"What's happening, master?" Aegis asked from his chest.
"I don't know, but I don't have a very good feeling about it," Ning said. "Let me follow and see. If I think something bad is happening, I will step in."
The parade went on for a little while before it reached the mouth of the cave. Finally, it stopped there and the 8 people that were carrying the float put it down.
The old man who was the father of the girl walked up to the cave and shouted, "Lord of the hills, We have come with the yearly tribute. I have brought along my daughter as this year's tribute."
They waited for a while before a booming voice came from inside. "Hmm… okay. Send her in and you guys may leave now," the beast inside said.
The father walked up to the float and opened the door. The girl came out as she wiped her tears away.
"Are you ready my child?" he asked.
"Yes, father," she said.
"Ah, my child," the father said as he held her hand to his forehead. "Forgive this father for not being able to protect you."
"It's okay father," the girl said. " It's time I go in. Tell mother and my brothers I love them."
The girl turned around, with determination in her eyes before fiercely entering the cave with no hesitation.
"Aegis, go and stay with the girl. If she's in danger, protect her," Ning said.
"Yes, master," Aegis said before flying into the cave as a harmless little beetle.
"Let's go back," the father said with tearful eyes that hid fury that only others who lost their daughters knew about.
"Yes," the group of people turned around to leave.
The father walked briskly and went to the group of people at the back. The 5 people at the back that were all wearing black robes and hiding their faces stopped along with everyone.
The old man then went on to slowly whisper his next set of words. "That is where the beast lives, please destroy him if you can. I don't want my daughter's sacrifice to be in vain," the old man said.
"Leave that to us. We will exterminate the beast," the 5 people said.
"Oh," Ning thought. "So it's that sort of situation huh?"
The 20-some people left, leaving only the 5 in their hoods.
"Let's go kill this beast," one of them said, and the others cheered. Ning sent out his divine sense to look at their faces, but they were just normal people with a high cultivation base.
The 5 briskly walked up to the cave and into it. Ning decided to see what it was all about as well.
"Man, if this is the beast I'm looking for, I don't know what sort of answer I can give to the beasts in the statue. Maybe I should just not tell them anything at all," Ning thought.
He walked inside the dark cave but had no problem seeing anything. The walls were all the same looking, with seemingly no distinction from anything else.
"Did the beast make these walls like this?" Ning wondered as he walked around. He walked for nearly 5 minutes before he realized that he was getting nowhere.
"What the hell?" he thought and started running towards where he could feel Aegis was. However, despite that, he couldn't even reach the place.
"Master," Night finally spoke after he was running around for a while.
"What?" Ning asked with slight annoyance in his voice.
"I believe we going in circles. I've seen these walls twice now," Night said.
"Are we?" Ning asked. He immediately spread out his divine sense and realized that the path was in fact a fake one. The path network was a closed loop, except for a single path that led outside.
"Dammit! The real one if hidden behind that wall," Ning said after seeing everything through his divine sense. "They are already confronting each other too."
Ning decided to waste no time and teleported to right outside of the main room where everyone was gathered.
When he reappeared, he walked directly into the room in full view without much care. The beast was already going to start fighting very soon, so it didn't matter to him if they saw him and decided to add him into the conflict.
Ning saw the five men in robes that now had their hoods removed. 3 of them were males, and 2 were females, all with a cultivation base in the mid Nascent realms.
He then looked at the girl that was crouched in the corner, hiding her face from the beast and the other 5 people.
Finally, he saw the beast. The beast was a giant mole about 4 meters tall and 6 meters long. It had incredibly sharp nails on its claws that were attached to rather short limbs.
Compared to the 5 other robed figures, the beast was actually not very stronger than them at all. If the 5 decided to fight the beast, the beast would surely lose.
"Where do you people keep coming from?" the Mole was both annoyed and worried as it had never seen so anyone other than the girl he was sent come in, let alone this many at once.
"Who are you?" one of the men in the group asked Ning.
"I can ask the same to you," Ning said with a smile.
"Doesn't matter. We are here for you anyway," the man turned to the mole.
"But why? Why are you after me?" the mole asked.
"They want to kill you because of what you've been doing all this time," Ning said.
"What I've been doing?" the mole looked at him confused. "But I've been doing nothing but staying in this mountain ever since I got here."
"You made the villagers send out their daughters here every year, didn't you?" Ning asked. "They are taking revenge on what you've done."
"Huh?" the mole asked in full exasperation. "But I don't ask for anything. They give me their daughters on their own."
"Are you saying you didn't threaten them to send their daughters?" Ning asked. "You didn't bring any harm to them?"
"Of course, n—" the beast stopped mid-speech. "Ah, is that why they keep sending their young females."
"What did you do?" Ning asked in full seriousness.
"Well, uh…" the beast turned to the 5 people and said, "Can you tell them it was a mistake. I explained it to them long ago, but it doesn't seem like they understood."
"You see, when I came here and made this home for myself, I accidentally threw out all of the dirt and rocks inside into the village down below. They thought I was destroying their home because I was angry."
"After that, they've been sending me their daughters every year."
"Wait, so you didn't do anything bad to them?" Ning asked.
"NO!" the mole answered, almost dramatically.
'System, is he telling the truth?' Ning asked.
<Yes>
"Ah, it seems you have no reason to kill him then," Ning said as he turned to the 5 people.
"See? You don't have to kill me. I'm innocent," the Mole shouted.
The man who had spoken earlier spoke once again. "Don't worry, we were never planning to kill you in the first place," he said.
"Oh," the mole said, a little surprised.
"Oh," Ning said as well, clearly not expecting the response.
"Then… you're going to leave now?" the mole asked, almost happily.
"No, we have an objective of our own, and that is to take you away," the man said.
"What? Why? I told you, I don't do anything to the humans below. I've been living a quiet life all this time," the mole said.
"Who cares about some pathetic humans. They can die for all we care. We are only here for you and you alone," the man said.
"Uh… you speak like you hate humans," the mole said.
"Of course we do. Who wouldn't hate them," the man said.
"Um, then do you hate yourself too?" the mole asked.
"No, because we're not humans. Not anymore," the man said with a sinister smile. "We've long since transcended humanity and have grown to be that much stronger. However, we can grow that much more. So, we are going to take you away."
"Well, I wasn't expecting that," Ning said. "Who are you guys exactly?"
"That human talks a lot, go kill him," the man said.
"With pleasure." A girl slowly walked forward with a dagger in her hand and a sinister grin on her face. She licked the edge of the blade and asked, "Tell me, how would you like to die? Fast, slow, full of a thousand cuts or a straight stab to the heart."
"Just kill him," one of the men in the back shouted.
"Tsk. Let me have some fun. Just because I'm with a gloomy bunch doesn't mean I have to be gloomy too," she said. "Right, where was I?"
"Uh, I don't know about you, but I was going to say that you little miss should give up on the idea of hurting me. While I don't like hurting little girls, I'm not so against it that you will definitely be walking away from here with more than just a few broken bones."
"Hahaha, you're funny, human," she said. "It's a shame you have to die now."
The remaining 4 people decided to go on the beast. Ning looked at the situation and sighed. "What sort of idiots did I come up against?" he thought.
"Night, Blue, go help him," he said.
"Yes, Master."