The bug puppets have holes in their rear and they started releasing some invisible gas into the air all over the city.
The gas leak I completely simultaneous there is no gap between each other and the whole city is covered except for the estate of the Kala tribe and the whole city which just started its activity went silent again.
All the people within the city fell silent. Not because they couldn't just talk. It is because they fell asleep. They fell asleep in middle of whatever they are doing.
Walking on the street, making love in the bed, eating, drinking, fighting, and training.
Anyone who is not a Astral Plane cultivator fell asleep in the middle of their actions. The Kala tribe once again went nuts. They don't know what to do.
They tried to find the anomalies that caused this but everyone who saw the metallic bugs are gone.
But soon they found the holes created by the bugs and started tracing them by closely monitoring the tunnels they are travelling through.
One barbarian forcefully opened up a small crevice in the ground and pulled the puppet out to check what it is and that is the mistake he made, the bug didn't struggle at all, after all it doesn't feel pain, so it enveloped its whole body and the energy cell that was placed inside exploded.
This used the same method the cultivators commit suicides by self-destructions, as long as they perform a rapid injection of energy into the spiritual core try to forcefully suppress it and it reaches the poi9nt where their force makes the core unbearable, the energy becomes unstable and the core collapses.
The same thing happened to the energy cell. But it is more stable than a spiritual core and the explosive effect is not as good as completely destabilizing the energy cell or a spiritual stone, but it sure as hell created a big enough wound for the poison placed within the bug to enter the body directly.
The poison Sam used is actually mixed with blood. Blood of the Ghouls and Vampires. This is a result of one of his perverse experiments.
The undead blood injected into a living creature, in fact he experimented on his own body to see what would happen and suppressed the vampire part of his body to not react and all the other bloodlines. Only letting the weakest bloodline of his, the bloodline that is his own to take the shot of this blood and he learned some very interesting things from these kinds of experiments.
And one thing is if undead blood has a constant supply of vitality and death energy at the same time, it will survive for months and the second thing is when it was injected into a living creature, it eats the vitality away from them without even knowing.
The rest of the poison along with that blood is a very mild one and it doesn't have any adverse effects, the only effect it has is that it gives a vitality boost to the body.
It is like a shot of adrenaline for a normal human being.
If a normal healthy man takes that shot, he would feel stronger and healthier for some time, and if a weak man takes that he will feel like a normal man and now Sam is making them feel like a normal man as their vitality slowly dries up.
They wouldn't no what happened.
The first barbarian who picked it up, didn't think it was a big deal. So, he told the rest of them to remove them off or destroy them.
Even though not all of them caught it, some of them did take some hits.
There are around thirty puppets sent that way. Even though it is a significant loss for such well made puppets to be destroyed like that, it is worth it.
This is vengeance after all.
The barbarians also have healers from other races and they checked up on the citizens and confirmed that they are not poisoned, they are just going to take some long naps and their waking up time will depend on their cultivation levels.
But the fastest one would not wake up until dawn next day.
Sam went back to the lake and started changing his base once again and this time he moved to a mountain nearby where they dug a hole within the mountain right in the middle.
It is almost like a hollow void formed within the mountain.
Sam created pin sized holes in the body of the mountain and used a special formation to make sure they are not filled with dirt and let the air flow in.
The holes just looks like some kind of perforated pattern on the mountain and nobody even notices that. At least anyone with a sane mind and he actually used a small space gate formation which he laid by himself to let everyone in and let the outside formation self-destruct without much commotion.
Now they have to let the people soak the shock in until the next night while they prepared for the next step.
They have to wait for the counter attack and as a part of it, they will at least evacuate the city or put all the people in a temporary refugee area so that they could be safe and they will wait for his next move keenly and be alert all times.
They might try to give him some signals that to try to fish him out.
And as expected, the whole Kala tribe is on high alert, they are patrolling the whole city with all their members.
At first they only had Astral Plane cultivators, but now they also have their Consummates patrol the whole city.
The family young masters who never had to do menial things are patrolling so the commoners could be safe.
But Sam didn't make a move, putting these people to sleep will only make the people afraid, not the main tribe, in fact they could be feeling very safe right now as Sam didn't attack the tribe with this sleeping gas.
But he is sure that something else is going to happen that could make the Kala tribe afraid.
That day nothing else happened and the citizens started waking up one after another and fell into panic. Sleeping for a whole day without even knowing is a terrifying thought to have after all.
There is no way, they could just accept it and let go of the thought.
After all the citizens woke up and a curfew was implemented to keep them inside the houses safely, the tribe head held another meeting.
"What are the updates? Any traces found?"
He asked in a frustrated tone. He is having a headache since the day before.
"We found the tunnels tracing towards one large hole half a mile away from the city. They all started from the same hole. These metal bugs dug the tunnels themselves and entered the city. But from there, the trial went cold. There are no traces at all."
"This is going to be a problem. The citizens are going to be in a panic and if whoever that is doing this try to take advantage of that, then we would be having some more trouble. The rest of the tribes within the realm are looking at us like hawks.
We cannot risk too much damage.
Now, take those scraps of those bugs and take them to that captive. Try to see if he could recognize them.
We didn't see puppets like this at all, they are certainly not common and I suspect that Sam must be the one who used them. Confirm it with him first and we can think of what to do later."
The young head took the bug scraps with him and left the room immediately.
After he left, the rest of members started discussing what to do next and at this exact moment, an Old man who is an Astral Plane cultivator, fainted onto the table all of a sudden and his face started turning pale.
He started palpitating and his whole body is covered in cold sweat.
"Call the healer, now."
When the healer came and saw the body, the Old man is already dead. So, he couldn't find anything wrong with the body.
The herbal mix that was injected into the body that increases the excitement and vitality is not something that could be traced easily and it is not exactly a poisonous thing for the healer to suspect.
As for the undead blood inside the bodies, it would have grown in vitality by a lot, but since the person is dead, then the blood wouldn't be able to survive.
It is similar to a virus in many ways and after the host dies, the virus also dies.
And the healer thought that the vitality in the blood that is slowly dissipating is actually a common occurrence.
After a person died, the vitality slowly leaves away and since the person is an Astral Plane cultivator it is even more common. So, healer kept on checking again and again to see if he could find what happened to him.
But he couldn't after a while, because another person also fainted at that moment.
The second step; the fear of the unknown finally started gripping their hearts even without them knowing.