Chapter 163 - The Abandoned Cave
Now that Lin Mu had an idea of how to proceed, he acted on it. He followed the trail of the broken and knocked down trees and tried to find the site of the attack. He walked for quite a long distance and reached a relatively wide and open area that seemed to be natural.
There were no more broken trees here, so Lin Mu concluded that the site of the attack should have been nearby.
"Now I just need to look for a broken carriage," Lin Mu muttered to himself as his eyes looked around.
Since it was dark, Lin Mu was also using his spirit sense to scan the area. Still, even after searching for over fifteen minutes, Lin Mu did not find anything. It was as if the carriage had disappeared into the thin air.
"The carriage cannot be taken away by a beast, then that means... The culprits! They must have removed their traces later on." Lin Mu guessed.
"You should use your spirit sense to look under the snow, it’s likely that the traces of the carriage and the tracks may be buried below the snow," Xukong suggested.
Lin Mu nodded his head as he looked below the snow. But his search seemed to have been for naught, as there did not seem to be any traces here either. Whoever the culprits were, they were smart enough to erase all traces.
At least that’s what Lin Mu thought until he found something that was stuck in the trunk of a tree. What Lin Mu had found was a broken part of a wooden plan. It had broken off in a diagonal manner, and the sharp part was embedded in the trunk of a tree.
Lin Mu only found hits by chance as he was looking around. And he actually did not find this because of his spirit sense, but rather because of his own eyesight. The thing that had pulled Lin Mu’s attention was actually the glint of the moonlight that had shined off of a small nail.
This nail was stuck into the broken plank that was then stuck in the trunk of a tree. Lin Mu thanked his luck as he pulled out the broken piece of the plank. He looked at the broken plan and saw its finish and size.
It was a properly cut and trimmed piece of wood, thus there was no doubt that it was a part of the carriage.
"Seems like they missed this piece. Now you just need to figure out which direction you’re supposed to go." Xukong chimed in.
Lin Mu nodded in response and looked around for more clues, but he still could not find any.
If one looked at it from far, they would think that the boulder had naturally rolled off of the mountain and had come to settle here. Lin Mu moved the snow from the ground around the boulder away and saw the dragging marks.
"Oh, so this boulder was moved here from the side to block the path to the cave." Lin Mu spoke.
’Seems like I need to make way for myself now." Lin Mu thought and tried to push the boulder.
He knew that he wouldn’t be able to push it with his current strength, but he still wanted to try it, hoping for a miracle. His hopes were dashed quickly, as he wasn’t even able to make it budge. Even when he used the entirety of his body’s strength and stretched it with spirit qi, there was no effect.
The boulder was about three meters tall and four meters wide. There was no way Lin Mu could move it.
"Don’t waste your efforts, just use your skill and walk through it directly," Xukong spoke in a chiding tone.
"Yes, senior." Lin Mu replied while feeling a little embarrassed.
He activated the third skill Phase and walked through the boulder. A second later he appeared in a pitch-black cave. Lin Mu stayed alert and scanned the cave with his spirit sense first and did not deactivate the skill yet.
He was fully expecting for there to be people here, but surprisingly there was nobody. Having confirmed that the cave was abandoned, Lin Mu deactivated the skill and lit up an old half-burned torch that was attached to one of the walls nearby.
With the flame blazing, the abandoned cave was illuminated and Lin Mu was finally able to see it. The first thing he noticed was the large number of cages that were present in the cave, along with chains and other types of restraints.
There were also some pieces of furniture scattered all around, along with a few random articles. Lin Mu checked out the cages and discovered small amounts of blood in some of them. In another corner, he also found some old food.
Some parts of the food had gone moldy, while the rest still seemed to be fine.
"Looks like they left in a hurry." Xukong spoke.
"Yes, but why? Did they know we were coming here or was it something else?" Lin Mu questioned in response.
Lin Mu looked around and saw the rooms that were located in the different corners of the cave. Most of them were empty, and the others only had some random items left in them. All Lin Mu could understand right now was that this cave was used to temporarily hold the mercenaries here.
"Looks like I’ll need to guide the Hei corps here. They have better investigational skills than me, they should know what clues I missed."