Chapter 220 Departure and New Complications

Amidst Hessiana's reluctant farewell (mainly directed at Vivian), the group left the sanctuary. The real Athens outside was still bathed in sunshine, bustling and peaceful. No one would have imagined the breathtaking battle that had taken place in the shadows of this seemingly tranquil city. The Demon Hunters hadn't completely withdrawn from the city. After the ancients risked their lives to drive them out of the sanctuary, a portion of the Demon Hunters had established some new strongholds in the city. These strongholds would likely remain for over a century, monitoring and suppressing the development of the shadow sanctuary. However, the Demon Hunters couldn't possibly launch another attack for the time being—the Shadow Interlayer had been restarted, and the Demon Hunters had suffered considerable losses in this operation. Nowadays, they could no longer raise a mighty army of the church and exorcists to sweep across an area like they did in the mythical era. Moreover, they still had to monitor paranormal activities in other parts of the world, so large-scale operations like today's weren't so easy to organize.

Just as Hessiana had said, everything would continue as before, only with an additional batch of new departed souls.

Fearing detection by the Demon Hunters in Athens, the group didn't linger. Instead, they completed the formalities directly and boarded a plane to return home, except this time there was an extra person in the team: Hesperides was traveling with them.

"Are you sure you have a way to dispel the Demon Hunter's power?" Hesperides was still a bit skeptical about Hao Ren's promise. She had only left Athens with this group because of Vivian's guarantee, but the thought of the hole in her head that had been plaguing her for thousands of years made her feel that this matter was unreliable.

Hao Ren looked at the ornate headband on Hesperides' head and smiled confidently: "Don't worry, we have professional equipment here."

Offering to help Hesperides heal her injury wasn't a whim on Hao Ren's part. In fact, he wanted to take this opportunity to study some things.

Hao Ren had always been very interested in the power of the Demon Hunters. He had heard some things about Demon Hunter training from Nangong Wuyue and Nangong Sanba, and had discovered many doubts: Demon Hunter training focused more on cultivating their temperament and knowledge about "demonic creatures," while a large portion of their various skills and magic weren't actually acquired through training. These powers stemmed from talent. A newborn Demon Hunter possessed these things from birth. Whether it was exorcism power, spatial teleportation, or even those complex spells, things that should normally be mastered through learning were actually the result of heredity. It was precisely for this reason that the Demon Hunters were a race that valued "talent" highly. A newborn Demon Hunter with excellent bloodline and strong talent would receive extremely special care, because as long as they grew up healthy, the power they possessed could far exceed those mediocre hard workers—this didn't sound fair, but it was a characteristic that had remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years.

This fact made Hao Ren have great doubts about the Demon Hunter race. He wanted to study this aspect, and now Hesperides happened to have a millennium-old brain hole in her head. This was a sample of power left by an early Demon Hunter with pure bloodline and excellent talent, and nothing was more suitable for research than this.

Of course, Hao Ren also took away many other research specimens from the shadow sanctuary: some Demon Hunter blood, hair and tissue samples, weapons, and Demon Hunter's commonly used body enhancement potions. Taking these things out of the dimensional pocket could fill at least two bookshelves. When they left, Hessiana even muttered that Hao Ren had finally done something related to human wizards—becoming interested in corpses…

Hao Ren didn't think this was anything to be happy about. He felt uneasy just walking around with such a large pile of creepy things in his dimensional pocket, and Doudou's protests were quite serious: the little one was also staying in the dimensional pocket, and her fish tank was next to the pile of junk. The little one felt that her sea view room had been severely threatened, so Hao Ren had to put up a circle of Spongebob Squarepants posters around Doudou's fish tank…

The journey in between doesn't need to be described in detail, anyway it was basically spent in Lily's balabala. Finally, the group landed at a remote small airport, changed to an airport bus to run to the city, then changed to a broken bus to run to the south of the city, then changed to an even more broken bus to run to the southern suburbs. The bus even broke down in the middle of the journey, and a group of people had to trek for twenty minutes between the desolate old streets to rush home. Only Hesperides, who had seen great winds and waves, remained calm all the way. If you changed to any girl with a normal worldview, she should have started to suspect that Hao Ren was a trafficker who specialized in selling women to mountainous areas and started planning to call the police. Finally, when the old Hao family house finally appeared in front of everyone, Hesperides breathed a sigh of relief: "Fortunately… I thought I was going to live in a cave…"

Hao Ren's eyebrows stood up: "What did you imagine my house to be?"

There was no hint of a joke on Hesperides' face: "Don't mind, I'm not being sarcastic—I know a lot of human wizards who live in caves. They have eccentric behaviors and like to do some extremely dangerous research. They're not allowed to stay where there are many people at all. But nowadays there are fewer and fewer wizards…"

"Because the Demon Hunters are cracking down too hard?"

Vivian spread her hands beside her: "Because the tourism industry is too developed, and the people who open mountains and mine stones are becoming more and more ferocious. There's no way to stay in the mountains these days. Last year, a wizard in Zhejiang was half-killed while doing an experiment in a cave—and now he's still in a lawsuit with the owner of the quarry."

Hesperides sighed: "Those who can't hide themselves these days are basically dead."

Hao Ren thought for a long time, and felt that the main reason why those wizards couldn't survive was that they didn't have active enough thinking—if they used the effort they spent on magic to slightly study how to make money, then they wouldn't lack caves to be a coal boss in Shanxi. If that didn't work, they could still go to Shennongjia to challenge the limits of the human body!

Of course, what happened to the wizards had nothing to do with his group. Hao Ren quickly threw this matter to the back of his mind and led a group of people back to his long-lost big house. As expected, the house had accumulated a layer of dust again, but it was much better than the last time he ran to another world for more than half a month. Vivian was busy inside and out, starting to clean up the house, and even Becky followed up to help. Hesperides looked at Vivian's busy appearance in surprise and asked, "Is this where you usually live?"

"How is it? Pretty good, right!" Vivian had just found a rag and was about to fetch water to wipe the table when she heard the words and proudly showed off to Hesperides, "The living conditions now are much better than before!"

Hesperides didn't know what she was thinking, but just looked at Vivian with a strange expression: "…It's not quite what I imagined, but anyway it's indeed much better than I expected. It looks like you're quite satisfied with this life now?"

"Of course I'm satisfied. It's very peaceful, very lively, no worries about food and clothing, and there are often fun things happening. It's much better than wandering around aimlessly like before," Vivian replied while busying herself, and then shouted in the utility room, "Hey… why is the water out?"

"The pipes might be frozen," Nangong Wuyue ran to the utility room, surrounded by water vapor. "Don't panic, I'll help! What kind of water do you want? Pure or mineral? Slightly alkaline is also fine…"

Hao Ren quickly reminded from behind: "Keep it down! You almost flooded the kitchen last time! Oh, and by the way, give Doudou a bath…"

Hesperides looked at this family's daily life in surprise. The usual scene of this small "sanctuary" was obviously different from what she had imagined. There was no infighting in the shadow fortress, no layers of traps. A large group of aliens of various races were mixed together without fighting. The place didn't feel like a sanctuary at all, but more like an ordinary… people's home.

Hao Ren's voice interrupted her thoughts: "Well, are you tired? If you're not tired, let's go to the basement to do a scan first, and I'll make a treatment plan for you."

As soon as Hesperides nodded, she heard Lily say solemnly next to her: "Basement physical examination.avi?"

Hao Ren slapped the husky on the head: "Can't you usually watch something positive? Oh, and you come over to help too, since you're idle anyway."

Hesperides followed confusedly to the basement, but was stunned when she saw the scene inside.

"Are you… sure you're a wizard?" She glared at Hao Ren, "You should tell me about the treatment plan first, so I can be mentally prepared."