Yan Mo was thinking on how to subdue the A’wu clan without spilling blood when A’wu people were crying for their injured and dead members. This Shaman stepped out of the crowd and chanted at the injured people, and took out an animal skull. He smeared smoothing black from the skull onto the injured person’s body.
If they get help too soon, they won’t feel grateful. He needed to make the A’wu clan beg him to protect them, but how to actually do it?
Yan Mo rubbed his face and head. Clothes make the man, gold makes the Buddha. As the mountain god’s print, his current appearance actually didn’t match his identity.
The way you look on the outside was important. He needed to think of a new look that would look cooler, and not blend in with the crowd, and make everyone know that his identity is different at first glance.
This was all for later. right now, it’s better to think when it is the right timing for him and Yuan Zhan to come out.
Those two injured people, one of them looked like his injuries were worse, if Yan Mo appeared too late, he might not escape the verdict of ‘looking on as people suffer and die’.
Yan Mo looked at Yuan Zhan, he needed to discuss with this guy that they might need to come out earlier.
“It’s not the wolves.” Yuan Zhan muttered.
“Not wolves, what is it?” Yan Mo knew that Yuan Zhan had always kept his eyes on search, so he asked immediately.
Yuan Zhan had an uncertain face, “I don’t know. But the shadows I saw can’t be wolves. that looks more like … human.”
Ei? Didn’t Jiu Feng say that there’s no other two-legged monsters around here except for A’wu people? Where did these humans come from?
No matter the old young man and woman of the A’wu clan, everyone had a sorrowful face.
Their lives will become very hard once winter comes. It’s cold, there’s less food, the beasts around here become fiercer, and if the beasts get too hungry, they’d attack their tribe.
They have lived like this since their ancestors, they don’t even know what is suffering and what is hardships. They thought that life is just like this, they lived similarly to animals around them.
But this year’s winter was harder than the previous winters. The human faced-bird refused their offered sacrifices, the Shaman tried many ways and he finally took the sacrifice. He’d come back after receiving the sacrifice to give them prey at least once and at most three times before, but this year he didn’t.
The change of human faced-bird god towards them was just the beginning of their nightmare. In these few days, they were targeted by a pack of horrible demons.
“God… did he abandon us?” someone asked the old Shaman anxiously.
After one spoke, another one added, “god hasn’t come here for so many days already.”
“Without god, we will all be eaten!”
The old Shaman let the clansmen shout on top of each other and pile questions and crying, he continued to care for the two injured people. But the two people were injured too seriously, just by looking at one of them, you’d know he won’t make it. The other one will die sooner or later.
“Shaman!” Noticing their Shaman is ignoring them, a lot of people got anxious and yelled.
“Shut up!” The strongest man who had gone with the hunting team shouted in anger.
At this man’s angry roar, the other A’wu people shut their mouths, not daring to make a ruckus again.
“Shaman, if we stay here, we will all be eaten by those demons, they already see our tribe as a rabbit hole.” the man walked to the front of the old man, and said in a low voice.
The old man finally talked, his voice was hoarse, “but where can we go if we leave this place? those demons will follow us, until they eat every one of us!”
The man also knows that that’s true. He avoided his clan people’s eyes and spoke softly, with sorrow and unable to believe, “God, why did he abandon us?”
The old man couldn’t answer that.
The man looked at the old man with hardly concealed disappointment, but he didn’t say anything, just telling people to move the injured people into the tent and make the little kids stay in the tent, then tell people to use all of their belongings to defend against the enemy, including women.
Within the thicket, Yuan Zhan leaned to Yan Mo’s ear and whispered, “A’wu people are targeted by something, don’t move, those things shouldn’t have found us yet.”
Yan Mo’s body trembled. He stared fixedly at the left underbrush far ahead, his voice cold and stiff, “no, I think they’ve already found us.”
Just now, he thought that something flashed in that underbrush and kept looking there. and he really found something weird there as he kept looking.
The other party seemed to be very vigilant, it felt someone staring at it and quickly looked back at Yan Mo’s direction.
Yan Mo first saw a pair of eyes, green eyeballs. no matter how you look at it, there’s beautiful eyes. but as Yan Mo looked on, he understood what those words ‘shining green eyes’ meant. That pair of eyes only had the most basic insatiable hunger towards its prey.
Then, Yan Mo saw a human-like face, aside from not having eyebrows, it had a nose, mouth and ears. just that this creature not only had bigger eyes, it was rounder too. It’s eye sockets bulged out, it’s nose bridge collapsed, but the nose pointed up. It’s mouth was abnormally wide, as if it would reach his ears.
The human-like creature suddenly opened its mouth at Yan Mo and bare its sharp dog-like crisscrossing teeth as if threatening him.
Is that human? Yan Mo was appalled! He can vaguely see the creature’s body, it looked even smaller than a 5 years old kid.
Yuan Zhan followed Yan Mo’s line of vision and found the creature as well. He immediately ducked lower and made a gesture as if ready to pounce, making a low threatening growl and baring his teeth at that creature.
The creature closed its mouth and shrank back its head in, moving its body further into the shrubs.
“What is that thing?” Yan Mo saw the bushes shake a bit, as if something were moving through it and going away.
“Don’t know, never seen it. From its face, it might be some wild small man tribe.” Yuan Zhan didn’t dare to let down his guard one bit.
“You mean that thing is human?”
“of course, but they also eat human.” Yuan Zhan added, “not because they’re starving but because they think of humans as one of the animals to hunt. The Shanyi people under the southern Hasa mountain is also like that.”
There was a sudden scream from the A’wu clan.
“they’re attacking the A’wu clan! we’re leaving!” Yuan Zhan decisively said.
“what?“ Yan Mo hadn’t reacted yet when Yuan Zhan pulled him up with him and made him crouch again.
“That thing has found us, they will think we’re leftovers of the A’wu clan and attack us too. Let’s go, follow me!”
Yan Mo didn’t ask any more, listening to the experienced warrior at this time can’t go wrong.
One of his hands grasped a two-headed sharp wood stick, and the other had a bag of drug powder he had wrapped in a leaf, closely following behind Yuan Zhan.
Those creatures have surrounded the place but Yuan Zhan didn’t retreat to the A’wu clan’s settlement to seek shelter, but wound around to the higher ground.
The creature who ran to their place before with its pack to catch the ‘separate from tribe’ people ran into an empty hiding place, unhappy, the short creatures shoved each other. Then they heard a sharp roar and ran down to the A’wu clan with their two-ended stone pick.
The A’wu people had not found Yan Mo and Yuan Zhan. They first found the creatures who ran down to their tribe while roaring.
A’wu clansmen had nowhere to run. They can only howl and meet the creatures with all their weapons.
Yuan Zhan took Yan Mo to quickly rush to the high ground. He stamped on the ground, his bare feet coming in direct contact with the ground, as if feeling the soil around here. Then, he stood there unmoving. Soon, a wall about 1.5 m tall and 2 m long appeared, and kept becoming thicker.
Yan Mo stared wide. When did this boy get this skill?
Not only could Yuan Zhan do this, when the earthen wall reached the thickness he wanted, he stopped making it and put his hand on the earth wall.
Rows of sharp smaller earthen pieces appear on the wall.
Yuan Zhan grabbed one and made Yan Mo stand behind him as well as telling him to be careful of attacks from behind. He didn’t have the energy to make another earth wall, he still needed to conserve some energy to make smaller pieces to attack those creatures.
Yan Mo closed his open mouth, no wonder he dared to run here to check on the A’wu clan and even dared to take him, this burden, with him. turns out he wasn’t being brash or reckless, but had his own assurance.
Casualties began to appear within the A’wu people. Yan Mo heard screaming, and didn’t even think before grabbing one of the earthen shards and throwing it below.
Yuan Zhan speechlessly looked at him.
Yan Mo made an awkward smile, “most important is saving people, A’wu clan is too pitiful.” Don’t look at me like that ah! I’m forced to act like this so the guide sees that I’m trying hard to save people, or I’ll just be waiting for punishment!
But Yan Mo didn’t expect that that earthen shard he threw down without aiming could so coincidentally hit the head of one creature charging downwards.
That creature made a strange shout and looked back while holding his head.
Because of this rash action from Yan Mo, the creatures below, and also A’wu people found the two of them.
The A’wu clan didn’t know if the new people were enemies or friends, and did not have the spare time or energy to look closely, they had their hands full fighting off the creatures.
The creature who was unluckily hit by a misfire earthen shard raised his stone pick high and angrily ran towards Yan Mo and Yuan Zhan.
“sorry!” Yan Mo sweated, he really didn’t do it on purpose. When he grabbed the earthen shard and threw it down, he didn’t think about it. It’s all because of the guide, it made him like this!
Yuan Zhan who originally planned to look for a weak point and hit there didn’t say anything to Yan Mo, he just made him duck to the side so he wouldn’t make things worse, then grabbed an earthen shard. His back arched back and aimed it accurately at that creature, and hurled it down.
“Ah—!” the creature made a human-like scream. the earthen shard smashed into his head and his body toppled back, rolling down the hill.
After the success of that first hit, Yuan Zhan took aim at his second target.
Those sharp edges and hard earthen shards, in Yuan Zhan’s hand compared to Yan Mo’s hand, was like the difference between sky and earth.
Yuan Zhan had had experience hurling spears, none of his throws were bad throws, and with his strength, when the fist-sized pieces hit the creatures, the force could even make the short creatures topple over.
Yuan Zhan found out that hitting them on the face produced the best result, and immediately aimed at their faces as much as possible.
As long as the earthen shards penetrate their heads, there’s basically no way for the creatures to survive.
The creatures made shrill cries.
In Yan Mo’s ears it became: “Kill! eat! kill!”
Seeing Yuan Zhan’s fierce attacks, many more creatures ran over to their side.
Yan Mo saw that Yuan Zhan needed to fight against attacks from the front, he stood on Yuan Zhan’s back, back against back, and defended against this side.
The creatures split off a bunch of people to attack Yuan Zhan, making the load on A’wu people nearest to Yuan Zhan decrease a lot. This time, they finally have the time to take a closer look at the two strangers.
Ee? Since when was there an earth wall over there?
The A’wu clan elder rested the fastest. He realised that the creatures on that side mostly went to attack the two strangers and shouted at his people to quickly go help their clansmen on the other sides.
The creatures were quick learners, seeing Yuan Zhan using earthen shards to hit them and making them unable to advance, some of them were burned with anger and didn’t think twice before imitating Yuan Zhan, hurling their stone picks to Yuan Zhan like a stone.
The stone picks were sharp on both ends and it would’ve posed a certain amount of threat to Yuan Zhan, but the creatures weren’t that strong. If they don’t get closer when throwing it, they would just be throwing away their weapons. Still, one of the picks nearly hit Yuan Zhan.
Yuan Zhan dodged the stone pick as he picked one of the picks around him and checked it. He saw the picks were sharp on two ends, there was a hold in the middle for putting in a wooden handle, and his eyes brightened.
He intuitively knew that this thing is very useful!
Mot all of the creatures were willing to throw out their picks to the enemy, because this thing, not only are they very hard to make, these things were their greatest weapons. Without their stone picks, they only have their teeth and not very hard nails left.
Those few creatures who had lost their stone picks, if not hit by Yuan Zhan’s earthen shards and died, they got surrounded by A’wu clansmen and hit chaotically until they died.
“Jiiik—!” A sharp scream rang in the air. Some of the creatures hiding in the bushes heard the command and ran to the high ground where Yan Mo and Yuan Zhan were.
Yan Mo yelled, “I saw him! their leader is on my side, on the left! he’s right in front of me! Ah Zhan be careful, they’re running up!”
Yuan Zhan whipped his head around, those creatures might have guessed that his back was his weakness, a lot of them had run around to attack him from the back.
Yuan Zhan immediately stopped attacking on his front side and focused his attack on the back side where Yan Mo was situated.
“Make a wall! quick!”
“It’s too late!” Just making continuous sharp and hard earthen shards already made Yuan Zhan feel laborious for him, he also didn’t expect he’d run into this sort of long continuous battle on his first day out of the camp.
Yan Mo panted for breath and raised his head, feeling the wind direction.
There seemed to be no end to the strange creatures, Yuan Zhan’s movements were not as quick and easy as when he first started to fight. He can only defend on one side, if he guards the back side, no one can handle the front side.
Seeing the small creatures were about to reach them, Yan Mo determined the direction of the wind and gritted his teeth. “Ah Zhan, trust me!”
Trust you what? Yuan Zhan didn’t get to ask yet.
“Turn back to your side, fight off the enemy on the front! Don’t think about this side! Hold your breath when I tell you to!”
Yuan Zhan chose to believe in his own priest, he flipped back and continued his attack on the creatures in the front using the wall as his cover.
He entrusted his back to Yan Mo.
At this time, there’s no other choice but to trust, even if he doesn’t trust. He’s about to use up all his ability!
Yan Mo took in a deep breath and fixed his eyes at the small creatures that seemed to only know two words “kill” and “eat”.
Those creatures also stared at Yan Mo, waving their stone picks and making strange shouts as they charged up the hill.
Close, they’re getting close! so close that he can make out their faces clearly.
“Ah Zhan! Hold your breath!” After shouting that, Yan Mo also stopped breathing and held the powder bundle in his hand loosely, scattering them towards the monsters below.
Just one bundle is not enough. He scrambled to his healer pouch for one more, then changed direction to scatter the powder, he used up all of five bags, and was about to be unable to hold it back anymore, before he stopped.
Yan Mo pinched his nose, not letting some of the powder scattered in the air to hurt him back.
Too bad he didn’t have a spray and vaporiser unit, or the effect will be better and he won’t need to waste so much drugs!
Ten doses, a medicine, nine doses, a poison, all depending on how the doctor uses it. He had discovered that this herb’s flower, seed and fruit disrupt an animal’s cerebellum. It can make their limbs unable to move, body twitching and spasming when used in small doses, but when it’s in larger doses, can knock animals unconscious or even kill them.
To bring up the effects of this drug to be quick-acting, he processed the herb after picking it, mixing it together with a catalysis herb he had. When grinding it into a powder he even had to cover his mouth and nose with a pelt, and had taken an antidote beforehand.
He got this formula by exchanging a prescription for children for parasitic disease and a box of highly effective medicines with people living in a small populated village in a deep deserted mountain.
He himself knew the toxicity of this herb, but this prescription could enhance the toxins in these herbs to the greatest degree and make it extremely lethal to people and undetectable. This formula had been used by that small minority group to protect themselves in the mountains.
He won’t believe these creatures can be immune to this poison. If this lethal poison that can deal with most living creatures turns out doesn’t affect these creatures in the slightest, then he can only accept his fate as their roast meat.
The wind carried the poison powder into the middle of the creatures.
Yan Mo counted in his mind: one, two…
After counting to two, one of the creatures ran to him suddenly became much slower, its steps became weak. His lower mouth twisted, as if he was drunk, his steps became unsteady and his stone pick fell from his grip.
After one, there are others. one by one, the creatures waved their hands and feet wildly, their limbs jerkily twisting without order and they fell down while spasming.
The creatures had small bodies, the poisons Yan Mo scattered were enough for them. the more active ones fell down faster.
Yuan Zhan held his breath until his face turned red, he turned his head around to ask his Priest-daren if he can breathe again or not, as a result, he saw the scene behind him and was so shocked that he forgot to keep holding his breath.
Edited by Silversun.
Padam: Thank you Llalica! I’ll try my best! Everyone, I made a gallery compiling official arts I found for BAW, it’s linked in the novel page. If you only read this translation version, the images contain spoilers!
Comments