The Basilica Icon was silent, and the vast and magnificent temple was shrouded in a strange silence. The mist of Chaos came out of nowhere and almost covered every inch of the palace. In the darkness, there was a dusk-like glimmer that filled the air. However, there was no warmth in this light. Instead, it only made people feel a strong malice and a gloominess that could make people go crazy.
This kind of dusk shimmer had never appeared in any Tide of Chaos, so Calaxus and the others did not know what it meant. But after coming into contact with the illusion, Hao Ren knew that it was a sign of Lockmarton.
It was seeping into the real world. First, it was the huge shadow floating over the city of Louen, and then it was the twilight that filled the Basilica Icon.
There were no survivors in the palace, but there were no corpses, not even the slightest trace of a battle.
"No one... no bodies..." Hao Ren muttered to himself in a low voice. "This place was supposed to be home to the most powerful forces of the Church, but all of them had vanished into thin air. There was no sign of their resistance."
Lily ran back and forth in front of the team, stooping down from time to time to sniff the surroundings with her sensitive nose. Soon, she came back. "Mr. Landlord, there is no smell of blood!"
Calaxus took out a platinum wand from his dimensional pocket. The wand in his hand released a constant warm white light, slightly dispelling the malice and madness in the air. Calaxus looked solemn. "It seems that everyone disappeared at the same time. Otherwise, there would be no trace left. What kind of power could do this? The divine circle in the palace has not even been activated. The circle is directly controlled by the pope's brainwaves. With just a thought from His Holiness, the Basilica Icon will enter the highest defense mode. No matter how urgent the situation is, His Holiness should have the time to activate the divine circle, right? "
Hao Ren did not say anything, but a thought suddenly came to his mind: unless the pope did not want to activate the divine circle at all.
"Uncle, where is the 'gatekeeper' you mentioned?" Lily suddenly asked.
Calaxus pointed to the corridor in front. "Through this corridor, through the garden, there is a teleportation portal and a spiral staircase leading to the upper level of the twin towers. But I don't know if the teleportation portal is still working, so we can only take the spiral staircase."
In the oppressive silence, the long corridor finally came to an end. After passing through an archway with complicated and gorgeous decorations, a garden suddenly appeared in front of everyone.
It was a large garden, complete with fountains, ponds, sculptures, and everything else. It was an exquisite and well-equipped garden, but a dim dome could be seen over the garden: it was built indoors.
Unexpectedly, the plants in the garden did not wither. In fact, they were even more lush and flourishing than usual. However, all of the plants were covered in a layer of light gray and dusky yellow. It was strange and lifeless.
This raised the vigilance of everyone who was about to step into the garden.
Lily was the first to step into the garden, and Hao Ren followed behind the husky maiden. Suddenly, as Lily crossed a certain boundary, her body began to glow with a faint white light.
The husky maiden was stunned for a moment, but Hao Ren immediately took out his gun and spear from his dimensional pocket and shouted, "Be careful! There are minions of Chaos nearby! "
Lily's body, which automatically glowed as soon as she entered the realm of Chaos, was a very useful automatic alarm.
Calaxus had been with the alpha for a long time. He knew very well what it meant when the alpha suddenly released the Light of Order. The high-ranking monk instantly cast several protective spells on the knights and abhumans around him. At the same time, he held his staff in one hand and a sacred magic ball of energy in the other. "Where is it coming from?"
Lily finally came to her senses. She quickly turned her head and looked at her tail. She found that the fluff on her tail had stood up uncontrollably, and the light floating on the fluff was gathering in one direction.
"Underground!" the husky maiden yelled. "The power of Chaos is below! What's underground? "
Calaxus was stunned for a moment. It took him two seconds before he said hesitantly, "The underground of the garden is the resting place of the holy spirits, where the holy souls of ancient times have been blessed by the goddess and become immortal."
Lily turned around and glared at the high-level cultivator. "Woof! Speak human language! "
Hao Ren did not wait for Calaxus to speak. "It means the tombs of the popes!"
As he spoke, he could not help but recall what the Shadow of Nightmares said before it dissipated. He remembered the name that the Shadow of Nightmares mentioned: Benedict III, the pope of the sanctum more than 2,000 years ago.
He could not help but curse under his breath. "F * ck, that's what the monster meant."
As he cursed, the entire Basilica Icon seemed to shake violently.
A low humming sound came from the underground of the garden, and the cold air broke through the ground, instantly covering the surrounding grass and trees with a layer of frost. Then, the nearby soil layer began to fluctuate and churn at a visible rate!
"It's coming!" Hao Ren roared as he pulled out his gun and fired without hesitation.
A ball of blue light burst out, and then countless crystal clear fragments scattered from the explosion point. Below the fragments, there was a distorted object with black smoke rising out of the ground. But the crystallization of the Psionic Erosion was not something ordinary objects could resist. The black figure was covered by the crystals as it rose, and when it rushed out of the ground, it had turned into a large crystal. Then, it shattered with a bang, and it did not even have the chance to scream.
But this was only the first one.
One by one, the black monsters rushed out of the ground, and the power of Chaos quickly filled the surrounding space. These monsters were in a variety of shapes. Unlike what Hao Ren had guessed, they were not pieces of flesh shrouded in smoke. Some of them had a large number of tentacles, some were covered with eyes and sharp teeth, some were simply a standard meatball, and some had a vaguely human form. Except for the monsters that still maintained a slightly human form, they were like pieces of meat that had deformed randomly. The only thing these monsters had in common was that they were all shrouded in the black smoke of Chaos and released a powerful mental wave!
Calaxus suddenly exclaimed, "Is that … the symbol of the church?"
Hao Ren followed Calaxus's line of sight and saw a clothed monster among the group of monsters. It was a Shadow of Nightmares that barely maintained its human form. It was wearing a ragged cloth, and the style of the cloth was vaguely discernible, but a pale golden ring emblem was clearly visible.
"Maybe it has not had time to rot away," Hao Ren said quickly. "This proves that these are the popes of the past!"
A huge shock swept through the church warriors. These brave and fearless soldiers could not accept the fact that the popes of the past had been corrupted into monsters. This kind of corruption might have started a long time ago and accumulated over thousands of years. Every pope who was sent to the Holy Mausoleum had become like this, or they might have been corrupted only recently. But in any case, these monsters came from the Holy Mausoleum, and there was the symbol of the church on them. One of the monsters even mentioned the name of a pope from 2,000 years ago. These facts were enough to make the devout monks and knights lose their will to fight.
But the monsters would not stop just because the humans were shaken. While the church warriors were at a loss, they had formed a black cloud in the garden and launched a swift and powerful attack.
It was the most dangerous, the most untraceable, and the most difficult to resist power: a psychic attack.
Waves of dizziness and various kinds of bizarre hallucinations swept over. Hao Ren seemed to see the smoke and dust monsters gradually condensing into an unprecedentedly large body. They became a mountain, a storm, and an endless and invincible source of power. In this power, a powerful voice echoed in his mind:
"Surrender! Surrender to this power! Surrender to your fear! Surrender to your exhaustion! Surrender to … "
Hao Ren stared, and all the hallucinations disappeared. "Surrender to your father! My year-end bonus depends on this fight! "
"How did you …"
"Nonsense. When I was playing Inception with the demigod, you were still rotting in this basement!"
However, although Hao Ren and Lily (who knew what the husky had done, but she was not bewitched by the psychic illusion) broke free from the powerful psychic attack, the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
The reason was simple. They were not only facing these monsters, and they were not the only ones being attacked.
More monsters, or the twisted souls of previous popes, were awakening in the underground mausoleum. The quantitative change in the psychic attack would sooner or later lead to a qualitative change. The church warriors and abhumans did not have strong mental resistance like Hao Ren. Their mental defenses were collapsing, and they could not hold on for long.
Illusions began to appear one after another. At first, they were only illusions in the spiritual world, but gradually, strange and dazzling shadows even appeared in the real world.
The soldiers and abhumans with weaker willpower had fallen into a trance. Their spiritual world had become a springboard, allowing more distorted shadows to enter the real world.
Hao Ren felt that his various senses were declining, and all kinds of negative feelings that did not exist were emerging out of thin air. He was not in danger yet, but he felt that it would be very dangerous if this went on. Even if he was fine, the ordinary people around him would be in big trouble.
With a gunshot, another distorted soul was turned into crystal dust by Hao Ren's psionic gun. Hao Ren then turned to look at Calaxus and shouted, "You guys retreat immediately! Leave this place to me. I want to purify the entire mausoleum in one go! "
However, Calaxus turned his head slowly. His eyes were unfocused as if he did not recognize Hao Ren at all.
"What the heck? The most reliable one has dropped the ball."
At this moment, Hao Ren's mental connection suddenly opened, and the voice of the MDT came.
"Partner ~ We've created the Matter Transporter Beta 1.0 on our end. How about I send you something to try?"
Hao Ren was stunned for a moment, and then he was overjoyed. "Hurry up! Send me someone with a combat power of 20,000! They are fighting! "
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