Chapter 1 “Evaporate?!”

“Evaporate?!” The voice coming through the communicator startled both Hao Ren and Lily, the latter immediately shouting, “What evaporate? What are you babbling about?”

“We don’t know what happened either! The monster was quiet all the time, but just now it suddenly started yelling, and then…”

Hao Ren interrupted him, “Don’t say anymore, bring it into the city immediately! We’ll go out and meet you!”

Before long, the strange nightmare monster was brought to the cathedral, along with Lily’s beast guard—after clarifying the situation in the city, these subspecies no longer needed to hide outside the city. Their appearance startled several priests in the Luan Cathedral, but compared to the Shadow of Nightmare, a few subspecies were just a small problem.

The monster was indeed evaporating.

Its body was emitting a large amount of smoke, making a slight hissing sound as if it were rapidly vaporizing. As the smoke dissipated, the monster’s size was also shrinking slowly at a rate almost imperceptible to the naked eye. Although the change was very slow, Hao Ren could still see that it was almost a third smaller than before, and as its size decreased, the monster was obviously in a weaker state.

In fact, this monster had always been quite weak. Ever since it briefly showed signs of rationality in the Black Crow Fortress, it had been in a half-dead state. After being sent to the Holy Land, it was suppressed by the holy power of this place and appeared unusually quiet, but this weakness was not fatal—until the “evaporation” phenomenon appeared.

“It has been in this state for thirty minutes, and it’s getting worse,” said one of the monks who had been outside the city, “Before the evaporation started, it shouted some strange words, but they were illogical and impossible to understand.”

Hao Ren raised his head, “What did it shout?”

The monk thought for a moment, “There was the name Lockmarton, the Abyss of Oblivion, and it repeatedly mentioned the words ‘door’ and ‘seal’… Oh, right, it also mentioned the Endless War, a long battle on the plains… but no history book in Coro has ever mentioned this battle.”

“Is that all?”

The monk spread his hands, “That’s all. Oh, right, it used not only Common Tongue, but also several ancient languages that are almost lost. We can only barely understand some of those languages.”

“Endless War… door and Lockmarton…” Hao Ren bent down, inspecting the condition of the smoky flesh, “The latter is easy to understand, it sounds like it’s talking about the ‘prison,’ but I don’t know what the former means.”

As he spoke, he carefully reached out and passed through the thick black smoke to touch the monster’s soft, nauseating body.

The place on his right hand that had been burned by the blood of the goddess was faintly hot, and some dark red marks were slightly revealed. The smoke around the monster seemed to be avoiding this “stigmata,” and immediately separated to both sides.

Hao Ren noticed this detail, and his heart skipped a beat. He stretched his hand over even more unhesitatingly.

As the cold touch came, a series of rapidly scrolling illusions suddenly appeared before his eyes, like a slide show.

He saw a magnificent and bright hall being built, twenty-one giant-like guardians standing in front of a mountain of light, taking an oath. These guardians were cast from sacred rock and steel, as immovable as mountains.

He saw these guardians ordered to guard an ancient prisoner. From the thoughts coming from the spiritual world, he knew that this prisoner was unimaginably ancient, even older than the First Born and the Guardian Giants.

He saw the guardians cultivating life on the earth, using the order of life to suppress and transform the evil chaotic forces.

He saw the fall of the goddess, which led to the failure of all this, the evil counterattack, and the decline of order.

Countless pictures flashed, and many fragments of memory were so fleeting that they could not be seen clearly. It seemed that some force forcibly erased and weakened these memories, and Hao Ren could only see the end of these memories—

In a desolate world forever shrouded in twilight, the earth was cracked and dry, the sky was burning hot, huge shadows floated behind the clouds, and countless towering tentacles and strange limbs swept across the sky and the earth. The ancient evil force was wandering in its cage, brewing a rage that could devour the entire world in its calmness.

On the earth shrouded in shadows, countless monsters roamed around, impacting a giant pillar that supported the sky and the earth. This giant pillar was clean and bright, as if made of pure silver mirrors, but what was reflected on the mirror was not the dry earth and burning sky around the giant pillar, but another world full of vitality.

At the foot of the giant pillar, the blood and broken limbs, ashes and remains of various monsters were piled up like mountains. Countless strangely shaped, twisted creatures were fighting chaotically, as if they had fallen into an eternally burning madness. These monsters seemed to be in two camps, fighting for control of the giant pillar, but it was also possible that they were simply controlled by killing, blindly killing everything around them under the will of Lockmarton.

The next moment, all the illusions vanished.

Hao Ren felt that a long time had passed, but he looked around and found that everyone was still in their previous positions, and knew that the illusion had only lasted a moment.

Lily was the first to come up. The husky girl was familiar with Hao Ren’s abilities, so when she saw Hao Ren suddenly lose his mind, she knew what was going on: “Landlord, landlord! What did you see?”

Hao Ren waved his hand to signal Lily not to make trouble, then bent down, stared at the mass of flesh shrouded in smoke, and asked slowly and clearly: “I know you can hear my voice now—who exactly are you?”

In the previous spiritual connection, he had established a brief mysterious connection with the “monster.” Under this subtle connection, the monster finally regained its clarity, the speed of smoke evaporation slowed down slightly, and an extremely hoarse, low voice came from the mass of flesh:

“I used to be called… Valenhir, Valenhir Saint Teniel Benedict, I am…”

The speed of smoke evaporation suddenly accelerated, and the mass of flesh let out a sharp cry. Before it completely dissipated, it hysterically shouted, “The prison! The entrance to the prison is at the top of Asu Man!! At the top of Asu…”

All the sounds disappeared, and the monster could no longer be seen in the cage. Only a small pile of black smoke was blown away by the wind.

In the unspeakable silence, Hao Ren broke the silence: “Who knows this name?”

“Valenhir Saint Teniel Benedict,” Karasus’s somnambulant voice came from the side, “Benedict III, the Holder of the Canon, a wise and just man, one of the former popes…”

Everyone was dumbfounded. The general reaction of the masses was “Are you kidding me?”, while Lily’s beast guards became the most calm—they didn’t understand what Karasus was talking about, and figured that humans were starting to BB again.

“It said it was the Pope?” Lily’s ears twitched, even with the brain of a scholarly dog, she couldn’t keep up with the rhythm of the plot, “By the way, is your Pope Benedict III dead?”

“He was a figure from nearly two thousand years ago,” Karasus said blankly, “As one of the greatest popes in history, his holy body was placed in the underground mausoleum of the Icon Palace, to be with all the ancient sages, and to be eternally illuminated by the glory of the goddess.”

“That’s the former emperor,” Lily immediately felt that she had found a fellow, “I am also the former emperor!”

“Don’t listen to her nonsense, her logic is abnormal,” Hao Ren slapped the husky aside, then looked at Karasus, “This ‘monster’s’ words… how credible do you think they are?”

Karasus spread his hands, “From a personal point of view, I don’t believe a word of it, but…”

“Too bizarre, but makes one suspicious, right,” Hao Ren nodded, “And most importantly, a ‘monster’ doesn’t need to lie to us like this. I’ve never heard of a Chaos Demon having this kind of evil hobby.”

Karasus did not say anything, and at this moment, a cry of surprise came from the window of the cathedral. Several low-level priests who were observing the situation outside near the window screamed in horror: “There’s something in the sky!”

A palpitation almost simultaneously spread from the bottom of his heart. Hao Ren almost rushed to the window in two steps, and then pushed open the glass window that seemed particularly obstructive because of its narrowness and complicated patterns.

He looked up at the sky.

He saw the sky was covered with dark clouds, and the twilight-like light permeated from behind the clouds. In the interweaving of light and shadow, an incomparably huge, indescribable thing was slowly moving behind the clouds.

This thing drooped countless thick tentacles and strangely shaped limbs, just like tornado columns drooping from the clouds. These limbs fluttered and curled between the sky and the earth, like licking the earth. The terrifying and malicious scene made people’s scalps tingle!

Even the most pious and firm church warriors could not withstand this moment of pressure. The low-level assistant priests retreated pale, the slightly better priests could recite prayers to strengthen their courage, and the weaker ones had signs of fainting, as if merely looking at those tentacles and shadows was enough to make ordinary people lose their minds.

The subspecies were also trembling under the pressure. The demon wolf let out a low roar mixed with fear and anger, the giant monster hugged its head and kept retreating, and the bear monster also had signs of madness—until Lily suddenly howled loudly, and they finally calmed down.

Hao Ren stood at the window like a statue, unyielding and unmoved. He faced the shadows in the clouds with his demigod body, resisting all the malice and spiritual erosion.

He knew what it was.

Lockmarton.