Dark clouds roiled above Qingmu Town. A vast gale kicked up yellow dust like snow. The teachers from Eighth Middle School stared, eyes wide, at the empty Central Square.
"Gone in an instant?"
"Why did the Secret Realm absorb everyone so quickly this time?"
"That's not right. I was within range, so how come I wasn't taken in?"
Anxious chatter spread across the square as more and more teachers gathered, surveying the collapsed stone pillars and the canopy of trees overhead.
"What do we do? Several thousand Demon Beasts trapped with fewer than a hundred students… It'll be… it'll be incredibly difficult to save them."
"The flow of time in the Secret Realm is different from ours out here. Who knows when it will open again? And getting experts on Secret Realms here will take a long time to arrange."
"Worst of all, that Demon Plant—the one even Director Zhao couldn't detect—seemed to have entered the Secret Realm too. Something isn't right about this…"
