The traveling time from the location of the Flying Sword Sect to the border area where the village was located would normally take a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator between one or two weeks if not longer to travel… And that was if they travelled without resting more than a few hours a day and went full speed.
Xuan Hao on the other hand was flying and could ignore most things like forests and other terrain that would normally slow one down, but even it would still take at least three or four days to reach the border village where the plague had first started.
As he was traveling through the territory of the Flying Sword Sect, Xuan Hao saw the impact that the plague had had on the relatively weaker villages of the Flying Sword Sects territory.
It had to be said that most of these villages had no cultivator in them and mostly had ordinary people. The strongest person in these villages would at most be a village elder who barely managed to reach the Qi Condensation Realm…
Now with the plague suddenly appearing, these villages had no way to resist as most of the ones in the path towards the centre region had already perished completely.
Xuan Hao felt slightly sad when he flew over them on his way, but there was nothing much he could do as they had already died to the plague.
"Hm? That is!" Taking in the sceneries as he was flying, Xuan Hao saw a large group of people suddenly appear on the horizon, moving slowly towards him from the distance.
The group of people were most likely not really moving towards him specifically but were most likely just moving in the direction that he had come from.
The thing that surprised Xuan Hao was the fact that the people moving inside the large group of people were all extremely weak, with the strongest person only barely reaching the first stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm!
This was a truly weird thing, as even in the case of a plague spreading, unless it was in their own village, most people would still choose to stay where they lived and wait for it to settle down again. Even if the victim of the plague was their neighbouring village!
After all, this world was extremely dangerous and even with the Flying Sword Sect around, demon beast would still roam around outside the villages and cities, if even a single demon beast with the strength at the Core Formation Realm passed by, everyone in the giant group of at least one thousand people would perish!
For them to willingly wander around, Xuan Hao doubted that there would not be a good reason for this and the most likely reason in his opinion would either be a demon beast had showed up in their village or city and they had to run away, or the plague had appeared, and they decided to run away before they became infected as well.
"Guess I will just have to ask them…" Muttering this to himself, Xuan Hao steered his sword down towards the ground and landed a few miles away from the group of people who had still not managed to spot him yet and made his way over towards them.
…
"Stop right there! Who are you and what are you doing out here!?" As Xuan Hao made his way over to the group of people, a strong looking middle-aged man stepped forward and called out to him in a threatening tone, clearly cautious about who the person in front of him was.
Xuan Hao glanced at the middle-aged man and instantly recognized him as the Foundation Establishment cultivator that was present in the giant group of what he by now assumed was refugees.
"I'm a member of the Flying Sword Sect, I was sent to investigate the recent plague outbreak, might I ask why your group is out here…?" Deciding that it would most likely be easier if he just stated his background as someone from the Flying Sword Sect here to investigate the plague outbreak, the middle-aged man would most likely have a higher chance of actually wanting to talk to him about his and his groups reason for becoming refugees.
There was no real drawback to this, so as he finished talking, Xuan Hao took out a small token with the symbol of a sword carved beautifully on it.
The token was the symbol of the Flying Sword Sect and only members of the Flying Sword Sect would have one to represent their identity.
"This servant greets the Flying Sword Sect" There was different levels to the tokens and the one that Xuan Hao showed was his Core Elder Token, but the middle-aged man did not know about this and still bowed respectfully, even if he only knew that it was an identity token of the Flying Sword Sect. No matter what, this was the Flying Sword Sect territory!
"No need, I'm only here to investigate about the plague, so if you know anything please do tell me why your group of people turned into refugees." Making a hand gesture for the middle-aged man to get up and stop bowing, Xuan Hao asked in a slightly aloof tone. Making sure that he took on the personage as someone from a prestigious sect.
At least he would not look like too much of a disappoint when it came to outsiders…
"Yes sir! A few weeks ago, the nearby city of Kubera encountered the plague and soon fell… We normally would not leave because of this, but due to how rich the city of Kubera had been before it fell, a lot of greedy people went there after they heard about its fall and as a result, they got infected by the plague… Some of the people who went were also from our city, so we evacuated before they could return and infect us with the plague as well…" Standing up straight again upon hearing Xuan Hao, he immediately started talking about what happened.
"So, we want to go towards a bigger city located further away from the border as it would be safer and there would be no plague to worry about there…" Finishing, the middle-aged man retreated slightly as he waited for Xuan Hao to respond.
"… I see, your group can continue, there are no strong demon beasts if you continue on the path ahead." Saying this Xuan Hao pointed in the direction he came from as he quickly made his way into the distance before the leader of the group of refugees could respond.
…
"The city of Kubera… Huh…" Xuan Hao had read about the wealth of the city of Kubera before, it was one of the relatively stronger cities in the territory of the Flying Sword Sect and they even had a peak Core Formation expert backing them up.
For a city with a Peak Core Formation expert to fall, Xuan Hao really doubted it purely due to the plague and decided to investigate it, after all, it was still on his path and he would at most waste a few hours…