However, after witnessing Heinrich's unusual behavior, Eve and Elsie were neither willing to report Heinrich for suspicion of dereliction of duty nor excessively surprised. It was because Eve and Elsie had no idea how many years they had maintained a close relationship with Heinrich, so they could easily discern the problem with Heinrich's appearance. This led Eve and Elsie not to entertain thoughts of using force against the illegal intruder but instead to treat the special visitor in a friendly manner within the base.
On the other hand, after leaving, Heinrich naturally did not prepare for the next purification mission. Instead, he returned directly to his room and immediately began trying to repair the seal within him once again, to prevent his mind from being eroded by original sin. Fortunately, the birth of his daughter, Tonalli, had greatly improved Heinrich's moral standards. This allowed Heinrich to stabilize the seal within him shortly after giving himself timely treatment, preventing the crack on the seal from expanding further. However, because Heinrich could not immediately repair the crack on the seal, he was very aware of the dilemma he was once again in and promptly decided to enter a semi-seclusion state.
Heinrich's decision was actually out of helplessness. Despite expressing anger at Eve and Elsie's unauthorized decision to keep Elina, Heinrich knew he couldn't make a fuss about it due to his own clean record. He could only quietly tolerate Eve and Elsie's recklessness.
Of course, Heinrich also set rules for Eve and Elsie. Heinrich stated that in order to prevent leakage of information regarding purification missions, he must forbid Eve and Elsie from bringing Elina near him and from entering the room where he was located. Eve and Elsie naturally understood that Heinrich's purpose in doing so was not only to prevent leakage of information about the purification mission but also to prevent his mind from being eroded by original sin again. To avoid upsetting Heinrich while he was still rational and causing more trouble.
In addition, Eve and Elsie were well aware that they should handle Heinrich with care. Therefore, they accepted Heinrich's orders. Elina was also very obedient, always keeping her distance from Heinrich and avoiding being in the same room as him. In this way, Heinrich could finally continue to command the team to carry out purification missions with peace of mind. Heinrich no longer had to worry about encountering Elina and risking the seal within him being struck by unknown forces again, causing further cracks on the seal to expand.
"How can you let Elina stay in the base?! Don't you know she's a fusion of Mold Spirit energy? Don't you know how dangerous Mold Spirit energy is?" Dao Lao asked sternly.
"Of course, I know. Elina didn't intend to hide her identity from the beginning. After Elina appeared, we also learned about her situation through channels in the Dark Layer system," Heinrich replied nervously, as if being scolded by his parents for failing an exam.
"Since you know, why didn't you take her down? Or directly kill her? For example, throw her into the Pregnant Sea and let her fend for herself?" Hao Yun continued to question sharply. Although he had guessed why Heinrich did not take any necessary countermeasures when he knew Elina's identity.
Heinrich sighed awkwardly, "Oh, it's really embarrassing! I admit that because Elina's appearance caused the seal of my original sin within me to be damaged again, I developed a strong desire for her. This evil desire severely affected my judgment and prevented me from making decisive orders to capture or kill her."
Heinrich's tone changed, and he explained defensively, "You should be very clear about Elina's strength, so even if we wanted to act against her, we would probably be killed by her in retaliation?! I won't hide it from you, although Elina is powerful, I actually thought about taking advantage of her inattention and throwing her into the Pregnant Sea. But in the end, I couldn't do it because at that time, I was really afraid to get too close to her to control my original sin. Moreover, after Elina appeared, she didn't show any hostility towards us, and even expressed willingness to assist us in speeding up the purification mission. Therefore, I naturally had no reason to refuse her goodwill."
Facing Heinrich's strained response, Dream Jia sneered and said, "Huh! I see you can't bear to let Elina leave, right? Otherwise, even if you can't defeat her, you could at least inform the Divine Realm about Elina's situation and let the Divine Realm handle her, right?"
Heinrich scratched his cheek awkwardly and chuckled awkwardly, tacitly agreeing with Dream Jia's questioning. However, realizing that his actions were somewhat out of line, Heinrich adjusted his tone again and continued to defend himself, "Oh, Dream Lady, we can't say that! Because as I just said, I initially thought Eve and Elsie secretly leaked information about the purification mission to Elina. The reason they did that was naturally because they saw an opportunity to use Elina to drag me down again. However, from my later contact with Elina, I learned that she actually learned about the purification mission through other means. Eve and Elsie only shared information about the purification mission with Elina after she actively mentioned the purification mission and proposed cooperation. So, we didn't leak any secrets; we just shared information about the purification mission!"
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Facing Heinrich's unreasonable arguments, Haoyun naturally didn't want to continue arguing with him about this matter. Because, from Heinrich's words, Haoyun learned an interesting piece of information. So he bypassed the topic of the leak and instead asked, "Regarding subsequent contact? Didn't you say you've been avoiding contact with Elina all along? So, are you two—?"
As Haoyun asked, he even gestured suggestively, curious until the end.
"Heh! Don't get any funny ideas! Between Elina and me, it's all very innocent! Ugh! How should I put it? I really wanted to, you know, with her, but before I could—. Sigh!" From Heinrich's tone, although he vehemently denied having deep conversations with Elina, he actually felt extremely unwilling about it, and amid his extreme unwillingness, he vaguely revealed a sense of resentment.
Heinrich knew well that once he had too much contact with Elina, it would accelerate the unsealing of the seal within him. So, he tried to avoid Elina as much as possible. However, it was precisely because of his actions that Eve and the others had more opportunities to be alone with Elina. It was during their private interactions that Elina had the chance to directly point out the plans Eve and the others were secretly making, and she expressed her willingness to assist them in successfully carrying out their escape plan.
Elina did not disclose how she learned about the purification mission of Team P1557 and their escape plan. However, to calm Eve and the others' nervousness and to express her sincere intention to cooperate, Elina openly revealed her plan to overturn the Spirit Realm. However, since Eve and the others were trying to escape from the Spirit Realm themselves, they did not want to inform the Spirit Realm about Elina's attempt or intervene.
On the contrary, they felt that even if Elina's attempt to overturn the Spirit Realm was almost certain to fail, it would at least stir up a temporary storm in the Spirit Realm. In this way, naturally, they could create a better opportunity for Eve and the others to escape from the Spirit Realm in the chaos. So, the two sides reached a strategic cooperation agreement after mutual negotiation, and in the following decades, they continuously improved the efficiency of Team P1557 in executing tasks on the surface, while secretly deepening the cooperation process of backstabbing the Spirit Realm.
Haoyun interrupted Heinrich's memory and asked in surprise, "Wait a minute! Are you saying Elina has been here for decades?"
Heinrich replied, "That's right. According to the time laws we created in the dark chain plane to execute the mission, she has indeed been living here for decades."
Because Haoyun knew that each timeline in the Spirit Realm had its own time laws, he could not question Heinrich's explanation. However, considering how Elina's strength had greatly increased in just a few decades of relative time, Haoyun simply couldn't imagine what terrifying level her strength would reach if Elina continued to stay in the dark chain plane. By then, Elina might indeed possess the power to overturn the Spirit Realm!
Thinking of this, Haoyun couldn't help but exchange glances with Dao Lao and Dream Jia. It was clear that Dao Lao and Dream Jia also shared Haoyun's concerns and showed signs of worry on their faces. Even though the three of them had lost their faith in the Spirit Realm's justice after realizing that the Spirit Realm was not as noble as it appeared, from a calm and objective perspective, they could not deny the outstanding efforts made by the Spirit Realm to maintain peace in the lower world.
However, compared to the hypocritical Spirit Realm, which claimed to represent absolute justice but was in fact a devil on one side and a demon on the other, Elina was obviously not so hypocritical. Because whether on the surface or behind the scenes, she was a pure demon. So from this point of view, Haoyun and the others felt that if they had to make a choice, they would rather let the Spirit Realm maintain the status quo than let Elina turn the Spirit Realm into a purgatory of suffering.
However, considering what Haoyun and the others had witnessed, the Spirit Realm's powerful and unfathomable strength displayed in digging the corners of more powerful and deeper dark chain planes, they still had to question whether Elina had the strength to disturb the Spirit Realm? In response to Haoyun and the others' doubts, Heinrich first expressed understanding and then indicated that he would address this issue in his subsequent statements. Then, Heinrich continued to recall the topic he had just mentioned.
After learning that Eve and Elsie had reached a cooperation agreement with Elina, Heinrich naturally could not sit idly by to prevent them from causing more trouble. So, Heinrich tried his best to suppress the restless crack in the seal within him, and expressed his anger when faced with Eve and their unauthorized cooperation with the mold energy.
As mentioned earlier, Heinrich himself was not clean. Coupled with his concern that his own unrestrained behavior would affect his daughter Tonali, his strong indignation was already the greatest protest he could make against Eve and the others' act of privately colluding. Eve and the others were of course very aware of the problems with Heinrich, which meant they did not take Heinrich seriously at all.
What's more, Eve and the others were even more excessive. After Heinrich protested, they immediately pushed Elina to the forefront, letting her confront Heinrich instead of themselves. Sure enough, after seeing Elina explain the reasons for their cooperation, Heinrich immediately acknowledged his cowardice. Because, as soon as Heinrich saw Elina, the desire in his body surged for no reason, forcing him to concentrate all his spiritual power on the seal within his body to effectively suppress the crack in the seal. Therefore, in addition to silently condemning the cunning and despicableness of Eve and others in his heart, Heinrich did not dare to continue to argue with them.
Fortunately, Elina has always deliberately kept her distance from Heinrich and has no thoughts in that area at all, which gradually made Heinrich realize that his desire for Elina was just an unrequited love. Although Heinrich felt extremely disappointed with Elina's indifferent attitude towards him, he was also relieved that Elina did not maintain the ambiguous state of wanting to win over his sister like Elsie did at the beginning.