"Don't let your guard down!" Kuo said in a stern voice when the creature disappeared. It could reappear anywhere since they didn't know of its abilities.
*Ding*
"The Bell!" said Qin Feng and Aria at the same time.
"Do you hear it again?" asked the blond spirit realm warrior with a frown.
"Yes!"
*Ding*
"The second one..." mumbled Hao Xuan lost in thought. It felt like he was about to remember something but then suddenly it vanished.
*Ding*
The bell sounded for the third time and the fog surrounding the town slowly disappeared.
Everyone present suddenly felt like a bucket of cold water was thrown onto them and they felt 'awake'. Apparently, the fog was not natural and had some strange effects. But Hao Xuan didn't feel any different, as if he wasn't affected by it at all.
When Kuo felt the feeling of clarity, his face changed. To confuse several Spirit Realm experts was not an easy task, whatever happened here was not the doing of anything he was aware of.
"Captain, we need to report back to the HQ right now," he said walking up to Hao Xuan.
"Mhmm, Qin Feng, bring the formation plate."
Qin Feng came up to them while the rest still stood guard around them. He moved his hand and a round gold plate with markings etched onto it appeared. Its diameter was about 1.5 meters and there were several holes along the edges.
Kuo bent down and took out some medium quality spirit stones and put them in the holes. After about a second the engravings started to light up and the whole plate became extremely bright.
Five more seconds later a hologram of about 3 meters in length appeared right above it, it was a man with glasses sitting behind a desk writing something.
"Hmm?" the man frowned and looked up at the formation plate.
"Who are you? Why are you contacting me through this formation plate?" he asked sternly.
"Sir, I'm Kuo Meng, ID number 274892 of the Red Legion," Kuo replied while doing a military salute.
"Hm, explain yourself. Why are you the one contacting me instead of the assigned officer?" he asked, still doubting his identity.
And no one could blame him. Each officer for the forwarding posts was chosen and trained to undergo the harshest of trials. Only one person was supposed to know their identity and no one else could know of their work. It was all top secret.
"Sir, the entire town's population has vanished. It seems they have been 'spirited away'. There was no damage to the surroundings but the people seemed to have just vanished into thin air. We were passing by on a separate mission and were supposed to check-in with HQ when we came upon this."
Kuo explained everything to the man, the ringing of the bells, the creature and everything it said. When the man heard about the bells his expression changed for the first time and got even more serious.
"Who was it talking to?" the man asked when he heard about the creature talking to Hao Xuan.
"Our captain, he is the Ninth Leader!" Kuo replied with a puffed chest as if it was his own achievement.
"Alright, I'll pass this along to the great general. Leave some warning glyphs and continue on with your mission. It should be safe now that the bell has run again," the man said, but the last sentence was as if he was talking to himself.
Without waiting for a response he cut off the transmission and the plate went back to its original state. The only difference was that in the place of the spiritual stones, there was only dust left now.
Everyone heard what the man said and without taking much more time, they finished putting up the glyphs and continued on their journey.
After that, there were no more disruptions or strange phenomenon for the next few days until they reached the vicinity of the trade caravan.
It took close to two weeks for the full journey. The location where the trade caravan disappeared was a jungle. The plant life here was so dense that they couldn't even walk five feet without getting a faceful of branches.
There were creepy crawlies everywhere. Even the smallest of things could be poisonous enough to kill everyone in their party.
"Why would the caravan go through this place?" asked Mia looking around. She used to stick especially close to Hao Xuan, hoping to catch a glimpse of Zhurong who spent most of his day sleeping. And even when he was awake he would stay close to Hao Xuan.
"They wouldn't. Not unless they didn't have any other choice," replied Luke from behind them.
"Alright, everyone stay together, don't lose sight of the person in front of you. If you get lost, we will use the ID badges to find you, remember to not to move from your spot. There are a lot of venomous and poisonous creatures here, some as small as an ant, and some bigger than you can imagine," Kuo said while looking around carefully.
This really was a very bad spot to get lost in. Unless you could fly, it was really easy to get lost because of the dense foliage. The beasts here were extremely strange and had weird abilities. For a single person to survive in here for any number of days was more or less a miracle.
It wasn't called the 'Poison Quarry' for nothing.