After Qin Shilei sent Mary back to the blessed land, he used the teleportation array to travel to the nearest point in the Grand Duchy of Lair, and then used lightning evasion to rush towards the Grand Duchy of Lair.
When he arrived at the city called Castle Rot in the Grand Duchy of Lair, he found the entire city eerily quiet.
Looking down, he saw corpses of people, as if asleep, everywhere on the city walls, streets, and squares.
Just as he was about to fly down for a closer look, several figures flew over from a distance.
The arrivals were Mu Ziping and others who had come ahead to investigate.
"Greetings, Your Highness!" Mu Ziping and the others greeted respectfully.
"No need for formalities. Have you found anything?" Qin Shilei asked.
"If it weren't for an Dark Night member happening to pass by, we wouldn't have known that all the survivors in this city had died without anyone noticing.
There were no wounds found on their bodies, nor any signs of a struggle in the city.
It seems as if their souls were taken while they were asleep, and they could never wake up again."
Mu Ziping furrowed his brow, his eyes filled with terror.
"Let's go down and take a look," Qin Shilei said calmly.
The group randomly chose a residential area and examined the corpses. They found that the people looked as if they were merely asleep, but they had no breath.
Divine Sight!
Qin Shilei activated the special technique of his eyes and looked again at the corpse lying on the floor of the living room.
Again, he found nothing.
Qin Shilei turned to Mu Ziping and asked, "What was the cultivation level of their strongest members, and when did they die?"
Mu Ziping replied, "The strongest among them were at the peak of Gold. There were twenty to thirty Gold experts in the two cities. According to Little Xu's deduction, they all died between ten o'clock last night and four o'clock this morning."
Qin Shilei asked again, "Did the intelligence department receive any distress messages from them on the chat channel?"
Mu Ziping responded, "I've already asked the intelligence department, and they informed me that no distress messages were sent from the people of the Grand Duchy of Lair on the chat channel."
Mary, standing nearby, speculated, "Do you think it was the clone of some deity or demon? To kill millions of people so silently, only masters of that level could achieve it."
Qin Shilei shook his head, "It shouldn't be. Even I couldn't kill such a massive number of humans so quickly and so silently.
Moreover, the clones of those deities only have cultivation at the peak of Platinum. Even with their incredible means, they couldn't accomplish this.
Instead, I can think of a type of creature that possesses such killing abilities."
Just as Qin Shilei was about to reveal the creature, a fiery red figure rapidly flew towards them.
The person who arrived was An Qian, holding the Shanhe Map in her hand.
"Last night, according to the person monitoring the Shanhe Map, no beings above Platinum appeared in the vicinity. When I came over just now, I also checked the Shanhe Map again and found no high-level beings other than those in the Qin'an Royal Mansion."
To resist the invasion of foreign races, all Platinum experts within the Great Xia territory are now registered with the Qin'an Royal Mansion.
These Platinum experts are also required to report their whereabouts to the Qin'an Royal Mansion frequently.
With the Shanhe Map, it is possible to monitor all Platinum experts within a range of fifty thousand kilometers of Great Xia at almost all times.
This way, they can be discovered the moment foreign experts appear, and then experts can be dispatched to eliminate the enemy in a timely manner.
For this purpose, Qin Shilei specifically selected over a dozen people to take turns activating and monitoring the Shanhe Map. He also specially assigned a pet at the Diamond realm to watch over these individuals, to prevent them from stealing the Shanhe Map.
Qin Shilei took the Shanhe Map, infused it with his vital energy to activate it, and indeed, within a radius of three thousand kilometers, apart from several red dots where they were, there were no other red dots.
"Let's go, we'll check the nearby cities for any clues."
Everyone then got up and flew towards the nearest city, Aalborg.
On the way, Mary couldn't help but ask, "Brother Qin, what was that creature you mentioned just now?"
Qin Shilei replied, "It's a type of demon called a Soul Devourer. A large group of Soul Devourers could indeed take people's lives without a sound. However, Soul Devourers are somewhat afraid of light and lightning elementalists. Lair is not devoid of these elementalists, so why were there no distress signals sent?"
He then recounted the Soul Devourers that had appeared in Lingquan City.
Unknowingly, they had arrived at Aalborg.
Most of the evolved individuals in Aalborg had already left the city for hunting. The survivors in the city were all normal, showing no abnormalities.
They had no idea that the Grand Duchy of Lair, thousands of kilometers away, had been annihilated overnight.
Qin Shilei took out the Shanhe Map and activated it with his vital energy.
The displayed three-dimensional map still showed no additional red dots.
As for the green markers, there were quite a few.
Qin Shilei and the others randomly selected several spots and found that the green markers were either indigenous beasts of the Blue Star, or ordinary foreign races like insects, or human pets.
An Qian frowned, "Shilei, do you think the murderers might have gone in a different direction and headed to other cities?"
Qin Shilei nodded, "It's possible. How about you all enter my blessed land, and I'll quickly scan all the cities near the Grand Duchy of Lair?"
"Okay!" Everyone obviously had no objections.
Qin Shilei, holding the Shanhe Map, used Lair as the center and employed lightning evasion to quickly scan the area.
After more than half a day, he had flown through all the cities around the Grand Duchy of Lair.
The evolved individuals in those cities lived as usual, with no abnormalities whatsoever.
At this moment, Qin Shilei was standing in front of a spatial rift more than two thousand kilometers away from the Lair Empire.
An Qian and the others also emerged from the blessed land.
Around them were several rhinoceroses at the Gold realm and countless rhinoceros beasts at the Silver realm.
"Gold realm exotic beasts are too common on Blue Star nowadays. If the murderers were beings at the Gold realm or below, it would be too difficult to find them using the Shanhe Map," Qin Shilei said with some helplessness.
"Do you think the murderers might have left our sphere of influence, or returned directly to their world?" Mary suddenly asked from the side.
"It's possible, but the probability is not high," Qin Shilei said calmly.
"In that case, we can only wait for them to come to us!" An Qian suggested, "We'll send people to constantly monitor the Shanhe Map. As soon as a green marker enters a human city, we'll rush over. As long as they commit another crime, we'll surely catch them."
Qin Shilei sighed, "That's all we can do for now. I hope there are some Gold realm beings among these murderers, otherwise the Shanhe Map will be useless against them."
With that said, he found a suitable location, took out the Shanhe Map, and had Mu Ziping and the others begin monitoring.