Chapter 16 The Hole-Digging Operation

Hao Ren and his group waited in hiding for a while. During this time, the little bat ventured out a few clones to scout the situation, finally confirming that Hasse had successfully infiltrated the command center of the Holy Crusaders as planned.

"The demon hunter patrol teams are starting to adjust their routes. Several visible guard posts are also moving to other places or changing shifts early," Hesperides said, receiving information from the clones. "It's consistent with the agreed-upon route... A gap will appear around the Poseidon Temple, opened by a time difference. Tsk, it seems Hasse is quite capable."

"I just don't know how he explained this temporary adjustment to the other demon hunters," Lily's ears twitched. "Opening up such a big gap... Hasse isn't the only supreme commander here. I'm afraid another Holy Crusader commander will soon become suspicious."

"That's why we can't waste this opportunity," Hao Ren said, getting up to leave. "Let's go, Vivian is ahead."

Outside the Poseidon Temple, the demon hunters' encirclement was still three layers deep. The entire mountain was covered with Holy Crusader patrol teams and guard posts, as well as demon hunter barracks garrisoned with large armies. However, within this layered encirclement, an imperceptible gap had quietly opened.

Ordinary lower-level demon hunters couldn't perceive this change, which required overlooking the entire battlefield to notice. They mechanically followed orders from the battle group leaders. Mid- and upper-level commanders might have felt a slight unease from a series of guard post adjustments, but they didn't raise any questions: this glorious holy war could be said to be over. The overall situation was settled, and the remnants of Olympus had no chance of turning the tide. Furthermore, other parts of Mount Olympus were completely under the control of the Holy Crusaders. In this situation, even demon hunters would inevitably let their guard down—including the commanders.

Although wary upper-level commanders would eventually discover these anomalies, Hasse would have plenty of room to maneuver and complete his "hole-digging" enterprise before they could remedy these loopholes.

Under his constant adjustments, the demon hunter patrol troops and observation posts had more blind spots than they realized. Hao Ren and his group moved swiftly through these blind spots, getting closer and closer to the towering but crumbling Poseidon Temple.

It was a rather stimulating experience—even Hesperides, who was always bold, had to admit this in retrospect. Around her were tens of thousands of demon hunter troops. The collapsed palace walls and rubble-strewn ruins of Mount Olympus could be said to have a post every ten steps and a sentry every five. Many times she could even see the demon hunter sentry posts with floating, shimmering runes in the distance, and the nearest patrol team was only a few hundred meters away.

If she and Lily weren't special "heterogeneous beings," whose innate antagonistic reaction to demon hunters was relatively weak and decayed rapidly with distance, and was easily concealed when there was no eye contact, even this close proximity would have been enough to alert the patrol soldiers.

Even so, they were walking a tightrope on the edge of this "safe distance."

Fortunately, Hasse's estimation of this "safe distance" was quite accurate. With the help of such a high-level "mole," Hao Ren's group's battlefield stealth was thrilling but without incident, and they made their way to the great barrier of the Poseidon Temple.

On the ruins of a slightly higher palace, Lily quietly poked her head out to take a look below. She saw the demon hunter barracks neatly arranged in the open space below, countless murderous, fully armed warriors walking around in the camp, and a batch of large magic-powered war machines being reorganized by demon hunter technicians. Those crystal "cannons" engraved with runes and the scorching core devices showed that they had been used to bombard the great barrier of the Poseidon Temple not long ago, and after a short adjustment, these war machines would be put back into use: until the last Olympian "god" died, the demon hunters' continuous fire would never cease.

The fur from Lily's ears to the tip of her tail bristled, and then she stuck out her tongue and retreated. "It's really the age of mythology. The little skirmishes between demon hunters and heterogeneous beings in the twenty-first century are completely insignificant here. It's like the difference between Zhao Family Alley bandit suppression and the Normandy landings..."

No one knew how the Zhao Family Alley bandit suppression had popped into her head.

Hao Ren patted Lily's head, calming the dog girl's slightly nervous emotions. He also saw the militarization of the demon hunters along the way. Before, he only knew that the demon hunters had ended the age of mythology and triggered the Twilight of the Gods around the world, but only now did he realize why the once-prosperous god dynasties were so vulnerable when facing the demon hunters—the gap in individual strength and power systems was only one aspect, the more important reason was the latter's incredible organization and military discipline.

The Holy Crusaders were a professional army, strictly disciplined and structurally sound. Everyone from top to bottom had only one goal: to destroy the enemy and achieve victory. The demon hunters who made up the Holy Crusaders were a group of freaks who could completely abandon their personal will, almost like ascetic saints. And what about their enemies?

Just a group of family-style violent groups who indulged in pleasure and the illusory sense of accomplishment of ruling the world, relying on simple and crude force to maintain order. Look at this Mount Olympus, think about everything seen in the Underworld: even if the Olympian "gods" possessed some ancestral technology, even if they built such magnificent palaces, their essence was just a muddleheaded family force.

A family-style armed force whose greatest ideal was to rule a few human city-states met a professional army determined to sweep the world. To be honest, Hao Ren was already surprised that they had managed to prolong the age of mythology for so many years.

Withdrawing his gaze from the demon hunter barracks, Hao Ren and his group quietly came to the back door of the Poseidon Temple under the cover of the ruins. A section of the palace wall here had been blasted open by the demon hunters' war-level spells in the early days of the siege, but then the Olympian "gods" used human lives to fill the gap and repelled the Holy Crusader warriors who had invaded it, and used the energy of the great barrier to block the crack.

After the war entered this stage, the demon hunters gave up on consuming soldiers' lives to attack the palace walls, and the Olympian "gods" had to shrink back to the inner hall to prepare for a desperate fight due to massive attrition, so this crack temporarily became a place no one cared about.

The so-called great barrier wasn't a complete and single magic shield. In fact, it included an anti-magic cover that enveloped the entire temple, a layer of magic energy covering the palace walls, and thousands of defensive magic arrays distributed throughout the temple. This layered protection temporarily protected the survivors in the temple, but it also caused a problem for Hao Ren and his group: the temple refused entry to all outsiders, including them.

Magic cannon fire from several nearby demon hunter camps constantly bombarded the anti-magic cover above their heads. Each round of magic cannon fire made Lily's ears twitch uncontrollably, and the palace wall crack in front of them was covered with a layer of shimmering energy shield: there was no way forward.

Lily waved her alloy greatsword and rushed up with a howl, only to be bounced back.

Hesperides tried to analyze the structure of the energy shield, but she was better at shadow magic and blood magic. Facing the unique technology of the Thunder Giant lineage, the little bat was also a bit at a loss.

The last hope fell on Hao Ren.

With a bit of trepidation, Hao Ren pressed his hand on the barrier that looked like flowing aurora, and prayed that his strange magic immunity talent could be of some use on this barrier.

After all, the magic of the Olympus lineage also came from the Dream Plane. Hao Ren felt that this thing should also be affected by his magic immunity talent.

As his palm touched the barrier, everyone heard a crisp sound like glass breaking.

The barrier actually shattered just like that.

"Wow—if I had known the landlord was so powerful, I wouldn't have gone up to crash into it," Lily stuck out her tongue. Her hands were still numb from swinging the giant sword to chop at the shield just now. "We..."

But before the husky girl could finish speaking, she saw the shield that Hao Ren had just broken a second ago shake twice, and it was restored to its original state in an instant!

Hao Ren blinked his eyes and didn't understand what happened. "This thing... has self-repair?"

But this little problem couldn't stop him. Every inspector who had studied shield expansion theory would know clearly that there was no shield system in this world that could withstand unlimited damage. Even god-made shields consumed energy, let alone the magic shields made by a bunch of pseudo-gods from Olympus. He immediately put his hand on the energy membrane again: no matter how many times this thing can repair itself, it will stop working sooner or later if it is broken a few more times...

At the same time, in the upper hall of the temple, Poseidon and the weak Zeus were listening to a message from a sentry.

"You said those demon hunters are frequently mobilizing? And they also withdrew some of the troops from the front?"

Poseidon gripped his Neptune Trident tightly, his majestic face now full of disbelief.

An Olympian warrior wearing silver-white armor knelt on one knee in front of him: "Yes, great Poseidon, I saw them withdrawing from the front battlefield with my own eyes, and the energy towers in the distance have also been moved."

Poseidon turned his head to look at a female "god" not far behind him: "Athena, what do you think of this matter?"

As one of the twelve main gods, Athena didn't have the stalwart physique of Poseidon and Zeus, but as the most outstanding individual among the genetically degraded "small species descendants," she had always been the brain trust on Mount Olympus and was deeply trusted by Zeus. Hearing Poseidon's question, Athena nodded: "This may be some kind of trap set by the demon hunters, but it may also be an opportunity... After all, they are also creatures who will get tired and have emotions. After such a long battle, some of their soldiers must be rested."

"Perhaps their commander also realized that it would be too wasteful to mobilize all the soldiers to besiege such a palace," another Olympian "god" echoed. "This may really be an opportunity."

Poseidon looked at the bed next to him. Zeus took a deep breath and said in a weak voice: "Yes, an opportunity to break through... And Vivian Ansaestia's mental state is just tending to stabilize, perhaps this is our last chance."

Poseidon nodded, gripping his Neptune Trident tightly, but just as he was about to say something, a bright blue electric light suddenly burst out from the trident. This electric light struck Poseidon, and a force was immediately extracted from his body!

The sudden energy backlash caused the dignified "Sea God" to scream on the spot, and he even fell from his chair!

Zeus was taken aback, and despite his weakness, he subconsciously propped up half of his body: "What's wrong with you?!"

Poseidon supported himself with the Neptune Trident, and just barely uttered the word "I," when the trident, which functioned as both a weapon and the temple's control center, shot out a ray of light again and struck him!

This "Sea God" fell down again...

But he struggled to get up in the next second: "The back of the temple..."

"Crack!"

"The shield..."

"Crack!"

"Is being..."

"Crack!"

Finally, Poseidon gritted his teeth and roared with a burst of willpower: "Can you let me finish!"

Strangely enough, after he roared like this, the energy backlash actually paused for a moment, which allowed him to catch his breath and say quickly: "The one at the back door of the temple..."

"Crack!!"

"Who in the world is doing this!!"

This sudden, bizarre situation left everyone at a loss, but Athena finally reacted first. She looked at the trident in Poseidon's hand, which was used to control and maintain the great barrier, and then thought of what the other party had said, and immediately shouted: "The crack at the back door of the temple has been breached! Poseidon's energy is being extracted to repair the shield! Go and meet the enemy!"

Several compatriots who still had courage left the hall with the warriors at top speed, but huge waves surged in Athena's heart:

What exactly happened to the crack at the back door of the palace? The demon hunters broke through that shield? The situation is quite suspicious!

Even demon hunters couldn't silently destroy the barrier at the crack, and even if it was destroyed, the barrier would be repaired instantly, and the strength after the repair would be exactly the same as before the destruction, but looking at Poseidon's appearance, the barrier was destroyed again in the next moment. Doesn't this mean that the powerful barrier, which gathered a lot of magic power and used Poseidon's power essence as "fuel," couldn't even last for a moment in front of the destroyer?!

Where in the world is there such an unreasonable thing!

At the same time, the three-person team outside the back door of the temple (the little bat was temporarily stuffed in Hao Ren's pocket as equipment, so it didn't count) was still working hard to stir up trouble.

The barrier that had shattered with a crash was restored to its original state again. Hao Ren had deliberately let this barrier run for a while to try to figure out its charging route, in the hope of shutting it down at the source, but he soon realized that it was better to break it a few more times than to study this technical work—anyway, it didn't take much effort, and he had a feeling that this thing wouldn't last too long.

"Crash crash," the barrier was once again turned into a pile of rubble by him, but it was restored to its original state in the next moment, not giving anyone a chance to rush in.

Lily held her alloy giant sword and squatted next to Hao Ren, counting with an innocent look:

"Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen..."