Without realizing it, they had been traveling on the road toward their destination for the past sixty days, during this time everybody was being extremely vigilant toward their surroundings, one for fear of being caught off guard by the beasts or even worse their enemies, another thing was to ensure that the kids won't run away from them.
Being caught off guard naturally meant that their chance of surviving that attack was gonna be low, while allowing the kids to run away would also ensure their death, so the only way to prevent these two things from happening was to keep an eye on their surroundings at all times.
Eventually, they stopped when they arrived in front of an entrance that led to a forest, when looking up you could see the sign written as Zhang Xiu.
"We have arrived at the Zhang Xiu forest, be more careful guys." Their leader muttered and signed them to keep moving forward.
Zhang Xiu Forest existed between the Dead Corpse organization and the Xue clan, these two forces usually go to war with each other, and it was normal since the Xue clan was a righteous force.
They disliked and resented the soul cultivator since these people liked doing evil deeds and spreading chaos everywhere they went, and more importantly, the soul cultivators didn't like to fight their enemies head-on, which made them even more hateful.
So every time the Dead Corpse Organization send someone out to recruit youngsters for their force, The Xue clan would often set up traps or an ambush within this forest, to stop them from forcefully recruiting innocent kids into their evil force.
And of course, the one who started it all was the Dead Corpse organization with the intention to stop them from expanding their force and limiting their future fighting capability, every recruited youngster that they caught from the Xue clan would often be used as material and refined into something that was of use to their organization.
As for the Xue clan, a righteous force was more merciful toward their captives, when they caught people who were recruited to the Dead Corpse organization, they would often let them go with no harm after they lectured them, some of them might even have a chance to enter the Xue clan if they were to be talented enough with body cultivation.
...
Entering the forest, the entire atmosphere around them was changed entirely.
The slight carelessness on their face was fully gone replaced by an extremely wary look, before they would occasionally make small talk with each other, but now only silence remained.
From time to time, they would scan their surroundings hoping that they would find out about the potential ambush that could endanger their life coming from both the wild beast and the Xue clan in time, so that they could counter-attack back before it was too late and even attacking them first could be possible.
They carefully looked at every gigantic tree to ensure that nothing was hiding behind it, and they didn't ignore the sky either as an attack coming from the sky wasn't that rare, though the chances of it happening were very low but who could guarantee that it wouldn't happen?
Once in a while, they would be startled by the random sound that came out from within the deep forest, be it the sound of footsteps or movement being created by animals, the sound of animals communicating with each other in their language such as bird chipping and stuff.
Along the way, they were attacked by wild beasts several times, sometime time they would encounter soul beasts, sometimes it was the warrior beasts, and the normal wild beasts were not worth mentioning since they were too weak.
The soul beasts and warrior beasts that they encountered since entering the forest were of low level, as the high ranking ones were killed by some of the high rankers from both sides because their future foundation depended on this forest road, without it things such as the future generations wouldn't exist.
So it didn't take them a long time to deal with every single beast that came to disturb them, the way they dealt with it was just like usual, two at the back continuously supporting them, turning the tide of the battle, while the other four being on the front-line fighting the beast head on.
They were injured after every fight, but the wounds inflicted upon their body weren't that heavy, still their master still handed them the elixir just in case they got ambushed by the Xue clan during their weak state, and with the help of their slightly good self-recovery ability, they were able to completely reach their peak condition the next day.
...
They kept traveling while maintaining their guard in case their rival enemies jumped out from somewhere around the forest and attacked them.
Fortunately, the worst thing that they were expecting didn't happen, they arrived safely at their main base without any accident occurring.
After looking around them, one of them took out a token and placed it in front of the statue's eyes.
The eyes that were filled with pure darkness and emptiness soon turned green.
The grounds beneath the statue began to shake intently as the entrance were slowly opened up.
After waiting for a while, the entrance was fully opened, then everybody walked into it hurriedly to avoid being ambushed or being seen by their enemies.
The space inside there was big enough to be called a cave, darkness would be everywhere if it weren't for the torch hanging on the wall.
The atmosphere inside was evil and cold, that the kids who were kidnapped inside the carriage shook uncontrollably.
Soon enough the carriage was stopped, and the door to the carriage was suddenly opened.
"Kids come out now, we won't hurt you if you behave correctly."
No one moved despite hearing this, the man felt disrespected and got enraged.
He lifted one of his hands up and slapped the kid closest to him.