After being brought outside, Tian Tian led Lin Fan’s group to the Mercenary Guild’s stables.
When they arrived they found that there was a beast carriage that had been prepared for them.
The beasts that were attached to the carriage were Second Qi Gathering Realm beasts, so there was no doubt about their speed.
It seemed like this mission was even more important to the Mercenary Guild than they thought…Or else the Mercenary Guild wouldn’t have invested a carriage like this into this mission.
The minimum price for a carriage like this was at least several tens of thousands of gold coins.
Yet they were using it to bring them to the location of the ruins?
This gave everyone a strong feeling that this mission was going to be harder than they imagined. Still, if that was the case, that meant that the rewards should also be much richer, so they were also a bit excited.
When Lin Fan and the rest got into the carriage, Lin Fan was surprised to find that Tian Tian had gotten in along with them.
He couldn’t help asking, “What are you doing? We’re about to head off, why are you getting in as well?”
Tian Tian looked at Lin Fan with an equally confused look as she said, “I’m coming along with you, so why wouldn’t I get in?”
Lin Fan then revealed a shocked look as he repeated, “You’re coming with us?”
Tian Tian looked at Lin Fan like she suddenly understood something and explained, “You can just treat me as the observer from the Mercenary Guild.” Then after a pause, she said with a confident look, “Of course, I can take care of myself.”
Lin Fan didn’t doubt this since he could see what level of cultivation she had.
Fifth Qi Gathering Realm, she was a cultivator in the Fifth Qi Gathering Realm.
He had some ideas before, but he had never used his Appraisal Eyes on her out of fear of being caught. However, now that his cultivation had greatly increased, he was able to see through her even without the Appraisal Eyes.
In fact, the aura that he felt from her was even greater than the aura that he felt from Huo Duo who was already the strongest member of this group based on his aura. That just meant that she was even stronger than Huo Duo…
Still, the fact that she was going as an observer wasn’t a good thing.
It meant that the Mercenary Guild was suspicious about him and they wanted to send someone to keep an eye on him…
But it wasn’t as if there was anything he could do about that, so Lin Fan just accepted it and got into the carriage with her.
After they loaded up, the carriage quickly left the city.
When the guards at the gate saw the symbol of the Mercenary Guild on it, they didn’t even check the carriage as they directly let it out.
As they headed along the road, Lin Fan couldn’t help praising how smoothly this carriage ran at the speed that it was going. The speed itself was actually slower than Hi who had already reached the Third Qi Gathering Realm, but the carriage didn’t shake at all.
This really was a carriage from a major faction, it was not a common item.
It was even comparable to the cars from the modern era Earth.
However, Lin Fan didn’t have time to think about this.
With their speed, it took them less than two hours to reach the forest that Lin Fan had gone to previously. It had taken Lin Fan half a day before, so cutting it down to less than two hours really showed how fast they were going.
When they arrived, Lin Fan found that the forest was still in the same state as before, there weren’t any signs of life in this forest at all.
The only difference was that along the roads that led into the forest, there were guards from the Mercenary Guild stationed there.
The excuse that was given was that they were there to prevent beasts from escaping the forest.
There had been beast waves before, which was the reason why Lin Fan was even given the mission of scouting this forest in the first place. So for the Mercenary Guild to station guards at the exits of the forest was a very natural thing.
In fact, this move won them plenty of goodwill from the surrounding villages and cities.
Of course, that was just the excuse.
Lin Fan knew that the real reason that these guards were here was because of the ruins that had been discovered in the center of the forest.
The Mercenary Guild was the first one to discover these ruins and naturally they didn’t want to share them with others. Since they had a perfect excuse to block entrance into the forest that these ruins were in, there was no reason for them not to do this.
When the guards saw the carriage with the mark of the Mercenary Guild, they didn’t move towards it or even say a thing as they moved out of the way of the carriage, letting it pass through into the forest.
The carriage continued along the road through the forest, the eerily quiet forest. The atmosphere around them remained like this until they came close to the cave with the ruins.
It wasn’t visible, but Lin Fan could sense the auras of people hiding around them.
They were hiding in the trees all around, looking down at them.
Lin Fan was about to peek his head out to do something about this, but Tian Tian raised her hand to stop him. When he looked at her for an explanation, she just shook her head to tell him to stay still.
Lin Fan quickly understood why Tian Tian had stopped him.
The people around them hiding in the trees were most likely also from the Mercenary Guild.
After all, even if they had an excuse to stop normal people without a good reason from entering the forest, that didn’t mean that they could stop everyone from entering the forest. There were people that still had to enter the forest and just the Mercenary Guild alone wasn’t enough to stop them.
But they couldn’t just have people walking around and finding the ruins by accident, so they posted guards near the ruins as well.
When people came to this area, they would try to persuade them to turn back by saying that the Mercenary Guild was investigating the source of the beast waves in this area. So they couldn’t just wander around, or it would interfere with the investigations of the Mercenary Guild.
They tried to persuade people with words when they could, but when they couldn’t…
Well, to put it simply…dead men tell no tales.
Based on the aura of the people around them, Lin Fan could tell that all of them were at least in the Fourth Qi Gathering Realm and there was even one person who was in the Fifth Qi Gathering Realm who was clearly their boss.
It seemed like the manpower that the Mercenary Guild were in control of really wasn’t weak.
They could even send all these Fourth Qi Gathering Realm experts here just to guard one place…
The people in the trees around just watched as the carriage made its way through their blockade. They had seen the mark of the Mercenary Guild on it and they had already received the report that the exploration team would be coming, so they just let the carriage go through.
Once the carriage arrived, the rest of the group came out in a spirited manner, clearly unaware of what had just happened.
They hadn’t noticed Lin Fan moving to go out since he had been by the door in the first place and they weren’t able to sense the people around them, so they didn’t know that they had been surrounded by people from the Mercenary Guild just now.
Once they arrived, everyone gathered around Lin Fan and waited for his orders.
But Lin Fan didn’t say anything as he just looked at the entrance of the cave and looked around the surrounding field.
He found that nothing had changed since the last time that he had been here, but that shouldn’t be the case based on the report that he had read back at the Mercenary Guild.
Still, even if it all looked the same on the outside, that didn’t mean that it would be the same on the inside, so he carefully made his way to the entrance.
The others were surprised by how careful he was being since they knew that this place had already been scouted, but since Lin Fan was acting this way, they followed behind him to the entrance of the cave.
When Lin Fan looked in, as far as he could tell, the corridor leading in was the same as the corridor that he had walked out of.
Out of habit, Lin Fan used his Appraisal Eyes, but he wasn’t able to find anything.
In the past, Lin Fan didn’t have the habit of using the Appraisal Eyes since they were something new to him, but after he found how useful they were, he started making a habit of using the Appraisal Eyes whenever he was checking out something new.
But even with the Appraisal Eyes, he wasn’t able to find anything new.
So left with no other choice, Lin Fan pulled out his sword and cautiously started heading deeper into the cave.
The others all looked at Lin Fan with strange looks since they didn’t understand why he was being this cautious, but since he was their leader, they could only match the pace that he was going at as they entered the cave.