Chapter 481: Finding a Temporary Yingdi, and a Crow Trading with an Eyeball in its Beak

Jier galloped along the road connecting the various farmlands outside the village, trying his best not to let Tianxuecao damage the village's crops, mainly sticking to the existing paths. The map he had temporarily engraved on a wooden board showed that the suspicious hill was located to the northwest of the village, which was also the closest location to him.

Passing by a place scattered with discarded farming tools in the middle of his journey, Jier even dismounted to take a look; this was likely where the villagers were captured at noon.

However, he could not make anything out. Although the ground was soft, the footprints were chaotic—the soldiers' footprints and the villagers' footprints were all mixed together, making it difficult to tell which came first and which came later.

He could only roughly tell that the soldiers all wore boots, while the villagers were barefoot, wearing wooden clogs, straw sandals, or leather sandals. Those soldiers had clearly cleared the traces of their activities before ambushing the villagers, so it was impossible to tell where they had emerged from.

And after they abducted the villagers, they had also experiencedly cleared their own movement traces, making it impossible for any potential pursuit to find them.

From this point alone, Jier could easily conclude that the other side was a professional combat unit; the vast majority of enemies he had encountered in the past did not have the habit of clearing their movement traces.

Seeing that he could not find any clues at the scene of the attack, Jier had no choice but to follow the previously agreed-upon method and find the enemy by searching for their Temporary Yingdi.

Because he was riding a warhorse and moving at high speed, he was not afraid of the enemy's scout reports even if there were Defeated Soldiers hiding and watching him, because the speed at which the enemy transmitted information was likely not as fast as his own movement speed.

Taking out the wooden board, Jier used the position of the sun and the orientation of the village's north gate to find the true north direction, then moved toward the northwest of the village according to the map he had temporarily carved on the board.

Tianxuecao crossed several gentle grasslands and soon discovered a raised hilly terrain ahead. This hill blocked the view from the village toward the northwest; if the enemy had established a Temporary Yingdi behind this hill, the village would not be able to see them lighting fires at night.

During the day, if the enemy did not use dry wood but fresh logs when lighting a fire, the thick smoke produced would also be discovered by the village.

And since the people of Lanse-Qingting Cunzi had not seen any smoke from the enemy's fires during the day until now, this meant that the enemy had either prepared dry wood or never lit fires during the day, only doing so at night to cook.

"Very cautious, and very professional in their conduct. I just wonder how strong they are in battle?" Jier was not afraid of how powerful the enemy might be; could they be more powerful than those Dwarves?

Moreover, since they couldn't even take down Lanse-Qingting Cunzi, it was likely that while they were professional, the number of Defeated Soldiers remaining around Lanse-Qingting Cunzi to abduct people should be limited.

The warhorse drew ever closer to the hill, and Jier tidied up his weapons and Armor, ready for combat at any moment.

But after he rode Tianxuecao in a circle around the hill, Jier walked south in disappointment, because there were indeed traces of human activity on the back of the hill, but they were not recent, and the scale was very small; it was estimated that only one or two people had spent the night or passed through here.

Moving south from the hill to the northwest of the village, Jier's target was a Shulin not far to the west of the village.

This Shulin, which was very close to the village, was where the village specifically went to chop wood and gather firewood. The Shulin appeared to be twice the size of the village, but even this was not quite enough; there were three similar Shulin around the entire Lanse-Qingting Cunzi specifically for the villagers to collect firewood for cooking.

Because villagers often frequented these firewood Shulin near the village, there were no animals that claimed them as their territory; even if there had been in the past, they had long since been hunted to extinction by the villagers.

Over time, the surrounding animals all knew that this was the 'territory' of the animal known as Human, and thus would not approach.

To say so much, the point was that this kind of Shulin near the village was actually relatively safe.

If not for the fact that it hadn't rained recently and the Shulin was very dry, it would have been possible for those soldiers to set up their camp inside the Shulin.

Jier rode his horse to a slightly higher gentle slope, looking at the sparse Shulin ahead, judging where on the right side of the Shulin he would no longer be visible to the Scout line of sight from the village.

After making a rough judgment, Jier rode closer.

He tried his best to move along the edge of the Shulin, letting Tianxuecao slow his pace to give him enough time to scout left and right to see if there was a hidden Temporary Yingdi.

He roughly judged that the number of Defeated Soldiers remaining near Lanse-Qingting Cunzi was within ten, so there must be at least two or three Tents. A Temporary Yingdi of this scale, if you say it's conspicuous, it is; if the Tents were brightly colored, one could see them at a glance.

But if you say it's not conspicuous, as long as one used some shrubs for concealment and painted the tent colors with various tree saps and grass juices, the mottled colors would be very easy to hide in the Shulin or the wilderness.

Therefore, unlike the hill where one could know if there was something at a glance, Jier had to observe carefully near the Shulin so as not to miss anything.

Birds were chirping in the Shulin on the left; they were in frequent contact with humans and knew how dangerous humans were, so every time Jier checked back and forth, as soon as he approached the Shulin on the left, many alert birds would flap their wings and fly up.

And as soon as Jier rode to the right, they would flutter back down, looking at Jier and chirping as if communicating something with their companions.

"Quiet down! You're exposing my tracks! Please be quiet!" Jier waved at the birds in the trees and complained.

For some reason, they seemed to understand; after a noisy chatter, they no longer flew up in alarm at Jier's approach, but instead cautiously stared at Jier and his horse with their large, pitch-black eyes.

"Thanks, thanks for being so accommodating!" Jier waved at them and continued to scout forward.

But Jier searched for a long time, from the northwest of the Shulin all the way to the southwest, and even later he could see Lanse-Qingting Cunzi not far away, yet he still couldn't find the Temporary Yingdi where the Defeated Soldiers were hiding.

"Impossible, do I have to get two wrong out of three? Is my luck that bad? Or, out of five, I can get three wrong? Are the enemies over by Bata'er Jiaoshi and the others?" Jier muttered to himself, but just as he was about to ride toward another Shulin to the southwest, a large crow boldly landed in front of Jier.

Right on top of Tianxuecao's horse head!

Jier was not frightened by this bold fellow; he was only afraid that Tianxuecao would be startled by the bird suddenly landing on its head and go wild.

But Jier overthought it; Tianxuecao, wearing metal Armor for horses, didn't even notice that an uninvited 'Merchant' had appeared on top of its head.

Yes, this was a shrewd 'Merchant'.

Jier saw something from the eyeball held in the crow's beak at a glance; he was stunned for a moment, then boldly said to the crow: "This is an eyeball from a human corpse, right?"

He didn't know if the crow could understand the common language of humans, but it clearly had often eavesdropped on humans in Lanse-Qingting Cunzi; upon hearing Jier's question, it actually nodded.

Jier took a deep breath and asked the second question: "Is this eyeball from a villager of Lanse-Qingting Cunzi?"

The crow nodded; it was still unclear whether it was nodding by chance or if it really understood Jier's words.

But this answer still made Jier's complexion turn ugly; for an eyeball to be carried off by a crow, it was clear that the owner of this eyeball had been dead for a day or two.

The deceased was clearly not a villager captured at noon today, but it might well be a villager captured earlier; whether they died trying to escape or from torture, they had died at the hands of those Defeated Soldiers, and the corpse had been carelessly disposed of, to the benefit of the various animals nearby.

"So, you brought this eyeball to tell me where the corpse is, right? You're here to help me, right?" Jier continued to ask.

If anyone saw Jier talking to a crow at this moment, they would probably think Jier had some mental issues, but Jier didn't care. Come on, this was an otherworldly world with Magic and gods; what was so strange about a crow understanding human language? Even if it started talking now, Jier wouldn't feel it was strange at all.

But faced with Jier's two consecutive questions, the crow holding the human eyeball nodded, then shook its head.

Jier frowned and tentatively confirmed: "You will tell me the location of the corpse, but you aren't here to help me?"

The crow nodded, its pitch-black, reddish eyes revealing a sense of 'you finally understand'.

"Not here to help me, but willing to tell me the location of the villager's corpse, could it be..." A look of disdain appeared on Jier's face as he reached into a small Leather Bag at his waist; this small Leather Bag contained a piece of fine cloth for wiping weapons, and at the bottom were some coins for convenience.

He felt around and took out an Iron Coin, but the crow remained indifferent, not even glancing at it.

Jier was amused; he put away the Iron Coin, felt around in the Leather Bag again, and took out a Copper Coin of a different size, weight, and material.

"Ta-da! Shiny Copper Coin! Do you like it?" Jier shook the coin in his hand.

The crow just leaned its head in, examined the coin in Jier's hand at close range, and then extended one of its wings, actually pushing Jier's hand away!

This crisp and decisive refusal even made Jier laugh: "Fine, fine, fine, you really know how to do business. But I'll say this first: if the corpse you lead me to later isn't a villager's, or has nothing to do with those Defeated Soldiers, don't blame me for killing every crow in the vicinity!"

The crow was stunned; from this point alone, Jier could confirm that it really could understand human speech, and it had even understood Jier's threat just now, which was why it was frightened.

Faced with Jier's words, the crow hesitated, then extended its claw and grabbed the Copper Coin in Jier's hand.

"See, a Copper Coin isn't bad, right? Often, some swindlers like to use tin mixed with copper to make fake gold to cheat people. If it can cheat people, it means the luster and such are pretty good. So, by the same logic, the value of a Copper Coin isn't much different from a Gold Coin, just missing a little bit of tin metal!"

Jier babbled on about irrelevant content, but he had clearly fooled this 'stupid' crow that wanted to make a deal. Seeing it take the money, Jier tilted his chin at the 'stupid' fellow: "Lead the way! If you take the money, you have to do the work."

The crow opened its beak, dropped the useless eyeball, then flapped its wings and flew toward the Shulin that Jier had just circled for the better part of the way.

Jier was startled; he had not expected those Defeated Soldiers to actually dare to set up a Temporary Yingdi inside the Shulin.

One had to know that it had not rained even a drop for several months, the Shulin was incredibly dry, and with the weather growing increasingly hot, when a spontaneous combustion might occur and evolve into a large fire was a random variable that no one knew.

It could be next month, or it could be the very next second.

"Damn it, are those soldiers not only evil, but also insane?"

Muttering curses, Jier jumped off the Tianxuecao. He patted the horse's head, letting the Tianxuecao wait for him in place, then Jier took down the Hunting Bow from the horse's back, brought along a quiver of Arrow, and without taking anything else, followed the crow that was waiting for him on the treetops into the Shulin.

The Shulin was dry; this had already been repeated more than once.

But only after Jier walked into the Shulin did he realize just how dry it truly was. Every time he took a step and set his foot down, he would tread on very dry fallen leaves, making a crisp, crunching sound.

If not for the chirping of many birds in the surroundings, this sound of crushing leaves alone would have easily exposed Jier to the Defeated Soldiers hiding somewhere inside.

Every dozen steps Jier took, the crow ahead would land and wait for him to catch up. The area of the Shulin was not small, but compared to a real Forest, it was far too small; after all, it was just a place near the Cunzi for Villagers to collect firewood and leaves for kindling. He only walked for a short while before his increasingly sensitive nose caught the stench of rotting corpses.

Once one had smelled this stench of Human corpses, it was impossible to forget; it could be considered an instinctual mechanism written into the Human bloodline. Its original intent was to let Humans avoid dangerous places, but for Jier, he had found a clue leading to the location of the Defeated Soldiers.

Through the crow on the tree ahead and the increasingly thick stench of corpses, Jier soon found a small mound of earth that had been casually buried under a tree. It was truly buried casually; most of the corpse was buried in the dry soil, but half of its head and one right hand were exposed.

At this moment, this poor Villager stared blankly at the sky, clearly accusing why his life was so miserable, and why, after death, he did not even have a decent cremation, or even a proper grave mound.

"Brother, although you are pitiful for having died, thanks to you, I was able to find the place where those scumbags are hiding. Rest assured, those guys won't live much longer."

Jier casually inspected the corpse, even brushing away some of the soil covering it, and discovered that the corpse had been completely naked when it died, which matched what he had heard before—that those Defeated Soldiers would strip the captured Villagers naked, then humiliate and beat them.

If the dead person were a Defeated Soldier, no matter how they died, it was unlikely that those soldiers would let their companion be buried here so naked and so crudely.

Jier stood up. He first waved at the crow looking at him from above, indicating that their transaction was complete, then he looked carefully to the left and right, and excluding the route he had trampled on his way here, he found another trail with traces caused by something being dragged.

The corpse had been dead for some time, and the traces of dragging the corpse to this place naturally had been there for some days as well.

If it were in the outside world, this period of time would obviously have naturally erased these traces.

But this was a Shulin that no Villagers had entered recently, a Shulin without any other larger animals, and a Shulin that had not seen a single drop of rain.

Such a Shulin preserved this trail very well, and it had persisted until Jier's arrival at this moment.

"Found you!" Jier exhaled, his expression turning serious, and his right hand gently drew his Long Sword, not letting the Long Sword make too much noise as it left the scabbard.

Afterward, he walked even more carefully along the trail of the dragged corpse toward the Temporary Yingdi of the Defeated Soldiers hiding in the Shulin.

?? I was delayed today, mainly because there was too much work, but I still made it! Haha. Finally, I welcome everyone to subscribe to this book, give this book recommendation votes, monthly tickets, and tips to support it. Thank you, everyone.

? (End of this chapter)