Chapter 39: Misunderstanding Resolved, Entering Yemei Town Together

"Knight Jier! What are you doing? Tell your men to put down their weapons!" the Sasi Family Heir, Bell-Sasi, shouted in a panic.

Jier lowered the faceplate of his helmet, gripped the reins with his left hand, and responded in a deep voice: "Then what about you having your men be so wary of us? You invited me here, yet you are on guard against me?"

How could he not be on guard? Although Jier's team was currently on the only path into the town—a massive, unobstructed trench—the Yemei Town guards were positioned high up on a guard platform several meters tall, directly facing the path, occupying the high ground.

But things could not be viewed that way.

The warriors on Jier's side were all armored, and they had wagons that could provide cover during a fight. If a battle truly broke out, they could completely have the wagons in the front row ram open the entrance gate on the path, and then the armored warriors could charge in behind them and slaughter all the town guards here.

While the town guards had the advantage on the high platform, most of the weapons in their hands were useless against armored human warriors. They were fine for dealing with parasitic monsters that lacked armor protection, but against thick metal armor plates, a long spear without acceleration distance could barely push a person back, let alone cause any injury.

This gap in combat effectiveness forced Bell to raise his vigilance and guard against the appearance of such a terrifying possibility.

It was just that Jier's reaction was also quite intense.

"I came in response to your agreement, and this is how you welcome me and my men?" Jier pulled the reins of his Tianxuecao with his left hand, causing the sturdy Tianxuecao to rear up, while the Dwarf Soldier Spear in his hand pointed vaguely at the Baron Heir on the wooden platform of the gate.

"I will say it again! Tell your men to put away their weapons, and my men will naturally put away theirs! Bell, you are too panicked; we have no ill intent."

The flushed Baron Heir finally came to his senses, realizing that the order he had just given was truly too panicked and had nearly triggered an unnecessary bloody conflict.

"Put away your weapons, all of you. These are our guests; they were invited here to assist us in dealing with those parasitic plant monsters."

Bell immediately gave the order.

Afterward, he took a deep breath, braced his hands on the wooden railing at the edge of the platform, and after calming himself down, said to Jier: "Jier, come in through the gate first. I need to ask you what exactly is going on with these people. You pulled this move so suddenly, I was truly frightened."

Then, Bell had his subordinates guarding the path open a gap in the gate at their feet large enough for a single person on horseback to pass through; clearly, he was still secretly wary of Jier's men.

If it were only Jier alone, he considered himself to have undergone long-term Knight Training and would not be weaker than Jier himself, but adding those dozens of armored warriors made it different.

If a conflict broke out, once Jier held him down temporarily, these armored warriors would slaughter the town guards here and then come over to support and intervene in the fight between him and Jier.

The balance of the two people's fight would be broken.

Unlike ordinary unarmored warriors who could not intervene in a knight's duel, human warriors wearing armor already had a little bit of the ability to intervene in a knight's confrontation. After all, facing the armor on their bodies, even knights would find it difficult to spare the energy to kill these warriors in one blow. Once too much energy was focused on these armored warriors, the opposing knight could gain a certain advantage, thereby affecting the outcome of the battle.

This was also one of the reasons why elite armies on large-scale battlefields could overwhelm knights with high martial arts skills. Ordinary soldiers would greatly distract the knights' energy, yet one could not simply ignore these people.

But Jier had no intention of following the other party's wishes; he took his feet off the stirrups of his warhorse and then shouted: "No need to open the gate."

Subsequently, he exerted force on the back of the Tianxuecao and leaped, jumping directly from the ground to the wooden gate platform several meters high, more than ten meters away. He landed exactly face-to-face with Bell, who was standing at the edge of the platform.

Jier lifted his faceplate and smiled: "Whatever you want to ask, you can ask now."

To be honest, when Jier jumped up just now, it still gave Bell's attendants and guards on the platform a fright. Many of them hurriedly drew the weapons they had just put away with a series of clangs, but Jier did not care about these people. He faced Bell, extended his right arm, and reached out with a clenched fist toward him.

Bell was stunned for a moment, only then remembering that this was a military greeting ritual between knights after wearing armor, because it was inconvenient to perform complex salutes while armored, and extending the right hand to greet also contained the meaning of not using the right hand to hold a weapon.

Therefore, after being stunned for a moment, Bell immediately extended his right hand as well, clenched his fist, and reached out to collide with the inner side of Jier's right forearm.

The arms of the two people, both wearing their respective armor, collided, emitting a crisp sound of metal impact.

"My men and I have no ill intent; you were too vigilant," Jier smiled and said once again.

Bell also let out a breath, a trace of a smile finally appearing on his face: "The reaction was a bit excessive, mainly because of those monsters. A few days ago, in order to build and expand the existing interception trenches outside the town, my family mobilized the villagers from all the villages outside the town, but the monsters also saw the opportunity and kept launching continuous attacks and harassment against us. Until the trenches were completed and reached the required depth and width, there were a total of over a thousand casualties among the villagers outside the town."

Jier glanced in the direction he had come from: "No wonder we defeated a group of dozens of monsters at Duoduogongti Village in the south yesterday. Clearly, their numbers had already diminished when I passed by, yet they suddenly increased by so many."

This made Bell even more embarrassed: "You defeated dozens of monsters that were ambushing and surrounding the southern village? That's great. Among those monsters, there are some particularly powerful leader-level monsters—the kind with plant branches growing out of their heads and blooming. Did you see them?"

Jier nodded: "There were three, plus some that were in the process of transforming, and even more ordinary parasitic monsters. But it was no big problem; they were all killed and burned."

Bell, who had been about to say that those blooming monsters had brought them huge trouble, suddenly stopped, realizing that although the other party was young and had spent much less time in Knight Training than him, he was clearly different from a Baron Heir like himself; he must have traveled north and south and experienced many battles. Moreover, his subordinates were not like the town guards on his side—not elite enough—but were all powerful armored warriors.

Clearly, possessing such a combat team, dealing with dozens of parasitic monsters was a sure thing.

"That's true, your men are all armored elites; killing those monsters is the most normal thing. So I have some doubts: where exactly did these elite warriors of yours come from?"

Bell asked the question he was most concerned about at the moment. Without the answer to this question, he could not rest assured about letting Jier's team into the town to rest; at most, he could only let Jier's people camp temporarily where the townspeople gathered outside the town.

"Remember what I told you? I was invited by the Agricultural God Church priest stationed at Changmai Village, south of Sasi County, to go and resolve the matter of a group of soldiers attacking Changmai Village," Jier said.

Bell nodded: "I did hear you mention it, but at the time I felt the matter of the hundreds of refugees following you was more important. Because as far as I know, the autonomous villages of the Agricultural God Church in the south of the county are mostly remote, with populations of only three to five hundred people. In terms of quantity and importance, some villagers who were attacked and abducted are far less important than the young refugee population you had under your command at the time."

"You should have prioritized ensuring the safety of those people, rather than leaving them behind to go find and rescue villagers who don't know how many old and weak are left," Bell said, clearly indicating that if the matter were left to him, that was what he would have done.

Of course, Jier had done exactly that.

"Yes, yes. Walking all the way south, I actually experienced many unimaginable things, which is why I was delayed for such a long time," Jier shrugged.

"Some people in my family and I even thought you had died in an accident. Sorry, because it had been so long and there wasn't a single bit of news about you, we had to infer that," Bell said with an apologetic look on his face.

"Understood, understood. Let's talk about the metal armor plates on my men. They were actually seized from the soldiers who attacked and plundered the villagers of Changmai Village," Jier pointed to the plate armor on the warriors below and explained to Bell.

This answer made Bell knit his brows: "Elite soldiers wearing plate armor? And in this quantity? How is that possible? You must know the location of Sasi County on the map; how could there be soldiers from an outside county here? Who are they? Where did they come from? How could they possibly appear in the southernmost part of the county?"

Bell asked urgently. At the same time, he was guessing wildly.

"That's impossible, right? My home here is separated from the enemy country's army by the entire Southern Mountains! What kind of army could accept such losses? And how could they possibly cross those mountains? I've heard that the depths of the mountains, where no one has ever stepped, are full of powerful Magic Beasts. That place is the territory of all kinds of formidable Magic Beasts."

Bell was clearly very surprised by his own guess.

Jier waved his hand to let him calm down: "Don't be anxious. I have resolved and understood most of the things this time, and I will answer them for you one by one."

"This matter actually starts from the defeat of the Noble Allied Forces on the front line last year..."

The two stood on the gate platform and talked for a long while. Bell's attendants and guards, who were pricking up their ears to listen, were all astonished. Who could have imagined that behind the seemingly unremarkable incident of a remote village being attacked, there were so many entanglements hidden deep within?

Of course, Jier did not say many things that should not be said; he omitted the fact that he had bribed the enemy country's Magic Apprentice with metal ingots, focusing only on defeating the defeated soldiers and the knight Hate.

"The armor my men are wearing now is actually plate armor made by dismantling the armor of the soldiers originally under the knight Hate and then thickening and laying out the plates. After all, I don't have that many men, so I just put the extra plates on the men I have now. Look, this Knight Sword at my waist is the sword I seized after defeating the opponent."

Jier drew the Knight Sword—Aipiedela—from his waist and held it with both hands to hand it to Bell opposite him for inspection.

If Jier could lie about other things, this scarred Knight Sword in his hand, made entirely of Magic Material, was the most solid evidence for what he had just said.

Once this heavy weapon was in his hands, Bell-Sasi could not help but believe it, because the material for his own sword was only made by adding some common Magic Materials to a steel sword, which could not be compared at all to this masterpiece made entirely of Magic Material.

Not only that, just by looking at it with his eyes, one could clearly feel how many thrilling battles this weapon had experienced, how much credit it had earned in a series of battles, and how many terrifying monsters in the mountains it had defeated and killed.

The sword body was covered with traces of acid corrosion, the blade had many dull dents from colliding with hard objects, and the gaps in the sword body were filled with many bloodstains and grime that were difficult to clean, not to mention the leather-wrapped part of the hilt, which was soaked with the filthy blood of monsters in several colors.

Although that knight Hate had poor personal character and chose the wrong path, the fact that the other party could lead his men across the entire Southern Mountains was indeed a shocking feat.

"So that's how it is. It seems your battle with that knight Hate must have been very thrilling, right? What a pity, I missed such a wonderful, true knight duel," Bell shook his head with regret, clearly feeling annoyed that he had missed this event.

He could see that Jier was clearly a guy with rich combat experience, and that knight Hate, being able to break through the Southern Mountains, was naturally no mediocre person. He hadn't seen the battle between the two; it was truly a great loss.

A serious loss.

Because such high-end combat is not something one can easily see. Duels between Knight Lords in small places rarely happen, because they all serve and pledge loyalty to the same Noble Lord; from the perspective of interests, the superior Noble Lord would not allow their important ruling forces to engage in a serious internal depletion.

Therefore, in various places, Knight Lords in small areas mostly practice martial arts in private; even if they occasionally display their martial skills at the request of Nobles, or if friendly Knights spar with each other, no one will bring out their true skills for killing and defeating enemies.

While large cities have complex factions and occasionally have duels between Knights of two different factions, that kind of combat is not something just anyone can watch on-site.

Often, the onlookers must be carefully deliberated and selected by both factions. An outsider wanting to observe a duel is simply not permitted.

—

Bell carefully inspected the knight sword in his hand, and by the time he came back to his senses, the sky was already at dusk; the sun was setting, and it would be night before long.

"It's already this late. Quick, have your men come in. Open the passage gate! Let Knight Jier's troop come in. Also, relay my order to have the town's west gate opened, and have the troop go directly to the 'Caimen Inn' inside the town's west gate to spend the night and rest," Bell said loudly.

His attendant immediately acknowledged the order and withdrew, and the passage gate, which had been tightly shut, slowly opened under the efforts of four Town Guards.

Jier waved to his men outside, signaling them to enter. At the same time, he whistled to his warhorse, and Tianxuecao automatically rushed in first.

"Right, Bell. There's another matter I need to tell you about." Jier wore a mysterious expression and leaned in close to Bell to whisper.

"What is it? Is there something inconvenient to say in public? Then let's talk about it when you come to my house for dinner tonight. We've already delayed your entry time, and it's almost dark."

Subsequently, Bell began to complain to Jier about the troublesome matter of those Monsters trying to find ways to attack and abduct the populace every night while the trenches were being expanded earlier, causing no small amount of loss.

The two walked off the platform above the gate together, chatting as they went.

Although Bell was chatting, he carefully kept himself and Jier in front of Jier's troop. This way, no matter what happened, he could at least escape before those armored Refining Qi Warriors could arrive to intervene.

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