Chapter 106 Inconvenient Truths

Actually, Hao Ren was quite curious whether it was appropriate for the Holy See Allied Forces to so casually post information about the Demon Lord's army outside—given Izhaks' notoriety over the past few centuries, any news related to the Demon Lord's army would cause social unrest. It seemed the Holy See Allied Forces didn't care about that at all.

However, after Lanina explained it, Hao Ren understood what was going on:

The Ten-Year War had just ended, and before that, there were centuries of the Demon Lord Empire's rule. The whole world hadn't broken free from a certain "inertia." News related to the Demon Lord's army might cause short-term disturbances, but it wouldn't cause panic anymore…

Because the generations who would panic about it were all dead.

Regardless of whether this war had a right or wrong side, and regardless of whether Izhaks' and the Seven Heroes' ambitions were nobler, what people couldn't deny was that, including long-lived races like the elves, the Demon Lord's invasion over four hundred years plus the Ten-Year War had killed off one or even several generations of all races in this world. Those who survived were almost numb. Both demons and mortals were like that.

Three days later, a ragtag force composed of mercenaries and adventurers departed from the Cadeuthus Plane, heading to the Second Demon Plane via a transit station.

All portals leading to the Demon Plane were strictly monitored, and since the Demon Lord's army was defeated and retreated from the mortal realm, Cadeuthus, the largest "world transit station," had sealed all portals connecting to the Demon Plane (of course, only the portals known to humans; Izhaks' escape routes left centuries ago were obviously not included). Therefore, the mercenaries gathered here had to travel with the Allied Forces to the Demon World from other nearby planes.

Hao Ren and the others mingled in this group, successfully passing the extremely lax review system under the identity of a temporarily registered wandering mercenary group. Of course, it couldn't be blamed on the Holy See Allied Forces for not strictly reviewing the mercenaries—they were going to the Demon Plane to risk their lives anyway, so what was there to review? Those who dared to follow the call of the Holy See and the Seven Heroes to find demons for a duel were either saints or madmen, and neither of those types needed to be reviewed.

Normal people would never guess that the Demon Lord himself would take this opportunity to sneak back to his old home: this couldn't be described as unconventional, it was like throwing out a "one of clubs" while someone else was playing "Fight the Landlord"…

After Hao Ren and the others left the Cadeuthus Plane, they were sent to a deserted wasteland by the portal. This wasteland was the only continent in this entire space: this place was called Mendukain, which in Orcish meant "barren land."

Hao Ren and his group wore low-key, coarse cloth cloaks and mingled in the motley crew composed of all sorts of people, listening to a mercenary veteran with a scar on his face introduce the desert: "Mendukain was an Orcish settlement four hundred years ago. It is said that there were many oases here back then, and the Orcs built a city and dozens of towns in the desert. The entire plane relied on mineral sand trade for survival, but later the Demon Lord's army looted all the Orcs in Mendukain, and this place was completely abandoned. No one has rebuilt it for hundreds of years. After the Ten-Year War, the Seven Heroes called on all races to seal the demon portals of all major planes, and had great mages establish portals in relatively desolate and remote places as a substitute. That's when Mendukain became useful again."

"There is a large portal in the center of the desert leading to the Second Demon Plane. Across the portal is a Holy See Allied Forces outpost. After we go over, we'll have one foot in hell," another tall, thin man with a turban wrapped around his head said cheerfully. "I wonder how many people will be left in that ghostly place this time…"

A mercenary next to him immediately complained: "Can't you say something auspicious!"

Hao Ren perfunctorily chatted and laughed with these strange mercenaries who licked blood from their blades and had a belly full of heroism, then retreated to Izhaks' side: "You were fierce back then, taking away the entire population of the plane?"

"Four hundred years ago, Mendukain was actually a place where the Orcs exiled their own people. The so-called city was just a huge slum, and countless Orcs were waiting to die in this barren place. I took them away to mine obsidian for me. Although they did hard labor, at least they ate better than in the desert," Izhaks shrugged. "The world is indignant for those Orcs, but in fact, the Mendukain Orcs are the most loyal group among all the races under my rule."

Hao Ren looked up into the distance and saw a huge, gray-yellow pillar faintly reaching the sky at the end of the desert: "What is that thing?"

"The Pillar of Mendukain. It supports the continent under our feet. Orcish legends say that once this pillar breaks, the entire Mendukain continent will fall into the Dark Sun—they firmly believe that there is a dark sun on the back of the continent under their feet, competing with the sun in the sky that never sets for control of the continent," Izhaks smiled. "There is no night in this space. The entire continent maintains an endless polar day. The sun moves along a curve in the sky and has never set for tens of thousands of years. In fact, the Orcish legends are somewhat based on fact, because there is indeed a brown dwarf on the back of the Mendukain continent. Due to gravitational locking, that brown dwarf will never rise above the horizon. Only those who dare to run to the edge of the continent can see the faint light of the brown dwarf peeking out from the endless abyss in a chance encounter."

Lili gave a long "oh" to express her amazement. In fact, as a science idiot, she didn't understand what it meant at all. She only knew that the continent under her feet was sandwiched between two stars. She looked curiously at the gray-yellow pillar reaching the sky at the end of the horizon. "That thing really supports the entire continent? Does it extend from the 'ground sun'?"

"It's just an unreliable legend," Izhaks spread his hands. "In fact, it's just a sandstorm, but for some reason… it hasn't stopped for eight hundred years. The area around the Pillar of Mendukain is very dangerous. We shouldn't be going there."

Izhaks was right. The artificial portal opened by the great mages of the mortal realm was not far ahead, at a safe distance from the Pillar of Mendukain. Before long, Hao Ren and the others arrived near the ruins of a city buried by wind and sand. Based on the architectural style of the city ruins, this was obviously the home built by the Orcs who were exiled here many years ago. Now the ancient city was gone, leaving only ruins, and the Holy See Allied Forces, these later arrivals, had built a small town near the city ruins as a stronghold, controlling and maintaining the artificial demon portal.

The portal was a dark red vortex with a radius of more than ten meters, lying diagonally on the desert in a very strange way, with an angle of about thirty degrees to the ground. It looked like the face of a sundial. Around the portal was a circle of binding devices made of dark red rune stones. These rune stones floated in the air, emanating a hot and oppressive aura that seemed to come from the Demon Plane.

The Allied Forces soldiers guarding the portal verified the identities of this group of mercenaries and the Allied Forces officers in charge, and then ordered the gate to be activated.

The dark red vortex lying on the ground suddenly became active, and the entire gate stood up with a crash. The scene in the vortex twisted for a while, and then presented the red sky and barren land of the Demon Plane.

Hao Ren and his group followed the team and stepped into the gate. Izhaks muttered softly as he crossed the gate: "I hope it's real news…"

The scene in front of him changed, and Hao Ren felt the desert atmosphere suddenly disappear, and the faint smell of sulfur unique to the Demon Plane wafted into his nostrils.

Before him was a dark red sky and a barren black-red land extending out.

Nangong Wuyue, who was beside him, put her hands on her hips and looked at the unique landscape of the Demon Plane with high spirits, full of heroism: "It's time to spit snake venom again!"

"Can you not be so heroic at this time," Hao Ren threw a collar over. "I forgot about this thing before… Actually, you can wear this life-support device to adapt to the environment."

Wuyue stared blankly at the collar in her hand, and finally couldn't help but jump up: "Why didn't you think of it before?!"

Hao Ren sighed: "Isn't this a limitation of thinking? This thing is designed to perform space missions… And to be honest, you're the only one among us who can't fully adapt to the environment. The rest of us don't need it at all. I only remembered that I could give you this thing after seeing Lao Wang give that little girl named Vanessa a talisman…"

Nangong Wuyue held the collar with mixed feelings, and was determined to take care of herself in the future: she couldn't count on this guy in front of her.

Lili, like the other mercenaries, was curiously looking around: this was one of the many strongholds established by the Holy See Allied Forces in the Demon Plane, and also the largest human base in the Second Plane. It was built on an easily defended highland, with a gentle downward slope in front.

The entire stronghold didn't cover a large area. In sight were human-style barracks and towers.

Back then, Izhaks ran rampant in all the Demon Planes, suppressing the other demon lords so that they couldn't hold their heads up. As a result, after the Ten-Year War, the Holy See Allied Forces took advantage of their momentum and the weakness of the other demon lords to expand their outposts to every Demon Plane.

Although they had to put in a lot of effort to maintain these strongholds, no matter what, nearly a year had passed, and these strongholds inserted under the noses of the demon lords had all persisted. Many demon lords couldn't remove these strongholds, but the Holy See Allied Forces had worked hard to create a balance: the struggle between the demon lords and the constantly growing military power of the Holy See Allied Forces, these two factors allowed these subtly positioned strongholds to survive to this day.

However, just when Hao Ren thought that he could be safe and sound today, he suddenly heard a commotion in the distance.

The commotion quickly spread to this ragtag army that had just been supported from the mortal realm, and Hao Ren finally understood what was happening:

A Holy See Allied Forces unit was in a direct battle with the demons of Banu K拉克 in the Broken Plains area!