Lin Fan made his way through the forest until he could finally see the mountain in the distance.
Once he could see this mountain, he immediately stopped in his tracks and released his scouts.
He already knew that there was a line of guards around this mountain from the information that he had received from the two girls, so the first thing that he did was find where they were.
With Greeny’s scouts, it didn’t take long for him to find the various Mercenary Guild guards that were lining the forest. All he had to do was find one guard and then he was able to find the perimeter of their blockade.
Once he figured this out, it was easy for him to scout along the perimeter of the line of guards to find a place where there was an opening for him to take advantage of. With this opening, he easily made his way through their blockade lines.
The mountain that the beast was hiding in wasn’t that small, but it also wasn’t that big. It was just a medium sized mountain.
There weren’t that many places for Lin Fan to search on this medium sized mountain, so it took him no time to find the cave that the beast was hiding in. Though, there was also something else that made it much easier for him to find.
In front of the cave that the beast was in, there were several Mercenary Guild guards that were standing there keeping guard.
However, these people weren’t on the same level as the normal Mercenary Guild guards that were in the blockade or were surrounding the village.
Lin Fan could see it clearly with his Appraisal Eyes, these were all high grade cultivators. The weakest among them was in the Sixth Qi Gathering Realm and the strongest among them was in the Eighth Qi Gathering Realm.
There was only one person who was in the Eight Qi Gathering Realm, so it was clear that this person was their leader.
However, all these high grade cultivators meant that Lin Fan wasn’t that assured in sneaking in.
He could use the illusion spell to fool those weaker cultivators, but he wasn’t sure how his illusion spell would work on these high grade cultivators. After all, high grade cultivators like this were rare and it was hard for him to test things out on them.
At a dangerous point like this, he didn’t want to take a risk by testing the illusion spell against these high grade cultivators.
But how could he find a way to sneak into the cave and see what was inside?
As Lin Fan was lost in thought as to what to do, the situation suddenly changed.
There was a middle aged person that suddenly came out of the forest on the side and walked over to the people standing in front of the cave. When this person came over, the people that had been in front of the cave revealed flashes of disdain, but that quickly disappeared as they gave respectful bows to this person.
The Eighth Qi Gathering Realm Cultivator and the leader of this group came forward to say, “Master Feng, are you ready to head in?”
The person who had been called Master Feng gave a nod before saying with a frivolous smile, “Team Leader Shen, why are you acting so tense? This is just a simple mission to take care of a dangerous beast that wandered into this area. With such a high grade team like ours, it shouldn’t be a problem at all.”
The leader surnamed Shen knitted his brows as he said, “Master Feng, this is a beast that has destroyed several villages by itself and has been deemed a first class danger. It is something that has to be taken care of as soon as possible for the safety of the people. Can you please take this a bit more seriously?”
Master Feng just waved his hand and said, “Sure, sure, whatever you say.” But then he said in a laidback voice, “But this kind of mission isn’t interesting at all, I can’t get excited about it at all.”
Team Leader Shen narrowed his eyes and looked at Master Feng with a cold look as he said, “This might not be important for you, but all the members of this squad have some form of family in the surrounding areas. I urge you to take this seriously even if you don’t find it interesting.”
Master Feng looked right back at Team Leader Shen and said, “Is that so?” His tone immediately dropped as he said, “What if I don’t?”
A trace of killing intent flashed in Team Leader Shen’s eyes and he was about to say something, but before he could, Master Feng said with a smile, “Why are you acting so seriously? We’re on the same side, there’s no time for this kind of infighting.”
Team Leader Shen was clearly taken aback when he heard this and he just stood there in a daze as he didn’t understand what was going on here.
One moment, he had gone from the person scolding an unreasonable person to being the unreasonable person the next moment. It was as if his words had been twisted by the person in front of him for his own use.
After this thought sunk in, Team Leader Shen realized that he wouldn’t be able to outwit this person in front of him with words.
Since that was the case, he decided to just endure this humiliation for now because there were more important matters at hand.
After a long moment of silence, Team Leader Shen finally said with a calm and cold look, “I hope that is the case and you will do your job properly.”
Without waiting for a response from Master Feng, he turned around to head back to his men and prepare to head in.
Master Feng just watched him head back and muttered under his breath, “He’s no fun at all.” Then after a pause, he added, “Oh well, this will all be over soon.”
After saying this, Master Feng also followed Team Leader Shen back to the group. However, he stood on the side by himself, making it clear that he didn’t have any allies in this group.
The conversation between them had fallen onto Lin Fan’s ears.
As soon as he saw this man appearing, he had immediately released Greeny’s puppet and had been listening with the Shared Senses Skill. However, what he had heard had completely confused him.
Based on what he knew, the ones that should have sent this creature would be the Mercenary Guild. So why did it seem like they were now sending a squad to exterminate this beast?
He had seen the firm look in Team Leader Shen’s eyes when he had talked about the beast and it was clear that he wasn’t lying.
So what was with this current situation?
If they were planning on exterminating the beast, all of their actions from before didn’t make any sense either.
Were they really just surrounding the village because they wanted to keep them safe?
But if they were, why would they waste all that effort into completely isolating the village from the outside world?
No matter how Lin Fan tried connecting the dots, he couldn’t figure out what kind of thoughts the Mercenary Guild had. It was almost as if they didn’t have a plan at all…
But that wouldn’t make any sense…
The Mercenary Guild had already gone this far and if they didn’t have any plans, then what was all of this for? Just why had they done all those experiments?
Lin Fan began to feel more irritated and more confused as he thought about all of this, but he quickly shook those thoughts out of his mind.
No matter what their plan was, there was only one thing that he had to do right now.
He had been planning on going into the cave to see what kind of beast it was, but he hadn’t been able to do so because there had been a team guarding the outside of the cave. However, if the team were to head into the cave now, all he had to do was follow behind them.
He wasn’t certain if his illusion spell would work against these high grade cultivators, but with them being distracted by something else, it would be easy for him to follow them.
So he waited for a while for the Mercenary Guild team to prepare.
When they were finally ready to head into the cave, he still didn’t move as he waited for them to enter the cave first.
As high grade cultivators, they didn’t have a need to use torches since they could see in the dark, so they just headed in without any worries.
During all of this, Lin Fan watched and waited until he couldn’t see them anymore from outside the cave to finally make a move. He made sure to maintain this distance between them as he followed them deeper into the cave.
As for losing them, he wasn’t worried at all because he had sent Greeny’s puppet in to follow them. As long as Greeny’s puppets were with this group, it would be easy for him to follow them.
After walking for around ten minutes, they still hadn’t been able to find anything.
This cave was completely different from the cave that Lin Fan had found the other creature in. This was a complete cave that had several different paths and different dead ends. It was similar to the cave that the bandits had used as their hideout previously.
As Lin Fan followed them, he started regretting focusing all his attention on the Mercenary Guild group instead of sending puppets in ahead of them to scout the terrain.
If he had done so, he would have been able to have a better grasp of the situation. It would have even helped if he had scouted out the area around the entrance to see if there was another entrance to the cave.
After all, it was never bad to have another escape route just in case things went wrong.
But after another ten minutes, they still weren’t able to find a single thing.
It was at this point that Team Leader Shen finally stopped his group and had them take a break to assess the situation.
Lin Fan did the same during this time and sent out Greeny’s puppet scout out the area.
As the Mercenary Guild group stopped, they started discussing splitting up which would become a headache for Lin Fan, but there was something that stopped them.
The Mercenary Guild group had spread out during their break and some of their members had been wandering around. As they wandered around, one of them accidentally kicked something on the ground.
When they looked down, they couldn’t help giving a surprised cry.
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