"There's something in the dreamscape. It's escaped from our hearts…"

Morian pinched his chin, repeating the words with a puzzled expression. He seemed unfamiliar with such knowledge. The old knight turned to Veronica: "Your Highness, this sounds like a wizard's trick."

"You mean mind magic?" Veronica frowned. "These soldiers seemed to have suffered immense fear before they died, and the commander showed signs of madness… It does look like they were hit by a wizard's mind magic, but I've never heard of any illusion with such a strong effect, and such a wide range—those who can guard the Chaos Boundary are veterans of a hundred battles, and each has undergone at least a year of willpower training. Their resistance to illusions is very strong."

Hao Ren watched from the side without commenting. In fact, he knew far more than Veronica and Morian—he had witnessed the most powerful soul force in the universe and faced the mind storms that could drive an entire city mad. He knew that many powerful extraordinary minds could do what he saw before him, such as the murmurs of the First Born and the dreams of the Guardian Giants, but these things were difficult to explain to the local natives.

And he couldn't be sure what exactly the soldiers in this outpost had encountered, because he hadn't seen any traces of the First Born's tentacles, nor had he sensed the Guardian Giant's aura. A mind storm might have indeed occurred here, but the perpetrator had not appeared.

After thinking for a while, Hao Ren asked indirectly, "Have you encountered any chaos monsters that are good at mental attacks?"

"The existence of Chaos servants itself can interfere with the human mind," Veronica shook her head. "They don't need to specifically master mental attack skills… Wait, could it be that a new species of demon has been bred in Chaos?"

The princess's guess immediately made the old knight next to her nervous. Although Hao Ren just asked casually, it made them both have overly far-reaching associations. Morian immediately stood up: "We must return to the civilized world as soon as possible. I'm afraid what happened here hasn't had time to be reported back."

Veronica nodded: "We'll go along the Bramble Road. There are still several outposts on this line, and maybe we can find something else."

The Bramble Road was a main road back when the Shadow Jungle hadn't been completely corrupted. It was originally a road often taken by the elves in the forest when communicating with humans, but as the forest completely turned into a land of chaos, the road was also swallowed by chaos. Poisonous plants and animated bushes grew on the roadside, and the softened and deformed soil made the road rugged and difficult to navigate. For ordinary travelers, there was no way to survive in this jungle.

But for the knights of the kingdom, the Bramble Road was still a passage—although there was a blockade of corruption power, the crystal dust that the Elven Kingdom had buried in the road slabs was still working. The danger of the Bramble Road was still a little lower than the surrounding wilderness. At least on this road, man-eating bushes were not yet everywhere.

Under Veronica's leadership, the team quickly found the second outpost located deeper in the forest.

Although they had prepared for the worst, everyone's heart was inevitably covered with a deeper shadow after seeing the corpses all over the outpost: the soldiers here had also all died, and the way they died was almost exactly the same as in the first outpost. The dead seemed to have experienced an extremely terrifying scene before their death. Their faces were twisted and terrifying, and their bodies were covered with self-inflicted wounds. The corpses had also begun to rot, but other than that, there were no traces of battle inside or outside the outpost.

The enemy did not launch an attack on the material level. The battle was completed in the spiritual world, and obviously, the spirit of mortals collapsed.

The third outpost was the same, but Morian found a wizard near a small stove fire in the center of the outpost.

The wizard also committed suicide in a frenzy, but he had set up a large number of defensive runes around himself before his death, and fragments of his magic guide were found scattered on the ground around the stove fire: sacrificing one's magic guide is a wizard's last resort, and it is only used when facing a life-and-death enemy. Obviously, the wizard who died near the stove fire, like the commander of the first outpost, also engaged in a desperate battle in a hallucination.

It's just that the mysterious and unpredictable magic power failed to protect this wizard. He ended his life sitting in the center of his defensive magic circle. His heart was burned into a hole, which was the result of detonating his own magic power.

Based on the death scenes of the commander of the first outpost and the wizard of the third outpost, Hao Ren made a speculation: Although the two of them also fell into madness, they did not show signs of being greatly frightened. This may be the role of the stove fire device. Although the stove fire failed to completely protect their spirits, it at least allowed them to persist longer than the soldiers who died in other parts of the camp.

And if the stove fire can have an effect on that "invisible enemy," the culprit of this matter naturally falls on Chaos.

On the way to the fourth outpost, Veronica's expression was terribly gloomy. This princess was not an introverted person. In fact, the "Battlefield Rose of Taros" has always been known for her carefree temper and her un-princess-like words and deeds. When she passed an ancient tree, she punched the trunk: "A hundred of the most outstanding veterans! To die so aggrieved in the camp! We don't even know what the enemy looks like!"

The ancient tree was instantly awakened, and an angry and evil face appeared on the pitted trunk. The branches turned into sharp wooden spears and stabbed at Veronica: "Eat you!!"

Veronica drew out her long sword and drew an arc, and the scorching light instantly cut off all the branches attacking her: "Shut up, go back to sleep!"

The ancient tree trembled, and all the branches gathered up: "Okay."

Hao Ren: "..."

Veronica had been very dull on the way due to fatigue and pressure, and he only now saw the fiery side of this knight princess.

"A new enemy has appeared in Chaos," Morian raised his eyebrows and quietly glanced at Veronica. "Your Highness, stay calm. Our main priority at the moment is to survive in the forest so that we can report what we have seen to the Western Territory General truthfully."

The next journey seemed even more dull, and after discovering the fourth outpost that had lost its vitality, the dullness of the atmosphere reached its peak.

Although no one said it explicitly, a fact was already in front of Veronica's eyes: all the outposts established by the kingdom on the west side of the Shadow Jungle had probably been拔掉了 (bá diào, uprooted/eliminated).

The Bramble Road was a main road that ran across the west side of the jungle. It happened to pass through every line of defense in the forest. If the outposts along this road had all been destroyed, then the possibility of the same thing happening in other areas would be very high. And more importantly, along the way, none of the attacked outposts had been investigated and cleaned up, which meant that the nearby outposts had not sent anyone to check the abnormal situation.

The stove fire outposts in the Shadow Jungle exchanged intelligence with nearby outposts once a day, so once a problem occurred in an outpost, other outposts would soon be aware of it. And according to the degree of decay of the corpses that Hao Ren and the others found, the first outpost was attacked many days ago. Under such circumstances, no one came to investigate, which only had one possibility—

All the outposts were finished.

The foundation of the defense system that the kingdom had built up over two centuries had vanished into thin air in such an inexplicable way, which made Veronica remain silent for the second half of the journey. The knights also fell silent, and this dullness also infected Hao Ren. He couldn't find anyone to talk to, so he had no choice but to continue to study how to restore communication in the spiritual world alone.

Until they finally reached the edge of the Shadow Jungle.

The trees in front became sparse, and the unpleasant oppressive atmosphere in the air was suddenly reduced a lot, as if suddenly crossing a certain boundary. After crossing two towering ancient trees growing intertwined, Hao Ren suddenly felt a lightness all over his body.

He saw a slightly undulating hilly area in front of him, and in the distance, there were two majestic mountains. Between the mountains, a towering pillar of light pierced the sky, even tearing apart the dark clumps in the sky, revealing the bright white sky.

Under the pillar of light, Hao Ren vaguely saw a magnificent city wall piled up with stones. Behind the city wall, there seemed to be towering fortresses and arrow towers. On both sides of the mountains, he could also see some man-made objects built along the mountain's terrain—these buildings distributed throughout the mountains were all bathed in the light of order. The intensity of that light was far from comparable to the light of the stove fire that Hao Ren had seen before.

Standing on the edge of the dark forest and looking at the mountains in the distance, which were plated with a layer of light, was as shocking as seeing heaven from hell.

If Hao Ren was a local, he would know that it was because of this magnificent scenery that the two mountains in the distance were called the "Gates of Heaven" by the mountain people of the Taros Kingdom. But even if he didn't know this name, it didn't matter. He could still imagine how much a person who had been trekking in the Chaos realm for many days would be touched when he saw a bright and shining world—the knights beside him had already cheered.

"It's the Western Territory Fortress!" When Veronica saw the radiant light of order, she finally swept away the depression of the past few days. The light of order was so powerful that ordinary people could break through the blockade of the Chaos mist when looking at the Western Territory Mountains here. As long as she saw the intensity of the light of order, she knew that the Western Territory Fortress had not fallen. "Great, our fortress is still there!"