The night passed without incident.
To Xia Nan's surprise, this Adventurer party that had unexpectedly come to Gray Valley Village actually stopped causing trouble after his silent warning. There was no movement from them for the entire night.
But that did not change his decision.
After eating breakfast at Tom's house and happily drinking a bowl of steaming, fragrant, sweet, and savory clear mushroom soup that Madam Janice had carefully adjusted to his tastes, he told young Leon to rest properly at home and not wander into the forest if there was nothing to do.
Fully dressed and armed, Xia Nan left the cottage and headed straight toward the village entrance.
He did not rush to carry out his previous plan. Instead, he found a hidden spot nearby with a broad field of view and waited quietly.
And just as he had expected, after waiting for a little more than twenty minutes deep among the dense forest shrubs, the four members of the Adventurer party appeared in his sight at the village entrance.
The scar-faced captain with a curved saber hanging at his waist, the tall Ranger carrying a longbow on his back, the Greenskins Half-Orc bastard, and the slightly bloated Dwarf.
Not one was missing.
Compared with their travel-worn, irritable appearance last night, a night's rest did not seem to have restored their condition much.
In particular, the burly Greenskins Half-Orc among them wore a sullen expression, and he kept looking back every few steps, frequently glancing toward the village behind him with reluctance, as if regretting that he had not been able to wreak havoc on the place.
The backpacks on the few of them had also clearly bulged out much more.
What was inside was the grain the villagers used to get through the winter.
Perhaps it