Chapter 626: On the Journey Back (Part 2)

At noon that day, the entire group once again "found" a clearing in the forest to rest for a while.

There was no food; to eat, one had to wait until dark, so if there were only two meals a day, it was best to eat more in the morning. The villagers wearily set down the items they were carrying, gathered in small groups by family, and talked, easing their exhausted bodies and spirits.

As for Jier? He found a bright spot and examined the sword of the Knight Hartna in his hand.

This weapon, named Aipiedela, was even longer and thinner than Jier's own Hunting Sword, and could be held with one hand or two. Judging from a simple swing after getting it, this weapon was more suitable for two-handed use.

Although the blade was thin and long, that was only in comparison to the Hunting Sword; it was still much wider and sturdier than the weapons of ordinary people. However, the weapon was now severely damaged overall, with traces of acid corrosion in many places on the blade. Even magic materials were afraid of acid corrosion.

This sword was heavier than the Hunting Sword, weighing just over twenty kilograms. If an ordinary person used it, they basically couldn't; it was too heavy. But for Jier, the weight was just right. When swung in his hand, the slender blade could easily cut through the air with a sharp whistling sound.

The tip of the sword lightly tapped the surrounding large tree trunks, and the sturdy trunks were easily sliced open, while the entire weapon felt almost no resistance.

"It's a good weapon, but damaged like this, it must be reprocessed by a weapon master. But the swords of knights..."

Jier had some concerns. The number of knights was not large, and the swords of each of them should have their names registered with weapon craftsmen, or even be crafted over years by a certain forging master for many knights one by one. He now possessed this knight sword—Aipiedela; if someone asked about it, how should he answer?

Oh, I got this weapon by killing the Knight Hartna?

But the problem was that the Knight Hartna was either marked as missing in action by the Southern Province or should have been captured by the enemy army. Where did the sword in Jier's hand come from?

He couldn't just say that the Knight Hartna had defected to the enemy, helped the enemy collect metal materials in an abandoned mine in the mountains, and was killed by Jier along the way? If he said that, it would be very troublesome to have to explain the whole recent affair.

Jier was willing to inform the Knight Kela and the others of the Kendall people about the detailed situation, but the others in the Southern Province? Please, Jier was not familiar with them. He, a New Knight from an outside province, had just arrived in this precious land and claimed that a knight of the Southern Province had defected and that he had killed the other party and their subordinates.

What kind of matter would that be?

Slapping the faces of the nobles of the Southern Province?

Then they would certainly make things difficult for the Kendall people later.

Therefore, regarding the repair and recasting of this weapon, Jier was somewhat hesitant. After thinking it over repeatedly, he gave up the plan to find an opportunity to repair it recently. It would be better to find a forging master to help him handle this weapon after returning to Kendall County or leaving the Southern Province in the future.

In addition to the weapon, the Knight Hartna's set of Knight Armor also needed Jier to find someone to repair and remake it.

He felt somewhat unlucky about the fate of the Knight Hartna who wore this armor, so this incomplete Knight Armor needed to be remelted by someone Jier found, at least so that outsiders wouldn't be able to tell at a glance that this was the Knight Hartna's armor.

Although the Knight Armor, which had been scorched by intense flames, had already lost its original appearance due to the melting of the decorative metal on the surface, Jier still had to be careful not to be recognized.

Jier took out a pair of metal combat boots from the Knight Armor, found a piece of cloth, and began to disassemble and wipe the parts of these boots.

Because the injured Knight Hartna had to maintain a state of being ready to fight at any time, he hadn't taken off the boots for at least a month or two. Coupled with the fact that the knight himself had suffered burns, Jier didn't feel it when taking off the boots, but at this moment, after disassembling the boots into parts, Jier could smell the extremely unpleasant odor of this thing.

He had to grab some damp, rotten leaves from the ground to carefully wipe these parts. Don't dislike these rotten leaves for being smelly, because compared to these rotten leaves, the smell inside the boots was ten times stronger!

Jier's warriors, having nothing to do, were gathered by Aoni to discuss the reward money Jier had distributed to them yesterday. This money was the bounty for the ambush and killing of the grain transport team led by the Priest Bata'er.

Because everyone's contribution to this operation had been calculated by the Priest Bata'er long ago and recorded on paper, Jier only needed to distribute the money one by one according to the records on the paper.

As for the battle of attacking the enemy camp, Jier had briefly recorded individual battle achievements last night, and the detailed situation would need to be inquired about after reaching the Forward Yingdi.

This was mainly to analyze and record some matters of several people cooperating to kill the enemy, so that the soldiers who cooperated to kill the enemy would each be convinced. Therefore, this matter was very detailed and could not be completed without specifically finding time to do it.

"Ah, it's really great. The money I've earned during this time is more than the money my whole family has earned farming from when I was a child until now." Aoni patted his money bag, shook it, listened to the clear clinking of precious metals inside, and looked satisfied.

Although his money bag was still a bit flat, he believed that as long as he worked with Jier for a year or two, he could fill the entire money bag with precious Gold and Silver Coins.

By then, he would withdraw from Jier's team, return to his own village, buy half of the village's land, gather his relatives as the backbone, and collect landless refugees and displaced people; he would inevitably become a well-known large farm owner in his hometown area.

Perhaps by then the whole village would be named after him. At the thought of this, Aoni grinned with joy.

Weier glanced at his money bag casually and didn't care about this bit of money anymore. He didn't care about this income; he was more concerned about how to acquire power. He had to find a way to build a good relationship with people stronger than him. Now that the villagers of Changmai Cunzi had been rescued, next, according to what Jier said before, he had to return to the Kendall army and bring these warrior subordinates with him. At most, when passing through Yemei Town, he would work with the agreed-upon Heir of the Noble to find a way to defeat the parasitic plants.

The former was something Weier had been keeping in mind. He really wanted to see the knight who could teach Jier this level of strength, contact and get to know the other party, in the hope that he would also be selected and become a knight.

He considered his talent no worse than Jier's. As long as he received Knight Training, he would inevitably be as powerful as Jier, or even more powerful than Jier.

Unfortunately, Weier didn't see the battle between Jier and the Knight Hartna, otherwise he definitely wouldn't think so.

At that time, Jier, who had used nearly half of his means, had already scared the surrounding onlookers—the Defeated Soldiers, villagers, and Beast people. That appearance of being pitch-black and emitting energy, as well as the moves that could release various lethal means from his body at will, were terrifying images that some people couldn't even imagine.

The other warriors sitting there excitedly discussed their respective gains in the camp battle. Bawei was exceptionally excited, loudly proclaiming his battle results. Sipulu only focused on polishing the Battle Knife in his hand and pondering new moves. It wasn't that Sipulu wasn't interested in money or anything; he was certainly interested, but he knew better that as long as his martial power was up to par, in a fair environment, his money would naturally not be lacking.

Xueya Site sat on the edge of the team, holding a leaf in his hand, solving some small troubles encountered by some villagers who came to him, while thinking in his heart about the fighting style of Jier he saw during the camp battle earlier.

That was a very terrifying appearance, beyond his imagination. He had never thought that—he thought he knew Jier very well, but in reality, once a real battle occurred, the Jier who used his full strength was so terrifying and strange.

Thinking of the entire journey from the Western Province to the Southern Province, and the many battles he saw Jier encounter, he couldn't help but have a strange question: Jier's strength was still normal when heading south from the Western Province, so why did it become increasingly incomprehensible to him after arriving in the Southern Province?

From yesterday's battle, it could be seen that Jier had clearly not exerted his full strength before. No matter how many Bandits he dealt with, he had kept more than one trick, or even several tricks, up his sleeve.

"Can't understand, can't understand..." Xueya Site sighed and decided not to think about these things that had little to do with him. After all, Jier's ability was Jier's own; whether he hid his skills or not was none of his business.

The Priest Bata'er was sitting among the believers in the village at this time, quietly listening to these familiar believers in the village telling him what Jier had done after arriving inside the Mine two days ago.

Jier had told him briefly before, but the Priest Bata'er didn't quite understand what exactly had been done. At this moment, hearing the first-hand intelligence from the villagers, he couldn't help but marvel at Jier's ability to solve the villagers' troubles in the Mine so quickly.

"Really amazing. To be honest, I couldn't achieve the performance of the Warrior Jier."

The Priest Bata'er did not reach this conclusion out of modesty. If he had quietly sneaked into the Mine, he estimated that the means he would have used would be very different from Jier's. He would likely have started by contacting the believers among the villagers and tried to twist their strength into a rope, rather than choosing to unite all the villagers and risk trading with the Beast people.

Especially before the trade, he had to defeat those Beast people who looked down on Humans; this was a very bold and risky move. It wasn't that he, Bata'er, couldn't beat a dozen Mao Mao; under the condition of being fully armed, he didn't think he would lose to a dozen Mao Mao warriors.

But Jier's situation at the time was different; Jier didn't even use a weapon!

He didn't wear armor either, just in ordinary clothes, and dared to fight with more than a dozen Mao Mao warriors. That was really too dangerous.

And when the Priest Bata'er heard a believer at the entrance of the Mine at that time talk about the battle between Jier and the Knight Hartna, he was a little puzzled.

"Is the Warrior Jier that strong?"

He knew that Jier had cyan light on his body; the cyan light came from the overflowing Divine Power of the Agricultural God within his body. Clearly, Jier had activated the 【Grass and Wood Source】 Divine Art ability given to him by the Agricultural God Church at that time. When this ability was activated, the user would have cyan Divine Power overflowing from their whole body, possessing nearly infinite energy and physical strength in a short period of time, and could fight without restraint.

As for the terrifying pitch-black power that emerged from Jier at that time, the Priest Bata'er had some guesses, but not many.

He knew that there was a Black Bird-shaped Wood Carving on Jier's chest, and it seemed that the power of an Evil God resided within it. If Jier borrowed the power of other gods, it was mostly this one.

It was just that doing so was inappropriate after all. How could an unknown Evil God be as reliable as the great Agricultural God, the true god of humanity?

Thinking of this, the Priest Bata'er let the believers pray by themselves, and he stood up to find Jier to talk about this matter.

"You said you want me to give up the power of an unknown god?" Jier was a little strange, not knowing if the Priest Bata'er had eaten the wrong food or which nerve was misaligned. He actually ran over specifically to talk to him about this.

"That's not an unknown god; the situation is more complicated. It counts as an ancient primitive god, right?" Jier didn't want to tell the priest too much.

The Priest Bata'er pointed out some improprieties seriously: "Jier, you have to know that there are many Evil Gods who will impersonate and hide their identities. They like to transform into some unknown newborn gods or ancient primitive gods the most, just to reduce the possibility of being discovered. If there is something inappropriate, they will also shirk it. When they give you power, it might be normal at first, but soon, when you can't live without the evil power of those Evil Gods, you will become one of their new pawns."

"I am not anyone's pawn." Jier was not very happy. It was good that Bata'er could worry about him being targeted by an Evil God, but he didn't like the tone in which he said this at this time, nor what he was about to demand.

"I don't know what you're thinking, Jier. I need you to take out that Wooden Carving of the god so I can examine it carefully; if possible, I even want to invoke the power of the great God of Agriculture to oppose Him." Bata'er Jiaoshi carefully took out the Sacred Artifact of the God of Agriculture he always carried on his person—that small Wooden Bowl which could pour out infinite wine.

After holding it in his hand, he looked at Jier.

Jier shrugged and opened the chest piece of his armor, letting the Priest look at his neck and chest, where the black Wooden Carving of the great bird god was no longer there: "See, it's gone, it was gone a long time ago."

Bata'er Jiaoshi had not expected this; he knew Jier had always worn it around his neck, and since he had come over suddenly, it was impossible for Jier to have hidden something he wore on his neck at the last minute.

Therefore, there was only one possibility.

"Hmm, it is most likely that when you were fighting with Knight Hate, you exhausted the Divine Power of the alien god stored within it, and perhaps because too much power was used, that black Wooden Carving could not withstand that force and, without you noticing, was shattered into fine ash by the overly powerful Divine Power?"

Bata'er Jiaoshi nodded: "That is likely the only reason. Jier, after the battle yesterday, did any festering spots appear on your body? Did any internal organs feel uncomfortable? Or did any abnormal tattoo marks appear on any part of your skin?"

Jier waved his hand: "None of that, rest assured. There are no festering spots on my skin, nor are there any tattoos. Aside from not having bathed much lately and having a bit of a smell, I'm just a little itchy. My internal organs are all normal too; there's no such thing as a rotting heart or lungs. My heart is perfectly healthy!"

After Jier finished speaking, he used his fist to thump-thump-thump against the plate armor on his chest, producing a clattering sound of armor plates.

Fortunately, the noise from these plates masked it, otherwise the hollow, dull sound from Jier's chest would have seemed very strange.

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