Chapter 382 Seven Difficulties

The world.

Heliopolis, the Golden Temple of the Sun.

"..."

"... the surging Nile River, the fertile black soil."

"Her water irrigates the black soil, and her milk nourishes Egypt."

"Praise the black soil, praise the Nile River."

"Long live, the source of all waters!"

"You came to this land, arrived safely, and gave life to Egypt."

"O hidden god, you have led the night to the day, we celebrate your guidance and praise your authority."

"You planted the garden cultivated by the god Ra, giving life to all walkers;"

"Never stop watering the earth, along your journey down from heaven."

"The treasurer of food, the one who gives grain, you bring light to every family!"

"..."

Above Heliopolis, the dark clouds have dissipated, and the devout believers are singing.

In recent days, more and more believers have gathered near the holy city. He either brings his family with him or makes a pilgrimage alone.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered here, singing hymns praising the gods day and night.

Or songs that record the deeds of gods, or words recorded in a certain volume of the Book of the Dead, carrying hymns praising the Nile River.

The pious singing reached the clouds, making the city seem more sacred and extraordinary.

…

Da Da——

In a corner of the holy city, as the organizer of everything, Qasim looked gentle and distant.

His fingers tapped the wall lightly, as if he was accompanying the hymn. The believers in the distance cast their reverent eyes one after another. This is the most perfect servant of God in the world, the priest who has always stayed in the land of gods.

"…Aibu."

"Teacher, what do you want?"

"You have been busy for a long time to settle these believers who came from afar. Then Aibu, do you know why they are so pious?"

After a long time, the sun set.

Qasim seemed tired, and his eyes closed slightly.

Beside him, Abu stepped forward to support his father and teacher: "That's because God exists."

"Since it exists, it's natural to believe in it."

This is Abu's idea, and it is also the cognition of most people.

As an objective thing, why don't people believe in it?

"Really? Think about it again."

With a gentle smile, Kasim continued to ask:

"If you have to believe in God just because he exists, then there are many gods in this world."

"Egypt has its own gods, and those sinners have their own gods. Tell me, why do we believe in the gods of Egypt and not their gods?"

"...That's because Ra will protect us and guide us forward. Foreign gods will only protect his people, so our faith will only be dedicated to Ra."

After a moment of silence, Abu gave his answer according to logic, but this answer is so straightforward.

People are willing to believe in gods because they can bring benefits, not because of their great power and greatness.

"Haha, Abu, many qualified priests actually know this. Even if they don't know it at the beginning, they will gradually know it in the process of spreading faith."

"But this can only solve the reason why people believe in God, but it can't solve the current problem. Look--"

The melodious singing is still ringing. As the nominal leader of the holy city at this moment, Kasim is talking about the source of faith.

"In the past, God has brought good weather and driven away disasters to the Egyptians more than once, but there has never been such a huge pilgrimage."

"Now there are hundreds of thousands of people gathered here, and even people from Upper and Lower Egypt are still rushing here. Tell me, why is this?"

"..."

"...Because they encountered a disaster."

Take a deep breath, Abu seems to understand what his father wants to teach him.

"I understand... As far as God is concerned, the beauty given to believers is best only temporary."

"When people first come into contact with God's grace, they will be ecstatic; when they receive God's grace for the second time, they will thank God for the gift. But when they continue to receive God's grace, they will only get used to it."

"So the gift of God must not be quantified, and it must not become a conventional rule. If you do this, it will only make God lose its mystery and make believers lose their awe."

"Let the current situation give them fear, and let God become the hope to avoid fear, and this hope is ethereal and vague. Therefore, the rewards of criminal law cannot be fully known, and its power cannot be measured."

"Of course, the premise of all this is that the gods really have supreme power."

The more he said, the more Abu felt that his faith in God was shaken.

This is a way to help the gods develop believers, but knowing this, he himself cannot become a devout believer... Thinking of this, Abu felt a little ridiculous while sighing at his father's experience and wisdom.

"Everything in this world is like this, Abu."

"The most capable officials of the dynasty do not believe in the law, but the people do; the most capable servants of the gods do not believe in God devoutly, but the believers are devout."

"Of course, there are exceptions, but they are too few. Abu, the reason why I asked you to think about this is to let you see through the logic behind it. In this way, you can become the most trusted servant of any god."

The voice is calm, and Qasim never hesitates to express his aging and weakness.

He told Abu a long time ago that he would not live for a few years.

"Okay, let's get down to business. Now, it's your turn."

"Tell me, what do you want to say when you come to me?"

Today's teaching was completely coincidental, because Abu suddenly came to see him at this time.

Kasim was also a little surprised. What was he doing here?

"Teacher...Father."

Changing his words midway, Abu gritted his teeth: "I saw those hallucinations again."

"I saw the sky being torn apart, and in the distant land, where I could never see, the yellow sand was evacuated and flowed to the edge of the world."

"The stars are swaying, storms are extinguished and reborn. The water vapor flowing between the sky and the earth is split into four parts...Darkness spreads to the world, and black smoke rises under the sun. The pillars in the sky disintegrate one after another, and the falling fragments will kill Two-thirds of all living things on the dead earth.”

"Is this really an illusion? Father, I feel that it is so real, like a wonder that happened in the past, present, and future. I have always had an uneasy feeling in recent days. I-"

"This is an illusion, Abu."

After interrupting, Qasim looked calm.

"Only Ra is the all-seeing god. What you see is naturally not the truth."

"..."

"Maybe the recent busyness has made you not in good spirits. Well... you can go and take a rest for a while, think more about what I told you before, and by the way, help the believers around you who are in trouble."

“Thinking and practice are indispensable.”

"...I understand, teacher."

Suppressing the uneasiness in his heart, Abu bowed slightly and left with full of doubts.

Behind him, Qasim watched him go in silence.

After a long time, the high priest of Heliopolis returned to the Temple of the Sun.

He stood in the corner and did not join in the prayers. Instead, he quietly listened to a hymn and then raised his hand to signal.

"High Priest, what are your orders?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you in your reverence for God, but I had to come here."

Smiling, Qasim faced the statue and turned his back to the crowd.

"I am going to pronounce an oracle."

Wow——

There was an uproar in the venue, and they didn't expect the gods to send another message.

The temple seemed to have shone with golden light this morning. The believers in the city thought that this was just a change caused by the gaze of the gods, but they did not expect that it was another oracle.

"As you may have imagined, I received Ra's command in the morning; I interpreted it at noon; I proclaimed it in the evening."

What Abu said flashed through his mind, and Qasim turned around and looked at the people kneeling in the temple.

"God said - the foreign people with the blood of sin still linger on the earth, and the foreign gods will send a curse on the people of Egypt."

"Frogs will come out of the waters and fill the houses, fields, and roads; lice will come out of the earth and bite people, livestock, and kings."

"The beetles will come and destroy the pastures, and the plague will make the livestock sick. Anyone who is infected by it will die; and those who are not infected by it will have sores on their bodies."

"In the end, the foreign gods will turn the water into ice and turn it into ice from the sky to the earth, and turn the sand into locust flies to eat up our food."

"This is the sin of the evil god - he will bring seven disasters to this earth and curse all the people raised by the Nile."

Wow——

The crowd was in uproar again. They looked at Qasim in disbelief and at the statue behind him.

Each of the seven disasters is enough to make them suffer, let alone the seven together.

If this disaster really befell them, they don't know how many of them would survive to the end.

"High Priest, God Ra sent down the oracle...should tell us how to solve it, right?"

Someone asked tentatively, and looking at people's expectant eyes, Kasim smiled and nodded.

"The people on earth have disappointed God and have not been able to destroy the sinful alien races so far."

"Then the god Ra called up the creatures underground and brought them back to earth to carry out his will."

Blaspheming the undead... This is a taboo in the Egyptian god's teachings, but if the god himself did it, then Qasim didn't know what it should be.

But compared to these, he thought of other things more.

The curse of foreign gods...

I don’t know whether this is a curse directed at the Egyptians, or whether they are just fish in the pond.

······

Crash--

In the world of Hermione, the eight gods are a certain embodiment of the world.

On the original water, all things came into being.

However, everything in the world has good and bad sides, and wherever there is order, there is chaos. Compared with the stable and quiet Tartarus of Chaos, Hermenu's chaos is scattered among the laws of the world and gathered in the darkness of the world.

Crash--

In the river flowing underground, in the time and space that exists and does not exist, a huge thing lies there.

On its body, little bits of gold and silver flames were still burning, colliding with strands of black air and extinguishing them.

The power of the flame is so powerful that it often takes several points of strength to destroy one point of black energy. However, as time went by, the black energy seemed to become stronger.

It seems to have received some kind of blessing, and its power becomes purer with each breath.

Click——

Kaka——

The body twisted, and the body and the invisible chains collided with each other. The giant thing obviously felt a little uncomfortable.

But its eyes were closed, and its consciousness was still sinking.

The two sun gods' biggest worry was finally completely suppressed by Ra. According to Ra's previous estimate, it would be difficult for it to break free for at least hundreds of years.

Apophis, the chaos serpent of Hemenu, is said to be the source of chaos born with the sun.

If the first generation of the sun god Atum represents the beginning of all things and the source of all births, then Apophis is the end of everything and the demon that destroys everything.

Its only meaning since its birth is to destroy all order in the world, so that in the most ancient times, the sun god Atum at that time had to fight it every day.

It is said by word of mouth that when the sun sets, it is the sun god who drives the celestial sphere to the back of the world and fights the chaos serpent for life and death; when the sun rises, it means that the god has defeated the demon who wants to destroy everything and reigns over the world again.

However, unlike other gods of Hemenu, Apophis has no reason. As the embodiment of chaos, it is also immortal. So no matter how many times it is defeated, it will still be reborn on a new night.

Therefore, Ra in Egypt was not as authoritarian as the God King of Chaos, because for a long time, their most critical job as the sun god was to suppress the monster that destroyed the world.

Of course, all this ended with the arrival of Amon Ra Atum.

When Ra stole the power of the Eight Primordial Gods, he truly possessed the power to suppress Apophis.

With just one move, he left the Chaos Serpent with unimaginable trauma.

For hundreds of years in the human world, it was difficult for it to wake up and cause chaos again. However, with the recent changes in the world of Hemenu, the Chaos Serpent seemed to be changing with it.

Crack, crack...

The sound of the chain breaking became more and more frequent, especially when the climate and celestial phenomena in the human world were in chaos due to the fall of the Pillar God, and it collapsed more and more quickly.

As the opposite of order, when this world was shaken, Apophis seemed to have taken the most perfect tonic.

Even if the power of the world did not lean towards it like Ra, it was increasing day by day, and instinctively broke the shackles that trapped it.

"Hiss... Huh..."

Apophis's eyelids trembled slightly as he hissed and breathed unconsciously.

It seemed that it was about to wake up, but it seemed that something was missing.

It was the first time since its birth that it was put into a deep sleep. If it wanted to wake it up again, it would either rely on time or stimulation.

As for what kind of stimulation could affect the abyss of the world, where Apophis was sleeping...I'm afraid no one could predict it before it actually happened.

And in the face of the natural disaster that destroyed the world, what kind of reaction the Chaos Serpent would make under the drive of instinct was also unpredictable.