“Eh?” A surprised captain walked over from the front cabin. He was a bearded man with deep, sunken eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for a long while, but his eyes were full of ferocity. His brows twitched as he glanced at Qianye with a serious expression. “An expert, I see. Fine, I was only stopping them from destroying my s.h.i.+p, no offense intended.”
Qianye hadn’t activated Bloodline Concealment, but his aura was well-constrained. Few in the empire could see through his strength, but here in the neutral lands, most of the people possessed extremely sharp intuition. They didn’t need to gauge him carefully to know that he was very powerful.
This made Qianye quite helpless. Then again, this was a cruel and merciless land; those without sharp intuition toward danger were probably dead already.
Qianye nodded toward the captain, not intending to stir up further trouble. He merely got up and walked over the toppled guests, preparing to disembark.
It was inevitable that he would step over people on his way out, but no one complained about it; they didn’t even dare to grimace. The captain had knocked so many people down with a single roar, yet Qianye was completely fine. Even an idiot could see that this person was so much more powerful than they were. These sailors and mercenaries were arrogant and fierce, but they had no habit of throwing their lives away.
After arriving at the cabin door, Qianye saw that two more airs.h.i.+ps had just landed and large numbers of mercenaries were pouring out from within.
Qianye was no stranger to the scale of Southern Blue. The war at Port City had just ended and the exploration of the Earth Dragon’s Lair was a secret, so there shouldn’t be any mercenaries here. There was no worry of unemployment for them since there was fighting everywhere in the neutral lands. The constant arrival of mercenaries was fairly abnormal. Did it have anything to do with the Earth Dragon?
Qianye asked the captain, “Is there another war? Why are there so many mercenaries?”
“Not a war but pretty close. There is indeed something happening here.” The captain stopped speaking at this point.
Qianye knew that the man was keeping him in suspense, so he fished out a couple of gold coins and stuffed them into the captain’s hand. Only then did the captain speak, “A little girl has reportedly appeared in the Black Grove in recent days. A son of the Southern Blue city lord was intrigued by this news and rushed into the woods to capture her. But for some reason, he never returned. After that, a furious Southern Blue city lord issued great rewards for the girl’s capture. Many people arrived to try their luck after hearing about this.”
A little girl in the Black Grove? Wasn’t that Zhuji? Qianye remained calm on the surface but was filled with killing intent. “How much is the little fellow worth? Besides, if it really is a little girl, how could she have wiped out an entire group of escorts?”
“There’s nothing impossible about that. That place is the Black Grove where countless natives operate. The Southern Blue city lord seems to have made up his mind to clear out all the natives in the region and see if he can uproot the Black Grove, too. Of course, this is the information everyone knows.”
Qianye stuffed more coins into the man’s hand. “Then what about the news others don’t know about?”
The captain waved his hands. “Not enough.”
Qianye simply pulled out the entire coin pouch and poured its contents into the captain’s hands. “Is this enough now?”
Qianye’s straightforwardness satisfied the captain. The man stuffed the handful of coins into his pocket, saying, “I know your money isn’t that easy to earn. Rest a.s.sured, my information will be worth it. I have two relevant pieces of information and a third that I’m unsure of, all included in the price.”
The captain turned back and roared, “Close the cabin doors, this information is worth a lot of money. You penniless misers can stay inside until I finish speaking!”
All the mercenaries felt helpless, but no one dared complain out loud.
The captain lowered his voice. “Firstly, someone managed to identify the young girl as a young arachne, but no one has any idea why she’s with the natives. This information has reportedly reached the Spider Emperor’s ears and he’s quite interested in this little fellow. A part of the Southern Blue city lord’s bounty came from him.”
“That was fast.” Qianye hadn’t been in the Earth Dragon’s lair for very long. Even the time he had spent traveling to and from the Northern Continent was only a couple of days. Yet, the Spider Emperor was already on the move.
“Mercenaries mostly depend on information to survive, they know who they should sell their information to,” the captain continued, “the second piece of information is related to the empire. It’s said that some people have arrived from that side. Naturally, their ident.i.ties are well hidden and no one knows what they’re here for. But these people were intrigued by the wood from the Black Grove and are willing to buy at a high price. You know that old fellow can smell the gold from half a continent away.”
Qianye nodded. The scariest part of the Black Grove was the natives hidden within it. If they could be cleared out, the forest would be nothing but a group of strange trees that could be chopped down. Hence, the Southern Blue city lord issued a large bounty with the Spider Emperor’s money. His true objective was probably the wood from the Black Grove. If the empire were to purchase them in large amounts, the price would definitely soar to exorbitant heights.
“Regarding the last piece of information, I’m not sure if it has anything to do with all this. I heard someone saw a destroyed wars.h.i.+p on the edge of the continent. According to hearsay, it’s an extremely large wars.h.i.+p, probably a duke’s ride. Oh right, that airs.h.i.+p resembles an Evernight vampire wars.h.i.+p, but it went down in the void so there’s no way to prove this. Okay, that’s all I know kid, you should get off now!”
Qianye’s expression was gloomy as he walked out of the airs.h.i.+p. He shot a glance at the disembarking mercenaries before leaving on his own.
Most of the soldiers felt a chill run through their bodies but had no idea why. All they could do was curse the d.a.m.ned weather. The captain watched Qianye’s receding figure with narrowed eyes. He spoke only after quite a while, “What intense killing intent.”
The first officer asked, “Do you know who that is?”
The captain shrugged. “It’s only a guess, but if it really is him, then this place is going to get very lively. Regardless, I have nothing to do with all this problematic stuff. Make preparations, we leave after two hours! Let’s get one more trip in!”
The first officer and sailors responded thunderously and got busy with their work. During this special period, Southern Blue would give out extra rewards for every batch of soldiers they brought in. Such good business wouldn’t last forever.
Qianye walked out of the airs.h.i.+p port, planning to buy a motorbike in the city and head to the Black Grove. But he found—as he arrived at the street where bikes were sold—that all the stores were completely empty. Even the older model jeeps had been sold out. There weren’t even spare parts left in the stores, and the key components were also in severe shortage. This destroyed any intention Qianye had to a.s.semble a bike on his own.
Qianye’s expression became gloomy. The empty street block only proved one thing: all the motorbikes had been bought out by the mercenaries. And their only possible objective was to rush to the Black Grove and capture Little Zhuji.
Qianye was highly confident in Zhuji’s combat strength; besides, she was right at home in the Black Grove. Her combat strength on paper was enough to destroy a complete mercenary corps, but a real fight wasn’t a game of numbers. Mercenaries were proficient in all kinds of treacherous methods, like traps, poisons, etc. Zhuji was still quite young after all, and lacked combat experience. So, it was likely that she would fall for people’s schemes.
Time was of essence! Qianye simply gave up on buying a means of transportation. He walked out of the city, robbed a motorcycle from a small group of mercenaries, and sped toward the Black Grove.
The Black Grove at this moment was much livelier than before. When Qianye arrived, the first thing he saw was the three large camps pitched beside the forest. They had even built an airs.h.i.+p landing pad, beside which was a mountain of various crates. Some of the containers had been opened and the mercenaries there were a.s.sembling what looked like a heavy truck, alongside some logging machines. There was even a half-constructed kinetic tower inside the central camp.
Apparently, this operation was quite an ambitious one. They were determined to gobble up the entire Black Grove in this region.
There were several wooden poles erected outside of the camp, from which hung the corpses of numerous native warriors. This was a form of psychological warfare. On one hand, it served to intimidate the enemy, while on the other, it was to infuriate the native tribes and lure them out from the forest. Their combat strength would be reduced by a third once they were out of the woods.
There was no telling whether this kind of strategy would be effective, but these mercenaries all walked a fine line between life and death. Naturally, they needed a way to vent the violent emotions in their hearts.
The native warriors hanging from the wooden poles were humanoid in appearance, but they possessed the characteristics of wild beasts in many parts of their bodies. A couple of them were exceptionally tall, possessing a slender build with long arms and legs. Those with b.e.s.t.i.a.l traits were the lowest level warriors among the natives. They possessed only a basic level of intelligence and played the role of cannon fodder. Only those two-meter-tall warriors formed the core strength of the native tribes.
Qianye had never observed a native up close before, so he went over to the wooden pole to size them up in detail. These warriors had obvious bulges on their throats, probably a special vocal organ. Additionally, their body structure was extremely suited for woodland combat.
Just as he was looking, a group of mercenaries rushed out of the camp, shouting, “The little fellow has been surrounded! Let’s go over quickly!”
“What? Completely surrounded? So powerful!”
“I heard the Stormwind Fury Corps killed countless natives and broke through the enemy lines, finally surrounding the little fellow and natives in a forest region.”
The group of young warriors was anxious. “Then what are we waiting for? We won’t even have soup left if we get there too late.”
An old veteran sneered, “You think those d.a.m.ned natives are so easy to deal with? There’s no telling how many of them are surrounded. There’ll no doubt be a lot of deaths in order to take them all down. The Black Grove has never been a fun place. Stormwind Fury must’ve paid a steep price in order to break the enemy ranks.”
But there was someone in the group who didn’t quite approve. “So what if there are a few casualties? Which one of us fighters aren’t living on the blade’s edge? There’s so much profit involved in this deal. How long are we going to wait? What’s the point of being a mercenary if we’re afraid of death?”
A large number of people chimed in. The group of mercenaries boarded their vehicles with great clamor and swarmed over toward the forest.
Watching the mercenaries leave, Qianye’s eyes turned cold and his smile, frosty.