Chapter 63: Kangkaiqi Cunzi

After reading the orders on the scroll, Jier handed the item to the two officials accompanying the team from the Government Office, then walked to one side and took out the detailed letter Bell had written to him.

The letter explained the situation on Bell's side.

It was not too bad; from the first day of the counterattack, Parasitic Vine Monsters had been entering Sasi County from the northwest of the village, and the village where Bell was located was the first to bear the brunt.

At the beginning, Bell was unsure of the situation and cautiously had all his forces guard the village carefully. But by the second day, after discovering that the monsters' offensive intensity existed but was limited, he immediately organized several small hunting squads to go out from the four main gates of the village, riding in carts to hunt the Parasitic Vine Monsters wandering by.

However, while things were okay on Bell's side, the situation on the path of the Sun God Church priests was not looking good.

Through Bell's retelling, Jier learned that since the night of the first day, the Sun God priests' path had been under constant attack by a significant number of monsters for the entire second day, with them attacking from all directions from their temporary encampment, regardless of day or night.

The Villagers moving along with them suffered heavy casualties, and the Town Guards and the temporarily organized Armed Civilians also suffered significant losses. One Sun God Priest was even dragged away from the group by a flowering monster during the battle and killed in a pile of monsters in the distance.

The Sun God Priests naturally had priest armor, and it was more refined than the armor of the Earth God priests. The priest armor on their bodies could not only resist external attacks but could also unleash a high-temperature flame counterattack against attacking enemies.

Many monsters were burned to death directly by the counterattacking flames when they ambushed the Sun God Priests. But even so, that poor priest who was ambushed and dragged away was surrounded by dozens of monsters and had his Divine Protection armor forcibly shattered.

Even though those Parasitic Vine Monsters themselves also lost half their number.

But there were only a dozen or so Sun God Priests, and every loss was an irreparable, serious blow. As for the Parasitic Vine Monsters, their numbers seemed endless—two hundred? Three hundred? Or four hundred?

The ashes of the monsters that died around the temporary camp on the Sun God priests' path even stained the ground around the camp.

Through Bell's letter, Jier learned that Bell was currently hesitating whether to go and support the Sun God Priests, and was even considering temporarily recalling Jier to the north side of Yemei Town.

Relying on the speed of Jier's horse, he could ride alone to the Sun God Priests' side in just one hour.

However, Bell had sent someone on horseback to ask yesterday, and the priests' reply was quite stubborn; they claimed everything was under control, that they already had a method to defeat the enemy in the predicament they were currently facing, and did not need support from Jier and Bell.

"So stubborn," Jier cursed, then continued reading the letter.

At the end of the letter, Bell finally made up his mind to ask Jier to take over the other villages on the Sun God priests' path. Judging by the current situation, for the Sun God priests on their path, being able to take one village according to the plan and hold it by relying on the village would already be the best-case scenario.

"It seems I can learn new moves? What kind of moves will they be?" Jier put away the letter, imagining the new Knight moves he would learn in his mind.

Those moves should be different from the weapon moves used by ordinary Human Warriors, right? Just like a move the Knight Kela once taught him before he underwent Knight Training: high-speed charging, defending while closing in, and simultaneously delivering a fatal attack at the moment of engaging the enemy.

The entire move emphasized being direct and fast, launching an attack straight at the enemy that they could not react to and could not counter.

Jier did not use this move much when dealing with enemies now, because the armor on his body was quite cumbersome to move in, and it could not smoothly follow his body for high-speed reactive combat.

To keep his movements from being restricted by the armor he wore, he would have to change into a new set of armor that was convenient for movement.

Jier already had some ideas for this new set of armor.

He had plenty of various materials on hand, especially after killing the Knight Hate, having seized many Monster materials from those people, plus some Magic Materials and special materials he already had. Jier planned to specifically find a master Craftsman of Knight Armor with superb skills after reaching a big city to customize an excellent set of new armor for him.

And it must be of Knight grade.

Among the materials for that new armor, he could modify and reuse the remnants of the Knight Armor seized from killing the Knight Hate; Jier did not feel it was unlucky or anything. That was an enemy he had defeated with his own hands, and Jier would only feel proud using equipment seized in battle.

Furthermore, the Knight Hate being defeated by him was not a problem of the Knight Armor itself.

"Let's go, let's go! Everyone move a bit faster. From the moment I just received the letter order from the messenger, the nine hundred or so returning Villagers of Kangkaiqi Cunzi have already set off. We not only need to defeat the Parasitic Vine Monsters inside Kangkaiqi Cunzi in advance, but we also have to meet them halfway!"

Jier rode on horseback, loudly explaining the situation to the Warriors who were getting into carts to prepare for departure.

"Besides this counterattack mission that needs to be completed today, there are two connected matters I need to tell everyone."

Jier paused, and after everyone had their weapons and equipment ready and climbed into their respective carts, Jier waved his hand, signaling the drivers to set off. He rode his horse beside the carts, informing the Warriors of the news as they moved.

As for Flo Cunzi behind them, the Armed Civilians took over the defensive positions of Jier's Warriors, reinforcing the village walls, sending people to stand guard on the thin village walls, and starting to prepare defensive weapons more suitable for the Armed Civilians.

After all, you couldn't expect civilians who were issued a Dagger and a Short Knife to really protect themselves in front of Parasitic Vine Monsters, right?

They needed to use the resources within their own village to reinforce and tie the issued Daggers and Short Knives to the front ends of two-meter-long hard wooden sticks; this would create a type of simple Long Spear weapon. Although it was not a specialized combat weapon, it was enough to use for defending the village.

After all, there were many Villagers; if seven or eight people all held similar weapons, facing the incoming Parasitic Vine Monsters, they could rely on the length of the weapons to resist the monsters at a relatively safe distance, or even kill them.

After all, Parasitic Vine Monsters only had great strength and hard-to-find fatal weaknesses; they were not some blade-proof, armored Soldiers. As long as they blocked the opponent's first strike when facing the monsters, they would likely win the battle.

The Villagers just needed to knock the monsters down and then throw Torches at the fallen monsters.

After many experiments, Yemei Town had already confirmed that Parasitic Vine Monsters were still relatively afraid of fire and high temperatures.

Moreover, the more powerful the monster, such as the monsters with flowering heads, the more they feared fire. Because half of the Parasitic Vine Monsters parasitized human bodies, most of the Humans they parasitized still had the original structure and tissues of the human body; it was just that the human head and Viscera would be eaten from the inside by the Parasitic Vine Monster, which then controlled the human body on the outside.

And as their strength increased, they were also performing plant-like modifications on the parasitized human bodies, starting from the bones, gradually replacing the original hard calcified bones with tougher, lighter hardwood bones. The muscle tissues originally responsible for movement in the human body were also gradually replaced by vine-structured structures.

The vine "muscles" attached to the hardwood "bones," imitating human joint movement, were stronger than the average person.

But the human body itself had a huge water content and strong fire-prevention and high-temperature resistance, so the average monster parasitizing a human body was not yet very afraid of flames. But the flowering monsters, or monsters with plant branches growing on their heads, feared fire much more.

After all, under their human skin were flammable plant vines and wooden bones.

Once a fallen monster was hit by a Torch, it only needed to burn for a while before it would continuously burn on its own, unable to be extinguished.

With a messenger familiar with the local area and Bell's attendant leading the way, Jier and the others walked quickly all the way, heading straight for Kangkaiqi Cunzi.

This village was directly east of Yemei Town. Unlike the west, which had a Lumber Yard and trade routes for entering and exiting, the south, which led to the vast area of Nanbu Sasi County, and the north, which led to areas that could mine mineral dyes, the east of Yemei Town was, after all, unremarkable and lacked features.

There were only rolling low hills here, plains between the hills, and abandoned villages one after another on the plains.

Occasionally, one could see the manors of nearby Knight Lords between the villages, but Jier did not pay attention to those empty manors; there was nothing there.

The Knight Family were the first to learn the news of the Parasitic Vine Monsters' movements, so they had known about it long before the order for the people of Northern Sasi County to go to Yemei Town for refuge was issued. Therefore, the Knight Family had long ago let their servants move out and empty the Knight manors outside Yemei Town, bringing various resources back to their respective family Knight mansions in Yemei Town in advance.

Now, these empty manors, with only the buildings remaining in the wild, probably only had a small number of Parasitic Vine Monsters distributed there, coveting the wells in the manors.

Jier had no motivation to actively clear out these Knight manors that had no harvest and would require effort to clear, so he just led the convoy past these places.

Occasionally, roars of monsters discovering the convoy would come from these manors, but when Jier turned his head to look over, those monsters seemed to realize the gap in strength between them and fell silent one after another.

Lost their nerve, huh?

Probably lost their nerve.

On the road, Jier explained two pieces of news to the Warriors in the convoy: one was that the Sun God Church, responsible for the path to the north of the town, had encountered interception by a large number of monsters and was still struggling to resist, with the entire team unable to move smoothly, let alone take the villages occupied by the monsters.

Therefore, the second piece of news was that Jier informed everyone that they would likely take over the villages originally assigned to the Sun God Church's path, and would need to continuously break through the monsters in village after village according to the original plan.

Everyone felt immense pressure and remained silent.

Jier, however, laughed: "Don't be so worried, looking like you all lost your coin purses. On the contrary, everyone can earn quite a bit of money! This is a good thing. It doesn't matter if you're a bit tired; the risk of fighting the monsters isn't actually that high. You have to understand that as we fight continuously and liberate the villages occupied by monsters, the total number of monsters is actually constantly decreasing."

"And it's decreasing rapidly. Let me explain it to you."

Jier said loudly: "Right now, Bell is leading people and blocking the northwest direction of Yemei Town where the monsters are emerging, which means that as long as they do well, the number of monsters around Yemei Town will not increase rapidly in a short time; kill one, and there is one less monster."

The Warriors' eyes lit up, while the two officials from the Government Office, riding in a bumpy carriage, were busy trying to record what Jier was saying at that moment with their dip pens.

These were important records; when someone in the future wanted to understand what happened during this period, the orders on the official Scrolls would prove what happened on the surface, while the more important details of various actions would have to rely on these situations recorded by the officials accompanying the team.

The two of them had no conflict of interest with Jier, so they could record most of the things Jier encountered here relatively objectively.

Including the words Jier was saying to all the Warriors in public at that moment.

"As for the Sun God Priest's route, although it is quite miserable, I don't know what angered the Monsters, causing the Monsters throughout Northern Sasi County to move sporadically toward them to 'punish' those Sun God Church Priests. But this is also a good thing for us, because the Monsters in the villages everywhere have gone over there, so the total number of Monsters there is decreasing! Perhaps you haven't counted, nor have you realized, that in fact, was the number of Parasitic Monsters we faced on the first day the highest? And then yesterday? Wasn't the number of Monsters in Flo Cunzi significantly lower than those in Banjiu Cunzi?"

Once Jier said this, the Warriors, including the Agriculture Priests accompanying the team, realized that it seemed to be the case.

Jier pointed to Kangkaiqi Cunzi, which could already be seen ahead, and patted his chest to assure everyone: "I can guarantee that in a moment, the number of Parasitic Monsters in Kangkaiqi Cunzi will be even lower than in Flo Cunzi, estimated to be only about half of Banjiu Cunzi! Does anyone want to make this bet with me? The stakes can be unequal!"

But none of the Warriors went to bet with Jier; apart from the temporarily joined Caravan guards and shop thugs, they all trusted Jier's judgment very much and believed in every decision Jier made.

Jier said the Monsters in Kangkaiqi Cunzi were only half of those in Banjiu Cunzi, so there were only half!

In fact, there really were only half, or rather, Jier had overestimated; in the entire village of one thousand people, including the two Knight manors outside the village, there were surprisingly only forty-some Parasitic Vine Monsters in total.

And when Jier and the others arrived, there were still one or two Monsters in the Cunzi dousing themselves with cool well water, intending to go out and head toward the Xīběi direction of the Cunzi. If he guessed correctly, they were intending to go and attack the Sun God Priest's team.

Needless to say, with such a small number of enemies, Jier directly spurred his horse to crash through the Cunzi gate, leading the Caravan straight into the center of the Cunzi.

The Caravan hurriedly slowed down in the open space at the center of the Cunzi, and then the Warriors jumped off the carriages one after another, directly scattering to pounce on the sporadic Parasitic Monsters.

It was absurd, as if the roles of both sides had been reversed.

Jier did not dismount either; after throwing the Yueshui Skull Two-Handed Axe and the Hunting Sword at the Monsters, he ignored them, riding his horse to stroll around the battlefield and using a Soldier Bow to support the scattered Warriors.

He was even reluctant to use the captured Heavy Crossbow; among these Monsters, there were only two blooming Monsters, one of which had its essence and life force drained by the Yueshui Skull he threw as soon as he entered, and the other was being besieged in turns by Aoni, Weier, Bawei, and Sipulu.

Actually, it wasn't that Jier couldn't leave the other blooming Monster to his subordinates, but in reality, the strength of Weier and the others at this moment was just barely enough for the four of them to confront a blooming Monster head-on.

By the time the other Warriors had wiped out the few and scattered Monsters in the Cunzi, Weier and the others still hadn't successfully taken down that blooming Monster.

"I say, are you guys capable or not?" Jier was riding on horseback; he hadn't dismounted throughout the entire battle, nor had he personally killed a Monster at close range, but the arrows he shot assisted many Warriors in successfully taking down those scattered Parasitic Monsters.

At this moment, facing the onlookers and Jier's mockery, the faces of Weier and the other three turned red.

It was hard to tell if it was from the long duration of the battle, exhaustion, or if they were blushing from shame.

"Haha, if you guys can't do it, you might as well let us try!"

Some Caravan guards who were confident in their skills spoke boastfully. These people who joined temporarily had initially maintained respect for Jier's Warriors, but after fighting together for a few days, they gradually discovered that Jier's subordinates just had much better equipment, and their combat power was piled up by the equipment.

Give them the same equipment, and they could kill more Parasitic Monsters; in terms of combat technique, they didn't think they would be weaker than Jier's subordinates.

Even for Aoni and Bawei, who had more eye-catching performances, Weier and Sipulu, those Warriors who relied purely on technique to fight, did receive a measure of respect from these outsiders.

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