Chapter 1 The Words of the King of Mountains

The words of the King of Mountains finally resolved many of Hao Ren's long-standing questions:

Why did the world of Holo in reality have only five floating continents and some fragmented floating islands that could not even make up a single continent? Even if all those lands were pieced together, they would not be enough to form a complete planet!

Why was it that Holo, a creation personally overseen by the Goddess of Creation, had so few true divine temples and relics, and instead only imitations built by mortals? Like the Temple of Calsuan and many of the temples in the Holy Domain, although they looked like they were in the style of the Goddess of Creation, they were clearly just the creations of mortals!

Why were the historical records of the various secular kingdoms in Holo so chaotic, and all divided from the timeline of ten thousand years ago? Even with the interruption of inheritance caused by Loken, this division seemed too abrupt and "neat," as if the world had been turned upside down and all civilizations had been restarted!

The truth was that the world of Holo had indeed undergone a cataclysmic rebirth—in the destruction of the Chaos Tyrant Loken, this small world with a diameter of two light-years had been divided into two in terms of spacetime. The original Holo had been pushed into the Nightmare side by the ancient jailers using the power of the "God Engine," becoming an old world forgotten by everyone. The so-called real world was actually just a replica used to control the prison system and accommodate the survivors! In the new world, the inheritance of mortal kingdoms flowed and changed, because the relics of the gods were all in the old world, suppressing that eternal nightmare...

Under the leadership of the King of Mountains, the group trudged across the desolate plains, heading towards a supposedly important stronghold. The probes released by Hao Ren had already begun to transmit the first batch of information. In those images from afar, Hao Ren could see the appearance of this "old world" more clearly and directly. However, to avoid alarming Loken in advance, all the probes bypassed places with obvious intelligent activity or strong energy reactions, but even so, the data they sent back was already invaluable:

Due to the collapse of the imaginary space, this "true Holo" had been compressed to a radius of only two astronomical units, and had stabilized at this scale. Apart from the continents floating in the void, it had no sun, moon, or stars. All light and energy came from the primordial storms that surged and raged in the space. Some solid lands floated in the void, roughly corresponding to the Holo of the real world (i.e., the new world), and countless phantom-like things moved and traveled between these floating continents, constantly penetrating each other but unable to affect each other.

In that vast area shrouded in dense clouds, the probes discovered countless fragmented ruins—including steel castles and magic spires floating in the sky, as well as ancient facilities that looked like factories and warehouses, and even space-based fortresses equipped with giant cannons and rails. However, these once-magnificent things had now lost their function, leaving only countless fragments floating in the sky of the old world. Between them, black chunks of flesh filled with chaotic power and blindly growing tentacle structures drifted everywhere, twisting and wriggling aimlessly, disgusting and full of malice.

The scenes transmitted by the probes were nauseating and disturbing. It seemed that the power of the ancient jailer legions had been very strong. The Goddess of Creation had once set up unimaginable heavy firepower and even space firepower on this planet, but Loken still devoured these defenses bit by bit, and even dragged the entire space into the imaginary domain. How strong was its resistance?

Could conventional firepower and warriors be its opponents?

"What are we going to do next?" While Hao Ren was pondering, Lily had already started yelling, hopping up and down. She was an impatient person, and this place made her whole body glow, which made the husky girl even more irritable. "Big guy, big guy! Where's that Loken? Let's hurry up and finish fighting and go home!"

In fact, it wasn't just Lily who was glowing. Except for the little weakling, everyone else in Hao Ren's team was glowing. The brightness of each person basically reflected the amount of natural treasures they usually ate. Lily was at the top of the brightness chart due to her extraordinary appetite and habit of stealing food. Izhaks ranked second—the old demon was surrounded by holy light, feeling that his whole style was not right, like he had just put down his butcher knife and was about to become a Buddha.

Hearing Lily's words, Gordon did not stop walking, but pointed to the distance: "It is unwise to face Loken rashly. We must first understand the situation here. We have been asleep for too long, so we are not very clear about how far the situation on the Reflection Realm side has deteriorated, but before the situation completely gets out of control, Loken left a large number of monitoring points and backup databases. These things still operate automatically after the jailers were corrupted, and because they are not biological, they should not have been completely polluted by Loken. I am taking you to the nearest monitoring point. If it is still operating, we can grasp the current location of Loken's main body, as well as the distribution and strength of its minions in the entire Nightmare World—challenging the Nightmare Tyrant is a difficult task. Without this information, we will only be like blind insects lost in this fragmented world, and gradually be swallowed by the nightmare."

Hao Ren nodded. As he expected, although the jailers were corrupted and controlled, they were not without preparation. Even today's counterattack was planned and arranged by them. Such cooperation would be more reassuring: a teammate who could understand the situation and control the situation was much better than a group of reckless men with courage but no brains.

While nodding, he couldn't help but recall the scenes he had seen in Benedict III's mental illusion.

The desolate and open wilderness, the monsters fighting in the wilderness, the shadow of Loken sweeping across the sky, and the mirrored giant tower in the background—the scene that appeared in the illusion seemed to be somewhere on this plain, and he had vaguely heard the sound of battlefields when he had just arrived on the surface. But where was the battlefield?

Hao Ren looked into the distance, but did not see any smoke of war.

Vivian came to his side and asked curiously, "What are you looking for?"

"Did you hear any shouts of killing when you came out of the cave?" Hao Ren tilted his head slightly and asked in a low voice.

Vivian frowned: "Shouts of killing? I seemed to hear a little bit..."

Before she could finish speaking, Lily jumped over: "I heard it, I heard it! But when I saw that you didn't react just now, I thought I had misheard it..."

Hao Ren and Vivian exchanged glances, thinking that dog ears were indeed sharp.

At this moment, the rumbling voice of the King of Mountains interrupted the conversation of Hao Ren and the others. The rock giant happily pointed to a silver-gray obelisk standing on the wasteland not far away: "Ah, the monitoring point! It's still there!"

The monitoring point was a small metal tower two or three meters high, which looked like a city monument engraved with glowing runes. Only after getting closer would one realize that it was not directly placed on the ground, but floated in mid-air about one meter above the ground. Below it was a recessed square platform, and countless lines flew quickly between the platform and the metal tower, as if exchanging data.

This metal tower was a tall building that ordinary people needed to look up to, but for giants like the King of Mountains, it was just a small device that they had to bend over to operate. Gordon knelt down on one knee in front of the monitoring point and put his hand on the silver-gray alloy surface, reading the data inside. Hao Ren took the opportunity to ask: "The Abyss of Oblivion... I mean, in this 'old world', are there any surviving resistance forces? Such as the automated legions you left behind."

"Surviving resistance forces?" Gordon was stunned and shook his head slowly. "There shouldn't be."

"Shouldn't be?"

"We were completely controlled by Loken's power three hundred years ago, but in fact, as early as a thousand years ago, the jailers had almost completely lost their ability to monitor the Abyss of Oblivion," Gordon's tone was very low, obviously he was not talking about something pleasant. "In other words, for ten centuries, this prison was unsupervised. No one knows what happened here, and we don't know how long those automatic defense devices we left behind lasted, and under what circumstances they were completely destroyed... So far, I know as little about the situation as you do, but at least there are still monitoring points left. I should be able to figure out the situation soon."

Another jailer sighed: "We have failed our mission."

Hao Ren was silent, just exchanging various intelligence from the front-line probes with the Data Terminal in his mental link. Dou Dou quietly hugged his arm and curled up in his arms, rarely being so well-behaved.

At this moment, the obelisk in Gordon's hand suddenly emitted a bright light, and then an abnormally blurry picture was projected on it. A fully armed soldier appeared in the projection, with a chaotic battlefield as the background. Intermittent sounds came from the picture: "...Seventeenth record... Fall... Our plan to retake the position failed... Unable to contact the jailer legions... We are in... the Scorched Earth Plain, we will hold on until... *zzzzz*..."

The chaotic picture ended here. Gordon looked at the unexpected message in shock and muttered to himself: "It's a mortal soldier..."

Hao Ren immediately asked loudly: "When was this record made?"

"Seven centuries ago," Gordon said slowly, "It's the last communication the monitoring point received."

"This legion is probably finished," Vivian said with a sigh, "But why are there legions composed of mortals here?"

"They are the 'Heroic Souls' mentioned earlier," Gordon explained, "The most outstanding and steadfast mortal souls. They devoutly believe in our mother and voluntarily join the ranks of the guards after death, resurrecting in this nightmare world to wage eternal war against Loken's minions. They are a supplement to the jailer legions, but not the main force."

Lily spoke bluntly: "They lasted longer than you main forces."

Gordon lowered his head silently and said after a long time: "Yes, just like you said."

At this moment, Hao Ren was recalling the sounds of fighting he had heard not long ago—he had heard it, Vivian had also heard it, and Lily had heard it without a doubt. Those could not be hallucinations!

In a daze, he seemed to hear those vague sounds again. He raised his head slightly, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

On the desolate horizon, a dark shadow appeared at some unknown time!