Chapter 107 A Hasty Demolition

Hao Ren’s response was swift and decisive. After a series of explosions and gunfire, the entire stone platform and golden sarcophagus were shrouded in dust and blue crystal fragments. To be honest, Hao Ren had even considered throwing out an annihilation bomb – if he hadn’t been worried about the whole place collapsing…

Heasely didn’t even have time to react after the explosion. She stared blankly at the coffin, which had only been opened halfway before being blown away along with the platform. After a long while, she hesitantly said, “Why did you just blow it up… Shouldn’t the typical scenario be that the adventurers stare in shock as some millennium-old Boss revives, then the two sides stand dumbfounded while some background music plays, interspersed with various behind-the-scenes explanations, and finally, they fight three hundred rounds…?”

Looks like this little bat likes to watch TV in her spare time.

Hao Ren blew at the muzzle of his gun, which wasn't actually smoking, and glanced askance at Heasely, “Nonsense, are we supposed to just wait for it to slowly revive? Anyone who spends hundreds or thousands of years lying in a coffin, just waiting to get up and vent their anger when someone digs up their grave, is definitely not a good person… Uh, Vivian, don't mind me, I wasn't talking about you…”

Vivian: “…I know. I wanted to tell you – that thing doesn’t seem to be dead.”

Hao Ren's expression froze instantly, and he looked towards the still-smoky stone platform (which at this point had been reduced to less than a third of its original size, the upper part completely vaporized or annihilated) as if he had seen a ghost. In the dust above the platform, wisps of black and red aura were visibly coalescing, and the temperature of the entire hall had dropped to the point where one could see their breath.

Not dead!!

Not dead even after being directly shot by the psionic pistol!!

Hao Ren felt his heart skip a beat, because this was absolutely unprecedented – it wasn't that he hadn't encountered enemies that the inspector's pistol couldn't deal with before, but those enemies were basically huge guys like the First Born and Lokenmarton. Their sheer size meant that the psionic pistol's limited destructive range couldn't inflict enough damage. However, after excluding such size differences, his pistol should theoretically have the power to instantly kill any target!

No matter how one looked at it, the thing crawling out of the coffin didn't seem to exceed the destructive range of the psionic pistol, especially since the entire coffin had already been taken out in one shot by the psionic rays.

How did it avoid the bombardment of the rays in advance? Or was it truly a super-being capable of withstanding psionic energy?

Hao Ren didn't have much time to think carefully, because the dust on the stone platform was gradually dissipating, and the figure coalescing from the black and red mist was about to solidify. This time, he didn't rashly throw a bunch of explosives at it like before. Instead, he readied both his pistol and rifle, and had everyone else assume a battle-ready stance.

He intended to see exactly what that "thing" was, but he didn't want to recklessly put his people in danger. While preparing to fight, he also silently recited the incantation for a high-level divine spell – even though the process of reciting the incantation was enough to cause immense damage to the caster's worldview, now was clearly not the time to worry about that – a milky white light emanated from his body and coalesced into a faint barrier in front of everyone. Lines of text flowed across the barrier, all real-time updating comments, some praising the goddess Raven 12345 for her brilliance and eternal might, some saying that following God gets you fed, some saying that the goddess was truly a mudslide in the celestial realm, and of course, many more were censored profanities.

The profanity-laden side faced outwards, indicating that this barrier was both offensive and defensive…

The little demon Elizabeth watched as a shield rose before her, and drawled, "Ooh – bullet-screen protection…"

As the barrier formed, the black and red mist on the stone platform finally solidified into a tangible entity.

It was a woman, enveloped in swirling black and red energy. Her body seemed to constantly shift between reality and illusion, sometimes solidifying, sometimes allowing glimpses of the hall behind her. A head of blood-red hair floated behind her, the ends constantly shedding black fragments like ashes. A hazy mist obscured the woman's face, and Hao Ren could only see a pair of blood-colored lights shining where her eyes should be, like the fire of a world being consumed, filled with an aura of collapse at a single glance.

"Hiss—" Vivian instantly gasped. "My… evil thought-form?"

"So it really is your evil thought-form?" Hao Ren said without turning his head. "Looks like it… but this evil thought-form doesn't even have a face."

"What do you mean, no face?" Vivian was taken aback. "I can see it clearly, it has the same face as me."

Hao Ren was on high alert, and couldn't help but pause when he heard Vivian's words, "Wait, you can see her face? Doesn't she have a layer of mist covering her face?"

"No," Vivian answered matter-of-factly. "Are we seeing different things again?"

Not just Hao Ren, but everyone else, including Izhaks and Lolita, looked puzzled. Clearly, the "evil thought-form" in their eyes was the same as what Hao Ren saw, a blurry figure without a face, while Vivian was the only one who could clearly see the evil thought-form's appearance!

However, the situation didn't allow them to start discussing this issue. The evil thought-form on the stone platform had completely coalesced, and like every mad Vivian, her soul was filled with pure destructive desire—

She tilted her head back and let out a piercing shriek, instantly shattering a layer of fragments from all the stone walls in the hall. Then, she raised her hand and pointed, and a scarlet shockwave appeared out of thin air, slamming heavily into the protective barrier in front of Hao Ren's group!

Negative energy and the divine spell barrier collided violently. Hao Ren felt his spiritual world shake, but after the shaking subsided, the divine spell barrier remained firmly in place in front of the group, while the ground in front of the barrier had been transformed into a black swamp-like quagmire by the shockwave. Nauseating bubbles containing poisonous gas constantly rose from the surface of the corrupted, flowing quagmire, a horrifying sight.

The evil thought-form didn't have much in the way of thought. Even though its attack was blocked, it wasn't discouraged. It raised its hand again, and another shockwave hurtled towards the divine spell barrier.

At the same time, Hao Ren issued a command to the data terminal: "Analyze the attack pattern!"

"Boom!"

The two energies collided violently once more. This time, the shockwave even caused the entire pyramid to shake violently. The data terminal's voice sounded sharp and shrill amidst the shaking: "Chaotic power, possesses level-one divinity! Repeat, possesses level-one divinity!!"

Hao Ren's expression didn't change. He fired two shots in the direction of the evil thought-form, then shouted, "Everyone who can attack from a distance, attack! This barrier is one-way!"

Izhaks and Elizabeth instantly hurled huge chaotic energy fireballs, and Lolita's holy flames shot through the air like arrows. Their attacks collided with the evil thought-form's third shockwave – the combined attack of the three was swallowed by the negative energy shockwave, and the resulting explosion instantly shattered the huge stone pillar in the hall!

The Great Pyramid shook once again, and this time the shaking was greater than ever before. However, Hao Ren remained calm amidst the dizzying shaking. He had realized why the psionic pistol, which could instantly kill all mortal things, couldn't kill the evil thought-form.

Because of divinity—the evil thought-form before him was unlike any opponent he had faced before. It possessed divinity, even a level-one divinity far exceeding that of Lokenmarton in the past. This meant that its divinity came directly from a true god, and could even be regarded as an extension of a certain true god!

Psionic energy was the energy of the gods. Its instant kill of mundane things came from its superiority in rank, in other words, its advantage in information priority. With higher authority, psionic energy could unconditionally annihilate all targets, even demigods with a certain degree of divine power. But if the opponent possessed the same information priority, then psionic energy would be no different from ordinary energy.

In Hao Ren's hastily crammed theological (or rather, unified information theory) knowledge, he knew that so-called divinity was actually a numerical value used to describe information priority and degree of interference. If the universe and everything in it was regarded as a self-sustaining data system, then the true gods and their various derivatives were instruction sets with different levels of authority in this system. So, the evil thought-form before him… was undoubtedly a high-level authority.

The situation was not good. The amount of information here was too great.

The battle in the hall became extremely intense from the moment it broke out. The constant collision of various energies tore through the surrounding stone walls again and again. If it weren't for the divine spell barrier that Hao Ren had summoned in advance and the "Old Lady's Protection Series Shield" on everyone, the situation would probably have already started to deteriorate. But even with a series of pre-prepared defensive measures, this battlefield could hardly withstand such a degree of impact.

"Uncle Ren! This place is about to collapse!" Little Elizabeth threw out a chaotic energy fireball the size of two washbasins, and turned to shout at Hao Ren.

The negative energy released by the evil thought-form had already corroded the entire hall into a quagmire, and the escaping power had made the structure of the Great Pyramid itself extremely fragile. The heavy and ancient building was making a low, strained sound. If one looked from the outside, they could clearly see that its central area was collapsing downwards at a visible rate.

Those inside the pyramid could even more clearly experience the accelerating process of the building's collapse.

"Then let it collapse faster!" Hao Ren glanced around and realized that being trapped in this environment filled with negative energy could only make the situation worse. He made a decisive decision, "Everyone listen up, after the pyramid collapses, Vivian and Lily will stay behind and fight this monster with me. Izhaks and Lolita, you two cover everyone's retreat to the edge of the temple, but don't approach those statues unless absolutely necessary, they might still be waiting outside. Any objections?"