In a small village on an island on the eastern edge of the Ionian continent, more than a dozen people were standing at the entrance of the village, anxiously looking into the distance, their shadows stretched long by the setting sun.

"Well, it's another day, and I don't know if they'll be able to come back." A woman clasped her hands tightly together and stood on tiptoe to look at the horizon in the distance.

"Don't worry, Anna, they must be fine with so many people going together this time." An old man with gray hair comforted her.

"But it's getting dark, and you should come back and tell us anyway, that's twenty big people!" The woman grabbed the old man's shoulders excitedly and shook his body.

The old man knew that her words were right, and that people had been missing from the village since two weeks ago. At first, it was just a few children, and he, the village elder, didn't care too much, thinking that the children might have been attacked by wild beasts when they ran to play, and they could only choose to give up after organizing a group of people to search to no avail.

But slowly, adults began to go missing, especially in the east of the village, and almost no one who went there never came back alive.

They were originally a small village, with a total of fifty or sixty people living here, and because the only exit to the outside world had to cross a steep mountain range, there was almost zero contact with the outside world. Originally, the security team from the Abbey of Hilana would come to visit once a month, but no one had been here for two months since they heard that they were at war with Noxus.

Seeing that more than a dozen people had disappeared in the village in the blink of an eye, they finally decided to save themselves. Early this morning, he gathered twenty young men in the prime of the village with some rudimentary weapons to form a search party and went to the east of the village to investigate what had happened.

But in the blink of an eye, a day had passed, and no one had returned, and twenty people had disappeared as if they had sunk into the sea.

"Alright, Anna, if there is still no news tomorrow morning, we won't wait, let's go out and ask for help." The old man struggled to stabilize Anna's mood as he looked at the towering mountain range to the west, and in their current state, he forced his way over the mountain range, and most of them were afraid that most people would not be able to make it outside alive.

Anna was not alone, the villagers standing at the entrance of the village at this time, except for the elder who could not show his panicked emotions, the rest of the people basically had panicked expressions.

"Look! They're back! A girl suddenly shouted, pointing to the distance and jumping up excitedly.

Sure enough, figures gradually appeared on the edge of the horizon in the distance.

Everyone present breathed a sigh of relief, they didn't want to run outside over the mountains, and more importantly, these people were their relatives, and there was nothing more joyful than knowing the safety of their loved ones.

"But it's so strange how they walk, are they hurt?" The other woman seemed to notice that something was wrong, and a worried expression appeared on her face.

"It's not necessarily hurt, maybe it's too tired, after all, it's been a day of running outside. I'll go up and see how they're doing, and I'll call you if I need help. With that, Anna ran towards the staggering group in the distance.

Anna's husband, Harvey, was also on the expedition this morning, which is why she was so anxious. Today is only the seventh day of his marriage to her husband, and the two of them are still in the honeymoon period, in which case her husband suddenly leaves her side and the uncertainty of life and death really makes her feel bad. So now she can't wait to fly to her husband's side immediately.

But as she got closer to the group, she thought they did look strange. Not to mention the way she walked, she should have had some reaction when she ran towards them, and those people still kept the same posture and moved forward slowly and stiffly. A sense of foreboding welled up in Anna's heart.

But it didn't matter, as the two got closer, Anna recognized her husband in the group, as well as a few of his companions who were with him on the expedition today.

"Harvey!" Anna screamed in surprise and threw herself into his arms.

But soon she realized that something was wrong, that her husband had not responded to her enthusiasm in any way, and that his body was so cold.

"Harvey?" Anna let out another cautious call, then looked up at the person she was hugging.

His facial features were still so familiar, but the purple light from his eyes made Anna's heart skip a beat.

The man looked at the woman who threw himself into his arms, and his movements were a little sluggish at first, but soon, he opened his mouth and bit Anna's neck.

Before Anna could scream, blood gushed from her neck, and the people around her pounced on her one by one.

Anna's eyes quickly lost their life, but as time passed, no more blood flowed out of her body, replaced by a purple liquid, and her eyes also appeared with purple light.

……

On the other side of Ionia, Ling Tianmao was walking alone on the path in the woods at this time, and according to Dahl, it should not be far from the entrance to Bandel City.

Bandel City does not have an actual geographical location, and the only way to get there is through portals randomly scattered in some corner of the world, and the location of these portals is subject to change. Only yodelers can sense their presence and, after finding them, activate portals through special yodel spells, which is why very few humans or other races can reach Bandel City.

According to Dahl's senses, the entrance should have appeared near this time, his father and relatives from the previous generation still lived in Bandel City, and some of his siblings had already come to the outside world with him. So this time they planned to sneak a sneak peek at Dahl's parents, and make a stop in the city to recuperate, and then look for a way to go to the sea, to Freljord.

"I said Dahl, are you sure the friends you said this time are reliable? If it really doesn't work, I'd better communicate by myself, and don't make it like Gu Yi again. ”

"Don't be so suspicious, those guys grew up with me, absolutely reliable brothers, you just wait to be treated. Besides, if you are an ordinary person and enter Bandel City, no one will be willing to receive you, this is the territory of the yodelers. ”

"Yodelers, aren't they just a bunch of dwarfs?" As soon as the words fell, Ling Tianmao felt that he had stepped on something under his feet.