Echidna leaned against the nest in the underground palace. His eyes could see through the huge stones and bronze without any obstruction and saw the sacrifices offered to him by the descendants of Poseidon.
He gently opened his lips and spit out his forked black tongue, tasting the fear flowing in the air and the smell of tears. He heard the noble princes pleading with the gods, praying to escape the shadow of death and the sea of misfortune. Unfortunately, the gods they respected turned a deaf ear to them, because the underground palace of Arima was like the abyss of Tartarus, a place where the self-proclaimed holy gods could not set foot and interfere.
With his heart overflowing with venom and filled with blasphemous joy, Echidna hissed and spat out his message. But at this moment, he suddenly heard a voice that was completely different from that of humans in thousands of years.
"Beautiful," said the human.
The young man's words were so clear and trembling, and the speaker sighed in surprise, as if he was breathing into a blooming flower.
"You are so beautiful."
In an instant, these words passed through the overlapping heavy stone doors, and all the desperate cries and piercing screams in the vast underground palace jumped out clearly.
It was just a sentence made up of two simple words and short syllables, but it was like a small and sharp golden arrow that pierced Echidna's heart, causing the ancient demon's chest to twitch in unbearable pain and confusion.
He was speaking to me, there was no doubt that this was spoken to me.
Echidna's black tongue froze in mid-air. The next moment, his golden eyes began to squirm, trying to find the owner of this sentence.
However, the more thoroughly he explored, the more he saw a bunch of crying, weak-limbed cowards, rolling in a tangle on the ground in an ugly manner.
He didn't find anyone who said this.
So, could this be a prank by the Olympian gods
Those young and naughty new gods were unrestrained and played around in the world. Under the power of the God of Thunder, they could arbitrarily despise any ancient gods, their ancestors.
Did they feel the long days were too boring, so they reached their golden white hands into the nest, determined to embarrass me
In his heart, Echidna was more inclined to this answer. He was brewing a sinister fire and suddenly became very angry.
How dare they come here and tease me in such a frivolous manner!
His forked black tongue twisted fiercely, and every black scale exuded extremely poisonous mist. The throne beneath him, which looked like a mountain, also moved, transforming into thousands of lingering snakes. They spit out their tongues, bared their fangs, and hissed threateningly at the void above, but were soaked in the poisonous mist and withered, then solidified into bronze-like solid statues.
The snake demon was about to attack the gods in the sky, but at this moment, his servant humbly walked in. They were a tribe of giants, whose ancestral blood all came from Gaia, the mother earth, and had an inseparable relationship with Echidna.
"Master," the four-armed giant said humbly, "out of stupidity, we have come to ask for your noble advice. How should we place the human sacrifice?"
The snake demon was still furious. He stared at his servants grimly and hissed, "Tell them to take care of the bronze bull! I would love to hear humans fill up Arima's underground palace with their wailing. Now go away and don't bother me anymore!"