333 The Portal

Selma Payne’s POV:

I stopped the purification and immediately gathered the rest of the small teams and ordered them to retreat.

“The evil power here seems to be endless. No matter if there are other sources of contamination or whatever the situation is, there is no point in staying here. Let’s retreat out of the city first.”

We rushed to the nearest city gate, but a strange situation happened again: After we stepped out of the city gate, what appeared in front of us was not a dense natural forest but the central square that we had just left not long ago.

The fountain in the square was still flowing.

This time, everyone’s expression changed.

“Check all communication equipment,” I ordered. ‘Is the signal to the outside world still clear?”

“The signal is full. Communication is normal,” the team members said. “No interception detected.”

“Are you still in contact with the elven capital?” I asked Kaya.

“Yes.” Kaya nodded. “The palace just ordered us to retreat ten minutes ago. The signal was still working then.”

“Send another message,” I said. “Briefly explain the current problem.”

I contacted my Lycan pack again. A message from my father was sent to my communicator a minute later.

“Try to find a breakthrough. Reinforcements are on their way.”

After receiving the message, I immediately confirmed, “Our communication signal has been hacked. From now on, don’t believe any message. Treat everything we’ve received before as fake.”

Everyone was puzzled. Kaya had just received the Elven King’s message and asked, “How do you know it’s fake? The communication between the capital and me is normal. I didn’t find anything suspicious.”

“Everything is normal, but it’s the most abnormal.” I said, “I’ve agreed with the Lycan pack. Once I signal them, all subsequent communications will be reversed.

“But now, the other side is telling us to find a breakthrough point. They have already sent reinforcements. Does the pack mean for us to wait for death? This is impossible. The person who hacked the signal doesn’t know our code, so they gave themselves away. Since my signal has been hacked, there’s no reason for them to let the others go. Out of caution, it’s better not to believe any information from the outside world.”

Kaya hesitated for a few seconds before putting down her communicator.

Master Kevin tried to use witchcraft to contact the outside world, and unsurprisingly, he failed.

“The opponent’s magic is too strong. My sorcery can’t penetrate his defense at all.” He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and said weakly, “This isn’t something an ordinary person can do. I even suspect the other party invited a real demon from hell. That kind of pure demonic power is something even the most vicious person can’t do.”

“A demon?” I got nervous. “Do you think it could be Leviathan?”

“No.” Master Kevin shook his head. “It’s not that bad. If I had faced a supreme demon of that level just now, my soul would have been shattered into pieces by now. But even if it’s an unknown demon, it’s enough to make us suffer.”

We’d tried every city gate, even climbing over walls and towers and other unusual ways. However, no matter what, we’d still return to the central square, as if the edge of Autumn City was surrounded by a teleportation gate that led to the central square.

Wait, a portal?

Everything we were experiencing now was a little familiar. Had I come into contact with or heard of such a situation somewhere?

The portal.

We couldn’t leave Autumn City.

Two interconnected spatial mayflies

Were they connected?

Wait, wasn’t this the same situation I encountered in the Rocky Mountains?

The illusion in the snowy night, Mullwica’s house, and the overlapping space at the canyon passage were similar to the current situation!

The illusion was the work of Azazel. As a supreme demon, it would not be surprising if Leviathan knew similar means. Furthermore, constructing an illusion required a continuous investment of magic power. I suspected that the evil power that I couldn’t purify no matter what came from this.

If that was the case, it meant that everything ‘we’ were experiencing now was an illusion, and the real us were unconscious somewhere. The way to wake up was very simple. He just had to believe that everything was fake.

If the current situation was similar to Mullwica’s house, we must meet certain special conditions before entering Autumn City. Thinking back to everything that had happened since we entered the city, I didn’t find anything special. We didn’t bring any special items, so the possibility of this happening was very small. Besides, there was no limit to leaving Mullwica’s house, which was different from our current situation. However, we needed to consider the possibility that there were other ways to cast the space fold spell.

Then, there was the canyon passage, which was the work of the witches of the Rocky Mountains, and the principle should be the same as that of Mullwica’s house. Therefore, we could consider the second situation.

I was done guessing. It seemed that we’d most likely fallen into an illusion.