Chapter 255: Mountain Forest Southwest of Bingxun Pass - Raiding the Outer Jiedian of the

Jier led a squad of ten soldiers through the night into the mountain forest on the west side of the pass.

Having walked the path once during the day, Jier, holding a torch at night, easily followed the signs and marks he had left behind to reach the small bandit camp he had previously discovered and fought at.

On the way, the soldiers, fearing that Jier might be a bandit setting an ambush for them, kept a close watch on him as he led the way, ready to kill him with sword or spear should they be attacked.

Fortunately, they discovered a small bandit camp at a dark, mound-like spot in the night. The tents in the camp, pieced together from various rags, bore the distinct characteristics of bandits.

Because those bandits were greedy, they generally would not spend the money they plundered on improving their living conditions in the wild. After all, they were operating at the risk of losing their heads or being hanged, so most bandits were the type to live only for the moment; aside from weapons and indulgence, those bandits would not spend money on anything else.

Half of the soldiers remained in the camp to inspect the remaining items, while the other half were led by Jier to dig up the two bandits buried earlier that day.

"Hah! This bandit died a miserable death; his head was split in two!" the soldiers discussed one of the two corpses. Jier explained, "I didn't do this. He was accidentally struck by a companion when he fell down during our fight, and that was the end of him. I was startled too."

"Is that so? Haha, the bandit who hacked him must have been very startled, right?"

"Of course he was startled, his mouth was wide open. Seeing his mouth open so wide, I took advantage of his surprise and stabbed my sword right into his mouth. I didn't expect to kill him in one go." Jier spouted nonsense, which actually made the soldiers burst into laughter, one after another saying that Jier, this young man, was truly lucky.

The camp was not large, and the other squad of soldiers could not find any more plundered goods, but on top of the mound next to the camp, they discovered and dug up some coins and cloth that the bandits had hidden.

The coins were mostly of a type they had never seen before, and the cloth was the expensive, foreign kind often used by the wealthy. A well-traveled soldier recognized that the coins, which were not Empire currency, were all used by a neighboring country to the south.

The bandits had not spent these coins, presumably because they could not spend them in the market. Merchants generally did not recognize these unfamiliar foreign coins, and finding a place to exchange them was not something these low-status bandits could manage.

Discovering these items made the soldiers very excited, far more than anything else, and at least the trip tonight had not been in vain.

Therefore, they even had the motivation and energy to carry the corpses.

When the moon was at its zenith, the group returned to the north gate of Bingxun Pass. Only when his soldiers returned safely did the Captain of the north gate breathe a sigh of relief, promising that the soldiers who went out would be rewarded.

As for Jier, who had caused all this, he simply told the Captain that he would return later, then took his leave from the north gate of the pass and hurried west along the pass wall.

"This young man is too strange." Shaking his head, the Captain said casually to the other soldiers, "Earlier, a bandit even said this person intimidated him and fed him a kind of poisonous mushroom, which is very strange."

"I think that damn bandit was drunk, or after knowing his fate, he was so scared he started hallucinating and spouting nonsense! He actually said that young man specifically let him go after tying him up, just to fight him again. Listen to that, if that isn't nonsense, what is?" A veteran nearby loudly mocked the bandit already locked in the Jianlao.

The fate of those bandits would only be the death penalty. The soldiers had already found many scattered items from caravans and travelers in the camp, and it was certain that this bold Bandit Group not only dared to set up a camp so close to the pass but also crazily robbed and killed many lone travelers and small caravans.

As soon as the Steward official in the pass reported this to the lord, Knight Kela, and received the lord's approval, they would immediately behead the two bandits at the north and south gates of Bingxun Pass.

Zhao Ji did not care for the bounty of two nobodies. After all, according to the drinkers he drank with, getting money from the Government Office was not only slow but also required being skimmed off the top. Don't begrudge them for taking advantage; those clerks and petty officials in the Government Office relied on these things to make money.

If you don't let these people skim a portion of the bounty, the subsequent payout will only be slower and more sluggish, and even more will be skimmed.

Therefore, Zhao Ji followed the advice of others; for matters like bounties, he only asked the victims of such incidents, who were the clients. To those clients, Jier solving their problem was a matter directly concerning their interests, so they were naturally quick and prompt with the money.

After all, if they hadn't encountered an insurmountable difficulty, who would be willing to find an outsider to solve their trouble?

Holding a torch, Zhao Ji entered the mountain forest, heading west first, then south. Along the way, he judged his direction by the several moons in the sky.

There were very few wild beasts in the mountain forest here; he hadn't seen a single large animal, nor were there any birds active at night. Zhao Ji guessed it was because of the season, or perhaps the bandits hiding in the mountain forest had hunted and eaten all the frequently active animals for meat.

With this judgment, Zhao Ji walked more boldly and confidently. He was full of spirit and didn't feel like resting at all, likely influenced by the fact that he had personally killed a Human during the day.

It left him very excited, without a hint of fatigue.

He walked for a long time in the sparse mountain forest, estimating that he had reached the south of Bingxun Pass, already outside of Kendall County. This vast mountain forest belonged to the edge of a mountain range on the west side of the pass; the further one went into the mountains, the more fierce and strange animal Monsters there were.

Zhao Ji felt that bandits were also people; if large numbers of soldiers could not gain a foothold in the deep mountains, these bandits with mediocre strength could not possibly hide too deep into the mountain range.

He estimated that they were more likely scattered and hiding in this mountain forest.

This place was neither a plain or sparse hill lacking cover, nor was it a dangerous mountain region that did not belong to Humans. For the bandits hiding here, they could not be too far from Bingxun Pass, nor could they be too close; this area was just right.

The mountain forest was dense, and the terrain had undulations. It was difficult for large numbers of Militia soldiers to enter here, but for a small number of bandits, it might be a good place.

The cold early morning was the coldest time of winter. To hide in such an environment far from Human society, a warming campfire had to burn vigorously.

Zhao Ji extinguished his torch and, staring into the night, climbed up a tall tree at least twenty meters high. With the help of the winter forest lacking leaves, Zhao Ji scanned his field of vision in all directions, seeing all the bright spots he could find on the ground for several dozen square kilometers nearby.

The bandits hiding in the mountain forest likely had not received news that there was going to be a crackdown from Kendall, so they had no awareness of needing to hide at this time. In the cold, pitch-black winter night, every campfire illuminated the smoke rising from it.

Those rising plumes of smoke diffusely reflected the light produced by the campfires, allowing Zhao Ji to distinguish their locations from the pitch-black forest in the distance.

Around Zhao Ji, besides a place not far away where campfires were slightly denser, there were a few scattered campfires in the distance.

Zhao Ji judged that the place with more campfires should be the hiding location of the so-called Yaguijing Bandit Group that he had asked about from the bandits earlier. As for the campfires in other places, they were likely small-scale bandit camps, or outer outposts scattered around by the Yaguijing.

The vast majority of bandits did not wear clothing that could compare to Zhao Ji's; they had no campfires to keep warm in the cold night, which would be certain death. Zhao Ji not only had thick clothing but also a warm wolf-fur Cloak wrapping him up, and inside the Cloak, there was a neck warmer made of alpha wolf tail fur, which was very warm.

After careful consideration, Zhao Ji decided to play it safe and first go check the nearest small campfire spot. If it was an outer outpost of the Yaguijing group, he would try to raid it and tie up a captive for interrogation. If not, he would not create extra trouble and would temporarily let these bandits go.

In that case, he would only be able to go to the place where the campfires were dense to secretly raid a resting bandit and try to tie them up and take them far away for interrogation.

Estimating that a bandit group of this scale must have at least several dozen people, he alone was certainly no match for them, so Zhao Ji did not intend to clash with this Yaguijing Bandit Group; he had to put his energy and time into the bandit group he truly needed to deal with.

"Damn, these guys can't just be in a group of a few people, so it's convenient for me to round them all up at once." Zhao Ji muttered, climbed down the big tree, shouldered the Backpack he had placed under the tree, and quietly groped his way in the dark toward the nearest scattered campfire.

Zhao Ji's sense of direction in the dark was still very strong. He didn't know if it was because he had stayed in places like the Elf Ruins, which were completely dark, that made him feel more at ease and safe the darker it was.

After all, as soon as he thought about how he was hidden in the dark while the bandits were staying by the campfire, needing illumination to maintain their visibility, it made him feel great. I am in the dark, the enemy is in the light. This kind of thing made him quite reassured.

Groping in the dark, he took off his Backpack and placed it on a large rock, then Zhao Ji approached the campfire lightly and quietly.

He tried his best not to make any sound while moving, carefully stepping out, and only after confirming there were no easily breakable branches under his feet did he gently put his feet down, stepping on the soft soil and dead leaves.

After slowly approaching the campfire, Zhao Ji hid behind a big tree closest to the campfire, quietly sticking out half his head, covering his eyes—which might reflect light—with his palm, leaving only a slit.

He quietly observed the situation of this campfire.

On the cold night, this campfire was burning very vigorously, and not far from the campfire, there was a stacked pile of firewood, all fuel to be added to the fire.

Near the campfire, five shallow pits had been dug, and in each shallow pit, a bandit was sleeping, covered tightly.

Zhao Ji could not understand why the bandits would sleep in shallow pits like this. He considered that it might be a simple measure to prevent the wind at night from blowing the flames produced by the campfire askew, fearing that it would ignite the flammable bedding and such.

Besides the five people sleeping and resting, on the edge of this clearing in the forest, there was a big tree broken into two sections. The place where the tree broke was quite high, estimated to be over three meters high, and at the break of the tree, there was a bandit wrapped tightly, dozing off.

Presumably, that bandit was on guard duty. It was hard on that bandit to be dozing off while on guard, but after all, their bandit group was likely the largest in scale and had the most people, so no one dared to provoke them.

And in this mountain forest on the outskirts of the mountain range, the bandits had also killed all kinds of large, fierce animals, so no animals would come to attack them.

Not to mention that on such a cold winter night, all animals were either hibernating or had already migrated to warmer southern regions in late autumn.

Long periods of nothing happening had caused the Yaguijing Bandit Group to lower their vigilance.

At least this outer Jiedian was like this.

After careful observation, Zhao Ji determined that this was an outer guard Jiedian of the Yaguijing. Because there were no scattered plundered goods like in the previous bandit camp.

This place is clean; one look and it is clear that this is just a small Jiedian for scouting, keeping watch, or relaying messages.

Zhao Ji calculated in his mind that if such a small scouting Jiedian had six Bandits, then the entire Bandit Group likely had at least fifty people or more.

"This is really troublesome. If Luodai Cave is of a similar scale to this Yaguijing Bandit Group, then his idea of wiping out the entire Bandit Group is basically impossible to complete," Zhao Ji calculated carefully.

Yet he did not want to give up the massive bounty he could receive for him if he wiped out the entire Bandit Group.

That bounty would be hard for an individual or a family to produce, but for a Merchant Guild, it was not an amount they could not afford.

Zhao Ji still wanted to obtain this generous bounty in his heart, so he did not want to give up this opportunity; he decided that what to do specifically would depend on the actual situation after finding the Luodai Cave Bandits later.

If the situation proved impossible, he would only rescue Mr. Kendo's nephew and avoid engaging in a major fight with that Bandit Group.

So, the question now is, how to subdue this group of resting Bandits?

Zhao Ji licked his dry lips, looking at the drowsy scouting Bandit sitting on a high tree stump, and then at the five Bandits sleeping soundly by the campfire.

He decided to first try to tie up the one on watch; if it went smoothly, he would tie the opponent up, then move far away from here to interrogate them.

If it was not successful, he would kill this scouting Bandit, and then find a way to leave one person from the resting Bandits to use for interrogation.