Chapter 854 — Progress
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Gao Yang finally learned the truth of the Augustus family's curse.
That truth was even more tortuous and bizarre than he had expected.
As someone with knowledge of the relevant events, Merkaur III believed that the "Eye of God" which escaped that year had suffered a fall in divine rank after entering the bloodline of the Augustus family, and after being diluted and degraded generation after generation by mortal blood, had essentially become a form of mental contamination devoid of divinity—yet Gao Yang did not dare be so optimistic.
After all, he knew of the ancient Godslaying War, knew that the gods had returned to the world time and again in altered forms, and knew even better that the power of the gods was in fact nothing but the projection of the collective will of mortals. And having mastered so much information, he did not believe that the "Eye of God" merged into the Augustus bloodline would simply vanish like that.
Only, he had no way to verify anything at present—even with a member of the Augustus family standing right here, Gao Yang did not know how to confirm the state of the "Eye of God" with the current technological conditions, so he could only mull it over.
Merkaur III had not heard Gao Yang's final soft murmur to himself. Recalling the Orendel Incident of two hundred years ago had plunged even this dreamland pope, no longer human, into lamentation. After half a minute of silence, his voice came again from the undulating cluster of starlight: "Your Majesty, that is all I know regarding the curse of the Augustus family."
Gao Yang also roused himself from his thoughts. He looked at the former pope before him and nodded gently: "It is all very important intelligence, very valuable."
Then he paused, and went on: "That you people survived Orendel back then is truly a miracle."
"Everyone underestimated the sturdiness of those ancient ruins. Some kind of inconceivable ancient technology had rendered its core and lowest levels virtually indestructible, while the collapse of the upper zones happened to completely conceal the fact that the interior was intact," there was a note of emotion in Merkaur III's voice. "At the time, Typhon was thrown into chaos by the collapse of the imperial capital and the massive casualties among the high nobility. They could only devote most of their energies to restoring order and relocating the capital… and moreover, with the technological conditions of the time, they had no way to ascertain the situation at the bottom of Orendel.
"As for us, we had backup passages and could evacuate through an exit outside the city of Orendel, but we knew that under the circumstances then, going out meant only death—so we lay low in the underground palace, surviving the first few months on stored supplies and the meager provisions that could be gathered from the ruins of the upper city, and only afterward did we slowly begin sending people out to scout the situation. Many years later, we repaired the middle and lower levels of the underground palace within the sturdy framework of the ancient facility and built new domes beneath the collapsed areas… It was truly not easy."
"I can imagine," Gao Yang nodded, then asked, "I am pondering something. Back then you used the notion of an 'evil god' in your dealings with the Typhon emperor, convincing him that what lay beneath Orendel was not a god but a malevolent spirit, and he believed it. But afterward the Augustus family certainly would not have let the matter rest—even if only to investigate the curse that had suddenly befallen them, they would have sought some way to understand the truth of the Orendel Incident. Do you think they eventually learned what was actually down there beneath Orendel?"
Merkaur was silent for a few seconds before speaking slowly: "I believe they must have uncovered part of the truth. They broadly knew that the curse afflicting them originated from a god.