It didn’t take long for them to find a trail after heading in the direction that this spirit beast corpse was facing.
After traveling for a few minutes, they immediately found traces of something being dragged on the ground. And with how big the trails were, it was clear that something…or someone big had been dragged through here.
This was clearly the trail that had been left by the spirit beasts dragging the elders and disciples away.
Since they were spirit beasts, it made sense that they weren’t the smartest kidnappers.
Now that they had found the trail, all they had to do was follow it to wherever they brought the elders and disciples.
The only thing that they needed to worry about now was how to deal with what they would find.
This power…it was their first time encountering something like this, so it wasn’t as if it was something that they knew how to deal with.
So though they were getting closer to ending this, they couldn’t help feeling more and more worried.
They could only hope that Lin Fan had some way of dealing with this enemy that they would need to face.
But what they didn’t know was that…Lin Fan didn’t have a way of handling this Control Toad. He had been working with Greeny this entire time to come up with a countermeasure, but they hadn’t been able to figure out a single thing.
Even when analyzing the Control Worm that Lin Fan had pulled out of the disciple, they still weren’t able to figure out a thing.
That was because Lin Fan and Greeny weren’t able to fully analyze the Control Worm.
But at the same time, it wasn’t that they weren’t capable of doing this. It was just that they didn’t want to do it.
The moment that they tried to use their spiritual sense to probe this Control Worm would be the moment that the Control Toad would find out about them.
Since he had locked it up, the Control Toad might assume that this Control Worm had died or something had happened to it. There were many different possibilities, so it wouldn’t think that they had anything to do with it.
But as soon as they probed it with their spiritual sense, Lin Fan was certain that the Control Toad would feel something.
The moment that this Control Toad felt something was the moment that they would be screwed since it would know about them.
If it knew about them, it would be on its guard and would prepare for them, making it harder for them to attack this Control Toad.
So the only thing that they could do now was hope that they could find something about the Control Toad when they found it. That would be the only way that they would be able to find the Control Toad’s weakness.
After traveling for a bit, they finally found traces of other things.
These were traces of spirit beasts, which meant that there were spirit beasts wandering around near here.
So it was very likely that the hideout of the Control Toad would be here.
As soon as they found these traces, Lin Fan stopped and gathered everyone together so they could use the illusion array again.
Only then did they start moving forward again to see if they could find anything.
It didn’t take them long to find something.
It was a spirit beast that was currently wandering around on its own. This was a tiger spirit beast that was wandering through this forest, which didn’t seem like it was that strange.
But there was no fooling Lin Fan’s Appraisal Eyes.
The moment that he used his Appraisal Eyes on this tiger, he immediately saw what it really was.
It had the same status as the disciple when he used the Appraisal Eyes on him before.
This tiger had the same ‘controlled’ status, showing that it was being controlled by the Control Worm.
Since this tiger was controlled by the Control Worm and was patrolling this area, that should mean that they were in the right place. The one that was controlling this tiger was sending it out to patrol this area, which meant that they were most likely nearby.
After confirming this, Lin Fan gathered the elders together to go over what they would do next.
There was one thing that all of the elders agreed on.
They didn’t want to face whatever was controlling these things head on.
They wanted to make sure that they could beat this thing before charging in to face it.
And the way to make sure that they could face it would all depend on Lin Fan.
After all, he was the only one that even knew what these things were and had been able to find them. If it wasn’t for Lin Fan, they might not have even known that this disciple had been controlled.
So they had to wait and see if Lin Fan could come up with a way for them to proceed.
Lin Fan took a deep breath and said, “We need to find the enemy’s hideout first and then we’ll see what we can do from there.”
But when they heard this, the elders couldn’t help knitting their brows.
That was because he seemed to be avoiding a certain thing…he seemed to be avoiding talking about these spirit beasts that were controlled.
If he was doing that, did that mean that he didn’t actually have an idea of how to deal with them?
If that was the case, the hope that they had would be crushed…
But if someone said something, that would mean that it would be crushed sooner and no one dared to say it out loud. So all they could do was agree with his plan and keep the hope alive a bit longer.
The truth was that it was dead.
Lin Fan had no idea what to do now that they had actually found the hideout of the enemy.
If he went in, he wasn’t certain that he would even be able to fight this thing…
So he had to think of something now or it would be too late…
The elders spread out while leaving Lin Fan alone.
He just followed the tiger along its patrol, using his Appraisal Eyes to inspect the tiger while it was moving. But no matter how he looked at this tiger, what angle he took, or what part of the tiger he looked at, he wasn’t able to find anything.
If he wanted to blame someone for this, he could only blame himself in the end…
After all, it just meant that he wasn’t skilled enough to use these eyes that had been given to him.
The Appraisal Eyes skill was max level after all, so it wasn’t as if it could become stronger.
It just meant that he was too weak to use it to its full potential.
This was all that it could show him with his current power.
But that was a problem since he didn’t know how to deal with the Control Toad.
As he mulled over what to do, he suddenly thought of something.
When he didn’t know what to do…there was one person, or rather one thing that he could rely on.
The system.
But the system didn’t always answer his questions, so he didn’t know if it would answer him this time…
Still, there was no harm in asking.
The answer that the system gave him was…
“The host already has the means to deal with the Control Toad. There is no need for the system to assist the host.”
Lin Fan was shocked when he heard this and he asked, “What do you mean by that? What means?”
But the system didn’t say anything else after that.
It was almost as if the system was ignoring him…
So Lin Fan had no choice but to accept it.
Since the system told him this, then that means that it must be true. After all, the system had never been wrong before.
It was just that he had no idea what the system was referring to.
After thinking for a bit, he found that the elders had returned to where they had agreed to gather and he also went over.
When he came over, Senior Brother Ying said, “Sect master, we found the enemy’s hideout. It’s a cave not far from here.”
Lin Fan gave a nod, but he couldn’t help hesitating a bit.
Even if he trusted the system…it was hard to willingly go into danger without knowing what he was capable of doing…
But since the system had said that he had a way of dealing with this thing, then it must have a reason for saying so.
So taking a deep breath, Lin Fan said, “Alright, let’s go and see what’s inside.”
The elders were all surprised to hear this since they thought that Lin Fan would want to search the area first to see if there was anything else.
But at the same time, it gave them hope once more.
For him to be this confident, it must mean that he had some idea of how to deal with the Control Toad.
So that must be why he didn’t hesitate to go and find it.
That was all they needed.
The elders led Lin Fan to the cave, which was pitch dark.
Still, since they were cultivators, that didn’t mean a thing as long as they kept injecting spiritual energy into their eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Lin Fan took a step forward and said, “Let’s go then.”
