Chapter 1036 Apollo's Dying Words

After the old priest left, Hao Ren nodded to Lily and the others. Then, he took out a signal amplifier from his dimensional storage and placed the badge on the amplifier's receiver. This way, the encrypted signal from Olympus could be broadcast directly, and he could even use the badge's limited communication bandwidth to sense the situation on Mount Olympus.

The first few calls went unanswered, sinking like stones into the sea.

Lily's ears twitched. "Is Apollo not home?"

Hesperide gave it some thought. "Maybe his phone's charging."

Hao Ren: "...You two, be serious."

Since conventional calls weren't working, Hao Ren resorted to cheating. He simply hacked the badge's function restrictions, using it purely as a signal transmission device, and began listening for movement on the other end of the communication channel.

At first, the signal amplifier only transmitted meaningless interference noise, but as Hao Ren constantly fine-tuned the device's frequency, other sounds seemed to emerge faintly from the noise. Gradually, even human voices and whistling sounds came from the device.

Encouraged, Hao Ren further intensified the signal filtering and amplification according to the previous fine-tuning direction. Finally, a clear shout suddenly rang out: "...Ah! I'm bleeding all over!"

Then there was no more sound.

The room was instantly very quiet. The four people looked at each other awkwardly, and the most awkward of them was obviously Hassel—although his poker face didn't show any expression. Lily glanced at the old hunter. "What's going on?"

"...'I' seem to have just killed Apollo," Hassel said in a strange tone. "Well, at least we can now confirm the battle situation on Mount Olympus—the 'I' in history has already led troops to break through the rear defense line of Olympus. The entire Olympian pantheon is about to be finished."

Hao Ren finally couldn't help but jump up. "Why were you so active back then? Why did you have to raid their home at this time!"

Hassel was particularly innocent: "...Wasn't that my duty back then? And two thousand years ago, how would I know that one day I would use those guys who were always regarded as 'prey' by the demon hunters?"

"Landlord, should we go to other temples to find someone to ask?" Lily tugged on Hao Ren's sleeve. "Anyway, people haven't all died on Mount Olympus yet, there should be someone answering the phone..."

"Ask my ass," Hao Ren sighed. "Hassel leading troops to break through the back door defense line of Olympus means that the stalemate stage of the Greek god war has ended. At this time, Mount Olympus is a mess. How broad-minded do you think those Greek gods would be to pay attention to the signal from the mortal world at this juncture? They can barely save their lives."

Hesperide curled her lips. "Tsk, as expected, relying on others is unreliable. We still have to find it ourselves."

Hao Ren didn't say anything, but he was quite regretful in his heart. In fact, logically speaking, after coming to the territory of the gods in the age of mythology, the best way would be to ask the local 'gods' about Vivian's whereabouts. Whether they were on good terms with Vivian or beaten to a pulp by her, at least they had been paying attention to the movements of that remarkable countess. For Hao Ren, who couldn't find any clues anywhere, those "gods" were the best source of information, and Raven 12345's suggestion was the same before departure.

But as the saying goes, plans can't keep up with changes—who knew that the backtracking node around the year zero would be stuck at such a juncture? This happened to be the moment when Mount Olympus was broken through by the demon hunters. Even when the Olympian family had been in a stalemate with the demon hunters for decades and the situation was getting worse, they were still paying attention to Vivian's movements, but at this moment, they were really unreliable.

Hao Ren and his party unfortunately caught up with a coincidental time. As soon as they came in, they heard the sun god Apollo's full-bodied sentence "I'm bleeding all over..."

After coming out of the room, Hao Ren saw the old priest with a nervous expression at first glance. The old man seemed to have been waiting here for a long time. Seeing the "gods" appear, he immediately trotted over: "Powerful gods, did you get the answer you wanted? Did the great sun god also bestow an oracle on me?"

Hao Ren was too embarrassed to tell the other party that the sun god he admired had just died, so he just casually perfunctorily said: "We have finished asking, but Apollo didn't give you any words. The divine kingdom is relatively busy recently, and probably won't have time to pay attention to the mortal world for a while."

The old priest lowered his head reverently: "The gods must be busy sorting out the order of heaven and earth."

Hao Ren sighed, thinking that they were sorting out the order of heaven and earth my ass, the whole family was busy being exterminated.

Lily glanced at the old man in the priest's robe. From the wrinkles on the other party's face that could no longer be smoothed out, it was not difficult to see how dazed and helpless this old man who had lost "divine grace" for decades was. Although the alien gods were never benevolent, for the priests who devoted their lives to worshiping gods, activities centered on the gods were the entirety of their lives.

Lily thought about the full-bodied "I'm bleeding all over" before, and finally couldn't help but say: "Well, old man, have you considered changing careers?"

The old priest didn't understand for a moment: "Huh?"

"It's nothing, nothing, she's joking," Hao Ren hurriedly waved his hand, grabbed Lily and walked out, "Then we won't bother you, you go busy with your work—remember not to tell anyone what happened here today."

When passing through the front end of the temple, Hao Ren looked back at the magnificent statue of the sun god Apollo.

Ordinary humans could not observe it, but Hao Ren could see that the layer of "spiritual light" shrouded around the statue was gradually dissipating. This stone statue that once housed a trace of Apollo's power was rapidly decaying, turning back into a stone that was no different from the surrounding bricks.

"Landlord, why didn't you let me continue talking just now?" Lily finally couldn't hold back after leaving the temple. "Those fake gods are all dead, what are these priests and monks doing if they don't hurry up and change careers?"

Hao Ren glanced at the husky girl, who was sometimes particularly shrewd, but sometimes particularly mindless: "It is precisely because the gods are disappearing one after another that the priestly class has ushered in the last wave of glory in history—for themselves, this may also be the first real glory."

Lily didn't even think about it: "Why?"

"Because no one cares anymore, you can talk nonsense, and you can take the things that originally belonged to the master for yourself," Hesperide shrugged. "When the 'gods' were all there, no matter how high the status of the priestly class was, they were just tools and slaves of those alien gods. Laocoon of Troy was such a good person back then, but he was killed by the gods just because he said the wrong thing—but it's different when the gods are dead. The end of the age of mythology is actually great news for human priests. Before the truth of 'the fall of the gods' is revealed, they can swindle and deceive for a full 1,800 years."

Lily scratched her head: "Oh, that sounds very reasonable."

"Are you really unable to think of it, or are you too lazy to think about it," Hao Ren complained. "Have you eaten all the skills of graduating from Peking University four times with big bones?" (Peking University is the transliteration of *Bei Da*)

Lily put her hands on her hips, confidently: "Nonsense, following you guys who are idle and like to think about things, why should I use my brain?"

Hao Ren: "..."

This was really the first time the husky girl had admitted this with confidence...

"Hao Ren, what are you going to do next?" Hassel also had no way to deal with Lily, the theoretical former leader of the demon hunters. To avoid embarrassment, he directly changed the topic. "It's not a good idea for us to search for Vivian's whereabouts aimlessly throughout Rome like this, especially since Hesperide can't provide any useful information."

Hao Ren pinched his brow with his fingers. In fact, he had even thought about going to Mount Olympus to inquire about the situation. Not only was it to inquire about Vivian's whereabouts, but also to find Hesperide of this era—that "goddess of dusk" was undoubtedly a great help for him to continue moving forward to the age of mythology. But the information collected in the Temple of Apollo dispelled this idea: the demon hunters broke through the last line of defense of Olympus. For the previous few decades, they had only been fighting a tug-of-war with Zeus's army on the positions at the foot of Mount Olympus, but at this moment, the battle had entered the final and craziest harvesting stage. Zeus's "divine court" was full of demon hunters and ancient Greek "gods" who had already gone berserk. It was no longer a suitable place for adventure.

He was very confident in his strength, but confidence was not recklessness. In the case that he could not call Nolan and could not seek other external help, rashly getting involved in the war between the demon hunter corps and the Greek gods was not a good thing—the reorganized Holy Church army was not the hunting group of 1400!

Although there should also be a Hassel leading the team on Mount Olympus at this moment, it would be a clever plan to let the Hassel next to him go over and switch him out, but that was under the escort of thousands of troops. The risk of taking a shortcut was still too great, at least it was not proportional to the reward.

Hao Ren weighed it in his heart, but suddenly a burst of noise from the street interrupted his thoughts.

I saw countless citizens pouring into the streets, and Roman soldiers wearing gorgeous armor and cloaks also ran along both sides of the street. Cheers came from afar, and it sounded like some big figure had appeared and was being welcomed by the people.

In the midst of the clamor, Hao Ren heard a name:

"Caesar! The great Gaius Julius Caesar!"

At the end of the long street, a gorgeous carriage decorated with garlands and golden leaves appeared. The carriage was covered with thick red velvet carpets, and surrounded by a circle of fences painted with gods, but there was no roof. The leader sitting in the carriage could therefore stand up directly to accept the worship of the people.

Gaius Julius Caesar, this famous Roman ruler was standing on the carriage. Four fully armed loyal guards stood beside him, and he himself was also wearing highly decorative gorgeous armor. In the midst of the mountain-like cheers around him, he was waving to the surroundings.

Hao Ren saw this scene.

He suddenly realized that not only the gods on Mount Olympus were dealing with Vivian in this era, but also the one in front of him—

Caesar, who was said to have been kicked into the moat by Vivian.