48 Hours a Day-Chapter 1199: The New Apocalypse

“I represent the apocalypse?” Zhang Heng frowned. “I’m just a mortal. Why would I have anything to do with the apocalypse? And speaking of the apocalypse, the twilight of the gods should be related to you.”

“The twilight of the gods is only the apocalypse of the Nordic Gods,” Loki said. “I have to admit… Hmm… from more than 2,000 years ago, that war was quite grand and magnificent. The Bards sang about it, and many famous people wrote many beautiful poems to mourn the fall of the gods. They sang about Thor and Odin’s battle heroism, the Asgardian gods’ valor, and indomitable spirit… blah, blah, blah. You can blame me for that, but unfortunately, they’re too old.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not targeting those older brothers. Really, I quite like some of them. I even collected some of their bones and made some furniture out of them as souvenirs. But with the productivity of that era, the craziest thing you could imagine was a red-haired, bearded, muscular drunkard who hammered from east to west with a big hammer. And what was his mount?—two goat-drawn chariots, two ridiculous and comical goats!”

Loki repeated, “Do you understand what I mean? This was the limit of the imagination of the people at that time, and now, you can pick any person, and he can say a hundred cooler and more awesome things than this. You have Ferrari’s, Long March 5, and not to mention the sky carriers… But we can’t blame them, their material conditions limit their imagination, and those poor guys have done their best.

“Whether it’s the twilight of the gods or the judgment of the apocalypse, all these doomsday stories, these elegant poems, they… how should I put it? They’re like a peerless beauty, unable to resist the erosion of time. They’re no longer in line with their once-mighty reputation, just like us old things.”

As Loki spoke, he took out another bottle of champagne from God knew where, uncorked it, and said to Zhang Heng, “Want a glass?”

Zhang Heng shook his head. “I need to stay sober before I kill you. I don’t plan on drinking.”

“Alright, then I’ll drink a small glass myself. Leave the rest here. I’ll drink it after you kill me.” Loki was very reasonable. He poured himself a glass and drank it in one gulp. Then, he raised the glass.

“Here’s to the good old days.”

Zhang Heng was unmoved.

“Speaking of which, some of us should thank television, comics, online novels, or more specifically, Marvel, Netflix, Sony… After the reprocessing by modern creators, some of the old stories have come back to life. I happen to be also one of the beneficiaries. Although I want nothing to do with that idiot with the hammer, and by the way, in Nordic mythology, I’m actually Odin’s brother, not Thor’s, but I guess no one cares about that kind of thing.

“All in all, I’ve recovered quite a bit of my strength. It’s is a good thing. It means that humans are still unable to escape lies and deceit,” said Loki, “But most of the old Gods didn’t have a good life. It’s not too much to describe them as struggling to survive. In order to recruit a believer, they had to use all their strength. But as I said, few people nowadays would think that a guy riding two goats is more handsome than a guy waving money, driving a Lamborghini. In contrast, a group of new Gods had risen. They were young and powerful.

“The god of media, the god of luxury, the god of the second dimension, the god of air-conditioning… Sometimes I don’t understand humans either. Some of them believe that air-conditioning is mankind’s greatest invention for summer, and air-conditioning saved their lives. Compared to us, the new gods have a more flexible way of absorbing faith. They don’t have to pray, they don’t have to sacrifice, and they don’t even care if their believers have respect for them. This was unimaginable in the past. Those old antiques would punish those blasphemers for some trivial matter, but now, who the f*ck would think of the god of air-conditioning in the winter, and at the same time, the simplify the ceremony?

“A lot of old guys have complained to me that the threshold has been lowered. Some time ago, I met a guy on the road. He owns a few websites that everyone likes. One of them is called P Station. His believers are all over the world; they have all kinds of people. He also gains believers in a very crude and violent way. The old gods can not imagine it at all. All you need to do is to post one of those small videos that he provides online and complete the ritual.

“He is simply the Einstein of the gods, a complete genius. From the day he was born, his followers have been growing rapidly. Moreover, they are incredibly sticky. Basically, as long as you log on to his website and become his follower, you will never be able to leave him. You will only provide him with endless faith. This thing is even more effective than the most stringent blood oath.

“However, new gods have their own troubles as well. Most have powerful divine power, but they lost the killing and fighting instinct of the old gods. Take the gods of Asgard as an example. When we were born, we faced all kinds of enemies. We had a mortal enemy, the giant tribe. There was also a civil war between the god tribes. At one point, we were on the verge of extinction. Later, at the dusk of the gods, we really died in battle… we basically never had peace. Every period of time was filled with blood. We fought against strong enemies or each other. If you couldn’t fight, you would be killed.

“However, the new gods in modern society are not like this. Other than a few who have the ability to fight, most of them are the younger brothers that I mentioned above who open websites. They are very good at collecting beliefs, but they do not know how to fight at all. In addition, many old gods think that they only have faith in their eyes and have abandoned the dignity and honor that a god should have. Moreover, their various actions have seriously disrupted the market, so many old gods view them as a cancer in the industry.

“But just as I said before, there are some unusual creatures among the new gods. I have to say that humans have never let me down on the road of courting death. This time, they have actually played a new trick on me—fear. It has always been the most primitive and purest human instinct. They have also developed many forms of entertainment to deal with fear, but most of them are just small things until they set their sights on the apocalypse. As I have said, whether it is the apocalypse or the twilight of the gods, they are all antiques that can not keep up with the trend of the times.. Humans have long lost their fear of the inferno painted by the pathetic imagination of their predecessors. They want to create new fears, thus, the exciting and magnificent new apocalypse of the 21st Century!”