Chapter 216: Camp in the Rain |
Three days later.
Heavy rain poured from the sky, and thick, dark clouds obscured the distant mountains. Bai Mu rode Tuya through the muddy road. Behind him followed nine deer-riding girls. Their equipment had been completely revamped. Besides their original bows and arrows, each was now equipped with an iron-cast sword or saber, and wore rattan armor and helmets that protected their chests and necks.
All of this gear was synthesized from items Bai Mu had scavenged from the battlefield ruins. Useless scrap, once processed through the Book of the Witch, was turned into treasure, mass-produced into Common-grade weapons.
Although these weapons held little value to Bai Mu, they significantly boosted the villagers' combat prowess.
In terms of a real-time strategy game, they had evolved from low-tier units to mid-tier ones. At the very least, on the battlefields of this era, their equipment was something only commander-level figures were qualified to wear.
Over these three days, Bai Mu had not traveled a particularly long distance, but the scenes he witnessed along the way could only be described as fields littered with corpses.
During this time, he encountered several groups of fleeing refugees. Some traveled in small groups of two or three carrying farming tools, while others were women hiding in the tall grass, shivering in fear. Without exception, they were terrified upon seeing Bai Mu and his group, scrambling away in pure panic.
These refugees all looked like beggars—dressed in rags and covered in blood and filth. Bai Mu captured them. It could not be helped; if he did not catch them, they simply would not stop running.
Bai Mu had no intention of harming these suffering people. Instead, he brought them to his camp, provided them with food to fill their stomachs and water to drink, and took the opportunity to ask them what exactly had happened in this region.
In short, they had just been minding their own business, farming and working hard, when an army suddenly invaded their home. This was not a small band of bandits, but a structured military force. They marched under various banners, resembling the private armies of nobles. The region these refugees lived in belonged to a rather remote countryside within the nation of Wen, lacking even a single decent-sized city. The refugees were completely ignorant about the cause of the war and had no idea why these noble private armies had come to their impoverished backwater.
All they knew was that these important figures arrived in their villages and demanded they hand over their grain.
At first, these invaders did not resort to murder. They merely coerced the local gentry into handing over food. However, wave after wave of troops arrived, each group extorting them all over again. The locals simply could not endure it any longer, and so, fighting broke out.
The gentry's militia fought the nobles' private armies, the villagers fought the nobles who tried to steal their food, and even different private armies began fighting each other over rations when they crossed paths. The situation quickly devolved into a chaotic mess.
In truth, the village Bai Mu had first seen was merely the outskirts of the battlefield. The further east he traveled, the more shocking the scenes became. Besides the corpses of villagers, he also saw the bodies of many soldiers.
That was a true battlefield. Even warhorses lay dead in the fields. The desperate people did not even spare the horse meat, carving it off as if they were starving ghosts reincarnated. Although they had not yet resorted to using human corpses for rations, at this rate, that day was not far off. Bai Mu estimated that if he had arrived here about ten days later, he would not be witnessing humans killing humans, but humans eating humans. He knew a C-grade Script would not be that simple. If his previous life of traveling and camping in the mountains had felt like paradise, then this place was an absolute living hell—a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
The only piece of good news was that he had not yet seen any human corpses turn into vengeful ghosts.
Returning to the matter at hand, after a three-day search, he had finally found the trail of those men wielding firearms.
He communicated with the roadside mushrooms using Mushroom Speak, bypassed a fork in the road, and soon spotted the glow of a fire at the entrance of a cave.
There were tents and a horse corral at the cave entrance. These were merely temporary structures, swaying precariously in the heavy rain and strong winds. Several of the tents had already collapsed.
It seemed everyone in the camp had retreated into the cave to escape the rain. He only saw a few armed men standing guard at the entrance.
At this moment, he finally saw the true form of those firearms. Just as he suspected, they were incredibly primitive matchlocks. They were large and unwieldy, requiring both arms to hold and operate, looking much like proportionately shrunken cannons.
They appeared to be the type of weapon that required a complete reload after every single shot.
The soldiers had wrapped the matchlocks in waterproof cloth. It was obvious that these firearms lacked any waterproof mechanisms; once rainwater soaked the gunpowder, they would misfire and become heavy, useless lumps of scrap.
This was good news for Bai Mu. If there was anything in these people's hands that posed the greatest threat to him, it was undoubtedly explosives and firearms. Humans who had mastered the use of gunpowder and those who had not were two entirely different concepts. The moment firearms were invented, history was destined to be rewritten by them.
These weapons required no practice to master. They did not require one to understand astronomy or geography, nor did they require a mastery of eighteen martial arts. Even an underage child could learn how to use one just by watching it being fired once.
Even though Bai Mu's base attributes were now more than double those of a normal human, the probability of a child with a gun killing him was still not zero. Until your enemy becomes a corpse, you should never be arrogant enough to think victory is entirely in your grasp.
It was just like playing a MOBA game. There were always those who loved to dance in the fountain before the enemy nexus exploded. Ultimately, this would give the opposing team a chance for a comeback, resulting in a counter-sweep and leaving them so angry they could not sleep all night.
In a game, if your nexus explodes, you can just start over. But if a person dies, there are no chances for a respawn.
Bai Mu understood this truth deeply. Therefore, he held absolutely nothing back when dealing with these soldiers and their primitive weapons.
He steered Tuya to a stop at a slight distance, then summoned Xiao Wei, instructing her to charge up a Magic Missile aimed at the soldiers.
At the same time, he readied his own bow and arrow, aiming straight for a soldier's head.
Archery was not a skill he needed to relearn. He had learned to use a bow before he ever learned to shoot a gun, though modern bows were much easier to handle and aim than this type of horn bow.
However, for him, there was no real difference. His physical strength was immense, allowing him to easily draw the bowstring to its absolute limit. Furthermore, the bow in his hands was an enhanced horn bow synthesized from three others. It was nearly impossible for a normal person to draw fully. But once drawn to the maximum, even fierce winds would struggle to throw the arrow's trajectory off course.