The city lord is looking at the blasted city gate and a bunch of broken corpses along with the few Black Curtain members who are struggling with severe injuries as they are being healed by the healers the city lord brought.
The whole scene left people stunned and even nauseated.
At first the City lord really didn't want to bother with the whole fight. Even though initially he helped the Black curtain members a bit and gave them freedom to deal with the matter and let them use some of the city guards if they needed, when the first team was hung on the city gate and the second team arrived, he realized that he is currently in the middle of two powers that he couldn't mess with.
So, he decided to take a step back and let them duke it out all they want so that he could at peace.
But this time, he has to get involved, because the two explosions one at the inn and the other at the city gate are too eye catching and too powerful for him to ignore. Now the whole city is living in fear and he has to make a move and show them that he cared and he is capable enough to handle the mess for them to be at peace.
That is why, he started investigating the things himself. Luckily he managed to get some of the information from the spatial rings of a few dead bodies of the group 2 sent by the Black Curtain. They seemed to be recording everything step by step to create a detailed report.
The information he got was that there are a few people who arrived at the inn and one of them placed a mission on a fellow member of their group and the Black curtain failed again and again to deal with them and finally when they tried to use the cursed inn, things backfired and everyone died.
As for the information regarding the investigation of the second group, very little was left. He couldn't find out anything relating to that.
He could only think of investigating from here, but he didn't have many hopes of it. All he could do is make the elders and all the powerful people under him to start looking around the city and the forests surrounding it to avoid another mishap. Any suspected individual is being arrested instantly.
But the rest of the Black curtain members particularly the three that went out to follow the investigation route of the group 1 managed to find some clues.
It turned out there is a way for the Black Curtain members particularly those that are under the Leader 3 have their own method of leading their members for the clues. Sam failed to observe this or might have never even bothered with this even if he has seen as it as he was so focused on the tracker, but the group 1 left some marks on the trees, rocks and on the ground as they followed the route completely.
Only when the three members of the group three managed to reach the first location did Sam understand about this.
After not finding anything at the collapsed inn, those three also decided to join this group. So, now six late stage transcendent cultivators in red cloaks are trying to track Sam and his group down. They are obviously not as fast as the tracker, in fact nowhere near. So, Sam has enough time to make a plan and this time after he saw how they are handling things, he wanted two of them be captured and the remaining four can be killed.
So, they started setting up traps for one after another in the path to the second hideout.
First trap is within a small rocky path they would come across.
Sam went there and for the first time in a while he made a golem. But the golem is not that sophisticated neither does it have some impeccable work put on it, it is the most basic and crude. He then placed a medium liquid energy cell inside and left it there.
When the group of six reached there, the golem which is lying in the middle of the rocks opened its large mouth and bit on the leg of one of them.
As he was struggling the group stopped by the sudden streak, before he could break the hold, Sam blasted the energy cell.
But the group is not as easy as Sam thought, even though they stopped for a moment, they immediately thought of the trouble that Sam caused them by now with the inn and the city gate, so they instantly jumped to the side and even the guy that was stuck came out of the shock faster than Sam expected.
That guy instantly tried to kick himself out of the golem and destroyed its mouth.
By the time the explosion occurred his leg is already out and he is in mid-air jumping away from the spot.
But he didn't escape scot free.
When the dust settled, his leg was completely gone. He is rolling on the ground with pain and since the liquid energy cell Sam used turned out to be earth element one, the earth elemental energy seeped into the injured area and the flesh felt like it is turning into stone.
One of his companions immediately ran to him and checked the leg, he is not a healer, he could only see so much, he could only give him some high level potions and pills that could promote the growth of the leg back.
They made a temporary camp nearby and scouted the surroundings to make sure that there are no more traps.
As for going back, they didn't even think about that, they need to see through this, even if they had to die. Otherwise, the leader wouldn't let them off.
Sam looked at their actions in the surveillance and from the looks of it, it seems like they are not going to move for the rest of the day, so he decided to set up a new trap while they are resting.
He went through the rest of the terrain and looked for a suitable spot.
After a while, he found a patch of trees which felt like a great spot for some next level trap.
He took out a few wood elemental and dark elemental liquid energy crystals and placed a formation.
Then he took out some metal poles that are similar to the one he used in fighting the Ice golem sect, but this time they are of wood and dark elemental energies and started injecting the energies.
The trees, grass and vines rapidly grew with the wood elemental energy with the support of the formation and Sam who is watching it from a far, let a tiny liquid energy cell with only a few drops of liquid energy inside in a special spot and went back to hiding.
The next day, the group started moving again. The one who got his leg injured has his leg grown back, but the muscles are not there yet and he has a bit of limp.
Sam didn't know how it would be to heal from the elemental energy attack directly as every time he used these energy cells and explosions people never survived, but from the looks of it there is some kind of problem with the leg as it didn't heal completely.
But he didn't care too much, the more baggage they have the easier it would be for him.
As they slowly entered the patch Sam set up, they were stunned, they felt that something is wrong, the forest is too overgrown and the wood elemental energy is too high.
They couldn't put a finger on it, but they knew that something wasn't right. They are also vigilant of the traps.
But they don't have any other way, the clues left by the previous group all lead to this place and if they tried to moved around it, they will lose the trial.
They could only harden themselves and get in there. They moved slowly and cautiously making sure that nothing rash happens to them.
After they moved to the middle of the forest, they relaxed a bit, but not too much, they just found a possibility that there is no trap at all in this place.
That thought only lasted a minute though.
Sam who is leisurely looking at the surveillance with the wine gourd in his one hand crushed a token with the other.
A small explosion happened within the forest and the group immediately got spooked. They became alert and took out their weapons.
As they are looking around for anything that could pose a threat to them, what they couldn't or didn't notice is that the roots of the trees are suddenly turning black and soon enough the trunks are also turning black with death energy.
When they saw this, they immediately started running away, they don't know what is going to happen, but they sure as hell knew that nothing good is going to happen.
