Chapter 1 The Gate to the Cemetery

The gate to the cemetery was right in front of them, just as Hessiana had said. It was a barrier formed by twisted thorns and roses—this eerie screen stood before the castle's north-side foyer, extending infinitely to the sides and above, as if the entire world was divided in two by it. Logically, a barrier of this size couldn't be hidden; everyone in the courtyard should have been able to see it looming in their field of vision. Yet, in reality, Haoren and Lily only saw the rose-covered wall after crossing the foyer.

Clearly, this thing was an unusual spatial phenomenon, or perhaps merely a mental illusion.

But looking at the pile of white bones beneath the rose wall, even an idiot wouldn't think it was just a harmless hallucination.

"We've seen the barrier," Haoren said, knowing Hessiana was dealing with the soulless guard's control system, but he asked anyway for good measure, "Are you sure you can get through this thing as long as you have a firm resolve? Lily and I have seen at least two or three hundred skeletons down here, including some that look like giants... and other super-races that look awesome at first glance. These guys seem to have been instantly killed by the thorns."

With such a mountain of bones, Haoren didn't believe there wasn't even one resolute person among them. And speaking of firm resolve, he considered himself to have a firm resolve after being mentally strengthened, but what about the husky... were the cat and dog just pretending to be cowards?

Hessiana replied after two or three seconds, "Hehe, so this is the final test—besides having a firm resolve, you must also ensure you have no malice. If you have even a trace of malice towards Lady Vivian, you can forget about entering the cemetery. You two should be fine, right?"

Haoren twitched his lips, thinking that the little bat was waiting for him here. He patted his chest, "You just deal with the soulless guard; we'll go into the cemetery to check things out. But you better hurry, we might not be able to get the upper hand if we really fight Vivian's 'incarnation,' and we'll still need your soulless guard for support."

"Don't worry," Hessiana said impatiently, "I'm almost done here."

Hanging up the communicator, Haoren and Lily exchanged glances and nodded slightly.

Then, the two of them stepped toward the rose wall that looked both glamorous and full of eerie danger.

The barrier full of thorns and black roses came towards them. Haoren tensed up subconsciously, but then felt as if he was just passing through a cool curtain of water. A gust of breeze blew across his cheeks, and when he opened his eyes, he found that he and Lily were standing on a grassland that theoretically shouldn't exist in the castle.

Color reappeared.

Night fell, and a bright moon hung high, its clear light shining on the earth. Lush green grass, deep enough to cover their calves, spread across the gentle land, forming a boundless, undulating green field. The grassland under the night sky seemed endless. Spatially, it had completely transcended the castle in that shadow world, and was more like a deeper layer of alien space.

This was very different from the "cemetery" Haoren had imagined.

Thinking of this, he looked back and found that the castle had indeed disappeared. Behind him and Lily was only a solitary rose gate standing on the earth. The thorns and blood-red roses grew together in a twisted arch shape, with a few fireflies flying around on the arch.

He withdrew his gaze, searching for Vivian—or the evil thought-entity—on the boundless grassland.

But to no avail.

The grassland was empty, and the moonlight offered no hiding places. To be honest, if Vivian or the evil thought-entity had really awakened, they were unlikely to hide themselves. So, everything was as Haoren had predicted:

Vivian had not awakened. Although the evil thought-entity had begun to move, it had not yet completely solidified into a physical form. This was why there was only a gathering of negative energy around Holoen Castle, without any clearly observable disasters occurring.

"So this is the deepest part of the dreamland that the big bat set up for herself..." Lily clicked her tongue. "Tch, she hasn't even gone to school, but she made it pretty artistic. I thought all she had in her brain was a big house... um, Landlord, why are you looking at me like that?"

The husky girl was halfway through her exclamation when she noticed Haoren looking at her with a smile that wasn't quite a smile, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable all over.

"You're still saying you don't have a good relationship with Vivian?" Haoren looked at the husky girl, who still hadn't reacted, and couldn't help but smile.

"When did I ever have a good relationship with that big bat!" Lily jumped up as if someone had stepped on her tail. "Landlord, don't make such unfounded accusations! Although I'm hanging out with you now, I'm a former emperor who once ruled an empire, so I have principles..."

"Anyone who harbors any animosity towards Vivian cannot pass through the cemetery's barrier," Haoren said leisurely. "Okay, now it's your turn to talk."

Lily: "..."

The husky girl was speechless, but her eyes turned and saw Hasso, who was being carried on her shoulder, and she became confident again: "Then why is it okay for him to come in with us—although Hasso didn't come specifically to kill bats this time, he's the Hasso from six hundred years ago. Can you say he doesn't have any animosity towards bats? So there's still something wrong with that barrier, it's not accurate at all..."

Before the girl could finish, Haoren curled his lip: "Nonsense, you smashed him into a coma and carried him in. Forget about animosity, he's no different from a vegetable right now."

As he was saying this, he saw the old hunter being carried on Lily's shoulder suddenly twitch again and let out a low groan, showing signs of waking up.

Lily threw Hasso down almost reflexively, then grabbed the greatsword in one hand and grabbed the other's collar with the other, aiming. Hasso's eyes opened at the same time. The unlucky old hunter opened his eyes and saw Lily holding up the greatsword, ready to smash it down. He immediately remembered the humiliating experience of being knocked unconscious by this crazy girl several times before. A psychological shock even overwhelmed his hunting instinct, making the normally serious and rigid old hunter couldn't help but shout, "Wait, are you even reasonable..."

"Hey—"

"Lily, wait!" Haoren finally stopped the husky girl in the last second before she smashed the greatsword down. "No need to smash him!"

"Eh? We don't need to knock him out this time?"

"It's time to let Hasso stretch his muscles," Haoren said, looking around for any anomalies on the grassland. "Look, Vivian is obviously not awake yet, and the evil thought-entity is not fully awake either. This time is different from when I violently broke through the Siberian cave last time. This time, Vivian has clearly made more thorough arrangements for her slumbering place, so we need expert guidance—Hasso, we can cooperate."

Hasso glared at Haoren, then stared at Lily with vigilance and hostility—his hunting instinct was being activated. In this six-hundred-year-old timeline, he hadn't yet gotten rid of the antagonistic impulses entangled in the blood and soul of the demon hunter. So, he immediately discovered the alien identity of the girl in front of him. But the hunting instinct that Lily brought him wasn't as strong as that of a normal werewolf: he could only vaguely sense that Lily was a supernatural creature with mixed blood, similar to a werewolf, but it only made him feel less than a quarter of the combat impulse. This made the old hunter feel confused.

Haoren smiled when he saw Hasso's reaction. When the "innate hostility" phenomenon hadn't been resolved, he had Lily and Hasso and other demon hunters tested, proving that the husky had an innate hostile effect with demon hunters, but the intensity was much lower than other normal aliens. This was because Lily was not a completely "alien" in essence. The basis for the innate hostility effect to take effect was "between any species from the dream plane that are racially different," and Lily was originally a demon hunter, and later became a mixed-blood dog demon from soul to bloodline. She and the demon hunter became alien races, but they were not completely different, which led to her "aura" that would make the demon hunters confused.

In short, the feeling of a demon hunter seeing her was—it's obviously a werewolf, but why do I feel like I don't have much motivation to fight?

Under normal circumstances, a normal, uncontrolled demon hunter would definitely be too lazy to think about anything when he saw Lily. Anyway, the thousands of years of war in the mythical era had turned demon hunters and all other supernatural creatures into an irreconcilable hostile camp. Whenever they saw a suspected prey, they only needed to draw their knives and chop at it, and there would definitely be no wrongful convictions. But now Hasso clearly didn't have this condition, so after staring at Lily for a long time, the old hunter turned his head to Haoren: "I don't think there's any need to cooperate with you, especially after you've done a lot of sneak attacks, conspiracies, and tricks."

Lily bared her teeth: "This era's Hasso is really annoying to talk to. The one we know is so polite."

"The one we know didn't fight us at the beginning either," Haoren waved his hand, squatted down, and looked at Hasso, who was unable to move because he was restrained by the energy binding device. "Actually, our goals are the same as yours—to save the world from the rampaging Vivian Ansessta, but my method has a higher success rate. It was out of necessity that I kidnapped you, after all, there's no normal way to get you demon hunters to cooperate with outsiders."

Hasso laughed as if he had heard a fantastical joke: "Haha, do you think I can cooperate with you because of this?"

"Whether you're willing or not is not important, what's important is that you're not stupid," Haoren smiled. "You must be very curious about where I brought you—come on, take a good look at this place. This is the deepest space where Vivian is sleeping. Of course, I haven't seen her yet, but she must be somewhere here. Now she's about to wake up, and you only have two choices—either we work together to appease her, or you'll wear this thing and be abused into scum by the berserk Countess."