Chapter 1 A Martian Mishap

A human probe the size of a small car was slowly advancing across the rust-red surface of Mars. Its pace was so slow it could almost be described as a crawl—due to the distance between Mars and Earth, remote-controlling a rover resulted in an astonishing delay, and it had to proceed at a snail's pace to prevent unrecoverable accidents. But this slow-moving little fellow was far from idle: a camera protruded from its front end, taking pictures of everything as it went, and it was apparently wandering towards the very area where Hao Ren and his group were located.

Considering the rover's speed and the distance between it and the hillside, it would probably take quite a while for the little guy to reach them, but as long as it didn't change direction midway, it would definitely come to this gentle slope and then see…

Hao Ren turned his head and glanced behind him, seeing the ground littered with crisscrossing, rotten, scorched marks, as well as glassy crystals fused by plasma bolts and fel fireballs. In addition to that, there were bound to be various residual fragments. He was immediately dumbfounded: "Why do we run into this situation? Mars is so big, how could we bump into a probe?"

"Whether you run into it or not, you have to clean up," the data terminal grunted. "This planet hasn't been developed yet. Earthlings will send more probes sooner or later. You think you can just leave this mess without cleaning up? Since the rover hasn't seen this place yet, hurry up and tidy up the battlefield to save trouble. But remember not to break the rover, it's protected by Imperial law."

Nangong Sanba turned to look at the mess on the ground: "How are we going to clean up such a large area? Dig it up by the roots?"

"We have two options," Lily said, her ears perked up with a sudden idea. "Option one is to dig up the whole area by the roots, and option two is to find an LCD TV, play a recording of Mars, and then I'll carry the TV in front of the rover's camera…"

Hao Ren was amazed by Lily's brain—had she reached this level, wouldn't she no longer need treatment?

"Considering the rigor and precision of science, we must ensure that all clues are eliminated," Izhaks said, rolling up his sleeves. "I'm a professional in this field, so leave this delicate operation to me…"

Hao Ren felt sweat breaking out on his forehead as he watched the runes light up on Izhaks' arm: "I don't see how your stance is a delicate operation at all…"

Before he could finish speaking, he saw a ray of light appear in the sky, and then a meteor, not too big or too small, drew a diagonal line as it rapidly fell from the horizon. With a deafening bang, a small mushroom cloud slowly rose, resolving all worries with one blast.

Izhaks precisely calculated the meteor's power and descent angle. The rover was just outside the range of the blast, while the traces left by their fight were completely destroyed, including the residual bloodstains (from that evil spirit), which were instantly vaporized. These vapors mixed with the meteor's steam and other space gases, and were instantly scattered by the shockwave, making them impossible to detect.

Of course, the scene of the meteor falling should have been captured by the rover's camera—but compared to aliens fighting, a meteor on Mars was still a relatively normal phenomenon, and frankly, Hao Ren and his group didn't have time to focus on these issues now.

They had to figure out what the thing they summoned today was, and what relationship it had with Vivian.

After confirming and clearing the traces they had left on Mars again, the group quickly returned home. After getting home, the first thing Hao Ren did was check the situation of the summoning circle. He saw that only a slightly blackened patch of land and a pile of messy white ashes remained in the open space behind the house. It seemed that the summoning circle left by Lily had self-destructed after exhausting its energy. The husky girl looked at the pile of ashes on the ground, on the verge of tears: "My shoes… I was planning to wear them this winter…"

"Stop focusing on such bizarre things," Hao Ren grabbed Lily's tail and dragged her back into the house. "Let's see how Vivian is doing first."

Vivian was surrounded by everyone on the sofa, with a confused look on her face. The events of tonight had left her dizzy. Lily and Hao Ren had secretly gone out and done something reckless, dragging her into it without any explanation. The vampire girl felt like she had been hit by a stray bullet. Facing Hao Ren's concerned inquiries, Vivian checked her physical condition: "I feel fine… just a little tired. That guy wasn't easy to deal with."

"Indeed too hard to deal with," Hao Ren clicked his tongue. "Challenging all of us, and almost successfully counter-killing us. If we hadn't cut off her connection with the moonlight in time, I'm afraid none of us would have fared well. Except for you—you were able to cause her so much damage. It seems that thing really has a connection with you."

"You're saying that you summoned 'her' by experimenting with the summoning ritual in the magic book?" Vivian frowned and looked at Lily. "Didn't I tell you not to study those mystical things? They're useless and only bring trouble."

Lily stuck out her tongue and unhesitatingly pointed at Hao Ren: "I said it a long time ago, the blame lies with the landlord…"

"Don't joke around. The landlord does have occasional whims, but without your instigation, his whims wouldn't form into anything substantial," Vivian knew the personalities of this husky and Hao Ren very well. "Let's not discuss other things. You said that 'evil spirit' looks just like me?"

"Exactly the same," Izhaks said in a deep voice. His words were obviously more reliable than anyone else's. "Only the hair color and temperament were different. What did she look like to you at the time? Couldn't you see her face?"

When Vivian heard Izhaks say this, she knew that this matter was probably not far from the truth. She frowned in confusion: "Exactly the same? I don't know what's going on. When I looked at her, it was just a mass of humanoid mist, black tinged with red, like a shadow. The face was also a blur. I couldn't even tell the gender, let alone the appearance."

"This precisely shows that the evil spirit is connected to you," Hao Ren looked at Vivian seriously. "Among all of us, you're the only one who can't see the evil spirit's appearance. Either the evil spirit specifically hid her appearance from you, or there's some kind of mutual interference between you—the evil spirit also fell into confusion when she saw you."

"And the bat was able to land critical hits continuously when fighting that monster! Even with a frying pan!" Lily shouted from the side. "It'd be strange if there wasn't a connection."

Although Hao Ren was a little speechless at Lily's style of description, he had to admit that Vivian's performance at the time was truly stunning, especially when she smacked the evil spirit into a three-second stun and a twenty-meter knockback with a frying pan—her pan strike was almost as imposing as a heaven-cleaving sword.

Vivian was still quite distressed about today's losses: "That pan was quite easy to use… what a pity."

Hao Ren took out that small tube of blood sample from his dimensional pocket. This was a special biological sample collection container, with transparent crystal shells on both sides of the metal tube for observing the inside. It could be seen that the viscous liquid inside had completely calmed down, looking no different from ordinary blood. He twisted the bottom of the metal tube and dripped a little blood sample from the special, backflow-preventing sampling port into a petri dish, handing it to Vivian: "Identify this and see if it's blood."

Vivian took the blood sample, smelled it under her nose, and then stretched out her tongue to taste it, but Hao Ren quickly reminded her from the side: "Be careful! This thing's origins are unknown!"

Vivian felt that made sense, so she separated a small bat from her body and had it lie on the edge of the petri dish to taste the blood droplets inside. She frowned: "It's blood… but it's a little strange. I can't tell what species it is. It's constantly changing."

"Changing?" Hao Ren looked at the sample container in his hand in horror. "Is this thing still alive?"

"No, it's dead. There's not a trace of life left," Vivian and the little bat smacked their lips at the same time, as if sharing the taste. "But it continues to change even in death, constantly transforming into the blood of other creatures… no, that's not right, it just feels like other creatures, but in reality it should be a kind of disguise. The true nature of these bloods is unknown, it's just showing characteristics similar to biological blood."

"How can there be such a thing…" Hao Ren didn't know much about blood magic, but he could still hear that Vivian's description was illogical. "So this thing isn't real blood?"

"Could ordinary blood turn into a person and fight so lively with you?" Vivian rolled her eyes at Hao Ren. "In short, I have to ask Hesperides where this magic book came from. Any witch who could leave such a thing behind must not be an unknown figure, but I've never heard of any witch with such high attainments in blood magic."

As things stood, Vivian didn't believe at all that what was recorded in the magic book was some kind of "summoning ritual." She felt that it was more like a seal. The book sealed a magical creature based on blood magic, and the summoning ritual performed by Lily and Hao Ren by mistake had actually released this creature.

In any case, it seemed that Hesperides' greatest wish was finally about to be realized: Vivian was going to contact her proactively.

Even though it was to question her…