Yuan Tong
Chapter 1385 Return Voyage and Imperial Audience
Despite a few minor mishaps along the way, Hao Ren's carefully planned journey and experiment had finally come to a safe and uneventful conclusion. After a two-day stay on Aerym, the Earth's paranormal beings re-boarded the spacecraft and embarked on their return journey. They carried with them the shock of the incredible experiences they had had in the past eight days, along with various long-term reflections they had never had before and an excitement that was still difficult to calm. They wandered around the lounge of the Petrified Turtle Rock, looking for people to talk to. Although the estrangement could not be completely eliminated, in this special occasion, this group of supernatural creatures finally temporarily let go of their hostility and vigilance towards each other, or rather, they did not have time to care about this hostility and vigilance for a while. They had too many feelings and questions to tell others, and they had no time to care who they were talking to, even if it was a werewolf and a vampire, a demon hunter and a paranormal being, there were always one or two sentences to say.
Before returning to the Gate of the Universe, the Petrified Turtle Rock first went to Holletta to pick up Loresa, who was waiting there, as well as a few "Ancient Ones" volunteers who were preparing to go to Earth together. The latter were all pure-blooded compatriots contacted by Marshal Ofra within the kingdom. The female marshal seemed to be quite prestigious among her people. Under her call, many volunteers stood up. After selection, she chose five of her most pure-blooded and oldest clansmen to participate in Hao Ren's project.
As for Marshal Ofra herself... in the end, she couldn't join the group personally: after all, as a military commander of a country, although she herself was quite looking forward to this incredible journey, she couldn't just leave.
After receiving these "experimental volunteers" on board, Hao Ren curiously asked Loresa, "What are you looking forward to in the next journey?"
"I can't talk about expectations," Loresa said casually while curiously looking at the interior of the Petrified Turtle Rock, "I haven't had such emotions since I was born—I was designed and born according to plan, following orders and cooperating with various experiments. Everything about me has been arranged, and I'm used to this arrangement. I'm not sure what attitude I should have towards unknown things. If I have to say I have expectations... I just hope that the 'Raven 12345' you mentioned will have a better temper, after all, my life will be in her hands."
"Don't think so seriously," Hao Ren couldn't help laughing, "She's definitely easy to talk to, even if you curse at her, she won't necessarily strike you with lightning. And you can look forward to the sights of the surface world. Compared to the Plane of Dreams, where everything is destroyed after the cataclysm, the surface world is a vibrant place."
Loresa smiled silently when she heard this, "Okay, then I'll start looking forward to it now."
There were no more twists and turns on the way back. Soon, the supernatural creatures from Earth returned to where they had started: the Kuiper Station in the solar system's shielding zone. Through a series of temporarily opened teleportation portals, these paranormal beings, who had been sightseeing in another world for ten days (including the round trip and the time spent traveling between planets), reappeared in front of their family members.
They had countless travel experiences to tell their clansmen, countless insights and knowledge to share with the sages of the clan, and even ancient artifacts from their hometowns to display. The rune dwarves brought back transcribed scrolls containing their ancient writing, Gene Lucas brought back scrolls recording the myths of the blood ancestors, the Eben brothers brought back stone tablets from the werewolf sacred mountain, the representatives of the Ankatro family brought back fragments of the walls of the golden city of Alamanda, Katrina brought back twenty gigabytes of photos and videos and stones from the seabed of Aerym, and Hesperiana brought back six pounds of roasted skewers and more than twenty pounds of local specialty snacks—Hao Ren didn't know that this little bat spirit liked to eat so much, most likely it was a sequela of being starved when she was with Vivian back then...
What happened to these paranormal beings after they went home was not what Hao Ren was concerned about. After confirming that everyone had safely passed through the teleportation portal, he directly brought the volunteers needed by Raven 12345 to the "Divine Realm." There were a total of ten volunteers. In addition to Loresa, the "perfect sample," and five pure-blooded ancient species from the Plane of Dreams, there were also four pure-blooded demon hunters, including Bai Huo and Hassu. In this way, these volunteers completely covered all sample situations: "mutated samples" that had crossed the Wall of Reality and were affected by the sin of divine blood and the impact of the world; "pure samples" that had not crossed the Wall of Reality and remained in their original form in the Plane of Dreams; and the initial products of divine cells, in the intermediate state between mortals and deified beings, retaining all traces of artificial transformation "perfect sample." It could be said that Hao Ren's "sampling" completely exceeded the original plan. The situation was so good that he felt that if Raven 12345 didn't give him a triple year-end bonus this time, she would be letting down the reputation of God's family...
The teleportation light curtain gradually dissipated in the air. Hao Ren led ten volunteers and stood in front of his own God's gorgeous bungalow. What relieved him was that his neurotic goddess sister didn't seem to be having an episode recently. The bungalow hadn't been blown into ruins, the garden hadn't been burned to ashes, there were no bomb craters on the small square, and the fountain in front of the house was spraying normal water instead of streaks of lightning—this peaceful scene made him put aside all his previous worries. He had originally prepared to lead a group of guests to visit the scene of Raven 12345's self-destruction of her property. He had even thought about how to explain the magical phenomenon of God demolishing Paradise when she had nothing to do... After all, this wasn't the first or second time this had happened.
After secretly taking a breath, Hao Ren put on a smile, turned around and spread his hands with his back to the bungalow, "Welcome to the source of truth in this universe—this is where the goddess lives..."
Before he could finish his words, he suddenly felt a violent shaking coming from under his feet, followed by a deafening explosion behind him, mixed with the roar of the entire house collapsing.
The expression on Hao Ren's face froze in that brilliant smile, while Bai Huo opposite him carefully raised his finger and pointed behind him, "Hao Ren... the source of truth exploded."
"What the?!" Hao Ren turned his head stiffly and saw that the beautiful bungalow that had been standing there just now had turned into a pile of rubble. A large amount of light blue arcane energy was streaming everywhere in the air, countless dust was rising from the rubble, and the last pillar of the house was slowly collapsing in front of his eyes. The whole scene was very Terminator, very Hollywood, very Raven 12345...
It made Hao Ren want to curse.
"Don't do this..." After a brief moment of stunned silence, he hurriedly ran towards the ruins that were still filled with smoke and plasma, "You're my own sister, why did you blow it up again!!"
A beam of light suddenly shot up into the sky from the ruins, causing Hao Ren to instinctively slam on the brakes and stop in place. Then, a holographic projection of Raven 12345 appeared in the beam of light. She didn't look too embarrassed. Except for her messy hairstyle, she was neat and tidy all over. The background behind her was a huge vortex filled with red light, bloody mist, and lightning, like the eye of a storm. The scale of the vortex was extremely large, and there was a chaotic nothingness around it that was difficult to determine the boundaries of. It was obviously not located in this space, but the explosion that occurred in the bungalow was most likely related to the vortex behind Raven 12345.
At first, Hao Ren thought that his goddess sister had had another fit of madness and blown up her own house, but after seeing the huge energy vortex behind Raven 12345 and the dancing runes and lines around the energy vortex, he forcefully swallowed the ridicule that had rushed to his throat and instead widened his eyes and asked curiously, "Boss, what are you doing... Did you blow up the Divine Realm with such a big commotion?"
"Hey, I did a little crisis prevention project," Raven 12345 waved her hand, and a powerful stream of red light rushed out of the vortex behind her. This stream of light instantly formed an extremely complex array of runes in the void, and then gradually dissipated into the darkness: Obviously, this huge energy structure was still being perfected, "No need to worry, it's just a little unexpected energy leak, anyway, this house explodes often, I'm used to repairing it..."
Hao Ren: "..."
Such a big commotion was still "a little energy leak"? And what was a "small crisis prevention project"? What kind of project was this goddess sister tinkering with at home when she had nothing to do?
"Cough cough, don't ask about the details yet," Raven 12345 seemed a little embarrassed and coughed twice to change the subject, "You're... oh, you brought the volunteers over? Which one is Loresa?"
"This is her," Hao Ren quickly pulled out the "Elf Queen," who was standing at the back of the line with a confused look on her face—in fact, it wasn't just this Queen who was confused, all ten of them were stunned the moment they saw Paradise explode in front of them, "She's the one I mentioned in my report."
"Hmm... a replica of the magic emperor of Holletta, is it?" Raven 12345's holographic projection nodded and looked at Loresa carefully. At that moment, Loresa suddenly felt an indescribably powerful will sweep over her. This will was so powerful that it even made her feel that every hair, every cell, and every basic particle that made up her body was instantly understood. Her pride and joy, her spirit and soul, seemed to disappear without any effect in front of this will. It wasn't until the goddess's projection in mid-air shifted her gaze that she felt her own existence again.
However, that infinitely powerful gaze was just a look conveyed by a holographic image.
Loresa instantly tensed up all her nerves and truly realized that she was facing a true god—at least some existence that she could never understand or resist. She nervously looked at Raven 12345's image, and the latter spoke at this time, her voice seemed to echo directly in everyone's mind:
"Wow, your hair is the same color as mine—"
Loresa: "?"