Chapter 1 The Beginning

As the oppressive, terrifying sound came from above, Hao Ren felt the surrounding air suddenly become scorching hot.

The blood mist released by Vivian had almost completely covered the demon stone, but now a foul shockwave erupted from the stone, instantly shattering all the blood mist. Even Vivian herself was knocked back several steps by the shockwave. She looked at the dissipating power of blood, an expression of disbelief on her face: "This… so wasteful. I could have eaten that!"

Hao Ren was immediately pulled out of the drama—this vampire's self-producing and self-selling habit after becoming poor was simply ruining the atmosphere.

Lily was currently smashing a giant stone pillar several meters long, creating such a commotion that the entire castle ruins seemed to be shaking in an earthquake. But the terrifying sound from the sky made her stop. The wolf girl looked up in shock, only to see that the sky above was already covered in dark clouds.

The starlight and moonlight had disappeared. A large patch of turbid, black-red dense clouds was gathering from all directions. The cloud layer was as thick as substance, rolling in the night sky like an upside-down swamp above their heads. It looked both terrifying and disgusting. As the clouds gathered, a patch of dark red firelight began to spread behind the dense clouds, as if a continuous sea of fire was carried above the dark clouds. In the brightest place of the firelight, a vortex-shaped opening was slowly taking shape. The immense pressure came from that opening—along with unbearable heat waves.

The firelight in the clouds was not an illusion. It really carried a sea of fire, an endless inferno from the demon dimension.

"So hot, so hot, so hot…" Lily swung the giant stone pillar several meters long, smashing large swaths of undead armor into irreversibly flattened iron pancakes. While frantically clearing away enemies, she shouted. The already somewhat weathered stone pillar couldn't withstand this kind of "usage" at all. After swinging it a few times, it snapped with a crack. Lily was stunned for a moment, but the undead armor, which was almost going mad around her, didn't give her time to be stunned. So she had to throw away the stone pillar and continue to pick up those meter-long "bricks" from nearby and throw them around. "Get out of the way! Will you ever be done! Landlord, I don't want to play anymore, I want to go home…"

As the clouds in the sky continued to gather, the undead guards in the castle also seemed to go mad. The Leta runes on their bodies glowed red, as if they had just been branded on with a hot iron. Lily was single-handedly clearing away all the undead. Although she could still handle it, she was obviously frightened by this sudden change. Hao Ren could almost hear the crying in her voice: this was indeed just a wolf girl who could only be considered a "cub" among her kind, she was still too young.

But Hao Ren wasn't much older either—he hadn't even gotten a wife yet!

Vivian flapped her wings and flew to Hao Ren's side. The vampire girl was surrounded by a cold aura, which finally slightly dissipated the unbearable scorching air. Hao Ren's spirit was refreshed in this cold air, and he finally spoke, "What the hell is going on?"

"I… don't know," the look of disbelief on Vivian's face never faded. She completely didn't understand where she went wrong. "It was very smooth at first, and I already sensed that the owner of the demon stone should have about the same strength as me. As long as I sealed it carefully, relying on the power of the moonlight, it should have been foolproof… but I don't know how it went out of control! The way this stone operates is completely different from the demon stones I know, it…"

"Okay, okay, I don't understand anyway," Hao Ren reached out and pressed on Vivian's shoulder. He felt something resounding in his mind, so much so that it was difficult to concentrate. "Why do I feel like my head is full of noise?"

"The power of the demons will impact ordinary people's minds!" Vivian said loudly, but she knew that her blood magic to dispel spiritual pollution was useless on Hao Ren. Even if she was anxious, she couldn't help, so she could only prepare for battle herself: The vampire girl suddenly flew into the air, and a pair of huge bat demon wings suddenly expanded. Countless blood-red streamers emerged from the air, condensing into a complex pattern of hundreds of meters in size behind her. A powerful pressure that Hao Ren had never seen before, far exceeding Vivian's usual performance, spread from the girl's side. Vivian's eyes were fixed on the vortex-shaped door in the sky. A huge, hoof-like foot had already probed out of the vortex. She had to fully release her power before the demon fully descended.

A power that she hadn't used for thousands of years, a power that she wasn't even sure she could fully control.

A ray of clear light suddenly pierced through the dense dark clouds in the sky. The clouds seemed to be forcibly torn open, and an unusually bright silver moon appeared from behind the crack. Hao Ren's attention was immediately attracted to this spectacle. He originally thought that this was the reappearance of the moon that had been blocked before, but he soon realized that the time was wrong. The moon should not still be hanging in that position. Then he noticed that the silver moon in the sky was much larger than what he usually saw, and the clearly visible wood grain-like patterns on the moon's surface were also unprecedented.

But before he had time to see more clearly, the surface of the silver moon was covered with a blood-like crimson, and the entire moon almost completely turned into a blood-red sphere. The ominous red light洒 from the sky even overwhelmed the sea of fire in the clouds at that moment, and the power of the demons was suppressed in an instant—of course, this may be a hallucination. After all, Hao Ren didn't understand any energy induction or mental scanning, he just felt that this strange moon summoned by Vivian was brighter than the flames in the clouds…

The surrounding undead armor also seemed to lose their target under the illumination of the blood moon and began to wander around blankly. Lily looked up at the strange moonlight blankly, and the fluff on her ears and tail slowly stood up one by one: "... I feel… a little uncomfortable…"

"Boom!"

A loud noise broke the brief stalemate. The sea of fire in the sky surged frantically, the vortex completely opened, and a gigantic demon crashed to the ground with a bang, instantly causing sand and stones to fly and the earth to shake.

Hao Ren and Lily subconsciously took several steps back.

A figure burning with raging flames slowly stood up from the flying dust. As the dust dissipated, the demon's figure was revealed: This was a huge humanoid creature five meters tall, with inverted, goat-hoof-like legs, and thick, powerful arms. His skin was dark like iron, and every bulging muscle was covered with cracks flowing with flames and magma. Raging flames formed the demon's armor, and molten iron slowly dripped from the cracks in his skin. The demon's entire body was like an erupting volcano, full of pressure and incredibly hot—that body of flames and molten lava was definitely not fake.

Hao Ren strained his neck to see the demon's face clearly. What he saw was a cold face carved out of obsidian. The demon also had facial features, but flames emerged from every pore. It seemed that this face only existed to make him look more ferocious. And on top of this demon's head was a pair of curved horns, like the horns of a black goat in legends.

Hao Ren noticed that one of the demon's horns was broken, with about a third of its length broken off at the end.

Vivian was stunned when she saw this demon, and she didn't launch an attack for a long time, because she found that… this demon seemed to be a different species than she knew.

Although the aura and general appearance were similar, it was still not the type of demon she had seen—she didn't know if it was a good idea to rashly attack an opponent whose race was unknown, whose strength was unknown, and whose fighting style was also unknown.

The demon didn't seem to notice Vivian lurking menacingly on the side. He just lowered his head and searched the ground around him, and then discovered Hao Ren, who was almost petrified. A muffled thunder-like rumble came from the demon's mouth: "#@￥#！￥%@%￥##@？"

Hao Ren: "?"

"#@￥#%#，#@#%#？"

Hao Ren was surprised to find that this demon was talking to him—but who the hell could understand demonic language!

The demon himself seemed to realize this problem. He showed a suddenly enlightened look (Hao Ren guessed that the expression should be suddenly enlightened, after all, it was a bit difficult to see a demon's expression in a ball of flame). Then, out of nowhere, he took out a metal plate. This metal plate was as big as a table, but in the demon's hands, it was at most a tablet computer. The demon tapped and swiped on the metal plate for a long time, then lay on the ground and tried hard to align his vision with Hao Ren's:

"Ni shi wo de fang dong ma?" (Are you my landlord?)

Vivian had been holding it in for a long time, and at this time, she finally fell down with a plop.

(These past two days, I've started practicing and taking the driving test Part 3, and I have almost no time to write... I'm struggling to hold on. If there's a sudden single update one day, please don't panic. That means I'm being held down to take the test in some godforsaken place.)