Before they left the rock beneath which they hid, Fubei Li left the dog doll marked with a green curse mark under the rock, and then placed a small array beneath it - it was not an attack or defense array, but a long-living one that had only one purpose: count the same kind of creatures that came to attack the dog doll. Fubei Li also scooped some water from the lake and stored it inside of a small vial - since it was not something that he could see everyday. But the liquid just instantly crystallized when it was away from the lake, and Fubei Li did not yet know why and how to change it back.

“That was a pretty neat observation and trick.” as they continued on their way, still cautiously avoiding the attacked sea urchin creatures in the air, Perketta looked at Fubei Li and said: “But still, it is quite risky. How did you know the curse would only spill that little amount of energy to you and that simple curse scapegoat was enough to contain it?”

“Well, I happen to be quite good at the process of tracing things through their causality. And I am somewhat good at divination.” Fubei Li smiled and said: “Unless you are utilizing some kind of God level power to tap into the laws of time and cause and effect, tracking remote attacks accurately, whether from a physical distance or from a chronological distance, is still one of the biggest challenge in the art of energy trail forensics. I don’t think that mouth thing could wield that kind of power. So I took a bet - looks like it only had the ability to track the attacker from the energy signature within a physical range. ”

“Hmm.” Perketta nodded, then turned her face forward: “So you’re saying you intentionally did not obscure your energy signature on that sigil?”

“Yeah, but I modified the sigil’s energy signature to be more like that scapegoat’s. So basically no risk to me.”

“See, I told you he could help.” Dave smiled: “There’s more to him than meets the eye - I mean there’s more where that came from.”

“Geez Dave, watch it with the roast!” Fubei Li laughed out loud: “You are all snarky and captain-like now.”

“Sorry, did not mean that as a roast.” Dave chuckled and shrugged: “It’s just the past knowledge, I found that I got to know a lot of very handsome men in my past cycles. So Mr. Yu, unfortunately I have to tell you that you are just barely above average.”

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“Jesus Daekan-Velliander, even I know that is a roast.” Xyankor said.

After dealing with the situation near the lake, the team of four did not encounter many obstacles or situations that would force them to pause or stop. They did stop a couple of times, because the scenery along the way piqued Fubei Li’s interest and he wanted to do some quick investigations. These stops and pauses paid off in the end, because at two of the later stops, Fubei Li found some strange small pieces of pale grey rocks that seemed to give off a pale light from the centers and have the ability to turn the land around pale and grey as well. These, according to Perketta, were the droppings of a kind of small but very dangerous creature of the gaps.

“How dangerous is this thing?” Fubei Li asked when they were on their way again: “And what’s the name?”

“Its name in our native tongue just means ‘Pillaging Snails’.” Perketta let out a long sigh: “They vary greatly in size. And they are not only extremely dangerous and hard to kill, they’re also very greedy and destructive. Lucky for us, judging from the size of the droppings, they are still very young. And since we are way over half way to our realm, I will arrange for extermination.”

“What are they like?” Fubei Li broke off one of the rocks and tried to look at what was giving off the pale light from the center, but there was nothing in the middle, and the two pieces started shining from their respective centers instead.

“They look like - like a bunch of centipedes with their tails tucked in a single snail shell. And they attack with these centipede heads.”

“Huh - interesting.” Fubei Li frowned: “I think I saw one before, very vicious indeed. But the one I saw was quite big. So when are the earliest records of them?”

“At least a couple tens of thousands of years, according to our records at least.” Dave said: “So it must have been even longer since they first appeared.”

The land narrowed in front of them - by Fubei Li’s measure, the most narrow part in front of them was around the width of three car lanes, and it was thinner than all parts of the land they traveled through.

Fubei Li could also tell that they were quite close to their first destination - the gate into the realm of the Fog Dwellers, because he could already see the gate at the end of their path.

The gate was light grey, round and slowly spinning. Fubei Li could not tell what kind of material it was, it seemed to be some kind of rock that slightly resembles the visual qualities of marble and quartz. Around the gate, there were a few patches of fog circling it to the opposite direction in which it was spinning.

“We’re almost there.” Perketta said: “I’ll shine the signal ...”

“Boom!” a beam of bright white energy shot from the space and struck the spinning gate in front of them. The explosion threw the circling patches of fog away into the space around and tore up a few chunks of the land attaching the gate.