Slaying Shi Tu
Shi Tu spat out Dao Blood, staggered, and flew backward off the back of the Ground-Walking Giant Lizard, crashing heavily into the mud pit in a sorry state.
The violent aftershocks of the blade swept outwards, even flipping the several-meter-long Ground-Walking Giant Lizard to the ground, where it let out a series of mournful cries.
Tread.
Amidst the flying pebbles, a light footstep sounded beside Shi Tu's ear.
Shi Tu struggled to his feet from the mud, his mouth full of blood and foam. Just as he was about to lift his broken witch's staff, a cold, sharp blade silently pressed against the skin of his throat.
Chen Fan looked down at him from his superior position, his eyes showing no sign of fatigue from the long battle, his bone knife as steady as a rock.
"Now, whose foundation is truly deeper?"
The boy raised an eyebrow and asked a question with a half-smile.
The Shi Tu in the mud pit was disheveled, its chest heaving violently, and its turbid pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints.
He stared intently at that still-childish face, his lips trembling, but he couldn't utter a single word.
The entire battlefield was utterly silent.
Ahead, deep within the massive Battle Formation constructed of heavy bronze armor, three thousand fierce warriors of the Mountain Ape Tribe stood frozen in place.
Seeing the high priest lying on the ground coughing up blood, and then seeing the ten-year-old child standing by the mud pit with a knife, the fierce light in their eyes shattered completely, replaced by endless terror.
Click.
Someone stepped on a dry branch on the ground, and the slight, crisp sound was particularly jarring in the deathly silence.
Immediately afterwards, the front-line Battle Formation began to move slowly backward uncontrollably...
In the mud, blood seeped from the flesh of Shi Tu's throat, and the cold bone knife hung precisely above his neck.
"You little brat... you dare touch me?"
Shi Tu coughed up blood, the lingering panic in his eyes quickly replaced by the savagery in his bones.
"I am the High Priest of the Mountain Ape Tribe! My chieftain, Yuan Ba, has already reached the Peak Seventh Rank, and the tribe also has two other Seventh Rank elders! If you harm me in the slightest, when our army marches upon us, your entire Fire Crow will be wiped out!"
Chen Fan looked down at him, a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"That was all his last words?"
Shi Tu's pupils contracted.
Before that blood-stained mouth could open again, Chen Fan's wrist suddenly sank.
Laugh!
The Blade Aura, a fusion of water and fire, sliced through the neck bone without hesitation. A blinding arc of gray-red light shot into the sky, and the enormous head, accompanied by a fountain of scalding blood, rolled into the mud. The two eyeballs still bulged out, staring intently at the gloomy sky.
Chen Fan flicked the blood off the bone knife with his backhand, the movement as natural as picking a withered cabbage from his own garden.
"Enough with the nonsense, you're in such a hurry to be reborn that you don't even bother to choose the right time."
He muttered something casually.
The commander-in-chief died suddenly, and the world fell silent for a moment.
On the walls of the village, the Fire Crow Tribe, who had been tense to the point of near suffocation, watched as the arrogant Mountain Ape High Priest was decapitated. The fear that had been suppressed in their chests was instantly shattered and transformed into a scalding, earth-shattering roar!
The high priest is dead!
"The leader has beheaded Shi Tu!"
Chen Fan suddenly turned around, his blood-stained bone knife pointing directly at the three thousand heavily armored soldiers who were caught in the chaos ahead. His clear command pierced through the storm and resounded across the wilderness.
"Since you're already here, you have to leave some toll. Fire Crow army, listen to my command: leave no one alive, trap and beat them!"
"Kill!!"
With a loud crash, the simple village gate was smashed open.
Hundreds of Fire Crow warriors, their eyes already bloodshot with rage, roared and surged forth in a ferocious Battle Formation, like ferocious beasts unleashed from their cages.
The ruthlessness he had cultivated through daily battles in the mountains and forests erupted in full force at this moment, the crimson power of the Fire Seed and the Blackwater magic complementing each other.
The three thousand elite soldiers of the Mountain Ape Tribe had already lost their fighting spirit due to the tragic death of the high priest. Faced with this group of madmen's counterattack, they could not even maintain their Battle Formation.
The Ground-Walking Giant Lizards, terrified by the remaining pressure of Chen Fan's Seventh Rank totem, stomped wildly, trampling over those in the front row and tearing apart the Wasteland with their howls and screams.
This was a siege with no suspense whatsoever.
Half an hour later, the last remaining Mountain Ape squad leader, who had put up a stubborn resistance, was pinned to a boulder by three short spears.
A fierce wind howled, and the thick stench of blood permeated the frozen ground.
The warriors of the Fire Crow Tribe, covered in blood, stood amidst mountains of heavy armor and the carcasses of war beasts, their chests heaving violently. They had won; with only a few hundred old, weak, and wounded soldiers, they had crushed the elite forces of the overlord who had roamed for miles around!
Step, step.
The sound of footsteps grew louder as they approached.
Chen Fan stepped into this battlefield of carnage. The overwhelming murderous aura he had just exuded had been completely concealed, and he still looked like a ten-year-old boy with rosy lips and white teeth.
Thump!
An elderly veteran who had lost his left arm could no longer contain his emotions. He knelt heavily on one knee, pressed his withered hand to his chest, and his voice trembled.
"Leader's might!"
Splash!
Hundreds of soldiers, along with women, children, and the elderly peeking out from the stockade walls, knelt down in unison, their fervent gazes fixed on that small, thin figure.
In the brutal and untamed world of the jungle, strength is the only truth, and what Chen Fan brought them was not only life but also dignity.
Chen Fan paused, his brows furrowing slightly, then stepped forward and lifted the amputee veteran with both hands.
"Why are you kneeling? The mud is deep in the ground; how can you lift a knife if your bones are frozen?"
The young man spoke gently, and with a slight movement of his fingertips, a wisp of pure, Qi and Blood flowed into the old soldier's wound, forcefully stopping the seeping black blood.
The veteran's body trembled, and his cloudy eyes instantly turned red.
Chen Fan turned his head and looked around the entire scene, looking at the simple faces covered in smoke and blood, and said loudly.
"We're brothers, no need for these formalities. After the battle, let's see the spoils first!"
The solemn atmosphere was completely shattered by these words, and the soldiers grinned widely.
Soon, the mountain of supplies was quickly inventoried.
Three thousand sets of heavy, tough bronze armor, more than two thousand poisoned heavy axes, hundreds of tamed Ground-Walking Giant Lizard war beasts, and the warm, smooth storage bone ring found on the Shi Tu corpse.
When Chen Fan wiped away the remaining marks on the bone ring and poured its contents onto the open ground, gasps of astonishment filled the air.
The pile of spirit stones formed a small mountain, hundreds of jars of perfectly preserved Ferocious Beast Blood Essence, and three whole boxes of Second Tier- and Third Tier Body-Tempering Blood Pills exuding a strong medicinal fragrance.
This is almost half a year's worth of the Mountain Ape Tribe's accumulated reserves, far exceeding the Fire Crow Tribe's total savings over the past few decades!
As dusk fell, a huge campfire roared across the open ground of the Fire Crow Tribe.
The priestess, holding a stone platter filled with elixirs, respectfully approached Chen Fan.
"Leader, these treasures are yours to keep; they will be enough to support you in advancing to the next level of the Seventh Rank."
In the past, according to the barbaric rules, high-level resources were always enjoyed by the chieftain alone, while ordinary tribesmen could only share scraps.
Chen Fan glanced at the Blood Pills in the stone plate, chuckled, and shook his head.
"Eating this stuff is no different from chewing candy; it gets stuck in my teeth."