Chapter 1 Hao Ren's Discovery

Hao Ren looked up at the towering halls before him, amazed that such magnificent architecture could have existed on Earth in ancient times. If these things were exposed to the world, who knows what kind of upheaval it would cause. Humanity's worldview might be completely refreshed. But now, these halls could only float quietly in some unknown alien space, waiting for the years to slowly weather them away. Hessiana had discovered one of these halls, but how many other secret realms like this were still hidden in some unknown corner of this planet? Probably no one could say for sure.

The colossal temple was rectangular in shape and composed of several sections. Its original function was impossible to determine. Its outer walls were covered with magnificent and ornate reliefs and a large number of ancient Greek-style sculptures. These sculptures were set in arched niches, depicting lifelike images of heroes and gods. At some breaks in the outer walls, neatly arranged massive white stone pillars could be seen, still supporting the temple's heavy dome, keeping the entire structure intact.

The group stood at the end of the cloud walkway, in front of a broken flagstone path floating in the clouds. The reason for the flagstone path's destruction was obvious: the entire temple was tilted at an angle of about 15 degrees in mid-air, but it was clear that it hadn't been built that way. The fierce battles that had taken place here had disrupted the temple's balance and torn apart the connecting section between the cloud walkway and the temple.

Hessiana easily jumped across the broken floating stones, landing on the temple steps on the other side. She waved enthusiastically, "Come on over! These stones are very stable, you won't fall!"

Hao Ren cautiously stepped onto the floating stone closest to him and tested it. He felt only a slight sinking, so he confidently hopped over. His agility might not be as good as Hessiana's, but with his current physical fitness, crossing this distance was no problem. Lily followed behind him. This girl, standing on these seemingly unreliable stones, was no longer afraid. She jumped over in a few quick steps. Then came Vivian and Gene, and the nimble Becky. Finally, Izhaks arrived even more directly: this powerful man took one step and landed, creating a crater at least three inches deep...

After Izhaks landed with a bang, Hessiana exclaimed with heartache, "Hey! Be careful! This is a cultural relic!"

"What cultural relic? Are you kidding me with cultural relics?" Vivian glared at Hessiana, then raised her hand to beckon to Nangong Wuyue, who was still hesitating at the end of the cloud walkway. "Wuyue! What are you waiting for?"

The siren girl looked hesitantly at the broken flagstones floating in the sky and the heavy clouds below, unsure of what was there. After a long pause, she finally squeezed out a sentence: "I'm a little weak... Wait a moment, I'll change into a form with higher combat power!"

Hao Ren watched in confusion, and saw a burst of water suddenly erupt around her. When the water cleared, she had transformed into a sea serpent four or five meters long. Nangong Wuyue carefully coiled her tail into a series of springs while calling out to the other side, "Move aside, move aside... I'm going to jump!"

Hao Ren was shocked: "Your creativity is not inferior to mine!"

As he spoke, Nangong Wuyue had already built up energy in her springs. The coils of her tail contracted tightly into a small segment. Finally, accompanied by the siren girl's cry of encouragement, the snake spirit with a mental illness drew a graceful parabola in the air, successfully crossing the broken sky flagstone path.

Becky looked at this scene with surprise, "Wow, that works?" As she spoke, she poked Nangong Wuyue's tail with the hilt of her sword: she had never seen such a creature in the Dream Plane.

Nangong Wuyue hung on a crossbeam of the temple's front door, swinging back and forth. She tossed her clothes-ball to Hao Ren and swatted Becky away with her tail. "I'll stay in this form for now, it's a bit easier to survive. Take the clothes. Hiss... Also, I think I need to practice my accuracy."

Hao Ren conveniently put the clothes-ball into his dimensional pocket. He watched Nangong Wuyue hanging from the crossbeam, seemingly finding it a bit difficult to get down, so he kindly asked, "Need any help? Should I pull your tail?"

Nangong Wuyue rolled her eyes, skillfully coiled her tail around the crossbeam, and then slithered down the pillar next to her like a snake. "You underestimate me. Haven't you seen sirens before? Haven't you watched Animal World?"

Hao Ren: "..."

The temple doors were wide open, with no traps or mechanisms in sight. The ancient and mysterious building quietly awaited the visitors who had suddenly arrived after thousands of years of silence. Deep and wide corridors lined with statues of heroes and gods seemed to coldly observe Hao Ren and the others as they carefully moved and spoke.

Well, perhaps not so carefully. Among the group, besides Becky, the veteran mercenary, who was driven by professional habit to watch out for hidden weapons and mechanisms, the rest were bolder than each other. Lily was even recklessly scratching every wall crack she saw. Fortunately, the girl still had some basic human sense of shame, otherwise Hao Ren was afraid she'd pee and mark her territory all the way...

Gene Lukas walked at the head of the group, leading them into the mysterious and strange hall. Hessiana continued to stick as close to Vivian as possible. Vivian happened to have something to ask her: "How much do you know about this temple?"

"We haven't explored it thoroughly yet," Hessiana scratched her head. "The temple structure is very complex, and some things deep inside seem to still be running. We were worried about accidents, so we didn't go too deep. The previous explorations were basically just to determine the scope of this space and some unique phenomena."

Hao Ren looked at the statues lining the corridor and felt that although the place was solemn and magnificent, the atmosphere made him uneasy. He glanced at Vivian, "Can't you tell whose palace this is? Aren't you pretty familiar with Zeus and them?"

"Not too familiar, it's just that there wasn't much entertainment back then, and not many friendly aliens. I often came here to freeload," Vivian frowned. "Besides, I'm sure I've never seen this palace before... Not only haven't I seen it, I don't even have the slightest impression. There's no house similar to this on Mount Olympus."

"Even you don't know?" Hessiana muttered in disappointment, but only muttered for a moment before no longer caring about the question. "Whatever, Mount Olympus is very big, and Vivian's memory isn't that good..."

The footsteps of the group echoed in the empty corridor. Hao Ren thought there should be some kind of artificial gravity here, and that the artificial gravity system was still working properly: the entire palace was tilted at an angle of more than ten degrees to the clouds, but people standing inside felt no discomfort, which meant that the palace had its own gravity environment. Then, according to the "aliens come from the Dream Plane" situation, did this mean that the previous civilization of the Dream Plane had mastered at least artificial gravity technology?

But Hao Ren didn't yet know what the magic civilization tech tree of the Dream Plane looked like, nor did he know what level of technology it was to use magic to achieve artificial gravity, so he couldn't rashly determine the situation of the previous civilization of the Dream Plane based on this.

He wasn't just blindly walking around in the temple, but constantly having the data terminal measure the energy flow in the vicinity and throughout the alien space. According to the measurements, he knew that the strange energy in this alien space was released with this temple as the center, and that an energy source should be buried deep in this building—and it was still radiating things outward.

The group walked deeper and deeper along the corridor. Vivian asked to look around the temple in every corner, saying that she wanted to see if she could determine the ownership and function of the hall. Gene, of course, was eager to have someone who knew what they were doing to tell him what this temple was for, so he led the way very diligently. Soon, the group passed through the outer corridors of the temple and entered the inner hall area. Once there, Hao Ren saw that the surrounding sculptures had changed: the generic hero sculptures were gone, replaced by a smaller number of more realistic statues with different images. These statues were randomly placed in various parts of the inner hall, men and women with different images. When Vivian saw these sculptures, she immediately showed a somewhat nostalgic expression: "Oh, it seems that this is a more central area. These sculptures are of the members of the Olympus family back then. They liked to sculpt themselves when they had nothing to do. That's Ares, next to him is Ares's uncle, next to him is Poseidon's brother-in-law, and next to them are Aphrodite and Hera. The one squatting in the corner is Demeter's dog, I remember it was called Poptert or Fatty..."

Hao Ren listened to Vivian rattling off the names of the statues as if she knew them like the back of her hand, and felt cold sweat pouring down his neck: "Why does it feel like all the mystery is gone when you say it..."

"The myths that have been passed down to this day are all things that humans have distorted according to their own preferences," Vivian spread her hands. "In fact, insiders know that the protagonists of these myths are just a family with rather messy relationships. They also greet each other and pat each other on the shoulders, and when they're free, they also shout and call others to Dionysus's house to drink. Even Zeus can't put on a big show when he meets his wife—he's afraid of his wife."

Hao Ren nodded as he listened, and at this moment, Lily, who had run to the front, suddenly exclaimed, "Hey, hey, hey! Come and see! There are words on the wall over here!"

Hao Ren quickly ran over and found a line of words carved on the wall at the corner of the corridor.

And it was Reta runes.