It caught them by surprise when the wizard lunged towards the Inferno Gate. As the gate was not fully opened yet, the violent magical energy was swirling like a storm at the gate entrance. Anyone in his right mind would not have jumped into it. In a split second, Lily leaped to stop Baptiste. She was fast like lightning, and almost got a hold of Baptiste with her hand in his way. Baptiste, who was about to reach the gate, raised his hand and tried to push hers away. However, Lily's claw was a sharp weapon and it ended up severing his hand. But because of his body's momentum, Baptiste was unstoppable. He fell into the warped, crimson vortex.
The rest of them could only watch as the wizard disappeared in the violent magical energy. The vortex kept shredding and reorganising Baptiste's body as black smoke and ashes sprang from the gate. Baptiste's frenzied laughter came out from the vortex. "I've succeeded! I've succeeded! No one—"
His voice disappeared in a gust of wind. The magic circle that sucked power from them crumbled as various magic facilities on the scene had stopped working. Inferno Gate lost its energy supply and dimmed. When the gate collapsed, it produced a whirlwind so strong that no one could come near to it. Hao Ren took out a silver gadget from his dimensional pocket and yanked it into the heart of the vortex. The tiny gadget flashed in a dark-red storm before it disappeared with the vortex.
The gate to Inferno had finally gone.
The whirlwind had subsided as if it had never been there. The spot where Inferno Gate had once opened became a huge, deep crater where stinking black smoke was billowing out and mixing with the fog in the surroundings. The fog that used to flow like liquid began to dissipate slowly. Obviously, the flowing fog was just the result of magic control.
Everything had happened too fast, and only after Baptiste and Inferno Gate disappeared, Hessiana burst out and swore, "Shit! He got away! That bastard got away!"
Lily bent over and picked up Baptiste's arm on the ground. Her prey had escaped and the arm was the only 'trophy' left on the scene. She took the ghastly stuff, came back up to Hao Ren and handed it to him muddle headedly.
Hao Ren could not believe what Lily was doing. "Why do I want this?"
"Dissect it..." Lily said casually. But before her voice trailed off, the arm suddenly turned into black ashes in her hand and blown away by the wind.
Lily shook her head and said in a regretful voice, "Now, it's gone."
Nangong Wuyue looked at Hao Ren helplessly. "What should we do now?"
"Of course, we can't let him get away just like that!" Hao Ren gritted his teeth, pulled out the MDT and switched on the tracking monitor. "I've thrown in a probe and I guess it has gone through the gate smoothly. But the dimensional turbulence had prevented it from tracking Baptiste. Anyway, it has arrived in an alien dimension. Vivian, could you tell if this is Inferno?"
While saying, Hao Ren zoomed in on the image the probe was streaming. It was a desolate world where disgusting, decomposing substances covered the black earth, and hot springs dotted the surface with muddy liquid surging inside. The polluting gases ejected from these hot springs had dyed the world into chaos. The probe was moving around, so the images constantly changed, but no matter where it went, the scenery was all the same, unpleasant.
Vivian used to take a peek at the first level of Inferno out of curiosity though she had never explored the deeper level. So she immediately recognised the scenery. "Yes, this is the place. Can you send us in?"
"It's easy to go in by teleporting, but Inferno is an unstable dimension, it's best to open a gate to ensure we can get back out safely." Hao Ren nodded. "Now we have the coordinates on both sides of the gate and the necessary instrument in my dimensional pocket, just give time, I will open up the gate."
By now, Hessiana finally took a proper look at Hao Ren. "What a surprise! You're pretty capable at the critical moment."
"He is capable all this while," Vivian looked at her, "it's just that you've prejudice."
Hao Ren had taken out a portal and a few autonomous robots from his dimensional pocket. This silver-coloured portal was two metres in radius complete with some auxiliary components, which was similar to the portal in the basement of his home, but just a little larger. It was an equipment inspector commonly used to go deep into the desolate spaces of the universe, and deal with the abnormal spatial phenomena. This kind of portal could help him explore unknown spaces while doubling as an emergency passage for small-scale evacuation and material transfer.
Hao Ren had never expected to use it to hunt down 'fugitive.'
Turcan and Kassandra looked at the strange equipment that Hao Ren pulled out of thin air. This man really surprised them though they knew his team members were a bunch of oddballs. The two curious vampires did not say anything as Vivian and Hessiana, the two ancestors, were watching.
With two years as inspector under his belt, Hao Ren was more mature now. He did not shy away from letting others see his high-tech equipment; after all, it was just some alien technology, no big deal.
The short-lived Inferno Gate had formed an energy focus point. It would save him a lot of time if he could use the energy focus point to reactivate a new dimensional door though it was collapsing. He commanded the autonomous robots installing the equipment in the crater that Baptiste left behind. With the efficiency of the mechanical squids, it seemed they could open the gate in no time.
"Frankly, for all the years I spent in the battlefields, this is the first time I've seen the boring tactic in the battlefield," said Vivian. She looked at Lily, who was standing on her toes in a daze. "What was she thinking at that time?"
"It doesn't matter what she was thinking, it works, anyway," Hao Ren said. "I figured there is no tactics in this world having more elements of surprise than this. And, only she could do it because no one could dig as quickly as she does."
Lily's ears flickered. She turned her head around. "Are you saying bad things about me?"
Hao Ren and Vivian replied in unison. "All good things."
Nangong Sanba stood on a large boulder on the edge of the high ground looking into the direction of the town. He could still vaguely see the route they had travelled though the dense fog was blocking his line of sight. But soon, the situation took a sudden change. "Look, the fog seems to disperse!"
True to what he said, the dense fog enveloping the ghost town was dissipating little by little. They could already see the scenery in the far distance though the sun had not yet appeared. As time went by, the fog had lessened by a large amount and the silhouette of the town began to appeared albeit faintly.
"Looks like the fog was also Baptiste's trick. Either his departure caused the fog to dissipate, or the sceptre that Lily snapped was the prop that controlled the enchantment," Vivian said as she looked into the direction of the town. "It seems that the scope of the mysterious realm is bigger than we initially expected. Just look at the layer of 'dark borders' in the distance; that should be the real boundary. The town is only one third of the space while the wilderness outside forms the rest."
Hessiana looked surprised. "Who is Baptiste? He could create such a vast alien dimension singlehandedly and keep it in existence for hundreds of years?"
"Looks like he could erase any city in the world if he wanted to. It's hard to imagine he learned this ability the normal way." Vivian shook her head and continued. "But his only purpose was go to Inferno? What a waste of talent! What is so good about Inferno?"
Hao Ren could not care less about Baptiste's ambition. He asked the MDT to check the surrounding spatial parameters, making sure that the place would not collapse so soon. Then he gazed at the town of Domir in the distance. It was at least an authentic medieval town with an extraordinary sight though looking a little gloomy.
Then he saw a fire rose up in the centre of the town.
"Look! Over there!" Lily shouted. "The town is on fire!"