These air vents are not conspicuous, they are basically on the back of the statue, and you can’t see them if you don’t go around, and besides the vents, you can see that the stone slab itself is also movable, which means that the statue’s The base is not solid, but is built with an arched structure like the Flavian amphitheatre.
Zhang Heng removed the stone slab, and saw that the space below was very narrow, basically only able to accommodate a child under the age of fourteen. In addition, Zhang Heng also found some bread crumbs and a bowl of unfinished water inside.
But other than that, Zhang Heng couldn't find anything else, so he went around to the back of the temple, where the priests lived.
The young priest who opened the door to welcome him has now gone back to bed and fell asleep. Besides him, there are also two older priests and six entourages doing chores.
Zhang Heng searched their residence without waking them up, but he didn't find much, so he retreated to the main hall where the statue stood, opened the bronze door, and left quietly up the temple.
A quarter of an hour later, Zhang Heng stood in front of the temple of Queen Juno.
Just about to repeat the same trick and throw the stone in his hand, but the next moment the gate of the temple suddenly opened by itself.
A woman dressed as a priest came out with a group of children.
Zhang Heng didn't have time to climb up to the roof, so he could only roll sideways hastily, and rolled directly to the edge of the cliff. He hung his body directly on the cliff when the gate was fully opened, and climbed the rock wall with one hand.
He moved quickly, but because of the sudden incident, the child who stepped out of the door first discovered something. The child stopped and looked at the cliff where Zhang Heng was hiding with some doubts.
"Priest Vera, I seem to have seen something."
The priestess named Vera glanced in the direction indicated by the child, but found nothing unusual, and then said, "It's just the wind, Mosmere, let's hurry up, you all have to get up early tomorrow."
Mosmere blinked, not thinking that what he saw was wind, but heeded the priestess's words and walked on, while the other children followed behind him.
After those children left, the bronze door did not close immediately, but a male priest came out from inside, but compared with the priestess just now, he did not pay so much attention to etiquette. After watching the children leave, He walked directly to the edge of the cliff, unbuttoned his pants, and was about to release the water.
But I didn't expect that it was not his urine that flowed out first, but his blood.
A black shadow with a breath of death circled behind him at some point, cut his neck open, and hugged his receding body at the same time, so that he couldn't scream when he died. The male priest reached out and grabbed the murderer's sleeve tightly, as if he wanted to keep the murderer here, but he only held on for a few seconds before gradually losing his strength.
Afterwards, Zhang Heng put the male priest who had turned into a corpse aside. He grabbed the right hand of the male priest and looked at it. There were many calluses on the male priest's index finger and thumb, and there were scars on his arm. It was obvious that he had been severely punished before. He has advanced military training, and may even have participated in wars. Rather than saying that he is a priest, it is better to say that he is a soldier wearing a priest's coat.
And judging from his appearance and skin, he should not have been born in Rome. If nothing else, he was the elite brought by Ortrus from the frontier, and they were also his most trusted group of guards.
Zhang Heng knew that this time he was in the right place.
Speaking of which, Zhang Heng was able to find the hiding place of Ortrus thanks to Klinder. If it weren't for the information that Klinder revealed when he chatted with him in the dungeon that night, Zhang Heng really couldn't find it here.
Klinder described Otrus as having witchcraft, he could enter a person's head and know what you were thinking, but with the previous experience of being drugged, Zhang Heng thought that Klinder said The thing about Ortrus using Veritaserum.
However, using the alkaloids in scopolamine to pry open a person’s mouth has a lot of problems. One is the problem of toxicity. Although I don’t know what method Otrus used to neutralize some of the toxicity, it didn’t make the toxicity completely disappear. With Zhang Heng's physical fitness, it might not be a big problem to drink that glass of medicinal wine, but it's hard for ordinary people to say it.
In addition, in terms of efficiency, this is not a good way to collect information. Ortrus needs to let the target drink the prepared medicinal wine, and find a way to bring the target to a place where there are no people before starting to question. In this case, he It would be amazing to be able to interrogate seven or eight people in one day. It is impossible for him to know the secrets of both common people and nobles as Klinder said.
Moreover, Zhang Heng didn't think Ortrus would waste Scopolamine on civilians.
He should have other means to collect information, and Scopol is more like his special means to deal with certain emergencies.
In addition, Klinder also mentioned that night that Otrus was deflated three years ago. The dock workers on the Tiber River demanded wages and paralyzed the traffic on the river. Get any news in advance.
Taken apart, these things don't seem to explain anything, but together, the answer is ready to come out.
Ortrus is gathering information through the temple.
Temples and baths are probably one of the few places that are open to the poor and nobles, and they are also the two places where people like to discuss secrets. Believers will not hesitate to express their most secret wishes when praying. Similarly, many people like to discuss business and some private matters in the bathhouse.
And what made Zhang Heng rule out the bathhouse was the embarrassment that Klinder said about Otrus three years ago. He couldn't get the news of the dock workers in advance because most of the dock workers were Jewish. They either believed in Judaism, Either you believe in Christianity, and you don't come back to the temple to pray to the Roman gods.
At the same time, Zhang Heng is more inclined to the temple, and there is another reason, that is, Ortrus was sentenced to death by a sentence from the court priest. If his father hadn't finally softened his heart and sent him away, he would have been in the temple. He died when he was four years old, and although he survived in the end, he also lost his status as a prince, and he will never be able to live in the sun again.
When he returned to Rome after many years and regained power, Zhang Heng did not believe that he would not take revenge on the priests in the temple, and in this way, he could also control these temples logically and turn them into Become your own intelligence gathering place.
The hiding place Zhang Heng found under the stone seat of the Jupiter statue is the best proof, and the group of children taken away by the priestess before should be the ears of Otrus.