could come in and put this statue here? And even if other keys exist, why would someone risk being hunted down by two vampire families just to put a statue in here? Of course, if the person who put the statue in here was me, it would be easier to understand, after all, I'm a die-hard fan of Lady Vivian..."

The girl's last words were quite confident, and even Vivian just opened her mouth and didn't know what to say to her. Jean glanced at Hesperian with a strange expression. "Tell the truth, did you put this statue in here? I think you could really do something like this..."

Hesperian waved her hands vigorously. "No, no... I want to, but I'll definitely get beaten up after Lady Vivian sees it. She doesn't like this. And look at this outfit, it doesn't look like something I could design—but Andrea from your family might be able to, she's obsessed with designing clothes, and even the clothes of the dogs at home are embroidered with Van Gogh's paintings..."

Lily listened to the side and became more and more impatient, so she directly used her broad thinking to help fill the pit: "Don't think about this, after all, the bat was very familiar with Zeus's family back then. It's possible that they sculpted a statue for the bat as a birthday gift—maybe they didn't have time to send it out before the demon hunters destroyed them. As for why the statue appeared here, let's just say it's for plot reasons..."

Hao Ren and Vivian shouted in unison, "Bullshit!"

Lily shrank her neck, then squatted down next to Vivian's statue and stretched out her claws to scratch it hard. "Bullying... bullying... I'm digging up your statue..."

Hao Ren and Vivian were too lazy to pay attention to her. While Lily was sharpening her claws, they began to look around the long hall for possible secret passages and stone doors. According to the records on the stone slabs in the corridor, this long hall was connected to the laboratory and the storage room. The storage room contained an ancient relic that the Olympus family had studied for a long time, and it was believed that this relic was very likely related to the Dream Plane. At the same time, the strange energy environment in this other space might also be released by that thing, so it could be said that it was Hao Ren's current target. However, after searching around, they didn't find any mechanisms or secret passages. The data terminal scanned that there was indeed an energy source in this long hall, but that energy source was mixed with the surrounding complex radiation environment and constantly changing its position, so it didn't seem to be as simple as a physical coordinate.

"It seems that the storage room and the laboratory are not 'connected' to the long hall in the literal sense," Izhaks guessed after searching around blindly, "Maybe there's a spatial structure here? To ensure safety or something..."

Hao Ren suddenly remembered that when Vivian interpreted those runes at the end, she said a very inexplicable word when mentioning the function of this temple. This temple was not only a storage room and a research institute, but also a "prison." At that time, he didn't understand what was going on. At this time, Izhaks reminded him, and coupled with Vivian's abnormal performance after feeling the energy environment here, he immediately thought of something.

The things that the Olympus "gods" studied here back then were probably not good things!

He immediately asked the data terminal to increase the scanning intensity to look for possible spatial rifts or other structures hidden here. The data terminal cautiously reminded him: "This is risky. The energy environment here is very unstable, and if there are spatial rifts, they are likely connected to traps or something. This unit can easily find the door, but to enter safely is probably..."

Before the data terminal could finish speaking, Lily suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! Look, I've found something again!"

Hao Ren quickly ran over and saw that Lily had scratched off a large piece of Vivian's statue. This idle and neurotic husky really had her own persistence in inexplicable places. However, the powder that Lily scratched off was undergoing some kind of change: they were shaking on the ground, then slowly floating up and re-condensing on the statue!

Lily simply took out her ice and fire claws and cut a few scars on the statue. Fine white powder rustled down, but after staying on the ground for a while, these powders floated back to their original positions again.

This statue was like a precisely designed magnetic field, constantly attracting the scattered dust back to reshape its form!

"I seem to have guessed how this thing came to be..." Hao Ren vaguely deduced something, but just as he was about to touch the statue, the entire temple suddenly shook!

A strange, low rumble came from nowhere. The shaking of the temple became stronger and stronger with the rumble. Dust fell from the temple ceiling, and everyone on the scene felt a tingling sensation on their skin as if they were being electrocuted. Becky was the most sensitive to this feeling. She was a complete human, and immediately exclaimed, "Ouch! It hurts!"

Hao Ren saw a layer of obvious white light floating on Becky's exposed skin. The skin under the light turned red at a speed visible to the naked eye, but at this critical moment, a cloud of water vapor suddenly came from all directions. Nangong Wuyue controlled the water vapor to form a temporary protective layer, and the scales on her long tail were emitting a blue glow under the influence of powerful magic. "Radiation! There's radiation!"

The data terminal's alarm sounded wildly: "High-danger radiation! High-danger radiation! The intensity is rapidly increasing, and it is about to exceed the extreme value that the team members can withstand. It is recommended to evacuate immediately, it is recommended to evacuate immediately—what are you waiting for! The reactor in this place is out of warranty!"