Lin Fan didn’t open up the cave right away after they escaped. Instead he brought the mercenaries and the two girls over to a camp that he had prepared ahead of time and got them settled.
He knew that they must have suffered at the hands of the bandits, so he quickly cooked them a meal and let them rest up before heading back to the cave.
Lu’er and Lan’er wanted to come with him, but he firmly rejected their request.
At first they didn’t seem to listen to him, but after he asked them to watch over the camp, they strangely settled down.
He also noticed a strange look that the two of them shared, but he didn’t understand the meaning behind that look…so he ignored it in the end and headed towards the stone wall.
With a single thought, the moles under his control dug right through the wall that was covering up the entrance of the cave. Of course, right before he penetrated through, he had the moles stop digging.
There was only a single layer of dirt and rock that was left between him and the inside of the cave.
To be safe, he evacuated the area with most of the moles and only left a single mole there. That mole that was left behind had a little surgical mask on its face that could block the poison that was still left inside of the cave.
Since he had decided to use poison, naturally had he prepared countermeasures to the poison that he used.
This surgical mask was the item that he had prepared.
While it looked like a simple mask, it was actually a magic item which was why the mole was able to wear it.
This surgical mask had the ability to neutralize poison that came in contact with it and the ability to change shape to fit the wearer. However, this item was also cheap and would only work while it was charged with magic power, so it wasn’t considered very powerful.
Still, it worked for the purposes that Lin Fan wanted to use it for.
This mole that had the mask on was the one that broke through the stone wall covering the entrance of the cave and the moment that it did, the purple poisonous gas poured out of the cave.
Lin Fan and the others were far enough from the cave that the poisonous gas didn’t reach them before it dissipated into the air outside, but the grass that was near the entrance of the cave all turned brown when exposed to the poison. This just showed how powerful the poison was.
Once the purple gas stopped pouring out of the cave, Lin Fan that had now put on the mask after taking it from the mole who had come back started moving towards the entrance.
Since it was nighttime, it would have been hard for Lin Fan to see if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a cultivator. But since he was one, he channeled his spiritual energy into his eyes and was able to see everything.
The first thing he saw was naturally the corpses that were lying by the entrance of the cave.
All of the bandits naturally knew where the entrance of the cave was since this cave was their hideout. Unfortunately for them, the stone wall that had appeared was just too strong for them to break through.
When Lin Fan walked in, he found that there were bumps on the wall from where they had attacked the wall in an attempt to break it.
It was just too bad that not a single one of them was able to sink deeper than a few millimeters.
The wall itself was close to half a meter thick and had been filled with the spiritual energy of the moles, so it was very hard to break in the first place. It would be able to easily withstand attacks up to the Second Qi Gathering Realm.
The leader of the bandits was in the Fourth Qi Gathering Realm according to Lin Fan’s investigations from earlier, but when poisoned, naturally he couldn’t use his full strength. But since the leader was in the Fourth Qi Gathering Realm, he was still able to keep his life after being exposed to the poison.
After Lin Fan walked in, he found that there were a few people who were still conscious lying there among the corpses.
They pretended to be dead to avoid attracting his attention, but they couldn’t escape his Appraisal Eyes.
The corpses didn’t give his Appraisal Eyes a reaction, only the ones that were still alive would give him a reaction. He was able to easily pick out the ones that were still alive.
He didn’t want to touch the ones that were still alive since they were poisoned, so he had the moles push them out of the pile with their earth moving abilities.
Pillars of earth came out of the ground under the corpses to push the ones that were still alive out. Then with a simple slant to the pillars, the ones that were still alive were put in a line in front of Lin Fan.
Of course it wasn’t perfect since there was still inertia, but it was good enough.
It didn’t take Lin Fan at all to find the boss of these bandits.
Compared to the rest, there were far less black spots on him, but Lin Fan was certain that he was still dying from the poison. Or at least that was what his Appraisal Eyes told him.
But before he died, Lin Fan had a few questions to ask him.
The bandit boss was only conscious because of his strong will, but that didn’t mean that he was doing well. He could tell that if he relaxed even the slightest bit, he would immediately lose consciousness and die.
So when Lin Fan appeared in front of him, even though he couldn’t see clearly who it was because his vision was blurry, he shouted, “Please save me! I’ll give you anything you want if you save me!”
But Lin Fan just stood there, completely ignoring his cries for help.
The bandit boss could also see this and since the soft method wasn’t working, he decided to use the hard method.
In a threatening voice, the bandit boss said, “You son of a b*tch, heal me or I’ll kill you here and now!” As he said this, he naturally released his aura as much as possible.
Even if he was weakened and he couldn’t release his full aura, he could still release an aura that was threatening to most of the bandits and the hostages who he thought Lin Fan was.
However, all that he received in reply to this was an ice cold voice that said, “Tell me who hired you to attack the caravan.”
The bandit boss felt a chill run down his spine the moment that he heard this voice and he couldn’t help looking up at Lin Fan to see just who this person was. But before he could even raise his head, there was a powerful pressure that suddenly fell down on him that pushed his head into the ground.
He couldn’t move a single inch, it was almost as if there was a mountain that was pressing down on him.
At this point, he finally felt the fear that he should have felt and he quickly said, “Please spare me! As long as you spare me, I can give you anything!”
Even though Lin Fan’s pressure was crushing him, it seemed like he still wasn’t willing to talk…But Lin Fan could tell that there was a different kind of fear in his voice.
It wasn’t the fear of him, but rather the person behind him that didn’t allow him to talk.
Lin Fan knew that to just use fear to crush this person’s will was hard at this point, so he decided to give him an olive branch.
Lin Fan calmly said, “I don’t know who’s behind you and why you’re so scared of him, but if you tell me who hired you, then I can help you escape from their grasp. As long as you tell me the truth, I’ll help you.”
The bandit boss couldn’t help trembling when he heard these words.
After a few seconds of hesitation, he said in a wavering voice, “Are you serious?”
Lin Fan revealed a faint smile when he heard this as he knew that his bait had worked. So he said in an enticing voice, “I am. As long as you’re willing to tell me the truth, I’ll help you.”
There was a few more seconds of silence before the bandit boss suddenly said, “I’ll tell you! It was…”
But before the next words could come out of his mouth, there was a stream of black liquid that dripped out of the corner of his mouth. After that, the mouth of the bandit boss started to foam over and his eyes rolled back in their sockets before his face fell right into the ground.
Lin Fan didn’t even need to check to know that he was dead.
When he looked at the corpse of the bandit boss, he couldn’t help knitting his brows.
It wasn’t that he was upset that the bandit boss had died since he had planned on killing the bandit boss in the first place. When he promised to help him ‘escape their grasp’, he had meant it in a different way.
After all, death was the best escape from anything.
So he had planned on letting the poison that he used kill the bandit boss.
Even if he wanted to save him, it was already too late since the poison that he had used had already gone too deep into the bandit boss. Of course, the bandit boss didn’t know that…
The reason why Lin Fan was upset was because he didn’t get the information that he wanted. Though not only that, he was upset because it was clear whoever was behind these bandits had clearly killed the bandit boss to silence him.
They had clearly placed a poison that could be activated when the bandit boss betrayed them to kill the bandit boss from far away. As for what the conditions were or how the time delay worked, Lin Fan wasn’t sure, but he knew that the bandit boss had been killed by this mechanism.
When he looked at the other bandits who had survived, he found that all of them had been killed just like the bandit boss. There was a line of black liquid that came out of their mouths and the same layer of foam in them.
There wasn’t a single living bandit left in this place…