After taking a few minutes to let the wounds on his foot close up, he chose the south-east direction and once again continued the journey.
It was about 1 p.m and the weather was so cloudy that unless you had a watch, it wasn't even possible to differentiate between day or night.
Hao Xuan was quite surprised when he found out that there was no summer in the Mei Kingdom. Nine to ten months out of the year it would be winter, and the rest autumn with a few weeks of spring if they were lucky.
That was why it was mostly chilly since he got here. Fortunately, he loved the cold. He always used to say that he'd rather freeze to death than stay in hot weather.
He didn't have a specific location in mind this time and just wanted to check out a few places before meeting up with the committee the military had chosen. They selected several people that had some experience in this area and were experts in their own fields. Hao Xuan was to meet with them once he had either found a suitable place or given up and needed their assistance.
He chose to stick to the less-traveled roads. For three days he traversed the many forested areas filled with beasts of all kinds. More often than not he had to take a detour to avoid large beast packs and ended up going way off track.
You would think there would some sort of a GPS in these so-called "spirit Bands" but there was no such function. After about another day or two, he was totally lost. Autumn was more or less over and the winter chill was coming back in. The sun would be out less and less and the nights were getting longer while the days barely lasted five-to-six hours.
Right now it was day sixth of him being on the road. It was around 7 p.m and the sun had already set so he decided to find a secluded spot for the night.
"God damn it, it was so nice just a week ago, how the hell did it change so fast?!" Hao Xuan mumbled while trying to warm his hands over the small campfire. Unlike the big cities which had gigantic protective formations to keep the temperature within a specific range, no such thing existed in the wilderness.
Here, the cold was infused with the spiritual energy from the surroundings, and people under profound realm had no way to protect themselves from it other than using fire and similar methods to warm themselves during the night.
Lex had come through in the end and made the portable camp Hao Xuan so dearly wanted. It alone cost more than 100 million gold and if not for the discount Li Ming had given out, it would not have been affordable.
In its closed state, it looked like a metal ball the size of an orange. It was made with the same materials used for the storage rings with some other precious materials added in.
Once activated it would expand and cover an area of 20 square meters. A small wooden cabin, a bathroom, a campfire, etc where just some of the things that would be set up automatically as soon as he turned the device on and threw it on the ground. There were also a lot of defensive formations, some warning formations, and a high-grade illusionary formation set around the boundaries of the camp.
No normal beasts would be able to detect its existence. Of course, this wasn't meant to be used in combat against demonic beasts and such. These defensive formations were just there to give him enough time to ready up and not get attacked in the middle of the night.
As Hao Xuan sat next to the campfire, the baby snakes that were sleeping in his shirt's collar woke up.
After being on the road for several days he felt really lonely since Zhurong spent most of the day sleeping, so he summoned the little snakes which were named black and white, according to their skin colors.
Currently, he was in a random forest somewhere surrounded by trees and the fog that came out as soon as the sun went down. It obstructed the vision so badly that anything further than 30 meters might as well be invisible. He was telling Black and White some stories from earth, who despite not being able to understand a single word, gave him their full attention. With their tinny heads, they looked at him as if he was the only thing in existence, making him smile.
Every now and then he would pat their heads and give them a piece of meat from the campfire. It was a sight to be held.
Time passed minute by minute, the night got darker and darker and the fog became thicker. He tried to fall asleep but it didn't work. His sleep schedule was all messed up due to the sudden change in day and night cycles and he couldn't fall asleep that easily so this was how he passed his time, not cultivating, but talking to the cute little worms.
Back on earth, he was almost always alone. If none of his few friends were online then he would sit alone in his room and read novels until he fell asleep. Meaning although he loved talking, there was no one to converse with. Now with those little guys, at least he wasn't alone anymore.
Time passed and the clock struck midnight. Hao Xuan who was happily chatting away with Black and White suddenly went silent and looked outwards into the fog. There was nothing visible but he 'felt' a strange fluctuation just now. He had felt something like this before but he couldn't remember where from.
He got up and walked closer to the boundary of the camp. He checked his spirit band which was connected to the portable camp but there was nothing showing up close to him. He stood there for a while, staring into the thick fog which seemed to be churning and taking different shapes but there was still nothing else visible.
After a few minutes, he gave up, returning back to the campfire where the Black and White were also looking around with confused looks.
"Haha, don't worry. There's nothing there," he chuckled and picked them up.
*crack*
He jerked his head around as quickly as it would, looking towards the sound.. That was not his imagination, something was hiding in the darkness.