After thinking this through, Lin Fan took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he sat down cross legged.
He started drawing in the life energy around him as the black hole in his dantian turned.
After a few minutes, the vortex of life energy around him suddenly stopped and he opened his eyes again. When his eyes opened, the aura that he released had returned to normal.
For someone like him with the special black hole and suns in his dantian, he was able to gather life energy easily and also recover quickly, so it didn't take him long to recover from the wounds of the clash from earlier.
Once he had finished recovering, Lin Fan headed back to the Hunters Organization group.
It was still clear by their expressions that they wanted to ask him questions, but he ignored all those gazes as he led the way forward.
Seeing that he didn't want to answer their questions, the Hunters Organization group had no choice but to follow behind Lin Fan. After all, they were relying on him to safely guide them through the forest now and so far he had been able to avoid all Child Soul Realm beasts, so there was no reason for them to doubt him yet.
But they did keep this matter in the back of their minds.
It didn't take them long before they reached a point where the forest around them started to get thinner until they finally reached the edge of the forest.
Once they came out of the forests, they were completely shocked by what they had seen.
There was a large prairie that was stretched out in front of them covered in endless grasslands, but this wasn't what shocked them. Rather it was what was on the grasslands that shocked them.
In front of them were hundreds of different staircases with steps of different heights that led all the way into the clouds. As for how far up they went, they couldn't see since the clouds were blocking their view.
It almost seemed that as far as they could see, there were staircases that led up to the heavens.
But after being surprised by them, Lin Fan started to look around the area while his group were still standing there in a daze.
As he looked around, he saw that it wasn't just his group that was here. There were many other groups that had made their way through the forest and were walking along the plains. Some groups that he was familiar with and some that he wasn't familiar with.
But as far as he could tell, there wasn't a single group that looked as clean as his group.
It seemed like they had all encountered their own hardships in the forest and most of them hadn't been able to get off with light scratches.
There was even a person who was missing an arm and a leg.
It was hard to imagine what they had experienced for them to lose this much.
As for the groups that he did recognize, there wasn't a single one that seemed to have had all their members.
It was clear that they either lost members or there were still members of their group that were still in the forest.
For a group to be completely together and not have lost a single member like them was rare, so naturally they attracted attention as soon as they came out. There were many people who were whispering to each other and were pointing in their direction.
Of course, they wouldn't do a thing since everyone was wary of each other, so all they did was whisper and point.
Well, not all that they did. There was one group that did much more than that.
From the group of the Thunder Sect and the True Spirit Sect, there were two glares that belonged to Lei Feng and Shi Yi respectively pointed in their direction. But those two glares were completely ignored since there was nothing that could be done about them.
While looking around, Lin Fan found that it almost seemed like everyone was waiting around for something before turning his attention to the nearest staircase where there was a gate that was placed right at the entrance.
When they had arrived, the first thing that they had looked at were the giant staircases leading up into the heavens, but they hadn't actually looked at the bottom where the entrances were.
Looking more closely at the other staircases, he found that there were gates that had blocked off the entrances of all the staircases.
Then when he looked even more closely, he found that there was a timer above each of the staircases. Then looking around, he found that the timer for each gate was different and the shortest timer was the staircase that was closest to everyone.
It seemed like these people weren't waiting here because they wanted to, but rather because there was no way forward for them unless they waited.
The only other thing of note was the pillar that was right in the center of where everyone had gathered, standing right in front of the closest staircase that had the shortest countdown. However, there wasn't anything that was on the pillar, so there was nothing to pay attention to when it came to that pillar.
Lin Fan led his group to the area where all the other groups were waiting and they also found a spot away from the others to wait for the countdown to end.
Based on how quickly the numbers on the countdown were changing, it seemed like the countdown was in seconds and it would take another ten minutes or so before the countdown would finish.
So for now, there was nothing to do but wait.
During this time, Wang Jian sent Lin Fan a secret message.
As allies, naturally they had devised a way to send secret messages to each other just in case they needed to contact each other without anyone finding out.
The message that Wang Jian sent was asking Lin Fan about the other members of the Myriad Sword Hall and the Ice Goddess Palace that were still in the forest.
He hadn't been with Lin Fan the entire way in the ruins during the Hunters Exam, so he didn't know about Lin Fan's abilities. However, seeing Lin Fan lead all of his members out safely, he could tell that Lin Fan must have some kind of tracking ability.
If that was the case, he hoped that Lin Fan would be able to find the other members of their two groups.
After all, they were working together, so this wasn't considered too big of a request.
Lin Fan had actually been looking out for these members during their travels, but the only ones that he had found were corpses.
There were two from the Myriad Sword Hall and three from the Ice Goddess Palace, which matched the number of people that were missing from their group.
After pausing for a moment, Lin Fan sent a message back telling Wang Jian about this matter.
After Wang Jian read this message, his eyes clearly trembled before he leaned over to whisper something to Bing Yu.
Her eyes turned wide when she heard this and then she turned to glare at Lin Fan.
Wang Jian saw this, but he didn't stop her since he knew that this would be good for them.
For people that didn't know what was happening, they would think that Bing Yu glaring at Lin Fan meant that there was some kind of grudge between them and the Hunters Organization. This was what they wanted to see happen since their cooperation was currently still a secret.
Of course, he would make sure to calm Bing Yu down since if there was actual anger in her over this matter, it would ruin their cooperation as well.
But it seemed like he didn't have to worry.
Bing Yu wasn't actually affected by what Wang Jian had told her, she had done this on purpose after hearing what Wang Jian had said. She knew that they had fallen into the trap of the Thunder Sect and the True Spirit Sect, so it couldn't be blamed on Lin Fan.
In fact, if it wasn't for Lin Fan telling them to stay back, perhaps they might have suffered even more losses than just these five people.
After waiting for some more time, there were more stragglers that slowly came out of the woods.
All of them had groups that they could go to, even the ones that didn't belong to any of the twelve great factions.
They headed to different twelve great faction groups and blended in with them.
It was clear that they had reached an agreement with these groups beforehand that they would work with them in these Ancient Era Ruins.
There weren't any that came over to the Hunters Organization group since they had used up all their tokens internally, so there wasn't anyone from the families under them that came.
When the countdown on the gate was about to finish, most of the people that had come into the Ancient Era Ruins had gathered.
Most of the groups had lost three to four members, only the Thunder Sect and the True Spirit Sect suffered the greatest, losing five members each. The only other group that didn't suffer as much as the Assassins Association group who had only lost one member in the end.
When the countdown on the gate finally finished, there was a sudden flash of light before a figure suddenly appeared in front of everyone.
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