Chapter 1 The Seal

The sudden muffled sound coming from the village was like rolling thunder, or as if a surging lava was welling up from the depths of the earth. This sound carried an ominous tremor that instantly changed Hathaway's expression.

"The seal!" Hathaway rushed to the window. "How could this happen..."

Hao Ren followed her. Looking through the narrow vertical window, he found that he could indeed see the entire village from the top of the tower. However, in this parallel dimension, there was no village to be seen. At the original location of the village, there was only a circle of giant stones. In the center of the massive stones was what appeared to be a bottomless pit. From the tower, Hao Ren could not see what was in the pit, only a black and red beam of light bursting from it, piercing straight into the sky and disrupting the heavy dark clouds above.

At this moment, the demon hunter Master Mohaben, who had been sitting in his chair like a living corpse, suddenly stood up. His bones cracked and popped, as if his utterly aged and decaying body was about to fall apart. The old hunter raised his right hand towards the village, and a few hoarse syllables escaped his throat: "The boundary has opened..."

As these syllables fell, a raging flame suddenly erupted on the old hunter's body. The silvery-white holy fire was even more powerful than the one Hao Ren had seen on Bai Huo. This flame, formed by burning life force, quickly rose to the top of the tower and spread along the magic-inscribed metal around the tower. Eventually, the entire tower became a burning torch, and a beam of light that reached the sky burst from the top of the tower, directly confronting the black and red beam of light erupting from the village.

"The Master is burning himself and the life energy left by the other nine demon hunters," Hathaway said, taking out two hand crossbows from somewhere. She looked at Hao Ren. "Didn't you say you were here to solve the problem? Well, come on, let's see if you meant what you said!"

The group quickly rushed down the tower, heading towards the village. Before leaving the small hill, Hao Ren looked back one last time. He saw the tower transforming into a semi-transparent crystal in the raging holy flames. The torch-like light even illuminated the clouds in the sky. In the rising flames, he seemed to see the old hunter's weathered face, his sunken eyes fixed on the direction of the cage even through the fire.

"Lily!" Hao Ren slapped Lily on the shoulder. "Eat a spicy stick!"

A moment later, accompanied by a loud howl, a five-meter-tall giant husky stood proudly on the wilderness covered with gravel and rubble. Hathaway stared in astonishment, and then was pulled onto the dog's head by Hao Ren. "Stop looking, just think of her as a werewolf – Lily, drive!"

The giant dog ran wildly, dust flying across the wilderness. While bouncing on the dog's head, Hao Ren turned his head and yelled at Hathaway, "What's the situation now? Is your seal weakening?"

Hathaway, as a ghost, was not afraid of the wind. Her hair wasn't even blown. She was steadily lying between the giant husky's fur, her voice tense. "I don't know... it just broke out. The seal has never weakened before, there was no warning at all!"

"It sounds bad, but it seems like things only went wrong after we got here," Hao Ren said, turning to look at Vivian. "I still think that artifact is related to you. Could it be that your presence is what activated it?"

"It's possible," Vivian said, her face grim. She was now holding the can of Tiny, the little evil spirit, in her hand. The little thing was still frantically jumping around inside. "I can feel... a very unpleasant aura coming from ahead, strong, dense, and full of anger."

Lily seemed to have an idea too. She opened her mouth, "Awoo woof... cough cough cough..."

The girl nearly threw Hao Ren off her nose with that. Hao Ren immediately patted the fur beneath him. "Focus on running and stop interrupting. You can't even speak properly in human form, what's the point of chiming in?"

Although he said they were some distance away, Lily was actually very fast. In just a few words, the group had arrived in front of the prison.

In the real world, this was a dense forest and a village within it. But in this parallel dimension, nothing here corresponded to the real world except for the ancient house and the terrain. The village was replaced by a huge pit, surrounded by a circle of giant stones. Bright sparks were now jumping between the stones, and the shape of the pit resembled a funnel, with circles of hardened structures extending down the funnel-shaped pit walls, disappearing into the dense, chaotic darkness at the bottom.

There was clearly supernatural power inside the pit, because Hao Ren's vision was swallowed by darkness less than a hundred meters down, which completely defied the principles of optics. At this moment, a black and red light was bursting from the darkness, the base of the light column rippling with transparent traces like water waves. The surrounding pit walls were flashing with dazzling silver-white runes, which were extinguishing one by one and being swallowed by the darkness.

These runes clearly represented the power of Master Mohaben, and the power of the nine demon hunters who gave their lives.

"I am ten thousand percent unwilling to go down there," Hesperides said, shaking her head after glancing into the pit. "I am one hundred and twenty percent sure that nothing good will come of it."

Lily also poked her head out to look down, and immediately her fur stood on end. She tucked her tail between her legs and retreated more than twenty meters, lying down with her huge paws covering her head, refusing to move.

What leaked out from the darkness and the red light was an extremely manic and negative aura. Just looking at them required immense courage, let alone Lily. In fact, even Hao Ren felt a wave of weakness standing in front of this thing.

But he knew he couldn't back down, because he could clearly see the red light impacting the boundary of the alien space. Some evil thing wanted to come to the real world, and once it entered the real world...

Then his damn year-end bonus would be gone!

So, he took a deep breath, calmed himself, and began to pull out his work supplies from his dimensional pocket—various yields available.

Just as he was preparing, Vivian suddenly said, "Looks like we don't need to go down. Something's coming up!"

In the deep, chaotic darkness, clusters of shadows suddenly emerged from the background. They crawled and struggled upwards in a disgusting manner, like monsters born from the mud, slowly transforming into humanoid creatures!

These dark "creatures" crawled in the darkness, and a chorus of roars like those of beasts came from among them, wave after wave, layer upon layer, constantly surging. Countless black humanoids began to crawl towards the edge of the pit like waves of mud, and their densest direction was towards Hao Ren and his group!

Without a doubt, the dark force had targeted Hao Ren and his group.

"What the hell are these?!" Hesperides shouted, her body suddenly erupting with a burst of heat. A dim yellow light was released from her hands, burning a group of black humanoids that were lunging over into ashes in mid-air. But as one fell, ten more rose, and countless monsters were rushing towards them madly. "Are these the incarnation of that evil force?!"

"...No, these are just scouts," Hathaway said, raising her hand crossbow and blasting two black humanoids into pieces in mid-air with holy silver arrows. Although she had become a wraith, her combat power from her previous life seemed to remain, and incredibly, she could still control these sacred powers in her undead state. "These are creatures that have crawled out from the other side of the boundary. They were originally formless and without substance, but after coming into contact with our real world, they began to imitate and evolve, and now they have human-like forms! Show no mercy when killing them, otherwise they will keep pouring out endlessly!"

Vivian summoned a swarm of bats to attack the "humanoids" while shouting, "I thought these were the humans who had been devoured in the small village in the forest over the past two centuries."

"Does the number look like it?" Hao Ren looked at the constantly surging chaotic darkness. "It looks like it's about to flood a prefecture-level city?!"

"It's not that exaggerated," the data terminal shouted. "This unit has counted, it's just reached a town-level unit..."

"Boom boom boom!!"

Continuous explosions erupted in the black tide. Hao Ren pulled out a whole bag of plasma bombs, throwing them into the enemy ranks while shouting, "No matter how many come, Xi Ling-style humanitarian care, specializes in treating all kinds of disobedience!!"

Hathaway stared blankly at Hao Ren throwing various explosives like a bombing maniac. The intensity of this attack deeply shocked her. "...What has the outside world become like?!"

"Don't take him as the standard," Vivian shouted. "He's a rare sight in the universe – Big Dog, how long are you going to tremble? Come and fight the little monsters!!"

A melee unfolded in the wilderness.