Night Patrol

"This one was at least heavy enough to smash people."

Seeing Lu Chen answer like that, the Barbarian Tribe member managing the armory could only register it for him.

Afterward, Lu Chen left the room with his weapon.

The moment he stepped outside, Lu Chen saw two burly men waiting nearby. They were the guides the guard captain named Ya had found for him.

Neither of them was a Barbarian Blood Warrior, but Lu Chen had no arrogance about him.

"I'll be relying on you two for the rules of the night."

"Don't worry. As long as you don't cause trouble, nothing usually happens."

As they spoke, the two led Lu Chen toward the outskirts of the village, explaining things to him along the way.

"Our Patrol Team follows predetermined routes. You should already know that from daytime patrols, so I won't say much about it."

"However, compared to daytime, our patrol range at night is cut by more than half. At night, we only need to patrol the area around the village."

"Remember, no matter what you hear at night, don't think about it, and don't look at it. At night, the fewer troubles, the better."

As he spoke, the other Barbarian used his torch to light an oil lamp.

Carefully shielding the lamp, the other Barbarian said:

"Whatever you do, don't let the oil lamp in your hand go out. Terrifying aberrations wander through the darkness. As long as there is light, those aberrations will not strike. But once the light disappears, even great figures of the Barbarian Body Realm and Barbarian Bone Realm can vanish without a trace."

"Vanish? You mean they die?"

"No. There are no corpses left behind, only footprints that disappear into thin air. No one knows where those taken by the darkness go."

Thus, amid their endless chatter, the two Barbarians led Lu Chen on patrol while explaining the relevant matters.

However, once they reached the outskirts of the village, their voices grew much quieter. They also warned Lu Chen that unless absolutely necessary, he must never speak.

"Sound attracts aberrations. The smell of blood does too, so you must be extremely careful."

Since Lu Chen had previously been a daytime patrolman, the other two Barbarians stopped explaining after talking for a while.

In their view, Lu Chen should already know everything else. After all, daytime patrolmen were trained for night patrols, and they had been taught some of the taboos of the night.

Lu Chen did know this, but hearing it from others was ultimately just hearsay. Only by patrolling in person could he truly understand the taboos of night patrols.

And so, following the two Barbarians, Lu Chen began his journey of night patrol.

Without making a single sound, the three carried oil lamps and moved along the planned route like ghosts.

This continued for more than half an hour. But after they had traveled along the patrol boundary for around ten minutes, Lu Chen suddenly halted.

Raising his head, Lu Chen saw a light appear over the moonless land. Looking closely, he discovered that it came from a fireball the size of a human head. The fireball was crimson and eerie, bouncing up and down as it moved forward.

When the fireball drew slightly closer, Lu Chen discovered that although it was made of flame, a human face was grinning ferociously upon it.

The sight made Lu Chen instantly draw his iron sword. At the same time, he placed a finger against the blade, ready at any moment to cut his own skin and let blood drip onto the "iron sword," using it to strike down the aberration.

There was no helping it. Barbarians were poor, and the only thing they could use was the vigorous Blood Qi in their bodies.

When facing aberrations, they could only fight blood with blood.

Fortunately, once they broke through to become Barbarian Blood Warriors, Barbarians' blood contained potent pure yang energy, the finest means of dealing with aberrations.

But just as Lu Chen was about to attack, two hands suddenly grabbed him from either side.

Turning his head, Lu Chen found that it was the two Barbarians.

Both were nervous. While gripping Lu Chen, they kept waving their hands and signaling with their eyes for him not to attack.

After hesitating for a moment, Lu Chen still chose to heed the two "old hands."

And the facts proved that the two Barbarians had made the right choice.

The Human Head Fireball truly was steadily approaching the village.

But after getting within a certain distance, the Human Head Fireball seemed to sense an aura it found unpleasant and became unwilling to advance.

However, it seemed to have been drawn in by Blood Qi. Though it did not move forward, the Human Head Fireball had no intention of leaving either, continuing to bounce about nearby.

On the other side, the two Barbarians pulled Lu Chen and rapidly retreated toward the village.

Very soon, the two Barbarians dragged Lu Chen back into the village. Only then did they relax enough to breathe loudly, and Lu Chen took the opportunity to ask what had happened.

"What was that just now? Why didn't we attack?"

His question made the two Barbarians exchange smiles. Then one of them said directly, "A'Chen, you may be strong, but night patrols aren't something strength alone is enough for."

"That's right. For us, not every aberration needs to be dealt with."

"The Totem Pillar in the village deters evil entities. Most evil entities are unwilling to enter the area protected by our totem. What our Night Patrol Team guards against are the monsters capable of entering the Totem Pillar's range at night."

From the two Barbarians, Lu Chen quickly learned Barbarian Bull Village's method of dealing with evil entities: stay vigilant, defend, and avoid alerting them whenever possible.

With the Totem Pillar serving as a deterrent, combined with such a passive approach, Lu Chen found that the Patrol Team's casualties had been reduced to the lowest possible level.

However, this also had side effects. Although evil entities did not dare enter a village guarded by the Totem Pillar, if they were not cleared out, they would continue to exist.

Later, during the patrol, Lu Chen sensed that nearly everywhere around the village at night was filled with wandering evil entities.

Human Head Fireballs, scarecrows, Tattered Freely Moving Umbrellas... all kinds of evil entities roamed and moved through the night, while humans could only tread carefully, unable to make the slightest sound.

The sight made Lu Chen truly realize that in this world, humanity was no longer the master of heaven and earth.

At the very least, it was no longer the only master.

"Day belongs to humans, night belongs to ghosts and monsters. I never expected the state of this world to have deteriorated to such a degree."

After several more hours of patrol, at midnight, when the sky was at its darkest, Lu Chen followed the two Barbarians to the village boundary once again.

The boundary of the patrol route was the boundary covered by the village's totem. Here, the Totem Pillar's deterrence was at its weakest.

As a result, the evil entities gathered here had the strongest desire to attack humans.

Whenever the patrol reached this place, the evil entities here would become restless, and their malice toward humans was no longer concealed in the slightest.

The two Barbarians had long grown used to this. They glanced at the evil entities and did not dare speak, instead carefully backing away.

But after retreating several dozen meters, the two Barbarians suddenly discovered that this time, only the two of them had retreated. The genius entrusted to them by Witch Doctor Master had not followed.