The owner of these auras were bipedal creatures that were like humans, but had strange appearances and green skin.
They didn’t wear clothes like humans, but rather they wore loincloths that only covered their lower half.
Seeing their bald head, long ears, and fangs, along with the clubs that they carried, Lin Fan couldn’t help feeling a strange feeling.
Wasn’t this the wrong setting?
Perhaps if this was a magic based world, this would be something normal, but this was a cultivation world after all!
What appeared in front of Lin Fan were several goblins, the most common enemy in any fantasy world. Well, not any fantasy world…any magic based fantasy world…
Once again, this was a world of cultivation, so why were there goblins here?
No, wait a minute…
Lin Fan suddenly thought of something.
There were also elves in this world, so why couldn’t there be goblins?
Goblins should be a very common thing, right?
But when he saw the surprised and confused look on Tian Tian’s face, he knew that this was wrong.
It was clear by her expression that she clearly didn’t recognize these goblins. It was almost as if she had never seen these creatures before.
That didn’t make any sense though!
Why would the cultivation world have records of elves, but not records of goblins? Elves and goblins were basically the icon of a magic fantasy world!
After these thoughts passed through his mind, Lin Fan took a deep breath and asked Tian Tian, “Do you know what these things are?”
Tian Tian just shook her head and said, “I’ve never seen these creatures before. Do you know what they are?”
Lin Fan decided to not reveal his knowledge since it seemed like it would be better for him, so he said, “No, but they aren’t weak at all.”
This was also true.
Based on the aura that was coming from each of these goblins, each one should be as strong as someone in the Third Qi Gathering Realm and the numbers that they had was staggering. Just this scouting party that they had met had included 20 goblins already.
It wasn’t hard to guess how many would be in the village ahead based on the auras that they could feel and the number in the scouting party that they saw.
Just with their group, there was no way that they would be able to defeat all of them.
It was a good thing that they didn’t need to defeat all of them since the only thing that they needed was the stairs down to the next level.
So for now, they would just gather everyone and avoid the goblin village completely.
Tian Tian understood what Lin Fan was implying and she didn’t object to it all. It was indeed much too dangerous for them to go charging into this village of goblins and there was no need for that at all.
It was better for them just to avoid it and look for the stairs to the next floor.
So after they came to this conclusion, the two of them quickly headed off to look for the other members of their group.
They had already discussed how to meet up with each other in cases like this, so it didn’t take them long to find the marks left by the other two groups. It took them even less time to find them and gather everyone together.
After hearing Lin Fan’s description of what was under the tree, everyone felt a chill run down their spine.
While they were all individually stronger than the goblins, with their numbers, there was no doubt that the goblins would eventually tire them out and swallow them up.
So seeing that there was no need for them to go to the goblin village, it was a unanimous decision to avoid the goblin village.
After sharing their finds with each other and the fact that none of them had found the exit to this floor, they decided to head out again. But this time, they decided to head out together just in case they ran into the goblins again.
They didn’t know how wide the territory of the goblins spread, so if they were to run into these goblins while they were out scouting, if they didn’t team up, they wouldn’t be able to take care of all the goblins that were in each scouting party.
If the remnants of the scouting party were able to report back to the goblin village, they would know that there were intruders that had entered this forest.
If they were wiped out, then the goblins would just assume that it was one of their natural enemies that wiped out this scouting party, so the implications were very different.
Even if it took much longer to scout out the entire forest in one large group than as several smaller groups, it would be overall much safer for them.
What they never expected was that even after searching for an entire day, they still hadn’t been able to find the stairs to the next floor.
It wasn’t that they hadn’t searched in a wide enough area, they had even reached all the walls of this forest, so it could be said that they had searched the entire floor. But even after doing that, they still hadn’t been able to find the stairs to the next floor.
The only place that they had left to search was…the goblin village.
Well, there were also a few blind spots on the map that they hadn’t been able to check, but the only likely option was the goblin village.
That was the only place that the goblins who had the largest population and had the greatest power in this forest lived, so it was clear that there was something special about that place that drew them there. If it wasn’t the stairs to the next floor, it was hard to imagine what else was there.
So in the end, they had no choice but to head to the goblin village.
The strange thing about this place was that the fake sun followed the same cycle as the real sun. As time passed, it moved through the sky like the real sun would and it also dimmed like the sun would.
Using the final hours of sunlight, Lin Fan’s group scouted out the goblin village.
They found that luckily, not all the goblins were fighters like they had seen in the scouting party. There were also female goblins, young goblins, and elderly goblins who weren’t able to fight.
But out of the total population of two thousand goblins, there were still over a thousand of them that were capable warriors.
A thousand warriors in the Third Qi Gathering Realm versus the seven of them, there was no doubt that they would be overwhelmed by these numbers. Just a single drop of spit from each one of these goblins was already enough to drown them.
Not to mention that while they had been scouting, they had seen some goblins with different clothing.
There were goblins that had more than just the loincloth, wearing things like leather armour or things like crowns made of feathers. These goblins also held weapons other than the clubs that the normal goblins wielded.
It was clear that these were special variants of goblins and the most clear evidence of this was the aura that they released.
The aura that they had put them in the Fourth and Fifth Qi Gathering Realm, not any weaker than the members of Lin Fan’s group.
The worst thing was that there was one goblin that was clearly much bigger and much more muscular compared to the rest that had something that resembled a crown on his head. It was clear that this goblin was the ruler of the rest of these goblins.
As for his aura, it wasn’t any weaker than Lin Fan’s.
It was at least in the Seventh Qi Gathering Realm!
This was also verified when Lin Fan saw it and used his Appraisal Eyes on it.
While Lin Fan was certain that he could win if he fought all out against it with all his different skills, he knew that it was impossible to get that one on one fight when it was surrounded by all these other goblins.
So there was no doubt that combat wasn’t an option for them.
The only option that they did have was sneaking into the goblin village and finding the stairs to the next floor.
Lin Fan felt that this was too dangerous, so he didn’t have a choice but to use the Gale Sparrow to see if he could find the stairs ahead of time.
So after sneaking off and sending the Gale Sparrow out to scout out the camp, he did find that there was indeed a set of stairs in the center of the camp. But the bad thing was that it was very close to where the goblin king spent most of his time.
To get to these stairs, it was very likely that they would have to sneak past the goblin king…
Lin Fan brought this bad news to the rest of the group, but what they cared about was something else.
The first thing that they cared about was naturally how Lin Fan had obtained this information.
Lin Fan just said, “It’s one of my secret techniques, but I can guarantee that it’s trustworthy.”
He took out a map that he had drawn based on the descriptions of the camp by the Gale Sparrow and after the group matched it to the parts that they could see, they decided to trust Lin Fan’s map.
As for asking what his secret technique was, they knew better than to ask since this was something that was related to his trump cards or he would have brought this out earlier.
They all knew that trump cards were important things to cultivators like this and it was better not to ask, so they didn’t.