The battles everywhere continue, Yu Sheng sits calmly in a high-backed chair at the end of the church's great hall, with his perception enveloping the entire "Heroic Spirit City."He can clearly "see" the tense and busy scenes inside and outside the black Great Cathedral, see the warriors gathering in groups heading towards the crystalline long bridge under the Crystal Tree, see the Saintesses and Knights who have just completed battles in the real world resting briefly within the city, with intelligence continuously being gathered from various battle squads in the city and then the more important parts being sent to the Great Cathedral—
Dual-line operations seem to be a basic ability of every Artificial Saintess and Brass Knight, their shells at the moment are combating the invasion entities from behind the Lodaxim High Wall in various Exotic Realms around Boundary City, while their minds congregate in various venues throughout Valhalla, where they exchange real-time updates about various situations, and even when some squads face "annihilation," they can simultaneously await backup forms while discussing lessons learned from combat failures.
All of these are managed in an orderly manner under Luna's management and the group of deputies she has selected.
Yu Sheng thinks this might already count as a war.
But he is utterly clueless about warfare, he just feels that the blonde girl standing beside him, full of confidence and spirit, is truly remarkable.
During the previous battle that destroyed the Holy Realm Planet, Luna had already demonstrated her abilities. At that time, the hurriedly "liberated" Artificial Saintesses and the Knight Order established order immediately because of her timely takeover and were able to evacuate smoothly at the critical moment of the Holy Realm's collapse—similarly, the liberation of Pasture Star followed suit.
Yu Sheng is delighted about this, he thinks Luna has found something she's good at again, and she evidently enjoys it, which is great.
Yu Sheng wears a faint smile as he withdraws his gaze from the golden-haired Luna and turns in the real world to look at the little creature jumping and gesticulating beside him on the ground—Erin is extremely excited at this moment, vigorously waving her fists and making a clamorous noise: "Hit hit hit, hit hard! Just like this, just like this, poke these bastards to death... Oh crap, a whole squad got wiped out again, what the hell, screen's gone black... not a big deal, I'll pull another bunch of A's over!"
Yu Sheng: "..."
Compared to Luna's orderly and well-planned command of the legions, Erin's art of command is clearly much simpler and cruder.
Her tactic is to gather a heap of mass-produced dolls and directly A them in, and if she doesn't win, she gathers an even bigger heap. Anyway, the cost is practically eight jin of earth and half an ounce of iron (some don't even have that half ounce of iron), the broken bodies can even be picked up on-site and stuck together with glue to continue using, absolutely no distress at all.
And now besides the Pyramid Hub, there is an Alchemy Workshop next to the Puppet City in the valley, coupled with plentiful raw material reserves during this period, at this moment Erin over there has maximized production, using puppets to create puppets, apparently the front-line consumption doesn't even match her production speed...
But Yu Sheng couldn't help but remind the little creature to use it somewhat sparingly when filling the lines in the Exotic Realms—after all, although there is plenty of earth in the valley, the regeneration of the blood in the Blood Storage Tank at the Alchemy Workshop is not so easy, all those are produced by him consuming three Blood Replenishing Pills a day not long ago, if production speed goes any higher he really can only sacrifice his body to prove his point...
After confirming nothing was wrong on each line, Yu Sheng lightly sighed in relief, sitting in the chair and rubbing his temples, easing the slightly weary spirit due to long-time perception of the blood connections.
His current location is still in the Special Service Bureau Headquarters Building, Baili Qing specifically prepared a rest room for him, serving as the "command center" of the travel agency—though Yu Sheng feels they actually don't need this thing, he did not refuse Baili Qing's kind gesture.
After all, the snacks and drinks in this place are free, the fox girl can freely indulge in the ocean of eating.
However, right at this moment, a sudden sensation of heart palpitations suddenly interrupted Yu Sheng's relaxed actions.
Even Hu Li who was squatting beside the snack cabinet eating tiny cakes instantly perked her ears up, the demon fox girl's golden-red eyes instantly glowed with a little light.
Almost in the next second, Yu Sheng heard a piercing alarm sounding from the depths of the building, followed by the vague broadcast sounds.
Erin, who was jumping and punching on the ground, instantly stopped, stared wide-eyed and turned to look at Hu Li: "Silly fox, you have sharp ears, what's being said outside..."
"Floor B is locked down," Hu Li already began speaking before Erin finished, "sounds like something went wrong with a containment zone... facility malfunctioned."
Yu Sheng frowned, instinctively reaching out towards the air, preparing to open a door to the Director's office, but before the door even opened, he heard the phone ringing, answering it, he heard Baili Qing's slightly hurried voice: "Go directly to the 'Knight's' containment facility, something went wrong."
Yu Sheng immediately uttered "Oh my...", not knowing whether to feel a sense of inevitability "Of course things would go wrong at this juncture" or to feel a sense of bewilderment "How could things go wrong at this juncture," then his hand turned to open the door to the containment facility, while calling Hu Li, Luna, and Erin (Freyia isn't present, Miss Angel is currently on standby on the crystal tree in Val↑hal↓la←ra→ serving as a backup card for the front-line combat squad): "Let's go check the situation together—that 'Knight' seems to be missing."
As they spoke, the group walked through the door, arriving at the special containment area Yu Sheng had visited once before, and in no more than two or three minutes after Yu Sheng arrived, an overwhelming aura descended out of nowhere, the next second Yu Sheng saw Baili Qing's figure appearing in the corridor.
On the other side, fine silver-white scales floated on either side of the cheeks and arms, and the eyes faintly bore the contours of vertical pupils—it wasn't far from flying over.
After seeing Yu Sheng, Baili Qing didn't bother with pleasantries and simply said, "Follow me," then turned to walk toward the confinement room, which was flashing with a red alert light.
Yu Sheng saw several teams of fully armed Special Service Bureau Officers on standby in the corridor, but there were no signs of violent destruction outside the containment room. The door and the protective force field on its surface were intact—yet when the door opened, the scene inside the room made everyone gasp.
The confinement room had been hollowed out—literally "hollowed out." The entire room, along with large sections of the walls, floor, and ceiling, had been completely gouged out by some incredible force, leaving only an irregular, cement-cavern-like void. All the facilities that were once in the room, including the knight who had been imprisoned inside, were gone without a trace.
Baili Qing stood at the doorway, frowning as she slowly scanned the hollowed space, and then her gaze rested on a certain corner.
A flicker of black flame was dancing and burning among the ruins, visibly waning by the second.
Erin's eyes widened as she looked at all this, her face showing a hint of disbelief: "Oh my god, no way... that knight in there didn't self-destruct, did he? He got so upset after being confined for just a few days?"
"No," Baili Qing shook her head, her tone carrying a hint of gravity, "He was taken away... the anomalous space-time structures appearing in various Exotic Realms have begun to invade reality."
As she spoke, she blinked slowly, and her faded gray eyes suddenly shimmered with a layer of misty brilliance. The next second, Yu Sheng saw a series of illusions suddenly appear throughout the room, as if time had been retrospectively rolled back, the scenes that once happened in the room flashing before his eyes—
He saw the room restored to its original state, the knight clad in hollow armor sitting quietly on the bed as usual.
He saw the knight suddenly raise his head, as if hearing something, and look in a direction.
He saw a few towering human-like monsters suddenly appear in the room, those monsters wearing tattered cloaks, but under the cloaks, there was no human body, only clusters of rampant, inward-collapsing black flames.
The knight rose to fight those monsters, yet he was clearly no match. After a few brief exchanges, he was forced into a corner—one of the monsters then shifted its attention to the confinement room's door, seemingly intending to break through the entry system.
Then the knight rushed forward, despite his injuries, and stabbed a short sword he carried into one of the monsters.
Accompanied by a strange howl, jet-black flames burst violently from the monster's cloak, and the knight rolled awkwardly to evade. The flames instantly ignited the whole room—the next moment, the space seemed to collapse, swallowing everything, including the furnishings, the knight, and those invading entities, all vanishing into the illusion in the blink of an eye.
The retrospect of this moment ended, and Baili Qing rubbed her temples.
Erin looked up at Yu Sheng and then at Baili Qing, blinking: "…So, what happened?"
"He was taken away by some spatial transfer process," Baili Qing said, frowning slightly. As the controller of the retrospect process, she seemed to perceive a bit more "information" than the others, "Or rather... he was captured by his homeland, the 'Kingdom'."
Yu Sheng frowned, then instantly reacted: "Wait, so this passage led to the source of the Kingdom!?"
"Unfortunately, the passage has already closed," Baili Qing said with a hint of regret in her tone, "That was my oversight, I should have been keeping a close watch here."
Yu Sheng opened his mouth, just thinking about trying to spill some blood here to see if he could locate the now-closed passage, when a sudden, urgent phone ring interrupted his thought.
The phone ring came from Baili Qing.
Baili Qing pulled out her phone, glanced at it, and her eyebrows seemed to wrinkle slightly before she answered and put it to her ear.
The next second, Yu Sheng, standing beside her, faintly heard a somewhat familiar voice coming from the receiver.
It was an elegant female voice, somewhat magnetic and carrying a bit of a bubbly sound: "Chief, support! Jinglin Sanatorium has been attacked—the sky has torn apart, and there's a half-dead knight fallen here with me!"