Chapter 1 The Projection

Seeing Lily's dizzy look, Hao Ren knew that the girl had no idea what had just happened, so he explained it simply: "Just now, Raven 12345 projected in through the gap you 'smuggled' open and possessed you to say a few words to me."

Lily wasn't bothered at all by the idea of being possessed; she was actually quite happy: "Awoo? What did the goddess say?"

"We might have 'helpers' in the future," Hao Ren said. "As I rewind, the closure of the distorted spacetime will decrease. If we happen to encounter other acquaintances in the historical trajectory, we can let them 'smuggle' in like you. However, since you're all entering as consciousnesses, you can't bring the equipment and power of your original bodies from the future, so you can only maintain your fighting strength from that historical period."

Lily easily understood what Hao Ren meant. She looked down at her hands, a look of sudden realization on her face: "No wonder I feel so weak in this body, and I failed to summon my claws just now..."

As she spoke, the usually carefree husky spirit revealed a hint of emotion: "I really miss it... the days on the Siberian snowfields. After leaving the village, I wandered around, my head full of ideas, never worried about anything, and didn't know how to make a living in the human world. Although I got lost, I was happy living with a pack of wolves every day... Landlord, do you know? I actually walked all the way to the vicinity of the Arctic Circle, and then I was blocked by a glacier and realized there was no road ahead, so I turned back..."

Hao Ren curled his lips: "I see now, your scatterbrained personality has been like this for more than half a century."

Lily smiled slightly, reached into her clothes, and finally took out that tattered, thread-bound, illustrated Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

"It's still here... I never returned this book in the end," she shook her head. "I carried it around with me to many places, read it countless times while wandering on the snowfields. Later, I looked for food in human cities, fought with people, did odd jobs, joined gangs, and then I wanted to study, to become a cultured person, so I went to Beiping to study. At that time, I also carried this book... When I finally graduated from Peking University for the first time, I finally remembered to go back to that small village to take a look, but there was no village there anymore."

Lily said, sighing: "I guess I'll never be able to return it, the old gentleman must be scolding me."

Hao Ren looked at her in surprise, and after a long while, he hesitantly asked, "You wouldn't be... crying, would you?"

"How could I be?" Lily raised her head, baring her teeth at Hao Ren. "I got used to this kind of thing half a century ago. I'm just a little emotional, I didn't expect to relive the past in this way. Alright, Landlord, let's not waste time here, let's go out and see what era it is, we're still waiting to complete the mission."

Hao Ren looked at Lily a few more times, feeling that this usually carefree husky girl actually had such sentimental moments. Then he nodded and came to the wooden door that faintly revealed a dim yellow light.

Outside the wooden door was another spacetime fragment, while on the side of the wooden door was the hunter's cabin, frozen in a black and white state. Hao Ren stood at the door, took a deep breath, and then pushed open the door without hesitation.

In an instant, the extremely static spacetime seemed to suddenly start running, the warm afterglow of the setting sun shone on his face, and in the setting sun, he could see a few finches startled and flying up. All kinds of sounds also came from all directions, interspersed with the creaking of wheels rolling over stone roads and sporadic human voices from afar. Hao Ren took another step outward, and then completely stepped into a new spacetime.

He found himself in front of an old street, a wet cobblestone road stretching from south to north. On both sides of the road flowed dirty and smelly sewage, and on both sides of the street, he could see low, cramped houses arranged close together. The brick walls looked mostly very old, the lower half of the walls covered with moss, and the upper half peeling off. The tallest buildings in sight were no more than two or three stories high, and the setting sun, about to sink below the horizon, hung on the roof opposite the street, and the light it cast was fragmented by the uneven roofs.

Perhaps because it was near dusk, there were almost no pedestrians on the street. Occasionally, he saw a few figures in the distance, all wearing old coarse cloth clothes, and rarely saw anyone with neat and bright clothes passing by. Those pedestrians who flashed past in the distance hurried on their way with numb expressions, and no one seemed to notice the two strangely dressed people who suddenly appeared on this side of the street. Occasionally, a cart full of sundries creaked past from the intersection in the distance, the driver loudly calling out to the livestock with a heavy local accent, which only added to the gloomy and chaotic feeling of the street.

Hao Ren looked back and saw that the "wooden door" he had pushed open earlier had not disappeared. It was abruptly embedded in a mossy wall, next to a barred window covered with oil stains and reinforced with iron frames. Above the barred window hung a dim, swaying oil lamp, which was gently swaying in the twilight breeze, making a slight creaking sound.

Hao Ren pushed open the door of the hunter's cabin again and found that the black and white static space behind the door still existed, and he could not find the window corresponding to the barred window next to the door no matter what: This was undoubtedly an abnormal spatial phenomenon.

The cabin seemed to be "embedded" on the edge of this spacetime, becoming something like a stronghold, and its only connection to this spacetime was the seemingly fragile wooden door.

Lily had already put away her ears and tail and turned into human form before following Hao Ren out. She curiously looked at the rather old street in front of her, and after a moment, she made a guess: "It looks like Europe... six or seven hundred years ago."

"Late Middle Ages, we jumped to this point in time," Hao Ren nodded. "But that's right, Vivian's sleep-wake cycle is two or three centuries each time. This is my second rewind, so it's normal to come here."

"Medieval Europe, the most memorable thing is burning witches," Lily wrinkled her nose, as if saying this sentence could smell the disgusting burnt smell in the air. "We've really come to an amazing era."

Hao Ren shrugged: "A dark era created by humans. The age of mythology has ended at this time, but humans have created a stage for themselves that is even worse than the age of mythology... We'd better find a set of clothes from the locals first. This outfit is too eye-catching outside. This is not an era that can accept performance art."

Lily wiped the sweat from her forehead: "I agree, I'm still wearing the Siberian survival suit, it's hot as hell..."

Hao Ren silently looked at Lily, thinking that this girl was really honest...

The two were agile and quickly sneaked into a deserted alley and got a set of local clothes from the clothesline of a house. Although wearing them was not very comfortable, it at least solved the problem of different styles. In fact, Hao Ren wasn't too worried about attracting the attention of ordinary people. The threat that ordinary people posed to him and Lily was almost zero. What he was worried about was that two strangely dressed people would attract the attention of the demon hunters: In this special period when the age of mythology had just ended, supernatural forces still deeply influenced human society, and demon hunters almost openly paid attention to or monitored the world. Although they didn't care about humans, they would buy or threaten ordinary people to be their eyes and ears, especially in Europe, where the end of the age of mythology was the latest. This kind of monitoring was particularly serious. In those dark and dilapidated streets and alleys, there might be countless eyes staring at everyone, and any disturbance in the corners would eventually be sent to the demon hunters.

This kind of monitoring and high pressure also indirectly spawned many fake and shoddy exorcism organizations and individuals, and then spawned a large number of informers who served these impostors. It must be said that the rampant "witch hunt" farce in dark Europe was also one of the results of these guys fanning the flames.

Of course, the most important reason for the "witch hunt" farce was the church at this time—they were once a symbol of human resistance against supernatural forces in the age of mythology, the only armed force that had become a climate, and an important medium for demon hunters to contact humans. But after the end of the age of mythology, the real alien threat (or "heretical threat" in the church's words) disappeared, and the demon hunters also cut off the only positive connection with humans due to the cooling of their hunting instincts, the church's activities quickly showed a state of losing control, which became the biggest root cause of the witch hunt movement completely out of control.

But for Hao Ren, all of this was irrelevant—he was just a passerby in the rewinded history. Everything that happened in this spacetime was just a stage play jointly deduced by Vivian's memories and the mirrored Earth. He walked on the stage, and what he was looking for was only that "heroine."

"Landlord, I think it's troublesome to fight in this dress," Lily tugged at the coarse cloth dress on her body, twisting around while complaining, "Can't medieval European women wear clothes that are convenient for movement... it's like a sack."

What she got was a gray coarse linen skirt, with a hem that almost dragged to the ground and two sleeves with pleated edges. Although its style was extremely simple, it was obviously too cumbersome compared to the light clothes she usually wore.

"Alright, don't be picky when you have something to wear. The economic conditions of the place we're staying in are obviously not very good. How many clothes can a family have for you to choose from," Hao Ren said while tidying up his tunic. The clothes he got were a black short top and a pair of coarse cloth pants, and there was a hooded short robe outside the short top. He didn't know the correct matching method and wearing standards of the clothes of this era, so he could only fool around and put on the clothes according to the impression left by the few pedestrians he had seen at the intersection before. "It's getting dark, we'll start exploring after it's completely dark, and try to figure out where this place is and what year it is."

As he spoke, he gently pressed his waist, and the hard, cold touch of metal came from there.

He knew that a holy silver short sword was hanging there—the standard armament of demon hunters, the 1315 model, courtesy of Hasselblad.