After hearing what he said, Xie Ning felt distressed, amused, and moved. With mixed feelings, she could only hug Echidna's back, whispering to him for a long time without saying a word.
In this way, they settled down in Sicily and lived an almost peaceful life.
Xie Ning kept his promise to Prometheus, slowly recording gods one by one on the canvas. On days when he was not painting, he would wander around the human world with Echidna. Because Echidna was a poisonous and rebellious demon, they rarely entered the city-states of humans in person. Most of the time, they just stood on the top of the mountain and looked at the various aspects of the mortal world from afar.
There are snakes that like to move in strong light, but there are no snake demons that like to walk in strong light. Even though Phoebus Apollo had served 230 years of hard labor in the abyss, Echidna still had an eternal hatred for him.
Many times, he wanted to sneak into the Golden Palace of the Sun God when Xie Ning wasn't paying attention, and take advantage of the other's weakened power to teach the Sun God a brutal and unforgettable lesson, but all those revenge plans failed. The reason was that half of the time, Echidna felt reluctant to leave and miss his lover not far from Sicily, and couldn't help but spit on himself for looking for trouble - why did he waste the time with Dolos to do those meaningless things
The remaining half of the time, he was careless in revealing his whereabouts and intentions, and was caught and taught a lesson by Xie Ning - anyway, he could never hide secrets in front of Dolores.
Time lost its meaning, and the rotation of night and day was not worth mentioning. Xie Ning finally realized that in the changing fate, even Prometheus could not accurately predict the future. He had not yet painted all the gods, but only added the figure of Thetis next to Zeus' throne. Thousands of years later, Zeus had already married the goddess of the ocean in a selfless pursuit of pleasure.
The awakened God King jumped up, he jumped up, loudly cursing the fickleness and ruthlessness of fate, he even wanted to curse Doros, the witness and narrator, and curse the god who suppressed all gods. But the most urgent thing was to repeat the old trick, just like he did to the original goddess of wisdom who gave birth to Athena, and swallowed Thetis, who gave birth to the future God King, into his stomach, so that she and her sinful offspring would never see the sun again.
However, the gods of the ocean united together, hid Thetis, and expressed their ambition to usurp power to the sky. Three thousand sea goddesses and three thousand river gods shouted in the thunderous storm and tsunami: "Just as the power of the world has shifted from the earth to the sky, now it is time for the ocean currents to dominate all things and creatures in the sky and on the earth!"
The civil war among the gods started fiercely. Xie Ning and Echidna, who were hibernating in their nests imitating squirrels, were awakened by the violent noise at the same time. They hurried out and looked at the huge battle that was overturning the world. They were both stunned and looked at each other in silence.
"I feel... I haven't woken up yet." Xie Ning murmured.
Seeing a huge wave threatening to crash into the collapsed mountain, Echidna acted decisively, slashed out with his snake tail, and smashed the mountain into countless flying fragments, which disappeared in the center of the surging waves.