Chapter 1 Hao Ren

Hao Ren had no idea how the people around him could always get off-topic at any time and any place, and whenever Vivian was present, the topic would almost always shift to the poor bat's financial luck—but thanks to this digression, the tense atmosphere at the scene was finally relieved.

In fact, when he saw the magnificent scenery of the "Golden Manor," Hao Ren had the same idea as Little Elizabeth. After all, gold was different on Earth than it was on Tanagus, and even those ancient aliens who were like gods couldn't live without earthly food. Just look at how many human companies the families in the Athens Sanctuary ran to understand: these guys were also living on human food. Therefore, the Ancatro family's Golden Manor should also be an amazing fortune in the alien society. But after thinking about it carefully, Hao Ren couldn't understand why the Ancatro had been able to sit on a gold mine for so many years unscathed: the aliens themselves really weren't short of money. Except for Vivian, that freak, which alien could starve to death? In addition, the entire Earth was theirs in ancient times, and in modern times, they were forced by the demon hunters to only dare to use slow motion when going out to fight, for fear that the commotion would attract pursuers, so they had even less time to think about the Tanagus' gold.

With so much energy, they would rather care more about how to improve their strength.

Of course, the second most important reason was that most alien families were probably no match for these Tanagus remnants.

Hao Ren looked around at the magnificent buildings that reflected the traces of advanced civilization everywhere. This was an alien base left on Earth, and its technological level was at least several hundred years ahead of that of humans, demonstrating the Tanagus' powerful technical strength. It also illustrated one problem: the Tanagus who had fled here were not only large in number but also maintained a considerable degree of industrial and material foundation. Like the sirens who fled on a colonial ship, the Tanarans also came to Earth with a large amount of family property. And what about the Holletta aliens of the same period?

Hao Ren still remembered Vivian's records in the ancient manuscripts. She mentioned several scenes when she met ancient "gods," such as seeing Zeus and other gods quarrying stones on Mount Olympus, seeing Osiris taking sand in the Nile River area, and seeing Odin and other Asgardian gods picking ash tree branches by the sea... These sounded like myths from the beginning of time, and the style was frighteningly high at first hearing, but on closer inspection, weren't they just a bunch of unlucky guys who were thrown to Earth with nothing and had no place to live, so they had to start from scratch and survive in the wilderness by hand?

When Hao Ren first saw Vivian's manuscript, he didn't think so much. Now, looking at the scene of the Golden Manor, he became more and more aware that the situation of each alien race when they came to Earth was probably different. Zeus and Odin needed to mine stones, chop wood, and split firewood to build their homes, while the sirens had a huge "Nassatoon" colonial ship as a place to live from the beginning. The Tanarans built the Golden Manor. It was impossible for so many high-purity gold mines to appear out of thin air on Earth 10,000 years ago, so the building materials and equipment of this Golden Manor (strictly speaking, a city) must have been brought by the Tanarans from their old home. It was no wonder that they eventually became the family guarding the seal and had existed safely to this day: they had the strength.

While these thoughts were running through Hao Ren's mind, the group had already crossed the outer building circle of the Golden Manor. The Tanagus' cities had their own characteristics. Like Alamanda, the cities they built were always roughly circular and divided into many concentric circular districts from the inside to the outside. Clear boundaries could be seen between each building circle: a series of magnificent barriers or continuous wall-like buildings. The team had just passed under such a barrier. Little Elizabeth looked at the golden gate that everyone had just passed through and stuck out her tongue: "No wonder they built their houses in another dimension. How heavy must these golds be? If they were built on Earth, they would probably sink into the ground, right?"

"It's not pure gold," Hao Ren shrugged. He had really studied Alamanda's architecture specifically because of this question. "It's just that the building materials contain a certain amount of gold. And their materials science is very advanced. The walls of these houses are very thin, and there are few supporting structures, so the overall weight is not too exaggerated. I guess they must have worked hard to study the technology of reducing the weight of materials and increasing their strength."

Lily giggled and laughed: "So being born in a place full of gold is not necessarily a good thing. I don't know how they built their first skyscraper."

Wayne felt a little inexplicable when he heard Hao Ren and the others discussing these issues. He didn't know how Hao Ren knew so much about the Ancatro family's buildings, but just as he was about to ask something, Lily suddenly twitched her nose and stopped: "Wait, there's a smell!"

Hao Ren didn't react for a moment: "What?"

Lily shook her hand silently, lowered her body, and walked forward while sniffing. The others in the team followed her. After continuing to walk forward for a while, Vivian and Wayne also felt the aura: the bloody and fishy smell in the air was becoming more and more obvious.

At this time, the surrounding fog had thinned to almost completely disappear.

Finally, at the last intersection, Little Elizabeth pointed to the distance and jumped up: "Look over there!"

A corpse was lying there.

Everyone ran over quickly. Wayne recognized the corpse at a distance: "It's a member of the Ancatro family!"

"There's one here, and here too... What the heck!" Lily ran to the corpse and immediately stretched her neck to look around, finally exclaiming, "They're all... all dead?"

Hao Ren looked ahead. Even though he had seen many big scenes, he still couldn't get used to this situation: countless corpses were lying on the side of the road, and the scene in front of him could be described as a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood!

"This is..." Izhaks stared at the scene in front of him, "It looks like there was a melee."

As Izhaks said, traces of battle damage could be seen everywhere on the street. Huge explosion craters and cracks that looked like they had been cut by sharp blades made the front of the city riddled with holes. A large number of buildings along the street had been ravaged by some kind of force, many of which were in a half-destroyed state. The molten outer walls of the buildings flowed along the terrain to the center of the road, even "casting" many corpses in the ruins.

Hao Ren squatted down next to a corpse. He saw that this was a dead alien with a different appearance from humans. The corpse was thin, and its limbs were more slender than those of humans. The face shape appeared flat and wide, and its skin was a strange dark gold color, which was its most unusual feature. The cause of death was obviously two fatal wounds on the chest and side abdomen. The dark yellow "blood" flowing from the wounds had long since dried up, and an unusual bloody smell emanated from the corpse. The entire block was filled with this smell.

This was a Tanaran. Hao Ren had only seen them on sculptures before, but now he finally saw a real person.

Unfortunately, he was already dead.

"The previous fog seemed to have slightly hindered the spread of these bloody smells, otherwise I should have been able to detect them earlier with my perception," Vivian muttered while bending over to examine the way the Ancatro family members died. "These look like they were killed by cold weapons, but the cause of death of these next to them looks like a high-heat weapon... but it doesn't look like the demon hunters' holy flame."

"There was a battle here," Izhaks examined a torn wall, "and it was a melee. This looks like it was blown open by a high-powered explosive. Demon hunters don't seem to have the habit of using such explosives in combat."

Hao Ren looked at the destroyed state of the street. Some of the buildings on the side of the road collapsed, some cracked, and some were almost melted. The road surface was full of bomb craters and dents. These marks were like a bombed battlefield. It wasn't that demon hunters didn't have weapons that could cause this effect, but as far as Hao Ren knew, demon hunters' weapons were more specialized in killing personnel and small-scale destruction. Even if they used large-scale weapons, the marks they left behind shouldn't be like this.

He had seen the Athens Sanctuary destroyed by demon hunters, and the scene was completely different from the street in front of him.

"This is the result of the Ancatro family's own weapons," Wayne saw the clue as expected. "It looks like they were killing each other, and they also destroyed their own town."