The mass-produced Puppet Army occupied the large platform in front of the Gate of Eden, delaying the church soldiers’ counterattacks while methodically teleporting back to the valley. The flames left by Hu Li burned wildly on the plains, with Fox Fire driven by Spiritual Power rising into a fire wall over ten meters high, creating an impressive spectacle.

But by this time, Yu Sheng and the others had already taken advantage of the chaos and smoke to sneak across the battlefield, running up the mountain through a path unnoticed by anyone.

Behind them, the "Gate of Eden" standing on the vast plains had already stopped operating. The enormous ring structure, daunting in scale, had been eroded by external forces and forcibly cut off from its energy supply. Before leaving, Yu Sheng had even shaken its structural foundation— 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

At this moment, that great gate was swaying in the strong wind; fractured structures continually fell from the cloud level, wrapped in flames and blood rain, crashing to the ground with a screeching sound that sent shivers down one’s spine, while sparks from the loss of control of energy traveled along the entire giant ring. Not long after the Puppet Army retreated, those sparks ignited the entire platform, causing it to burn fiercely in the blood rain.

Gale, blood rain, the tilting Gate of Eden, and the continuous lightning storm in the sky spreading flames everywhere—a scene right out of an apocalypse.

Admittedly, this was not quite the "secret infiltration" Yu Sheng had initially planned.

But things going beyond the plan was also part of the plan, and he was used to it.

The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox transformed into a white shadow, darting through the depths of the mountain forest. Erin clung tightly to Yu Sheng’s arm, lifting her head strenuously: "You said you sensed two ’rift sources’?! What’s going on? Why are there two? Was the second Dark Angel really wrapped in that grease-proof paper pack?!"

"The Dark Angel might only be one, but I did indeed sense two energy focal points," Yu Sheng explained quickly while holding onto the small Puppet to prevent her from falling off Hu Li, "I only sensed another rift’s existence when establishing a connection with the gate on the plains, and its scale is even larger than this one... I even have reason to suspect that the other rift is the main point; the one on the plain is either a decoy or some kind of ’ignition device’..."

The small Puppet blinked, seemingly wanting to ask something, but before she could speak, a continuous thunderous roar suddenly swept over from the plains, interrupting her train of thought.

The sound of thunder was mixed with the terrifying noise of huge structures fracturing and collapsing, accompanied by the unrelenting shaking of the earth.

Erin hurriedly looked back in the direction of the sound.

At the same time, on the plain at the foot of the mountain, a fragmented black-skirted Puppet lay in a crater, and then her body, which had already ceased functioning, suddenly twitched. She opened her eyes and looked towards the nearby distance.

Amid the sea of flames and smoke, the magnificent giant gate was collapsing—the massive explosion of its internal energy units finally destroyed its last supporting structure, and the ring that pierced the clouds tilted beyond its limit, starting to fall entirely amidst a series of fractures. The blood rain descending from the clouds was swept by the gale, slapping onto the slowly falling gate.

The bloated red light curtain within the center of the Gate of Eden contracted for the last time, and a few seconds of silence enveloped the plain—after which, an unprecedentedly large explosion swept across the battlefield.

The Puppet’s connections were severed.

The mountains were quaking, thunderous rumbles came from the depths of the earth, rocks and soil crashing down, the distant sky shattered into pieces, and then dust and mist began to obscure the sky.

"Holy crap! That thing’s completely finished!" The small Puppet instinctively leaned her neck back, nearly tossing her head off, "Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng! The gate exploded!"

"I know, I controlled the explosion—and there’s a second rift source, keeping the one on the plain would only complicate things, so I ’shut it down’ in advance to prevent any unexpected events," Yu Sheng said, pressing down on the small Puppet’s head, "Take it easy, your neck just cracked a bit."

"Oh, oh," Erin held her head with one hand, "Can you feel where the second gate is?"

"Not sure, the ’permeation’ time was too short, and I haven’t fully grasped how this system is structured, but I can vaguely sense it’s underground... that ’energy source’ should also be underground."

"Underground?" Erin was momentarily stunned, then immediately turned her head and shouted, "Silly fox! Can you dig a hole..."

Yu Sheng interrupted her before the small Puppet could finish speaking, "I don’t think it’s a depth Hu Li can dig through, and the exact direction isn’t even determined, where would you dig?"

Erin panicked, "Then what do we do? The earth is quaking, the Holy Seat ran off, I...I... I feel this isn’t good..."

Yu Sheng didn’t immediately reply to her. He just squinted up at the sky.

"Plans can’t keep up with changes..." he suddenly said, "but it’s not a big problem, the timing is about right."

The small Puppet was confused, "What’s the timing...?"

Before Erin could finish her sentence, a sharp whistling from the clouds suddenly interrupted her thoughts—and then, swift black shadows with black and red paint appeared above the forest.

They were air assault crafts from the Hidden Monastery.

Hu Li looked up and shouted, "Savior! They’ve discovered we’re running away!"

Erin followed up with a scream, "Damn it, cheating or what, we escaped with smoke and they tracked us from eight hundred miles away!"

The next second, those pursuing craft locked onto the Nine-tailed Demon Fox running wildly through the forest, and with flashes of light, over a dozen high-energy particle beams struck towards Yu Sheng and his group.

A furious roar filled with anger came through the communication link from a priest, "These invaders will pay for desecrating the Saint Realm—"

"Report, report—target’s life signal has disappeared!"

"Good, I didn’t expect it to be this light..."

"No, before the attack hit... the signal already vanished!"

...

A tall figure bathed in holy radiance strode quickly over the long bridge in front of the Supreme Temple. A Living Saint with wings emerged from the great hall, silently following behind the tall figure.

The heavy psychic turbulence weighed down on the entire temple, the dense, almost tangible oppressive aura made everyone lower their voices even as they breathed. For the first time, the figure crossing the bridge shed his usual gentleness, his eyes filled with anger, confusion, and a bit of unease almost imperceptible to ordinary people.

"Holy," a high-level priest stationed at the temple stood at the door, immediately approaching as he saw the Holy cross the bridge, "about the Gate of Eden..."

"The gate has been destroyed," the Holy stopped, his voice colder and harder than usual, but still restrained to maintain the bare minimum of calmness, "we also lost some compatriots—they fought bravely in intercepting the invaders."

The high-level priest’s expression changed several times, his lips quivering: "Unbelievable, actually..."

"It’s alright, what truly matters is knowledge and experience, and we have obtained the most critical data—the gate can be rebuilt, as long as I am here, there’s nothing that cannot start over," the Holy glanced at the priest, his voice softening, "what’s important is that the invaders who entered the mother planet have been eliminated, those comrades fighting on the plains will soon return. Next, we must quickly gather the troops. The United Fleet invading the Boundary Land is the real threat—we still can’t determine the situation over at the border?"

"All contact is completely lost," the high-level priest lowered his head, "we received a final brief transmission from the internal garrison of the Star Gate several minutes ago, the content was very brief, just... just three words."

"Three words?"

"Yes, yes, the content was ’It is alive.’ The meaning is unclear, but it seems ominous, and the ’Generational Guard’ mission to destroy the Star Gate’s power core seems to have also failed."

"Then let’s proceed assuming the Star Gate is completely under enemy control, and the United Fleet has acquired our route charts," the Holy said solemnly, "the United Fleet has journeyed here, even with Star Gate support, they cannot deploy many fleets into the Dark Meteor Domain at once, we are fighting on home ground, as long as we can reclaim the Star Gate..."

He suddenly stopped.

A strong sense of foreboding was warning him through his Spiritual Intuition, as if indicating that something worse was about to happen.

The high-level priest was stunned for a moment, then was about to inquire, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw another priest hurriedly running towards them.

"What? The search team discovered traces of the invaders in the mountains... and then they vanished into thin air again?!"

Hearing the message, the high-level priest widened his eyes, quickly turning his head in alarm: "Holy, those invaders..."

He stopped halfway.

A powerful psychic pressure was permeating, the oppressive force unintentionally leaked from the Holy seemed to choke him, rendering him speechless.

The Holy tilted his head back, seemingly looking at the sky, lost in uneasy contemplation.

Unease, an increasingly intense unease, an impending disaster... What was overlooked? How did the situation suddenly turn like this? What will happen next?

Everything exceeded the plan, a series of unexpected events — the dramatic change at the Gate of Eden, the "Angel Hunter," the bizarre invaders, the border attack...

The Holy stood in front of the temple perched above the clouds, suddenly, as if something caught his eye, he stared intently at a direction in the sky.

The two priests beside him instinctively looked up, glancing in the same direction.

At the far end of the sky, a faint shadow seemed to be slowly emerging.

At first, it appeared to be a hazy rift, as if something beyond the atmosphere was tearing space and time, then the rift began to warp and twist, with some kind of enormous entity "squeezing out" of the rift, presenting a somewhat familiar silhouette.

At first, the two priests couldn’t discern what it was, as the shadow was too vague, and the immense distance made its size difficult to gauge, but gradually, they saw a ring-like structure emitting a dark red halo — a stream of energy tens of kilometers long was leaking from the opening at the front of the massive ring into space, illuminating the majestic and towering radar array and antenna system surrounding the ring.

Everything became clear — such a grand space megastructure, even if hanging in orbit, was enough to cast a shadow on the sky.

The messenger priest finally opened his mouth, his voice squeezed out from deep within, sharply distorted—

"Star Gate!!!"