Chapter 831: Let's Be Friends! The Scorching Metal Long Staff

Having resolved the unexpected parasitic monster near the lumber yard, Jier was jumping down from a pile of logs, preparing to return to his horse to continue his watch, when he was unexpectedly called out by two Sun God Church priests.

"This young Knight. The sun is above, and its light shines upon all living things. May I ask if that sword of yours carries some kind of power from our God?"

The thirty-year-old Church Priest, who had a one-handed lumber axe slung at his waist, asked the question, and the Sun God Church priest holding a staff beside him also looked at Jier's Hunting Sword with curious eyes.

However, because the sheath and hilt of Hunting Sword were both made with magic materials provided by the Agricultural God Church, outsiders could only see a faint trace of the Agricultural God's Divine Power leaking out if the blade was not drawn.

If the two had not just seen with their own eyes the familiar Sun God Divine Power wrapping around the Knight's sword, they would not believe now that this sword carried the Sun God's Divine Power. Of course, the question at this moment was merely a means to find an opportunity to close the distance and build a relationship with the visiting Knight.

Facing the inquiry, Jier was very candid: "That is correct. This Hunting Sword of mine does indeed have a Sun God Church creation embedded in the blade that carries a magical light power. Two honorable Priests, do you have any questions?"

The candid answer allowed the two priests to skip many of the things they had originally intended to say. They looked at each other, and the one with the slightly higher status said with a smile: "You are a Knight from another province, are you not? Before we arrived, we heard at the Baron's Mansion that a group of refugees had come to Yemei Town, and the leader of the group was a young Knight of noble conduct. That must be you, right?"

Jier lifted his faceplate and laughed: "I can hardly be called a man of noble conduct. I was just passing by the White Stone City Wall checkpoint at the provincial border with my companions, and seeing the poor people there blocked and unable to move forward or backward, I felt a moment of pity and brought them along. It's hard to say who needed whom more on this journey; I led them, and they supported me in return."

To tell the truth, throughout this journey, aside from the fact that Jier was an Apprentice Knight, the reason he could be treated as someone needing serious attention by local administrators everywhere had everything to do with the fact that he had a team of hundreds of people under his command. After all, if there were only one or two people, the local leaders in charge of various places would not take him very seriously.

Of course, traveling all the way, there would naturally be much less trouble. But Jier's gains here would also naturally be much less. Take the horse armor on Tianxuecao, for instance; if he hadn't had hundreds of people outside Duoen Town, Mr. Scott, one of the leaders of Duoen Town, would not have helped him so much back then.

The Sun God Priest spoke up: "That is the humble speech of a noble person. This Knight, since we have eliminated a parasitic Flesh Demon monster together, may we get to know each other?"

Jier chuckled. What did they mean by "eliminated together"? Could a parasitic monster, such a weak opponent, even be considered a monster? A water ghost would likely be more troublesome than these guys. However, he understood the other party's meaning; the previous words were just a pretext, and getting to know each other was the real purpose.

But why not?

Jier did not want to bind himself entirely to the Agricultural God Church, although he was currently working for them and had already received quite a few benefits and support from them.

But he understood that relying on mountains makes them collapse, and relying on rivers makes them dry up; a good man needs three helpers. Knowing one more person meant one more path.

Thinking of this, Jier struck his left chest with his right fist and stood straight: "Two Priests, I am Qiao-Jier, from Kendall County in the Northwest Province. I have come to the South this time precisely to support the Noble Lords of the Southern Province in their war to repel the neighboring country to the south."

The two Sun God Church priests also immediately saluted. First, they held their palms up toward the sky, mimicking the reception of the sun's grace, then placed their hands on their chests and bowed slightly to Jier: "Torque Trist, Church Priest of the Sun God Church in Sasi County, holding the position of Pastor."

The other person, while saluting, held his hand toward the sky with the one not holding the Metal Long Staff, then placed it on his chest in the same way, bowed slightly, and said: "Mels Nass, also a priest in Yemei Town, Sasi County, and also a Pastor."

"Then, greetings to both Pastors. Although the place is not very suitable—there are neither tables and chairs nor wine and food—we can consider ourselves acquainted." Jier smiled and gestured to the surrounding environment.

Tall piles of logs, the corpses of the eliminated parasitic monsters, and the busy Lumberjacks and a large number of carriages behind the log piles nearby.

The environment could not be called good.

"It does not matter. As long as we are bathed in the loving radiance of our God, what difference is there between the wilderness and the town?" Priest Trist said heartily. Priest Nass beside him also nodded, feeling that his companion's words made a lot of sense. Priests of the gods were not ordinary people and did not need to be troubled by the idle rules and customs of the world.

"Although it is a bit presumptuous, Knight Jier, could we two take a look at your sword? To tell the truth, we two just sensed the Sun God Divine Power on your sword. If I am not mistaken, that should be a Blessing Tool that adds abilities to weapons and equipment? It is truly rare."

His companion, Priest Nass, added: "It is very rare. At least in Sasi County and the superior Borisfa City diocese, these things are rarely made. The superior priests always tell everyone to promote Faith, and say that the Divine Power boost brought by Faith is much more useful and flexible than these. Now it seems that is not the case at all."

"Say less." Seeing that his companion's remarks were inappropriate, Priest Trist immediately advised him.

Jier did not mind. He felt that spiritual weapons were least afraid of being stolen or lost, so he immediately drew Hunting Sword from its sheath, supported the blade with his left hand, held the hilt with his right, and placed the long sword horizontally in front of him to show the two priests the Sun God Church Blessing Ability that had been fused into the blade after Hunting Sword was recast.

Seeing the young Jier being so generous, the two priests bowed slightly and leaned in side-by-side to observe closely.

The two of them looked down carefully and exclaimed in admiration: "Nass! Look quickly, this is a Praise Prayer extolling our God. Let me think, which one is this?"

His companion, Priest Nass, opened his eyes wide and read out the Praise Prayer engraved on the sword blade word by word.

"At sunrise, light shines upon the earth."

"All things unfurl, active and blooming."

"At midday, the light shines everywhere."

"Those with guilt in their hearts should retreat."

"At sunset, the radiance is gentle."

"Look upon me, and I shall grant you peaceful sleep."

"At the beginning, one should be joyful."

"In the middle, one should be in awe."

"At the end, one should be attached."

"When night falls, one should not panic."

"Those who believe in me, whether eyes are open or closed, shall have me."

"Thus, the darkness retreats."

"Those who are your enemies shall suffer the pain of blindness."

It was the first time Jier knew the content of the Sun God Church prayer embedded on Hunting Sword. This actually had some connection with the weapon ability granted by this Blessing Tool. One must know that the special ability of the long sword Hunting Sword was exactly what this Blessing Tool brought: releasing a range of white light to blind enemies.

He suspected at this moment that if he were a believer of the Sun God or a priest of the Sun God Church, this Blinding ability would likely be strengthened, just as magical as the Amber Metal Long Staff in the hands of Priest Bata'er.

However, he was no longer as weak as he was last year when he first obtained the recast Hunting Sword. After being brought into Knight Training by Knight Kela, his own skills were constantly improving. The Blinding white light, which was previously his trump card, now had very few opportunities to be used.

After all, for ordinary enemies, just swinging the sword a few times and the enemy would be dead; whether or not he used the Blinding ability, the result was about the same.

While Jier was thinking this, Priest Trist in front of him slapped his forehead and shouted excitedly: "I remember now! This is a formal prayer I once saw when I was studying in the diocese. The teaching priest at the time just briefly glossed over it. So it can actually be made into a Blessing Tool through certain methods?"

Priest Nass muttered with a puzzled look: "Why don't I remember the teaching teacher teaching this prayer? I have no impression of it..."

"Stupid, you forgot. The teacher at the time mentioned it once when teaching the production of Divine Power items. Of course, only once, and he only read the first half of this prayer. Hmph, those guys don't like making Divine Power items, so they didn't explain these in detail to those of us who were studying." Priest Trist explained to his companion.

But Priest Nass rolled his eyes at his companion: "Who has as good a memory as you?"

After they finished discussing, they thanked Jier for taking out his sword for them to view. Jier felt strange: "Is that all? No need to transcribe it? Or let me demonstrate this ability that can blind people?"

Priest Nass was about to nod, but Priest Trist waved his hand and declined: "Thank you, Knight Jier, this is already enough. I have remembered the prayer after seeing it, and the ability brought by the Blessing Tool is all contained within the content of the prayer. This is a formal Praise Prayer. As long as one knows the full text and possesses our priest's Sun God Divine Power, one can find ways to recreate it."

Priest Nass opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, he said nothing and had to shrug at Jier, indicating that Trist could do it, but he was still not capable enough.

Jier clearly felt Priest Trist's confidence and the faint pride in his own abilities in his words. He also wanted to get to know and befriend this young priest who looked like he had limitless potential for future development, so he thought for a moment and said: "Seeing that Priest Trist does not have the Metal Long Staff you had before, the 'Meteor' you threw earlier, hehe, I presume that was you who threw it, right?"

"That's right, that's right. It was me. I condensed Divine Power on the staff and aimed and threw it, intending to turn that parasitic monster into ashes directly. Sigh, who could have thought that guy would dodge it, and it just went off-course and landed somewhere I don't know."

Priest Trist turned around and pointed to the flight direction of the long staff that had just flown away, feeling a bit regretful: "But it doesn't matter. A priest's long staff—the church back in town has spare inventory. Although it's not the original one, there's no difference in using it temporarily."

Jier coughed lightly at this time: "If you don't mind, I can ride my horse along the direction it was thrown and help you find the lost weapon."

The two priests looked at each other and shook their heads in unison: "That won't be necessary. We've only just met, so it's really not good to trouble you like this. Besides, Knight, you have to be responsible for guarding the lumber caravan, don't you? If you leave temporarily, the safety here will be in danger."

Jier hummed and laughed twice: "Don't worry, my warhorse—Tianxuecao is very fast; it won't take much time to go and come back. As for the safety of the caravan and the Lumberjacks, I'll have to trouble you two to help out. If it really doesn't work, please call Knight Sasi; he and his soldiers are quite capable."

After Jier finished speaking, without waiting for the two to refuse again, he jumped onto Tianxuecao on the spot, sheathed his sword, tapped the horse's belly, and pulled the Jiansheng to start running.

Not passing through the Lumber Yard, Jier rode Tianxuecao, rushing out of the Lumber Yard which was covered in log piles, and circled directly from the outside toward the direction where the Jiao Shi Chang Zhang had flown off. Meanwhile, the two Church Priests at the scene exchanged a glance and had no choice but to enter the crowd, temporarily replacing Knight Jier to be responsible for the safety here.

Whoosh—whoosh—

The violent wind brushed past both sides of Jier's Helmet, bringing up a rhythmic whistling sound.

The Tianxuecao beneath him ran forward excitedly, letting go of its speed and stamina; encountering pits, Stones, or scattered logs that had fallen, it accelerated directly to leap up, jumping over these small obstacles.

Jier also shouted excitedly, which caused some of the parasitic Monsters lurking in the surroundings to hide one after another, or flee back in the direction they had come from.

Perhaps due to the fact that a large number of local parasitic Monsters had been defeated by Jier alone on horseback yesterday, these guys, upon discovering that this Human riding a horse was charging, all shrank back, no longer as stubborn and reckless as before.

The thrown Jiao Shi Chang Zhang flew toward the north side of the Lumber Yard; although anyone who saw that scene at the time would most likely describe it as a 'Meteor', in reality, this Metal Long Staff did not fly very far. After leaving the Lumber Yard, Jier, riding on horseback, easily saw a large area of scorched marks brought about by the 'Meteor' landing on a hillside to the north.

A piece of land the size of a house, along with the grass and trees that originally existed on it, had been burned into black ash. At this moment, as Jier galloped over on horseback, he could still see small clusters of wildfires still burning around the scorched marks, as well as rising gray smoke.

The smoke brought by the wildfires failed to form a conspicuous column of smoke, mainly because the wind here was quite strong; the small amount of smoke was blown away by the wind, disappearing after a few moments.

Jier, having ridden over, did not dismount immediately to search for the staff, but first circled this area a few times while on horseback.

"Sure enough, they are lying in ambush here."

Jier had sharp eyes; his gaze crossed the smoke that obstructed his vision, and on this black scorched earth burned by the flames, he discovered several 'ash piles'.

This was an uninhabited wilderness, not a place where Humans lived, so where would haystacks or firewood piles come from? Correspondingly, there naturally wouldn't be ash piles burned by the Divine Power brought by the staff falling from the sky.

Turning around, he took the Full Metal Double-Edged Spear from the Weapon Rack behind the warhorse, and Jier spurred his horse to charge straight at these ash piles.

Tianxuecao was somewhat afraid of the small patches of burning wildfire and the rising smoke, but with Jier urging it, it had no choice but to bite the bullet and charge forward, choosing to trust its master.

The wildfires on the periphery of the scorched ground were trampled out directly as the warhorse charged through, and even the smoke was dispersed by the wind brought up by the galloping warhorse. Calculating the speed and distance, Jier pressed his spear down, sweeping across an ash pile in front of him.

With a *puchi* sound, it clearly stabbed and pierced something.

The warhorse did not go deep into the scorched zone, passing by in a flash; Jier took the opportunity to lift the spear and look—sure enough, what was pierced on the spearhead was exactly a baring-fangs-and-brandishing-claws parasitic Monster.

Perhaps it had burrowed into the ashes to ambush the Church Priest who might come to retrieve the weapon; this guy was covered in black, filthy ash, looking not like a Monster controlled by a Human Face Core, but rather like a coal Miner coming out of a coal mine.

At this moment, not only was this guy pierced through the chest by Jier's spear, but even a vine root extending from its mouth was pitch black, listlessly whipping about on its face.

Jier laughed heartily, waving the spear in his hands, and nimbly chopped the guy's torso into several pieces in mid-air. In this way, even if the Human Face Core on the torso wasn't destroyed, the severed human body was no longer a parasitic body that the Flesh Demon parasitic Monsters could use normally.

In other words, this guy had been dealt with by him.

After dealing with this one, Jier turned the horse's head and charged toward the scorched zone again. This time, with the previous experience, Tianxuecao was much bolder; it felt that the so-called flames and smoke were nothing much—after being charged through like this by it and its master, they were directly trampled out and knocked aside.

They couldn't hurt it at all, *neighhh*!!

Jier keenly noticed the emotional change in his animal partner and praised it loudly: "That's it! Be brave, my friend! Charge!!!"

The warhorse galloped past, its massive iron hooves trampling out the flames and kicking up large patches of loose, scorched black soil, and the wind brought along with it also dispersed the smoke that interfered with vision and smell.

Jier leaned over and stabbed with his spear again, dragging the parasitic Monster that was lying in ambush in the ash pile all the way along the ground.

With the immense force applied to its body and the continuous friction against the ground, the parasitic Monster didn't even have any obvious counter-attack movements before it shattered into several pieces from the friction and impact with the ground.

Jier turned the horse's head and trampled over the shattered parasitic Monster, crushing it into the mud.

The parasitic Monster in the last ash pile knew that the ambush had been seen through by the Human and could no longer stay; it jumped out of the ash pile and scrambled to flee in any random direction.

But the hillside was gentle and covered entirely in mud and grass; before this guy had run even a few dozen steps, it was caught up from behind by Jier riding the warhorse. Without even needing to use a weapon to kill it, he simply rode the horse and trampled it to pieces, crushing it into the mud.

"Good, well done, lad! Now let's go retrieve Priest Cui Si Te's staff."

Jier patted the top of Tianxuecao's head, which was covered by a metal horse Helmet, making a *bang-bang* clashing sound of steel against steel.

This caused Tianxuecao to shake the pair of horse ears extending from the Helmet in dissatisfaction.

Jier jumped off the horse and used the spear in his hand to push aside the remains of shrubs on the path ahead that had been instantly turned to ash, to avoid getting his armor and cloak dirty.

He went straight to the center of this scorched earth; it was empty, but after he poked the ground at the center with the tip of his spear, it indeed emitted a crisp metallic clashing sound.

It seemed this move of the Priest's had great power; the vast majority of the long staff had pierced into the soft wilderness ground.

Judging the position of the staff by the sound, Jier reached out and felt around on the ground a few times, then grasped the end of the staff, which was still at a high temperature at this moment.

With a pull, the entire staff, still scorching hot, was extracted from underground by him.

The staff was scorching hot and one and a half meters long. It was unknown if any other materials had been added; the entire staff extracted from underground was not stained with mud or black ash, and the staff body still had visible Sun God Divine Power remaining on it, emitting white light particles that flew outward.

"It's quite hot," Jier muttered, sensing the rise in temperature on his right Gauntlet, and immediately switched hands to hold it carefully.

Afterward, he jumped onto the horse, switching hands to hold the glowing, scorching Metal Long Staff all the way, and hurried back to the Lumber Yard.