Chapter 1 Where are the Saints?

"Where are the Saints?" Bai Huo scanned the surroundings, searching for the figures, or rather, the remains, of the eleven Saints who should have been present.

There were thirteen Saints in the Demon Hunter order. Betoris had already been confirmed dead in the banquet hall, and the First Saint had never left his secluded chamber. According to the information provided by Claude, there should have been eleven Saints in this ritual hall.

Yet there wasn't even a single corpse to be found.

Lili immediately widened her eyes, sniffing carefully as she searched, and quickly made a discovery: "These… are these what they left behind?"

She found a patch of very dim, grayish-white traces near the edge of the runic array in the corner of the hall, and next to this patch, she could see a few strands of black cloth.

"…It's ash," Hao Ren came to the patch of grayish-white traces and reached out to brush it, his fingertips picking up some fine powder. Among the black cloth fragments, he also found some hard, granular material. "And fragments of their clothes and masks."

Bai Huo judged the location of these traces in the room and immediately ran to the other corners of the ritual hall: "There's some here too! And over here!"

She quickly found all the traces: eleven patches of ash remained on the floor of the ritual hall. Most of this ash had probably been scattered by the wind and swallowed by the energy vortexes in the hall, leaving only a shallow, grayish-white imprint on the ground. These traces were symmetrically distributed like the numbers on the face of a clock, with only one spot missing—that should have been where Saint Betoris stood during the ritual.

"So they're all dead," Hao Ren recalled the traces left behind by Saint Betoris after his death. "The circumstances of death are the same, turned to ash and smoke, and the ones left in the ritual hall clearly suffered even worse."

"When did they die?" Lili's brain suddenly started working. "Did they die at the beginning of the ritual, or not long ago?"

The data terminal detected the information remaining in the ashes: "…The flow of time here doesn't follow common sense, so it's impossible to determine their time of death, but it's certain that they were reduced to ashes not long after the ritual began. The energy remaining in the ashes can prove that."

Hao Ren instantly noticed a suspicious point: "They died right at the beginning of the ritual?! Then who was giving orders during the entire Demon Hunter civil war that followed?"

Everyone's gaze fell on Claude at the same time. The young aide also looked astonished, but he seemed to have some idea: "The Saints' instructions were always coming from the hall—transmitted through secret techniques. We didn't feel anything strange at the time. But indeed, they didn't show their faces throughout the entire process, so no one could be sure if the Saints were still alive at the time."

A chill gradually spread through Bai Huo and Tutan's hearts. They realized something with horror: of the twelve Saints in charge, excluding Betoris, eleven had already died before the mutation occurred. Then who was commanding the war that followed in the Corpus space?!

This sword? Or the "monster" attached to this sword?

"Terminal, check again, is there any intelligent activity here!" Hao Ren said loudly, while quickly taking out all kinds of things from his personal space and setting them around the black longsword—from various explosives to general-purpose energy suppressors. In fact, he had no idea how to stop the magic charging process in the hall. Even the data terminal didn't know. But he thought that if things really got out of control later, blowing up this tower in advance might at least prevent a chain reaction of other energy nodes in Corpus.

Izhaks had already begun to imprint demonic runes into the original runic array of the ritual hall. This was an extremely risky operation, like reaching into two high-speed rotating fan blades to extract a nail. A slight carelessness would lead to the collapse of the entire composite reaction, prematurely detonating the mass of contaminated arcane energy. But the old demon was using his powerful control and rich experience to carry out the operation, doing his best to reduce the operating efficiency of these runic arrays.

Although the magic reaction in the ritual hall had reached this stage, the influence of the runic array was no longer so important.

The data terminal turned on all its sensors, searching for any information fluctuations that might indicate intelligent activity nearby. If there really was an intelligent "monster" entrenched here, manipulating everything, then the only way to solve the problem was to choke the monster's main body.

However, after a search, the data terminal gave a disappointing answer: "No, all the intelligent activity here comes from you guys."

"How can that be…" Bai Huo couldn't understand it at all. "In the past half month, something in this hall has issued hundreds or thousands of orders to the Elder Council in the name of the Saints!"

"But 'it' really doesn't exist—unless 'it' has run away," the data terminal interrupted Bai Huo with a sharp screech. "Now all that's left here is an evil weapon and a mass of energy that's about to go out of control. We need to focus on the crisis at hand."

Just as the data terminal finished speaking, a light suddenly lit up in the dark depths of space outside the Spirit Realm Clock Tower. The light expanded into a portal, and a silver-white warship slowly emerged from the portal. Hao Ren received a communication from Nolan in his mind: "The Petrified Turtle is entering the battlefield, awaiting further instructions."

Nolan had entered the "battlefield"—in previous battles, because all the ship's weapons were too powerful, in order to prevent the psionic cannons from indiscriminately destroying everything (and the powerful radiation produced by the ship's firing would also cause terrible damage to friendly forces on the battlefield), Hao Ren had always kept Nolan on standby in the rear. But now it was time for her to appear. So what could this ship do?

Hao Ren's simplest and most crude idea was to have the Petrified Turtle's secondary cannons fire at the Spirit Realm Clock Tower. Psionic energy would completely destroy everything within range, including matter and energy, as well as time and space. The out-of-control energy mass might be erased before it exploded.

But the Godslayer Sword and most of the Spirit Realm Clock Tower would also be annihilated at the same time.

Hao Ren quickly dismissed the bomber's idea in his mind. At the same time, the energy mass above the Godslayer Sword was further expanding. Like a dark vortex that devoured everything, it enveloped the upper part of the ritual hall, and through the connections between the various temples, this thing was also rapidly polluting all the energy nodes within Corpus.

At this moment, the data terminal suddenly shouted: "Buddy, this unit has found something!"

Hao Ren and Izhaks asked in unison: "What?"

"The key to the magic structure in the hall is not the sword, but the energy vortex above the sword," the data terminal said quickly, and the holographic projection showed the magic connections between the Godslayer Sword and the surrounding environment. "The sword is just a 'trigger point', but the key to maintaining the entire reaction process lies in that mass of energy. It has grown too powerful, so that even if it loses the supply from the Spirit Realm Clock Tower, it can still maintain this reaction process continuously on its own. If we can cut off this energy vortex… perhaps everything can be stopped."

"Cut it off?" Hao Ren looked up at the black mass above the hall. Now that indescribable thing had spread to the entire dome, surging like black mercury. Bright blue lightning burst out of the mass, constantly shattering the surrounding building structures and the metal objects floating towards it. And in the center of the mass, some subtle light spots were rippling, as if opening a crack leading to the starry sky of the universe.

But Hao Ren knew that it wasn't a space crack, but the same optical phenomenon as the surface of the Godslayer Sword, or rather… the Godslayer Sword was assimilating this mass of energy into something like itself!

A bold idea suddenly popped up.

He asked the data terminal urgently: "Can you teleport this mass of energy out?"

"This unit's teleportation system is for small-scale personnel transfer. The power of a personal data terminal can't handle this high-density energy mass."

"Then can my personal space withstand this thing?"

The data terminal instantly guessed Hao Ren's idea, but it still analyzed conscientiously: "…Theoretically, it's possible, but it's very dangerous. If it explodes in your personal space, the security protocol will immediately cut off the mental connection between you and the personal space. Your brain will be severely damaged by this hard cut. This unit estimates that it will only last for twenty seconds at most after leaving this hall before it explodes."

"I'll throw it out before then," Hao Ren said quickly, and then contacted Nolan, "How quickly can you get from Corpus to the deep space of the universe in the surface world? The farther away from inhabited star systems, the better."

"The fastest?" Nolan also understood Hao Ren's idea. "The space channel I came in through is still open, but the other side of the space channel is the Kuiper Station… Ah, right, I set up a gravitational anchor point near a star, and I can jump from the Kuiper Station to near the anchor point in a few seconds."

"Are there people around that star?"

"No, it's a lifeless area."

"Okay," Hao Ren nodded vigorously, his eyes fixed on the dark energy above the hall. "Wait for my command. I'll put this thing into my personal space, and then you immediately take me away from Earth, the farther the better—we'll throw this thing into outer space."