Chapter 699: The Dawn of the Contest (Part 6)

Jier flicked his right hand, relaxing the discomfort caused by the sudden, forceful clenching of his fist just moments ago.

To be honest, Jier could already feel the discomfort in many places of the full-coverage metal armor he had crafted together with his Craftsman friend. His strength had grown rapidly; the metal armor, specifically made for self-defense and combat when he was only slightly stronger than an ordinary person, now created constraints and limitations not only in movement but also in attacking and agility.

Rather than further enhancing his combat effectiveness.

"Sigh, I haven't even worn it for that many days," he muttered to himself.

The armor had been finished in winter, and he had worn it when he set out with the army in early spring. Now, only a little over a month had passed, yet the armor already had many areas of damage, and it no longer matched his own strength.

But he had no choice; for now, he could only keep wearing it and take things one step at a time.

The sword-wielding enemy who had fallen to the ground and had his arm broken by a punch did not seem to have lost his combat effectiveness solely due to pain. Jier walked over to take a look and realized that this person was indeed mentally unstable. At this moment, the man was convulsing all over; despite having lost consciousness, he was still muttering incoherently in his mouth in a language with a distinct accent.

Patting the man's face and tugging at the young man's drooling mouth, Jier received no reaction; the man was merely reciting the names of men and women from some family.

After thinking for a moment, Jier fetched a Rope, carefully bound the man's hands and feet, and tossed him aside on the ground.

The man's broken arm seemed to have an extra joint; when Jier moved it while tying him up, it could be bent into a strange angle.

Jier picked up the Hunting Sword he had dropped in the emergency and walked over to the few Bandits who had been severely burned by the Magic Dagger's flames.

Some of these people had their upper bodies covered under loose soil, emitting wisps of smoke, and looked fine, but their lower bodies had been completely ignited by the flames. The hems of the Beast Skin Clothing the Bandits wore and the beast-skin boots on their lower legs, along with their hairy thighs, had all been thoroughly scorched and blackened by the fire.

Jier kicked one of them, but the person didn't move at all. Curious whether the man was dead or just unconscious, Jier pulled his upper body out from the loose soil.

When the Magic light shone on him, Jier saw that the man's face was purple; it didn't look like he was faking it. Somehow, he had just died.

"Strange, the fire on his head and face was clearly extinguished."

Jier muttered a sentence, then checked the person next to him who had been burned by the Magic Fire.

Upon inspection, he realized how dangerous it was for Magic Fire to come into direct contact with vital parts of the body. On the heads and faces of the Bandits swept by the high-temperature Magic Fire, the skin surfaces of many vital areas had turned into charcoal, and the important Blood Vessels lying directly beneath them had, of course, also suffered major damage.

Jier used the tip of his sword to nudge the neck of the Bandit he was checking and found that the Blood Vessels under the neck skin were also ruined; as soon as the metal sword tip nudged them, the Blood Vessels detached and tore.

Only at the bottom of the break, near the body, was fresh blood squeezed out, while the Blood Vessels on Jier's sword tip seemed to have been cooked along with the blood inside.

The blood had coagulated and blocked the Blood Vessels, which was why the fallen Bandit had lost his life in such a short time.

"Damn it, in the future, I must never let high-temperature Magic Fire jets come into contact with places like the neck."

After Jier finished lamenting, he realized that these few Bandits were beyond saving. He approached the low Shandong entrance near the clearing from which the Bandits had previously swarmed out, peered inside, and listened for any movement. Finding nothing, he then set off in pursuit of the Bandit Leader whose left leg he had severed.

Even on familiar ground, without the support of any lighting, Shanlang Bani could not run very far with a broken leg.

Jier followed the trail of blood from the wounds on the ground and easily found this guy, who had crawled fifty meters and was hiding behind the trunk of a large tree.

"￥%#￥!" The stubborn Bandit Leader threw his own left lower leg directly at Jier.

Jier chuckled: "What, do you think this thing can hurt anyone? I don't want your stinking foot."

Waving his Long Sword to knock away the severed foot, Jier cautiously followed the path the other had crawled to escape, gradually approaching the Bandit Leader who was still putting up a stubborn resistance.

Holding a Long Sword, the one-legged Bandit struggled to stand up using the tree trunk, then hopped on his single leg and fiercely charged at the young Knight. If it were an ordinary youth, he might have been terrified by this guy's crazy appearance and killed in surprise, but against Jier?

Clang, clang—the two Long Swords clashed twice, and then Jier twisted his Long Sword, disarming the opponent.

A follow-up intimate contact with the Shield, even with its light weight, could give the enemy a painful "face-to-face kiss."

Sheathing his sword, Jier grabbed the guy's only remaining leg, picked up the weapon the other had dropped, and dragged him back.

"You ￥% guy, what are you doing? It would be better to just kill me. Ha, want my treasure? Go to hell, you'll never know even in your dreams."

"That's not up to you."

Jier forcibly pulled one of the guy's legs, dragging him across the ground with obvious drag marks in the leaves, and returned to the previous clearing.

After binding this guy tightly as well, Jier used a piece of scorched Beast Skin Clothing torn from a nearby corpse and stuffed it directly into the Bandit Leader's mouth, blocking his incoherent shouting.

"Stay still. You've done plenty of evil deeds; hmph, you'll get what's coming to you."

Jier broke off a few branches from the nearby Shulin, snapped them into small pieces, borrowed some fire from the still-burning Bandit corpses, and lit a bonfire in this clearing that could serve as a beacon in the night forest. He was afraid of not being able to find this place again, as he had missed it before.

Afterwards, he followed the route he had taken while chasing down from the top of the ridge and walked quickly back toward the top of the ridge to rendezvous with his subordinates.

"Sir Knight, is that you?"

Facing the young Refugees who were standing back-to-back on the ridge top holding weapons in alert, Jier nodded and said: "Of course it's me. What else could those remaining Bandits do? Come on, follow me down to loot the Bandit lair; hehe, it's everyone's favorite post-battle activity again."

Jier was quite excited, but these young people were somewhat dejected. They carried the corpse of their companion, who had died some time ago while protecting them in the center, and followed closely behind the young Knight who was leading the way down the mountain.

Soon they arrived back at the clearing at the entrance of the Bandits' Shandong.

The scorched corpses on the ground did not surprise the young people, but the two bound Bandits made them overjoyed.

"Sir, which one of these is the enemy who killed our people? We want to give him a taste of his own medicine!"

Some young people carefully examined the few Bandits on the ground who were either killed or captured. When the incident happened earlier, the enemy's movements were too fast; no one had seen clearly what happened, and the enemy and the Knight had chased off one after another.

Jier waved his hand and said casually: "Alright, it's that guy who looks somewhat like a human. But this person is crazy; he lost his mind while we were fighting. Hmm, as soon as we met, he was muttering nonsense; I reckon this guy's mind has been unclear for a long time."

Shanlang Bani, whose mouth was blocked and could not speak, struggled twice, making muffled sounds in his mouth.

But no one paid him any mind.

Before tonight, this guy was still a powerful Bandit Group leader, but now, he was nothing more than a bad guy with a broken leg who had been captured and faced an unknown fate.

Hearing the Knight say that the enemy who killed their people was crazy, the remaining five young people curiously gathered around to look. They discovered that the guy whose mouth wasn't blocked was indeed muttering some names they had never heard before. At the same time, his face was twisted, and he kept making various intense facial expressions; his eyes were mostly closed, but occasionally they would open, and beneath the eyelids were not clear eyes, but rolled-up whites, and the pupils of his eyes were also constantly spinning wildly in their sockets.

He looked truly, completely insane.

The few young people didn't kill him; they kicked and beat him a few times, which vented their anger. They even more creatively used the palms of their dead companion to slap the face of this insane Bandit back and forth vigorously.

They weren't satisfied, and upon hearing the Knight say that the other injured and captured Bandit was the leader of this group of Bandits, they became even more energized. Bullying a madman wasn't very interesting, so they directly used their companion's palms to fiercely slap the Bandit Leader's face.

Shanlang Bani's wide-eyed expression, as if he wanted to kill and eat someone, made even Jier laugh.

"When the big bear is sick and weak, it can only eat the fox's feces. Haha, you Mountain Wolf, I think you're about the same."

After letting them play for a while, Jier arranged for two people to guard the prisoners and organize the corpses and the Bandits' weapons in the clearing.

"Keep an eye on these heavy hammers and logging axes; they are all good tools and can be put to great use. Add some fuel to the fire and make it burn brighter!"

"Yes, sir."

Afterwards, Jier lowered his body and took the lead in crawling into the low Bandit Shandong, with the other three following behind.

The Shandong entrance was very low, and Jier, wearing armor, had to lie on the ground to move. The young Refugees had it much easier; in their simple, tattered Bandit Beast Skin Clothing, they only needed to bend their waists to barely move.

But fortunately, this path that wound downward and deeper grew larger and more spacious. Otherwise, Jier would have had to guard the outside and let his subordinates go in to scout.

There was air flowing in the passage, so the air was not stagnant, though it did have a unique, filthy stench characteristic of bandits. That smell was produced by dozens of people gathering together for a long time without washing.

After turning the last corner, the interior of a spacious Shandong appeared before him.

The ceiling of the cave here was high, and fire basins and torches provided illumination in three places around the perimeter, allowing anyone who entered to see everything here at a glance.

But Jier only took one sweeping look before secretly thinking it was bad.

"###, I've been tricked!"

It was not because of anything else; simply put, as he looked into the interior of the Shandong, apart from crude wooden beds and haphazardly hung hammocks, there were none of the numerous Caravan goods he had expected the Bandit Group to have plundered.

After all, it was impossible for all the Caravan goods to have been sold off at low prices by this group of people; where would such a good thing happen?

Thinking this way, he could understand that he had been tricked.

It was impossible for this group of Bandits to have only one Jiedian lair; this Bandit nest established in the Shulin not far from the north side of the Shanglu was very likely just a place where the Bandit groups gathered and waited before they lay in wait for Caravans to launch raids.

There was no need to guess that the true lair of these guys was definitely in a safe place deeper in the Shulin, further into the mountain range on the north side.

Perhaps it was also similar to this place, a hidden Shandong with traps around it and a concealed entrance?

While Jier was annoyed at having been tricked, the other three young men who had followed him in were already holding their weapons and cautiously searching the sides.

They had already done this kind of thing twice before, so their movements had become proficient by now.

They even developed a division of labor: one person picked up the Torch stuck at the entrance to provide light at any time; one person held a weapon, guarding the surroundings; and another person carried a pocket on their back, constantly searching near each Bandit's sleeping bed.

The bedding was lifted entirely, and coins deliberately hidden by the Bandits in the gaps of the wooden beds were pried out. The Linen Cloth quilts filled with hay and soft leaves were torn open, and by sticking a hand in and stirring vigorously, one could find hidden small coin purses in places frequently opened and repaired.

Without even looking closely, these were all thrown into the large pocket.

Grass-woven pillows or wooden pillows were the most important items to search; having a companion use a Cleaver to hack these things open would always yield something from inside.

If it wasn't various kinds of coins, it was small, shiny jewelry.

These were also all thrown into the pocket.

Jier did not concern himself with how they did it; he took a simple scan and found the place where they lit fires to cook and stored food on the left-hand side after entering the Shandong.

Lifting the lid of a wooden barrel that was frequently opened, apart from a few Jumping Mouse that scurried out in alarm, there were pieces of hard, dry Bread the size of a human head.

Finding this food actually made Jier very concerned and interested.

Under the current situation in the Southern Province, it was hard to say how much value or use coins and valuable items really had. After all, normal commercial trade and transactions had been destroyed; one only needed to guess with their heels to know that being unable to buy things with money was definitely a common occurrence.

And these grains or food were even more important.

"It's a pity I couldn't find the true lair of the Bandits in one go. Hmm, I'll have to interrogate them well and pry that guy's mouth open."

A cat's meow suddenly sounded nearby; Jier turned his head to look and discovered a gray-furred cat jumping down from a wooden bed, fiercely chasing the Jumping Mouse that had just scurried about.

The little cat pressed down on the largest Jumping Mouse in one go, bit it to death, and then carried it in its mouth to Jier's feet.

Jier looked down at this little ball of fur; the kitten opened its mouth to spit out the dead Jumping Mouse, used its paws to nudge it twice to Jier's feet, and then sat proudly.

The corners of his mouth curled up; Jier put the lid back on the Bread barrel, closing it tightly this time so the Jumping Mouse could not sneak in.

Then he squatted down, extended a finger, and carefully rubbed the gray cat's forehead. The little thing was not afraid of people; after a light meow, it trotted off with a proud gait to catch other Jumping Mouse that had nowhere to go after being driven out.

Taking advantage of the cat walking away and not paying attention, Jier pinched the long, thin tail of the Jumping Mouse with his fingers and threw it into the nearby lighting fire basin.

With a sizzle, a burst of charred, foul-smelling smoke rose from the fire basin and drifted away through the gaps in the top of the Shandong.

Just as Jier was planning to check what other survival supplies he could harvest, the young men not far away let out a slightly surprised, but not panicked, shout: "Wow! This, this, this!"

"What's wrong?"

Jier asked loudly, while his footsteps also walked over quickly.

But the voice that answered him carried an alternative tone: "Knight, it's women, hehehe, and they aren't wearing clothes—"

Jier snorted, walked over to take a look, and sure enough, in the corner of the cave, where the bedding on the wooden bed was loosely draped, two naked women with bruised, purple-and-blue skin were tied up inside.

"Untie them already. You two, we are not bad people; this nest of Bandits has been defeated, you are rescued."

The Rope was deftly untied, and the cloth stuffed in their mouths was also removed; however, the two rescued women did not look pleasantly surprised, but instead, after wrapping themselves in the bedding, cautiously sized up Jier and the others.

"Who, who are you?"

Jier shrugged: "I am a Knight from Kendall County in the north. I originally had a mission with the Priest of the Agricultural God Church, but when passing by the Baishi Chengqiang Guanka, these Farmer families who were fleeing from villages all over the Southern Province were blocked by the local checkpoint, so I took the young people among the Farmer families and prepared to lead them to find their own way. As it happens, they can also be of some help to the mission."

"You didn't say the main point!"

"Aren't the Bandits teaming up to rob us? But after a night of fighting, several Bandit groups have been defeated. I am currently leading people to loot—no, to clear out the Bandits' lair."

As a result, one of the two women said straightforwardly: "Then you must be disappointed; there is nothing here. Bani never keeps things in one place."

Jier had been a bit further away, but at this moment he walked closer and said to the two: "Oh, Bani? Are you very familiar with this Bandit Leader?"

Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue, or perhaps they were frightened by the glowing eyes under Jier's Faceplate, but the two women not only did not answer Jier's question, they even pulled their heads back and shrank their entire bodies into the animal-skin bedding.

"What is the meaning of this? Is it hard to answer, or what?"

Jier was a bit puzzled, but a young man beside him laughed and said: "Knight, they must have been frightened by your aura."

Sizing up the armor on his body, Jier sniffed; apart from the smell of blood all over, hadn't the bloodstains from the previous battle on the armor been wiped clean? And he had wiped his armor twice tonight; could this still scare people?

He frowned and pointed at the two women in the bedding: "Let them put on clothes and come out with us in a moment. You three, find someone to watch them. The other two go search. Damn it, there isn't much stuff in here. I hope the true lair of this Bandit Group isn't very far."

Just as Jier was about to walk away, a voice came from the animal-skin bedding: "It's very far."

"What?" He turned his head and asked.

The voice came out again: "You have to walk along a dried-up riverbed for a whole day, in the direction deeper into the mountain range."

Jier teased: "Very clear, aren't you? Been there? Or?"

There was no response; Jier shrugged and walked toward the most conspicuous place on the opposite side of the Shandong cave.

That place was open, and against the rock wall of the cave sat a tall wooden chair; it was clearly the place where the Bandit Leader issued orders.