They all ascended easily. After I had climbed a few meters, I looked back, feeling a bit daunted. When I had been climbing, I hadn't paid much attention, but looking down from up here, I saw that apart from the cliff face, the rest of the mountain was also very steep and covered in loose rocks. If I happened to fall during the climb, being killed outright would be considered lucky. It was highly probable that my body would continuously roll down the steep slope, being cut to pieces by sharp rocks in the process!
I looked up again at the distant, high target and the other fiends eagerly climbing upwards. Silently, I retraced my steps, carefully climbing back down. I waved at the eagle fiend that was hovering at a low altitude on this side of the mountain. The eagle fiend landed, stretched its talons and neck, and flapped its wings a few times in place, a warm-up equivalent to a weightlifter before lifting. Then, with great effort, it carried me up. It wasn't that I was too heavy, nor that the eagle fiend was too weak. It could fly me a few thousand meters with ease when flying close to the ground, but this kind of vertical ascent, though only a hundred meters, was as difficult as reaching the heavens. It was like being able to run swiftly on flat ground carrying a fifty-pound bag of rice, but try carrying it up stairs. And this was a vertical staircase!
Fiends were unscientific, but their abilities were scientific and followed basic physical laws. This claw-assisted ascent, if I remembered correctly, involved issues of "work" and "gravitational potential energy."
I was the fastest to reach the mountain summit. There wasn't much flat ground at the top either, only loose rocks. I found a relatively safe crevice between rocks, wedged myself in, and using the sparse bushes in front of the crevice as cover, I observed the manor below with binoculars.
The manor covered a considerable area, about the size of four football fields. However, the surrounding area was covered in grass of a faded green and yellow hue (the color of late autumn). The main building of the manor itself was only about two hundred square meters, feeling smaller than Chen Lu's villa. The manor was European in style, or perhaps with a touch of a Disney castle. It had pointed roofs and a circular stone structure. The windows were small, and the main gate faced south, invisible from my vantage point. There was no back door.
Not far from the castle, there was an observation tower that the eagle fiend had mentioned earlier. It looked somewhat like a 5G mobile phone tower, or rather, it was a signal tower with a small platform on top. On the platform, there were three people dressed in black coats. Two of them were sitting on chairs, chatting, while the other leaned against the railing, looking down, seemingly playing with his phone. The signal there must have been excellent.
"Are we going to act now?" the snake fiend asked me.
"Speed is of the essence. Go down and incapacitate everyone on the periphery—by incapacitate, I mean neutralize their combat effectiveness, not kill them. Then, capture the three big shots inside," I said.
The seven fiends received the order, descended the mountain, and split up to enter the outer vineyard.
I decided not to go down, opting to hide on the mountaintop with the eagle fiend and watch the show.
Five minutes later, all seven fiends reached the edge of the vineyard. Beyond that was the lawn, and entering the lawn would expose them.
However, I overestimated the enemy's vigilance. Because until the leading snake fiend began to climb the signal tower, the three guards only then noticed several strange figures appearing on the lawn. They immediately shouted questions and drew their guns, pointing them at the ground.
A few seconds later, the snake fiend reached the platform and directly used her saber. However, I saw clearly that she was using the flat of the blade. After quickly subduing the guards, she leaped directly from the platform, creating a large pit in the soft lawn below.
The guards at other positions subsequently discovered the anomaly here and immediately rode their off-road motorcycles to provide support. This saved the fiends the effort of attacking separately. When everyone arrived, they were all dealt with by the fiends.
I looked back towards the castle. The people inside must have received the intel. All the windows were closed. The seven fiends surrounded the castle. The walls were too smooth, and they tried, finding that they couldn't climb in their human forms. I thought the snake fiend would transform again to climb, but I was mistaken. It was the deer fiend and the mink fiend who transformed. The mink fiend rode on the deer fiend's large antlers. The deer fiend took a few steps back, then with a powerful upward swing, flung the mink fiend onto a window roughly on the third floor.