Chapter 220: Easy Victory and Pollen

The warriors dispersed, preparing to surround the other side and engage in battle.

Jier's long sword in his left hand emitted an unusually bright white light, illuminating everything within a dozen meters around him, even though it was night and the forest was dark even during the day.

Ahead, a large piece of black cloth was hung between two large trees, perfectly blocking the side Jier was approaching from; even though he was emitting such conspicuous light, the bandits on the other side of the cloth did not notice in time.

Is this what they call "trapping oneself in one's own cocoon"?

Jier thought to himself; this bit of cleverness from the bandits might have helped them many times before, but in the end, it only took influencing their reaction before a critical battle to completely doom them.

Behind the black cloth, the idle chatter and muttering of some bandits could be clearly heard, but as the warriors on the left and right dispersed to surround them, these bandits finally discovered the anomalies.

"Boss! Look at both sides! There's light!"

Someone shouted a warning, but before these people could make any response, Jier had already reached the front of the black cloth, holding his long spear inverted with his hand gripping the end of the spearhead, and with a fierce downward smash, he used the butt of the spear to crush the black cloth directly to the ground.

"Ha! A surprise is here!"

Jier swung his left-handed long sword forward, throwing it directly at the chest of the bandit furthest from him, and at the same time, he leaped out, his long spear quickly twisting and turning with his body, stabbing out in one motion to pierce directly through the chest of the bandit closest to him.

The moment he launched his attack, Mao Mao, who was on his shoulder, pushed off his shoulder with its tail, its entire body leaping out to pounce onto a bandit's face. While still in mid-air, Kuaitui Maomao pulled a steel dagger from behind, stabbing it quickly and accurately into the eye socket of the bandit it had tackled.

The dagger went straight into the depths of the head, twisting to mash the bandit's brain.

But the unconfident Mao Mao was afraid the man wasn't dead yet, so when it jumped up, it gave the man's neck a deep, supplementary strike.

Jier's movements were much faster; after completing the reversal of his long spear, he lightly knocked the helmet off the bandit who appeared to be the best equipped, even using the spearhead to lift it up and juggling it twice in the air to keep it from hitting the ground.

Although this display of skill was ostentatious and frivolous, it terrified the Bandit Leader, who had lost his leather helmet. Looking left and right to see armored warriors swarming the camp, he lost all spirit, stopped resisting, and threw his belt aside, prostrating himself on the ground to surrender.

After Jier grew tired of playing with the man's helmet, he pressed the spearhead down, pointing it at the center of the man's spine to prevent him from getting up.

The Bandit Leader was very sensible and surrendered directly, but his subordinates did not have that kind of foresight. Although the warriors' surrounding attack was full of surprise, these bandits, who had been at it for at least a year or two, still had the guts to resist.

They pulled out their weapons one after another, working in pairs to counterattack.

But the confidence of these foolish fellows lasted only a brief moment; those who engaged were immediately killed by the warriors in face-to-face combat, more than ten of them.

Aoni still used his simple and effective old routine: starting with his shield to slam into the enemy, then his treacherous long sword would slide along the edge of the shield to stab into the ribs of the bandit he was fighting; with a simple, forceful twist, the bandit he was fighting would lose strength and collapse to the ground.

Weier wore the lightest armor and had the fastest footwork; the moment they engaged, he stepped forward and ducked, avoiding the axe swing from the bandit, and then his beloved sword struck from behind the opponent, piercing directly into the enemy's heart to finish him off.

Sipulu was not flashy; when he rushed up, he judged the enemy's martial skill level at a glance: it was worse than when he had first touched a weapon. So he handled it simply, striking with his blade, using the length advantage of his weapon to cut off the opponent's arm first, and then spinning with a heavy upward slash that cut the bandit he was fighting in two at the waist.

The simplest were the two squads led by the Tusi Brothers; the brothers quickly drew their bows and fired at close range, bang-bang, shooting down two rushing bandits.

Other warriors swarmed up; although they had been instructed to meet the enemy in small-scale battle formations before coming, the enemy's level was too poor, and the Squad Leaders leading them had almost solved one bandit each with a single strike. If they continued to press forward slowly in formation, the opportunities to kill the enemies would surely be taken by these Squad Leaders.

So they ignored the formation, let out a howl, and rushed up one after another, killing almost all the bandits in a few strikes.

It wasn't that there weren't guys with unique methods among the bandits; someone pulled a poisonous snake from their pocket, letting it coil around their arm to try and bite the warriors rushing to engage. But when this bandit saw clearly at close range the plate armor that almost covered the warriors' entire bodies, he immediately wailed in despair.

But the warrior fighting him didn't care about the opponent's frustration; sword and shield met him, first cutting off the arm where the poisonous snake was coiled, then cutting the neck of the bandit who was howling.

There were also bandits who basely and treacherously threw fine stone powder and strange-smelling pollen during the fight, but the warriors fighting them didn't dare get close to this person, simply calling out to the archers and pointing at him; *whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh*, five or six arrows directly turned the man into a hedgehog.

The preparation time before the battle in the camp was long, and the time spent coming over was not short, but the actual engagement lasted less than a minute; except for the bandit who surrendered under Jier's spear, everyone else had been killed by the warriors.

Jier was very satisfied; this showed that everyone's usual training was not in vain. Although the enemy's level this time was too poor, causing the planned live-action drill for team coordination to fall through, Jier felt it was enough—one shouldn't be too greedy, right?

"How is everyone?" Jier asked loudly.

"Boring."

"These people are so weak."

"A bunch of low-level trash who can only bully and extort passing merchants; what did you expect?"

"That's true."

The warriors expressed that the enemy's level was too poor, and wondered if the enemy bounty announced by Jier before coming would be lowered because of the enemy's actual level?

"How could that be? The reward price was agreed upon before we came, and I won't change it temporarily. Rest assured. Everyone, get moving; although these people are smelly and dirty, even a fisherman's broken fishing boat has a few iron nails. Take everything on these bandits and everything stored in the camp; we'll check and process it when we get back. Also, their corpses, including the few sentries Mao Mao took out before we arrived—take all the corpses. In the next day or two, we'll transport them to the town and hand them over to the local Church of the God of the Dead to deal with."

Jier called Kuaitui Maomao over and had it lead the way to bring back the corpses of the few bandit sentries nearby.

The warriors agreed one after another and then busied themselves while grumbling; they had killed too quickly during the fight, and only after the people were dead did they remember they were responsible for the aftermath, needing to carry these dead bandits' corpses—the dead-heavy corpses—back!

Many people immediately regretted it; they only just remembered that the bounty given for capturing bandits alive was 1.5 times that of killing the enemy. Thinking of this, capturing the enemy alive not only meant more bounty, but also saved them the physical labor of carrying the enemy's supplies and corpses!

They could have just let the captured enemies do the work themselves while they stood on the side to watch and monitor.

Thus, the warriors complained one after another, but they were just saying it; the number of enemies was not even as many as the number of people they had sent out this time. It was a case of "first come, first served." You might be thinking of capturing the enemy, but the companion next to you was thinking of just slaughtering the enemy to get the kill registered under their own name—wouldn't that be better?

While working and discussing, the warriors felt that if there were a similar situation next time, they would have to strike first. As for capturing enemies, if there were a large number of enemies, it would be suitable to capture more, but if the number of enemies was too small, then it was better to just kill them.

"Get up, stop lying there."

Jier recalled the long sword he had thrown out earlier, wiped it simply, and returned it to the sword sheath, while using the not-very-sharp spear-butt spike of his long spear to poke the bandit lying on the ground.

What made this person different from the other bandits was that he was wearing a set of protective equipment that was somewhere between leather armor and leather clothing.

If it were before, Jier would have handed this equipment to his subordinates to wear, trying to improve their equipment level as much as possible. But ever since they wiped out the defeated army that attacked Changmai Village, the equipment of those elite soldiers had raised the protective gear of his subordinates, and even himself, to a very high level.

At least, even the Kendall City Guard didn't have such a full set of metal armor plates; the guards of Kendall City still wore simple, full sets of leather armor. Only some of the personal guards under the Baron himself had standard metal armor crafted by professional Armor Makers.

"I don't dare, I don't dare to get up, my lord, please spare me, you can have me do anything. I have a large sum of money hidden away; I will give all that money to you, every bit of it! I only beg you to spare me."

This person was still lying on the ground, not daring to get up, fearing that he, too, would die easily and confusedly in this place just like his other subordinates.

He really hadn't expected that failure and death would come so suddenly. In the past, they were the ones who lured and drove monsters near the Shanglu, bringing accidents and death to those blind merchant caravans. He hadn't expected that the tables would turn, and today, such accidents and death would fall upon them.

"Hmph, hidden money—captured bandits always say that. Not to mention how much this delays things and time, let's just talk about how many words of truth can come out of you guys' mouths? To survive, you'll say anything. So don't give me that nonsense about having hidden money and wanting to take us to find it. Get up, and then honestly obey orders and come with us!"

The man wanted to shout a couple more times that he really did have hidden money, but Jier didn't believe it at all, or rather, he had no need for the money this bandit had hidden. He gave the man a kick, and the Bandit Leader honestly crawled up.

The man first looked around and discovered that his subordinates, who had been obeying his orders one by one not long ago, were all dead. He immediately lowered his head carefully and tremblingly obeyed the instructions.

Jier handed him over to Weier to watch, had a rope tied around his waist to a warrior, and then had him carry some supplies to follow the team.

The warriors thus carried the supplies and dragged the corpses; they had walked into the Shulin with great momentum not long ago, and now they were walking out of this Shulin full of complaints.

Although they were full of complaints, at least no one died in this battle, and there wasn't even anyone injured, except for one guy who was unlucky enough to get some fine stone powder in his eyes, which felt much better after rinsing with clean water.

Jier himself also used a rope to drag ten bandit corpses; he had always been someone who would help personally if he could.

When they went, everyone's steps were light and fast, but it took more than an hour to return to the camp by the Shanglu.

The merchants in the camp had waited a long time without seeing Jier and his men return, and they came back and forth to inquire about the situation with anxiety. But Xueya Site was not worried that something would happen; he had a lot of confidence in Jier, and with the warriors' numbers and equipment being so strong, unless they were unusually unlucky and encountered a Magic Beast, it was unlikely that anything would happen.

The Dwarves were even less worried; they did not think there was anything nearby capable of dealing with Jier. They knew better than anyone else present that when they first met Jier, not a single one of them had been able to do anything against Knight Jier.

Sure enough, after a long wait, the bright white light emitted from Jier's Long Sword was seen from afar by the people anxiously looking out.

Following behind were the Warriors carrying Lighting Orbs; the group walked slowly, seemingly because everyone was carrying something.

Once the group drew near, the Merchants and Shop Assistants of the Caravan discovered that although there were some supplies, in reality, more of what was being transported back were over twenty Human corpses that had died in various ways.

This made the people of the Caravan feel chilled to the bone even on the sweltering night, and one by one, they subconsciously began to feel afraid.

Some feared that Jier's raiding party had suffered losses—generally speaking, as long as there is a clash, there will of course be casualties. But everyone had counted the number of people when the party set out, and now, counting the people returning, the number had actually increased!

Of course, when Jier and his Warriors returned to the Yingdi, the people of the Caravan counted the armored Warriors up close and discovered that there were no casualties. The twenty or so corpses on the ground were all Bandits.

"Mr. Zuojigela, come here for a moment. We didn't have any casualties on our side, but one Warrior was unlucky enough to have his eyes blinded by powder sprinkled by a Bandit. Please take a look at him. We already rinsed them with clean water, but I don't know if that's enough."

As soon as Jier returned, he threw the Rope strung with over a dozen corpses onto the ground and called for the subordinate whose eyes had been blinded to go find the Herbalist in the group.

The Herbalist, Mr. Zuojigela, was responsible for the group's medical treatment and the preparation of Potions, Ointments, and medicines. Since the group had gone out on a raid, he naturally hadn't slept. After coaxing the few children who were overly excited after seeing the giant crocodile to sleep, he sat by the campfire with his two wives, waiting for the raiding party to return.

Hearing Jier's call, he immediately shouldered his Medicine Box and told his two wives to go to sleep early; with only one person 'injured,' he could handle it completely on his own.

"Let me see."

The Herbalist hurried over, and before he even checked the 'injured' Warrior's eyes, he leaned in close to the Warrior and sniffed with his nose.

"This isn't right, Burier! There is a scent of pollen on you; this is not right! Quickly take off your Armor and find someone to carefully wipe it down, and you, hurry to the river to rinse yourself off."

Mr. Zuojigela reacted quickly. After smelling the pollen that shouldn't have been there, he immediately thought of something and told the young Warrior named Burier to deal with it with lightning speed.

Jier also realized something was wrong. He looked at the pitch-black night sky around him, and his sensitive ears seemed to hear a low buzzing sound from the various noisy sounds in the surroundings.

"You, you, and you two, you were in a group at the time, all come over here quickly, take off your Plate Armor, and throw it by the campfire at the edge of the Yingdi! Throw it close! Quickly!"

Jier immediately gave the order, while telling the others to stay far away and not to come near. He watched as the Warriors followed his requirements and threw their Armor by a campfire at the edge of the Yingdi, then immediately had the others build that campfire up high, and personally led the few Warriors who had stripped down to their undergarments to rush toward the nearby riverbank with him.

"Right, Weier! Keep a close eye on that Bandit Leader; don't let him run away or die. Also, nobody panic, it just seems like some bees from the Forest are flying over following the scent of the pollen. Nobody panic!"

After finishing, Jier led the people running toward the river; as long as they cleaned the pollen off their bodies with water, they would be safe.

Mr. Zuojigela rubbed the tiny bit of pollen on his hand and sniffed it carefully, recalling what kind of pollen this was and what kind of bees, dangerous or otherwise, it would attract from the mountain Forest.