Alex started fearing; he knew what this feeling meant for not just him, but the empire itself.
He looked outside. This time, the feeling felt like it came from the southeast rather than just the south.
'What's there to give me this feeling? It's completely different from the one from the desert, and yet I feel it so clearly,' he thought.
'No, now is not the time to ponder on these things. I need to hurry up and do something or else the beasts will attack the caravan.'
He immediately took out his talisman that was meant to message his master. He hoped it was close enough for him to reach, but unfortunately, it didn't. He had come too far away for the low-range communication talisman to function.
He looked towards his senior sister who was still emotionless except for the tinge of sadness in her eyes.
"Sister, I need your help." Alex stood up and walked over next to her.
"Go away, Yu Ming. I am not in the mood to talk right now," Luo Mei said in a low voice.
"Sister, please. Now is not the time for you to be depressed," Alex said.
"Just leave me alone," she said. "I want to be depressed right now."
"Stop acting like your father is dead!" Alex shouted. "He's not dead, okay? Aren't we going there to heal him in the first place? Or have you already killed him off in your heart?"
"Do you have that little faith in your brother that you don't think I will be able to save him at all?" Alex asked.
Luo Mei finally looked up with tears in her eyes. "I can't lose him, Yu Ming. I already lost my mother, I can't lose my father too," she said as tears started dripping down her cheeks.
"Don't worry about your father right now, sister. Worry about yourself. With what's happening right now, we might end up dead before we even reach your father," Alex said.
"What?" that caught Luo Mei's attention for sure. She immediately spread out her spiritual sense to see if there was any problem, but she couldn't find any.
"What are you talking about, little brother? What danger? I can't see anything," Luo Mei said.
"Beast Invasion," Alex said. "Not the second one either. One similar to the first one in the capital. That beast invasion is coming for this caravan right now.
"Wha—?" Luo Mei immediately lost any hint of sadness from her face as she got both confused and scared.
"The beasts will attack at any moment all around the empire. We need to let the master know so he can protect the city," Alex said. "My communication talisman is too low leveled to work. Do you have any that works?"
"Uh… yeah, mine is a higher grade one. As long as we haven't left 1000 Kilometers away from Scarlet City, it will work," Luo Mei said.
Alex frowned. While the caravan wasn't fast by any means, it was much faster than the average car in his real life. Given that they had been on the road for a whole day with no stopping in between, he worried if they had left the range already.
"Try communicating, or rather let me talk," Alex said.
"No, only I can operate it," Luo Mei said and brought it out before sending a message through it.
After a few moments, the talisman glowed a little and made a small noise to let them know there was a message back.
Luo Mei quickly read it and said, "Master wants to know how you know about that. Also, are you absolutely sure?"
"Uh… Tell him I have a similar feeling to the one I had before the first one. I told him about it when the invasion started in Capital too," Alex said.
"As for whether I'm sure or not, I don't think that should matter right now. Just the fact that there is a chance of the invasion should mean that master should get to take precautions," Alex said.
"Yes, you are right," Luo Mei said and quickly sent the message back to her master. After a few more moments, they got a message back again.
"Alright, Master is going to start preparing for the attack. He has also taken it upon himself to send messages to the other cities to let them know," Luo Mei said.
"Alright, if others will be fine, then it's time for us to worry about ourselves," Alex said.
"Huh? Oh right, the caravan," Luo Mei said and tried to walk out of the carriage.
"Not the caravan, sister. Me! The beasts follow me. I'm sure they are on their way here right now for me. Imagine the entirely of the beasts that attacked the Capital coming for this one small caravan," Alex said.
Luo Mei's face immediately went pale. Even Meng Yun got scared.
"N-n-no, that can't be. You will die, You will die for sure," Luo Mei suddenly got unreasonably afraid.
"Um, we still have time sister, I can run away," Alex said.
"No, You can't. They will catch you. Oh no, and then they will kill us too," Luo Mei said.
"Um, I'm sure I can go far away so that not even the True realm beasts can catch us," Alex said.
"I'm not scared about the True beasts," Luo Mei said.
"Huh? Then what?" Alex asked.
"The Saint beast," Luo Mei said.
Alex's eyes went wide. "Sister, what do you mean by saint beast?" he asked. "Are you saying there is a beast out there with Saint Realm cultivation base?"
"Yes. There was a Saint Beast, a black Jaguar-type beast, during the first attack. The Emperor himself fought it, but couldn't beat it off. He said that if the beasts hadn't returned back on their own during that time, he would have surely died there," Luo Mei said.
Alex was shocked to hear these 2 new pieces of information.
'So there is another saint beast out there, and the Emperor himself is in the Saint realm too, huh?' Alex thought.
"Alright, let's not waste any more time. If last time is anything to go by, we have mere hours, but it's better if we don't rely on that. It's better to act like we could be under attack at any moment now," Alex said.
"Yes, let's go," Luo Mei said and immediately searched for Zhang Xie with her spiritual sense. Once she found him, she opened the carriage and walked into the evening light.
"Senior Zhang, it's an emergency," Luo Mei said.
"Huh? Little Miss, what's wrong?" Zhang Xie said as he opened the door to his carriage.
"Senior Zhang, I just got a message from my master. He said that there is another Beast Invasion coming and that we need to get away from this path right now and get as far away from the forest as possible," Luo Mei said.
"Miss, this… you aren't joking right?" Zhang Xie said. He had always been afraid of the beast invasion, but despite his uncle's opposition for him to go on a caravan, he had insisted that he would be safe.
And now…
"Senior Zhang," Alex called out. "Take this."
Alex brought out two pills and handed them to Zhang Xie. Zhang Xie looked at the pills for a while, but couldn't understand what they were.
"What are these pills, young man?" he asked.
"These are called the Beast Attracting Pills. When you pour in a little Qi and throw it away, it will attract every beast below True realm to its place. If the situation is dire, use these," Alex said.
"This pill… I've never heard of this," Zhang Xie said.
"I wouldn't doubt you have, but you must have heard about the Royal Alchemist saving the day in the capital during the first wave of Beast invasion," Alex said.
Zhang Xie's eyes shined widely as hope appeared in them. "You mean—"
"Yes, they may be a little worse since I was the one that made them, but they are the same pills as the Royal Alchemist's," Alex said.
Zhang Xie immediately pocketed it with a smile, but then stopped. "Why aren't you keeping it? You can use it if the situation is dire, young man," he said.
"I have some myself. As an Alchemist, I have a lot of such pills," Alex said. "As for why I'm giving it to you is because… I will need to go somewhere else."
"Huh? Where do you plan on going?" Zhang Xie asked.
"I'm going to lure the beasts from here and go perpendicular to the forests. You guys go diagonally towards the Northwest side and get as far away from here as possible. It's a shame you can't go directly towards the north due to the terrain," Alex said as he looked at the uneven hills to the north.
"I can't let you do that, young man. You are my responsibility. I promised sect leader Wen. I can't let you go anywhere," Zhang Xie.
"You don't have a choice, senior Zhang. I'm leaving with or without your approval. Please take care of my Senior sister in my stead," Alex said.
"Huh? No, I'm coming with you," Luo Mei said.
"No, sister. It will be dangerous. You need to go with the caravan," Alex said. "I will lure them away and since I have that escape technique, I will surely be fine."
Secretly, he sent spiritual sense to Luo Mei to say something else.
"Go with them. Since the beasts are following me, you will be in more danger. I also happen to have a boat artifact that I've somewhat managed to learn to use and will get as far away from here as possible."
"Adding onto that my ability to conceal myself and go invisible, the beasts won't find me so easily," Alex said.
"That's…" Luo Mei was torn. She was already sad about losing her father, and now she had to see her newly made brother throw away his life to save theirs.
"Don't worry, sister. I will find the caravan as soon as the beasts return back," Alex said. "Take care."
Alex suddenly stopped moving and watched the caravan and Luo Mei go along with the caravan.
Alex stayed there for a minute or two watch as the caravan changed its course and started heading Northwest where they would most likely encounter any beasts as most would be coming for this area.
The ones that did go there would have to fight the True cultivators in that caravan.
Alex didn't know how many there were, but there should have been enough to fight off a random bandit army.
Once the caravan was no longer in view, he took out a boat from his storage space.
"Alright, time to leave."
