Chapter 170: Unexpected Help in the Soul Land, Increasing Shadow Birds, and the Merchant Redeeming Alone

As for Jier, he went to rest in the latter half of the night.

At this moment, just as he expected, having killed so many people during the day, his consciousness delved deep into his own Soul Land that very night.

It was still a campfire on a pitch-black wilderness; he sat on the ground wearing light clothing, and the campfire before him was burning fiercely, just like his own vigorous vitality or mental power.

And all around, as expected, in the pitch-black, empty wasteland in the distance, countless people he had killed with his own hands, with broken bodies and blood-stained faces, were wandering about. Those young Bandits mostly had missing upper limbs, swaying as they gradually approached the campfire. Some farmers and Shop Assistants in different attire were missing hands or feet, and some even had only their upper bodies left, crawling with both hands toward Jier's location with great effort.

Jier scrambled up from the ground, chuckled, and was about to call the Shadow Birds to deal with these ghosts—things he had been helpless against before, but now quite looked forward to.

However, very quickly, Jier noticed something appearing to break through the ground from beneath the earth not far away. The ground trembled, the wasteland ahead gradually bulged, and it seemed a huge thing was about to emerge.

"What's the situation?" Jier became tense; he did not like such sudden, unexpected situations, so he immediately reached his hand toward the sky and gestured twice, and two large, pitch-black birds flapped their wings and landed on his hands.

Before one hand could even settle, Jier spread his arms, with one bird landing on each hand.

The two Shadow Birds had glossy feathers and large builds, their eyes nimbly staring at the approaching remnant souls and grievances, looking eager to hunt.

"Wait a moment, let's see what's going on over there."

Jier called out to the two Shadow Birds, who were ready to strike at any moment, and retreated to the other side of the campfire, keeping a safe distance from the bulging ground ahead. At least with such a campfire in between, it was always a bit safer, right?

Rumble, rumble, the ground bulged higher and higher; it seemed something larger than a bull was about to squeeze out from underground.

With a crash, under Jier's gaze, a huge green mushroom cap broke through the soil!

"Huh? A mushroom?"

Jier was quite surprised. If a huge Monster made of countless vengeful spirits had emerged, he could understand it, but a big mushroom? What was this?

"It must be that old fairy playing tricks! That's right, as long as it's a strange event involving mushrooms, it must have something to do with it!"

Jier immediately began to complain, but complaining aside, he also understood that the old fairy's mushrooms would at least not harm him, so he immediately released the two Shadow Birds, letting them hunt the approaching remnant souls and grievances in the surroundings to reduce his mental pressure.

At the same time, he would enhance the abilities of the 【Divine Shadow Birds】 by devouring the broken souls of those he had killed with his own hands.

According to previous estimates, even if the 【Divine Shadow Birds】 required more soul power to grow stronger each time, the enemies he had killed with his own hands this time would certainly be enough.

But things were not that easy.

Because that huge mushroom man with a green cap, after breaking through the soil, shook the dirt off its body, then performed a few bodybuilding poses, and then moved its thick mycelium arms to punch the remnant souls—things Jier's soul body was helpless against—into pieces, one punch at a time.

The vengeful spirits of those killed were not stupid either; they immediately swarmed toward the conspicuous mushroom man, even forgetting to seek revenge on Jier. After surrounding it, they bit with their mouths, tore with their hands, and pulled at the huge mushroom man's body.

Although the mushroom man had immense strength and could take out a soul with one punch, its body was soft and delicious; every time a vengeful spirit took a bite, it could tear off a piece of delicious mushroom-scented flesh. After a chaotic battle, dozens of vengeful spirits were beaten into pieces by the mushroom man, but the mushroom man itself was also heavily injured.

Jier stretched his neck across the campfire to watch for a while and couldn't help but comment: "The strength of the fists is okay; relying on its size, it can knock down an enemy with one punch. But if you do bodybuilding without training your legs, the enemies will be happy; look at those tiny mycelium feet, one look and you know the training method is wrong."

The mushroom man had a tall build, but its roots touching the ground were over a dozen mycelium feet as thick as wrists, making it quite slow to move. Although it was sturdy while standing, in this situation of being surrounded, its slow mobility was a major flaw.

Jier couldn't watch anymore; he whistled to let the two Shadow Birds return.

"Go, help that guy. Although it was a bit of a hindrance, it was well-intentioned to come and help, so I can't let it be surrounded and defeated by these small-fry scum. If there's only this one mushroom man and it dies, there won't be any others, and that would be bad."

After Jier finished speaking, he pointed a finger, and the two Shadow Birds flew across the pitch-black void, one on each side, diving directly into the bodies of the two remnant souls surrounding the mushroom man.

With a few crunching sounds, the Shadow Birds devoured the souls of the remnant spirits that were pestering Jier from the inside, causing the enemies—who looked fine on the outside—to vanish rapidly, leaving only two Shadow Birds with even glossier feathers.

It seemed that after the recent battle, their size had grown by another circle?

Soon, the Shadow Birds flew around the scarred mushroom man to assist, killing one stronger enemy soul after another, devouring the last trace of their existence in the world.

Jier had no attack ability here, so he could only cheer on the 'fighting' Shadow Birds and the mushroom man from across the campfire.

After an unknown amount of time in battle, both Shadow Birds were half a person tall, and the enemy souls, which likely numbered at least two or three hundred, were finally dealt with.

The tall mushroom man was covered in missing mushroom flesh from being bitten, and one sturdy, thick arm had even been torn and bitten off by the remnant spirits. Its condition seemed very poor, so Jier hurried over to support it.

Once he touched it, Jier discovered that although this mushroom man was at least two and a half meters tall, its body weight was extremely light. After Jier supported it to keep it from falling, its tiny mycelium feet moved slowly, moving from the place where it had broken through the soil to the enemy soul fragments it had shattered nearby. The tiny mycelium feet covered the broken things on the ground, seemingly digesting and eating.

Soon, the missing parts of its body grew back, quite easily.

Jier blinked, watching it go from being covered in wounds to healing rapidly after eating, recovering as good as new after consuming only a few shattered souls.

He thought that was it, but unexpectedly, after the tall mushroom man healed and ate its fill, its cap emitted a green light, then it shook, and from the gaps under the cap, some green light spots the size of rice grains fell.

These green light spots had no life when they landed on the ground, but when they happened to land on the scattered soul fragments of the other remnant spirits all over the place, they gradually grew, and visibly turned into pocket-sized mushroom men the size of a fingernail.

"Ha, mini mushroom men! It reproduces after eating its fill; then in the future, my place might be covered in mushrooms."

Jier looked around; besides the non-bloody severed limbs and fragments on the ground, there was only the endless pitch-black wilderness, and the only thing providing light in the entire wilderness was the lonely campfire.

"That's not bad either, at least it's better than nothing." Jier shrugged: "And it can protect me. Hmph, if anyone comes to my Soul Land to attack me in the future, they'd better be careful. Mushroom men, Mushroom Legion, you'd better beat them hard for me when the time comes!"

The tall mushroom man struck a bodybuilding pose, looking quite confident. Those tiny, pocket-sized mushroom men, only the size of a fingernail, also struck a pose as if they were going to cover for Jier.

This made Jier laugh out loud.

And the Shadow Birds, at this moment, had somehow turned into four, each half a person tall.

They had killed the vast majority of the remnant spirits and were not yet full, rudely pecking at the soul fragments scattered all over the ground, even fighting over the slightly larger pieces. And that tall mushroom man, after successfully reproducing a few Mushroom Boys, slowly moved back to the place where it had emerged and burrowed back into the ground.

Strange to say, after the mushroom man burrowed back into the ground, in a short while, the place where the soil had churned became flat again without anyone noticing, as if nothing had happened.

Jier watched in amazement, then checked the now-doubled number of Shadow Birds one by one, looking at these half-person-tall big birds with wingspans of over two meters to see what other changes there were.

But at this time, someone was vaguely calling him.

Jier first looked up, then looked toward the campfire.

With a moment of confusion, he opened his eyes and woke up in the real world.

"Jier! Wake up, someone is looking for you."

Outside the tent came Weier's voice; because Jier's tent had guards, even Weier could not break in without Jier's personal consent.

Jier looked at the ventilation opening at the top of the tent; the finely woven mesh of the ventilation window revealed the slightly pale sky outside, letting Jier know that although time in the Soul Land did not seem to have passed long, it was already dawn in the outside world.

"I'm awake, Weier, come in."

Jier climbed up from his Dog-skin Bedding, sat on a low stool nearby to put on his armor, and at the same time poured some water from a wooden Water bottle, drank half, splashed the other half on his head and neck, wiped it messily with a clean cloth, and his face was washed.

Weier entered, and seeing Jier was already getting up and tidying up, he explained: "Just as you expected, someone has come to pay money to redeem that unconscious enemy leader!"

He looked excited, his eyes slightly red, and his chin full of stubble; clearly, he hadn't slept all night to watch over that Xiao Aokesi, waiting until dawn for someone to finally come to buy the unconscious guy.

"You've worked hard, you didn't sleep all night, right? Take one of these to clean your mouth."

Jier took two swollen willow branch segments soaked in a Water bottle from his luggage, one for himself and one for Weier, and they began to chew them in their mouths.

This was, of course, not some breath-freshening betel nut, but a little trinket used for cleaning the mouth. After being soaked in medicinal water, this thing would soften, and by chewing it in the mouth for a moment, it could clean the teeth and remove any foul odor. It was a little trinket Jier had bought casually in Dorn Town.

Weier had certainly used better and more convenient things in the past, but in recent years, he had not used such items; most ordinary people simply used water to rinse their mouths repeatedly to clean them.

However, it was clearly not as convenient as this thing of Jier's, so Weier naturally accepted it gladly.

As the two chewed, they began to talk about the person who had come looking for them.

"How many people came to find you?"

"You certainly wouldn't guess it; it was only one person. One person paying out forty Gold Coins—this person's scale is quite large," Weier remarked.

Jier was also somewhat surprised; he had originally thought that at least three or four people would pool their funds together, so that a single Caravan would only need to use a small portion of their available capital to 'buy' Xiao Aokesi. At that point, whether they directly killed the unconscious Xiao Aokesi, cured him to help him take over the Zihonghua Inn later, or seized the vast amount of land and family property in Bianji Cun, all would be possible.

By that time, Jier would have long since left the area and would not care about anything happening here at all.

He hadn't expected that no one else intended to pay, and that only one person was digging into their own pockets to get their hands on Xiao Aokesi.

"Let's go, let's see what that person's intentions are." Jier dressed neatly, kept his hand on his Sword, and lifted the tent flap.

The Caravan Steward who was paying the money also had bloodshot eyes, clearly having not slept all night; he had likely spent the entire second half of the night calculating the pros and cons of this matter.

However, since the other party was appearing here now, it meant they intended to take Xiao Aokesi for themselves. Whether Xiao Aokesi had a very good relationship with them, whether there was a life-saving connection in the past, or whether this Caravan Steward was simply eyeing the assets behind Xiao Aokesi, none of that was Jier's concern.

"Forty Gold Coins, do you intend to pay it all yourself?" Jier smiled and stepped forward to ask.

This middle-aged Caravan Steward gave a bitter smile: "They, the others... sigh, in short, I am paying this money alone. However, Knight Jier."

"What is it? If you haven't brought that much money, IOUs won't do, and I won't accept promissory notes either. If it's the kind of withdrawal voucher from a large Merchant Guild, I could consider it, but only on the condition that the large Merchant Guild has a branch in the big towns to the east."

Jier stated his terms for payment upfront to avoid the other party using a piece of paper or a promise to avoid this significant income.

"Of course not, you worry too much, Knight. Since no one else is willing to pay, I can only pay this sum in my private capacity. So, would you accept a few valuable pieces of jewelry in place of the forty Gold Coins in cash? After all, the gold coins in the Caravan are still needed for future trade."

Hearing the other party's words, Jier touched his chin and realized he hadn't shaved early that morning, so he drew the Magic Dagger Heart Fire from his belt and used its relatively sharp edge to scrape away the stubble on his chin.

Although he didn't say a word, the large Gem on the dagger, brimming with Magic power, clearly made the Caravan Steward in front of him feel uneasy.

He also complained inwardly that the Oakes Brothers were both fools, pure gold fools.

Although Knight Jier's actions at this moment were showing him that he was not ignorant of expensive jewelry—so he shouldn't think of trying to swindle him—it also proved from the side that yesterday, Knight Jier hadn't even used this Magic Dagger—although this Merchant didn't know what the specific function of this Magic Tool was, regardless of what it was, the Oakes Brothers clearly never had any possibility of winning.

"Knight Jier, please take a look."

The Caravan Steward immediately slipped a Gem ring off his finger; although the large ruby on it was simply crafted, the fact that the Gem was large enough meant it was valuable enough.

"And these."

The Caravan Steward then took a Waist Pendant ornament inlaid with Gems from the inside of his gold-threaded belt.

"If that's not enough, there's this." He gritted his teeth in pain and took a pendant off his neck; it was made of silver and inlaid with a sapphire, and there seemed to be an emblem of the God of Wealth inside the sapphire.