Chapter 1 The Boundary

A few seconds after the first tremor ended, the second one came, this time more noticeable than the first. Hao Ren was able to catch the changes it caused within the space.

The boundary of "Moonlight Grassland" was being devoured by heavy darkness. This tremor seemed to have damaged the structure of the dark boundary, causing a series of vague images to suddenly appear in the deep shadows. In those images, one could see towering city walls and spires, even parts of the courtyard structure of the dark castle—the confinement of this "graveyard" was clearly weakening with the tremors!

"What's going on?!" Hao Ren immediately shouted into the communicator.

Almost as soon as he finished speaking, the witch Helen's panicked voice rang out in the communicator: "The boundary… the demon hunters have broken the boundary! They're killing their way in from the outside! They're destroying the first gate of the castle!!"

Madam Marie's voice followed closely: "Good heavens! There are too many of them!"

"What the f*ck…" Hesperiana couldn't help but curse in the communicator. "I clearly closed the passage after we came in. How did these guys crack the barrier of the shadow world so quickly…"

"Because they are an elite hunting team led by a demon hunter elder," Hao Ren said, dodging the chaotic shockwaves released by the evil spirits in mid-air. He also glanced at Hasse, who was fighting hard not far away. "They are not in the same league as the small fries you initially guessed. Now you understand, if we hadn't disrupted your 'plan,' you would have been rubbed on the ground by the demon hunters by now."

Hasse noticed Hao Ren's movements from afar. He raised his hand and threw out a shimmering rune card. The rune card disintegrated in mid-air and formed a shimmering barrier. The barrier collided head-on with the silent screams of the evil spirits, annihilating each other silently. The old hunter took the opportunity to retreat dozens of meters: "If you have time to chat there, you should think about how to quickly solve the problem at hand—the space is collapsing faster! Decide quickly whether to fight or retreat!"

In the communicator at Hao Ren's hand, Hesperiana's voice also rose eight degrees in an instant: "They are an entire hunting team?! Jesus Christ!! I almost died a martyr in this damn place! Witch! Where are those demon hunters now?"

"They have already broken through the atrium," Madam Marie's voice trembled, speaking quickly. "The soulless ones don't know where they've gone. Only a few guards are blocking those guys. They're destroying everything along the way like a whirlwind!"

"It's simple, the soulless ones are all here with us," Hao Ren was not panicked at all. Rather, everything was within his plan. "Little bat, can the rose barrier around the graveyard be closed?"

"Don't call me by that nickname in public," Hesperiana replied. "The rose barrier can't be closed. It's actually Miss Vivian's mental defense when she's asleep. Even I can't interfere with it by external force."

Hao Ren frowned, then asked, "Can the demon hunters forcibly break through it?"

"...If it's a demon hunter of the scale of an elite hunting team, it's not difficult to forcibly break through the barrier... After all, Miss Vivian hasn't really woken up yet, and the rose barrier is only operating autonomously without anyone controlling it..."

Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief: "Phew, that's good, it saves me trouble—little bat, you send out a part of the soulless guards to lead those demon hunters to the graveyard."

"Don't call me by that nickname... Wait, what did you say?! Lead the demon hunters to the graveyard!?"

Hao Ren chuckled: "It's just messing around for those guys to bombard outside, it's better to let them come in and have some effect."

Hesperiana's mind didn't turn around for a while: "How can you let those bastards come in and disturb Miss Vivian's sleep!"

"Damn, come and see the situation on our side. The ground has been blown down two meters, what sleep are you talking about! Aren't you a pragmatist? Let those demon hunters deal with Vivian's evil spirits. You usually don't even have the chance to use demon hunters as cannon fodder!"

Sometimes, the same thing will have unexpected effects if said differently. Hao Ren's sentence "using demon hunters as cannon fodder" immediately hit the little bat spirit's heart. The latter subconsciously felt that this was a good thing, and after thinking about it carefully, it made perfect sense!

The next moment, Hao Ren heard the little bat spirit's excited voice in the communicator: "You wait, I'll send troops to lead those idiots to their death!"

Hao Ren grinned, raised his head and made an okay gesture to Hasse: "Hasse, don't worry, your hunting team will come to help soon."

Hasse's smart battle suit had been damaged in many places by the continuous shockwave attacks of the evil spirits, but the old hunter still stood imposingly in the high sky, exuding a domineering aura. After hearing Hao Ren's words, his face was expressionless, and his tone was cold: "Help—I'm not deaf, I heard everything you and your accomplices just said!"

"Anyway, this was your plan in the first place," Hao Ren chuckled, "And if I didn't say that, that little girl definitely wouldn't cooperate so well—Besides, aren't you demon hunters thorough pragmatists? As long as the final result is the same as the plan, what's the big deal if the specific implementation process changes a little bit?"

Compared with sneaky conspiracies, this kind of aboveboard scheme is even more impossible to deal with!

Hasse stared at Hao Ren, and a trace of anger seemed to appear on his face, which had lost its expression due to toxin erosion, but in the end, he turned his head: "Say what you want—Also, was that the blood descendant of the Red Moon Countess just now?"

"The one who spoke last in the communicator? Yes," Hao Ren smiled, while directing the remote-controlled turret to continue firing at the evil spirits. "Her name is Hesperiana! You will meet later."

"Is that so..." Hasse was expressionless, "I'm really interested."

The soulless ones' offensive was still fierce.

The dark bone dragons continuously dropped powerful death breaths from the air, the ghost knight order organized wave after wave of charges on the grassland, and the indescribable nightmare monsters screamed in chaos and madness, throwing themselves into the beam of light where the evil spirits were as weapons as if they were having a carnival, but this fierce offensive had almost no effect on the special evil spirits. Often, only a silent scream, or even a negative energy shockwave created by a casual finger point, would cause the soulless ones to be wiped out in pieces. The speed of the latter's death even exceeded the speed of resurrection at one point, causing the soulless army on the grassland to become sparse at a speed visible to the naked eye. If it weren't for Lily, who alone topped an army and constantly filled the defensive gap after the soulless ones retreated, this dream army would have lost its containment effect at this moment.

But they had contained it long enough. After another gargoyle army was shaken down from the air, new reinforcements finally entered the battlefield.

It would be better to say that they stumbled into the battlefield in a daze than to say that they entered the battlefield.

Under the lure of a retreating soulless army, the demon hunter squad led by Lockheed gradually penetrated into the deepest part of the dark castle. After passing through the northern hall of the castle, the rose wall of the graveyard suddenly blocked these elite hunters.

The demon hunters immediately realized that they had come to the sleeping place of the Red Moon Countess. Although they didn't understand why the soulless guards would consciously attract their group here, Lockheed immediately ordered a fierce attack on the rose wall.

Due to the fierce battle in the graveyard, the core operation of this shadow world had problems, so the rose wall also had a certain degree of decline. Large areas of necrotic and withered spots appeared on its surface, and withered rose petals fell from the air like rain. The once indestructible death defense line was full of weak cracks. Under the fierce attack of the demon hunters, a crack appeared in a moment, enough for the entire hunting team to pass through.

Hao Ren only saw a big explosion suddenly occur at the rose gate not far away. The arched gate of thorns and roses vanished in the blink of an eye, and the power of the explosion extended all the way, rushing straight to the sky from the gate, and finally leaving a towering, distorted space crack in the sky above the grassland.

That was really a loud crack.

Then Lockheed led dozens of demon hunters in.

The scene of the soulless army fighting the evil spirits was presented to these confused warriors. Hasse, the elder they knew well, was actually at the forefront of the battle. The fake demon hunter who was originally identified as a "kidnapper" was even not far away, and it seemed that he was fighting side by side with Hasse!

What's going on?

Lockheed's brain short-circuited for half a minute.

Hao Ren winked at Hasse: "You know what to say."

Although Hasse had a lot of resentment towards this "cooperation", he was quite able to distinguish the priorities, and naturally he would not do things that would ruin all efforts at this critical moment, so he turned to Lockheed: "This is a temporary cooperation! Prioritize attacking the Countess!"

In this emergency situation, he didn't have time to explain to Lockheed and his team what an evil spirit was, as long as they knew which side to attack.

The demon hunters were confused at first, because they had made too many useless plans before entering this shadow world—they guessed that they would fight against the endless undead guards in the shadow world, guessed that they would directly face the violent Vivian Ancessa after entering this world, guessed that they would be attacked by Hao Ren and his gang, and even guessed the worst situation of facing the red moon in the sky as soon as they came in, with all the warriors dying one after another, but they didn't guess the situation in front of them:

The number of undead guards in the shadow fortress was small, and they didn't encounter any substantial obstacles all the way to the graveyard. In the graveyard, Elder Hasse, who should have been kidnapped, was fighting side by side with the "kidnapper" and the undead guards. There was indeed a red moon in the sky, but there was no destructive mysterious power in the moonlight at all...

The situation was far beyond expectations, making Lockheed a little confused.

But he didn't stay confused for too long.

Hasse's order quickly woke up this demon hunter and realized that this was not the time to get to the bottom of things.

He raised his right hand high and gave an order to all the demon hunters:

"Listen to my order—cooperate with the elder and the undead army to attack the Countess!"