Here it's necessary to describe Bai Huo's impression of Hao Ren's group.
In Bai Huo's mind, Hao Ren's side was a very peculiar "haven for aberrant creatures."
Her demon-hunting career of less than a hundred years was neither long nor short. Although she was still a young and inexperienced girl among her own kind, due to her rapid rise to the "master" level and her travels with an excellent mentor like Hasse, Bai Huo had seen much of the world. She knew many secrets of the aberrant creature families and had been in contact with a lot of intelligence regarding aberrant creature havens. She knew what normal havens were like: heavily guarded, secretly fortified, and hidden layer upon layer in the cracks of the real world, almost as impenetrable as fortresses in the earth's core. Moreover, to ensure survival in long-term isolation, a haven was usually a self-sufficient small "world," at least the size of a city, with shadow spaces like the Athens Haven being the most common form. And these havens invariably shared common characteristics such as clear class distinctions, inter-ethnic opposition, militarized management, and harsh laws.
And Hao Ren's "haven" was specifically destroying her point of view.
They lived openly in a human city, in a small building at best, with everyone going out to find work in human society. Vampires and werewolves even lived next door to each other—if someone had reported the discovery of such an aberrant creature haven to her a year ago, her first reaction would have been to kick the reporter down and force-feed them two bowls of clarity potion...
Later, with gradual contact, Bai Huo gained a better understanding of Hao Ren's situation, but she still only knew bits and pieces, and she was even more confused. She found that although this group of strange people was small in number, each member was extraordinary: the oldest and most famous vampire count, a demon race of unknown origin comparable to the ancient "gods," an explosive landlady who claimed to be a wizard and carried countless destructive weapons, and even a siren, said to never contact outsiders, wandered around in this team. Finally, they had a husky—the composition of this team was like a collector assembling a deck of various monsters and demons, and Bai Huo couldn't imagine how they got together and still managed to get along so well.
Not to mention that there was a "demon hunter" mixed in with this group... That last point almost scared Hasse out of his wits!
Later, she gradually learned more about Hao Ren, such as the possible existence of a hidden force behind him, the ability to travel through "worlds," and the knowledge of things beyond this planet, and so on. In any case, all kinds of information beyond her knowledge kept popping up. Not to mention her, even the well-informed Hasse couldn't sleep all night after meeting with Hao Ren and his group, relying on sleeping pills to find himself.
In her spare time, Bai Huo occasionally did things that matched her age, such as reading human comics and novels. So she gradually felt that Hao Ren and his group were probably similar in nature to those secret teams in "urban legends," the kind that "may be small in number, but have a lot of stories." But no matter how she thought about it, she couldn't imagine one thing: Hao Ren had an army under his command!
She stared dumbfounded at Hao Ren's side, which had already begun to seriously discuss the issue of dispatching troops, and turned to look at the people around her: "Do you mean that you have an even larger force hidden in a deeper haven?"
She subconsciously thought that Hao Ren's house was just a disguise, and that there might be something like a Third Neo-Tokyo thirty kilometers below. Her imagination went wild on the spot.
"It's a bit complicated to explain this to you, involving deep-space faster-than-light travel and communication deviations in the field of linguistic expression among different races and civilizations. In short, you should go back and lie down," Hao Ren waved his hand and sent Bai Huo back. "Vivian, you don't mind letting her lie on your bed for a while, do you?"
After coaxing, deceiving, and using tough measures to finally get the stubborn female demon hunter to lie down and rest, Hao Ren and his group ran back to the living room. Hao Ren took out the data terminal and placed it on the coffee table, then said with a serious face: "What kind of situation is it if I mobilize 100,000 people to attack the demon hunters' headquarters in this case?"
"Tsk, you still have a bit of administrative vigilance," the data terminal replied lazily. "Inspectors can't interfere in intra-civilization wars. To be precise, inspectors can't 'change the course of other civilizations through formal military intervention.' So there are loopholes you can exploit when you do many things in your personal capacity. But once the number of mobilized people reaches a certain scale and directly participates in the war, the situation will be more troublesome."
"The most similar situation was the last time we went to Izhaks' hometown," Hao Ren stroked his chin. "Didn't we lead an entire Erem fleet there at that time? I remember that was okay."
"Because we didn't officially 'go to war' last time," the terminal said in its signature cheap tone. "We were just 'escorting experimental samples.' The escort personnel were subjected to limited harassment by local natives who were unaware of the truth during transport. Subsequently, we carried out extremely restrained and limited counterattacks—from beginning to end, your Erem legion did not declare war on either side of the conflict, nor did it explicitly support either side. Therefore, that didn't even count as a military operation."
The data terminal was playing with words inside and out. As Hao Ren listened, his eyes lit up: "I think I understand a little—as long as it's not an official war, and we don't openly support or strike either side militarily, it doesn't count as a violation, is that what you mean?"
"And this time, the situation is even easier to deal with than the last time in Izhaks' hometown," the data terminal reminded. "Last time, all the races in Izhaks' hometown united in a war, and the scale of that war had reached the 'critical turning point in civilization' as defined by the standard, that is, 'more than half of the members of a civilization directly or indirectly participated in the war.' Intervention in that kind of war is extremely sensitive. But this time, we're only facing the demon hunters' civil war. What kind of civilization are the demon hunters? They don't even have household registration on Earth—we can even directly define them as a mob fight between a small number of armed personnel. Don't even mention a turning point in civilization; don't even mention the word 'war.' There's more than one way to bypass this 'war definition'."
Vivian listened in a daze: "That's okay too?"
"Why not? What do you think inspectors do? Inspectors are part of the administrative team, and how can they be a good administrative team if they don't talk nonsense?" the data terminal babbled with a straight face. "Let's be clear, what is the fundamental purpose of the various restrictions and prohibitions on inspectors? It is to protect the normal progress of civilization and prevent the emergence of civilizations with abnormal development. So, the question is: the demon hunters are just a secret organization on Earth. Do they count as a civilization?"
Everyone was speechless.
The data terminal shook its body: "No! Thanks to them for ending the age of mythology and crippling themselves in the process. The main body of Earth's civilization has not been demons and monsters for many years—the main body of Earth's civilization currently registered on the K1 sovereign hub is humanity!"
Hao Ren suddenly understood and immediately felt like he had opened the door to a new world...
"So, as long as we keep this incident within the demon hunter community and avoid the suspicion of 'expanding the war,' we have room to maneuver," the data terminal vibrated twice. "The Empire's data network monitors every inspector around the clock for violations of the restrictions and prohibitions. But the judgment rules of this data network are actually lenient—after all, inspectors are chosen from among mortals, and they have to deal with matters between mortals. Mortals are fickle, so the audit standards for them will be correspondingly lowered a lot. Basically, as long as we settle this before the incident affects the order of mainstream society on Earth, there won't be any problems."
The only red line of that monitoring mechanism was to not let the main body of Earth's civilization—that is, human society today—be affected by this incident.
"Settle it before the Elder Council breaks out of Corpus..." Hao Ren nodded. "The Erem elves' army should be able to do it. They may not be as powerful as the demon hunters, but they have a technological advantage."
However, Izhaks shook his head slightly: "No, the Erem elves are not suitable."
Hao Ren looked at the great demon in surprise: "What do you mean?"
"The Erem elves actually have no combat experience," Izhaks tapped the table with his index finger. "The last time they were dispatched, it was at most a deterrent, because 'spaceships' are too incomprehensible to the people on 'our' side, so their fleet seemed powerful. But this time, we're going to fight in a closed secret realm. The Erem elves' aircraft and various ultra-long-range weapons will be useless. Only individual qualities will come into play—but the individual strength of the Erem elves is far inferior to that of the demon hunters. In my judgment, in a limited local battlefield, the Erem elves' technological advantage over the demon hunters cannot reverse this disadvantage."
The old warmonger's vision was indeed sharp. In a few words, he pointed directly to the core of the issue. Hao Ren immediately realized that this was a problem: "Then where am I going to find tens of thousands of seasoned veterans?"
As soon as he finished speaking, he slapped his forehead: "What's wrong with my brain... Old Wang, has your gang of cleaver-wielding thugs rusted yet?"