"They killed it just like that?"
Ning Zheng had been hiding in the grass halfway up the mountain as a sniper, and it took her quite a while to recover.
Because this looked far too absurd.
The Mountain Villa Defense Battle, which had suddenly been beaten back at every turn, had actually sent news of a great victory?
"I really worried about them for nothing."
Ning Zheng sighed. Were they really playing that dangerously?
Fairly speaking, this move had indeed been brilliant.
However, it was also because she had stepped in and lured the Crow King out for them.
Given the situation before, the Crow King had no need to appear at all. It could have simply commanded the crow swarm to attack one blind spot after another, break through their tower defenses, and wear them to death.
Ning Zheng made no further moves. Instead, she hid on the mountainside and silently observed the situation.
What happened next was simple enough.
They sealed the gap in the tower defenses that the Crow King had opened.
The headless Crow King outside flew and crashed around wildly, like a headless fly left with nothing but its body's instincts.
Caw!~
Caw!~
Without anyone to command them, the crows fought on their own and fell into chaos.
They began attacking the windows of the various tower defenses again, densely packed like swarms of bees.
But without organization or discipline, they were merely a heap of cannon fodder. Their attacks had no pattern, and they could not find the temporary blind spots that kept moving.
The Mountain Villa's various Defense Towers covered one another with volleys of arrows, and just like that, they held the line.
The battle was going splendidly!
That Crow King, however, was extraordinarily strange. After flying headlessly for a while, it seemed to gradually weaken, its vitality slowly fading away.
Its powerful instinct to survive made the headless body attack a passing crow beside it. With its claws, it brutally snapped the other crow's head off.
It lowered its head, as though putting its crown back on.
Crack!
It fitted the other crow's head onto its own body, and the two dim green eyes slowly lit up again.
Inside the Defense Tower.
The blacksmiths stared in stunned disbelief, clearly shaken. "The boss has a move like this too? Grafting a duck head... Cough, a crow head?"
What was one supposed to say about this world?
Before, they had only felt that being blacksmiths here was a little strange. Now, the more they looked, the more bizarre it became.
However, in the interest of emergency self-preservation, the Crow King, which had changed to a new head, was clearly much more foolish.
They could even basically confirm it.
The Crow King's head now contained another soul. It was no longer the same one as before.
Although someone in the Five Bodies Realm could survive having their head severed, their soul was ultimately parasitic within their head.
Without a head, it was difficult to live.
For the body to seek survival by cheating and finding a new partner was understandable, right?
From this, it was clear that this game was green everywhere.
Whether blacksmiths or crows, the game had only been open for a few days, yet one would fall victim the moment one let one's guard down.
"What a pitiful boss."
"I'll go outside and make two memes, putting a cuckold's hat on it to commemorate its departed youth."
"Aren't you the ones who cuckolded it? Scum!"
"You only thought of the surface. I thought of something deeper. A headless crow's body instinctively goes looking for a head? If a cultivator also had their head chopped off, and their body's instinct was trying to survive, would it run around looking for a head?"
Everyone found this angle rather novel after hearing it.
It really did seem possible.
If it ran around looking for a head, wouldn't the original cultivator be cuckolded?
If there were such a good thing, please have that headless body pass through bustling cities and crowded streets to come find me, snap my head off, and put it on.
This wasn't a question of whether one wanted to be Cao Cao.
They were mainly just greedy for the other party's body. To obtain a powerful body out of nowhere—wasn't that a Heaven-Sent Opportunity?
"Stop thinking about cuckolding someone's cultivator."
"Exactly. You're all dreaming while awake."
They shook their heads. As they chatted, they continued firing arrows, and the battle was going extremely well.
One arrow, then another, then another. They kept firing for more than half an hour. A pile of crow corpses had nearly formed a mountain on the ground when a blacksmith suddenly noticed, through the lookout window, a crow outside that was clearly dead stand up, swaying unsteadily.
It was actually a soul-form.
And then something strange happened.
That soul-form was like an empty bubble. It actually began devouring the flesh and blood of the surrounding crows, filling itself out with flesh and blood. The dense feathers covering the nearby corpses also flowed onto its body like water.
Caw!
The crow came back to life.
"What the hell is that? A ghost?"
The sight gave everyone goosebumps, and they hurriedly sent for Su Yu Niang.
A few minutes later, Su Yu Niang climbed up into the Defense Tower through the tunnel behind it. After listening to everyone, she paused slightly. "It is only an ember."
"What is an ember?" everyone asked curiously.
"You can understand it as a ghost. The vengeful spirits of this world are corporeal aberrations, while these embers can devour flesh and blood and attach themselves to it, taking on physical form."
"Now that several thousand crows have died, isn't it normal for an ember to appear?"
Su Yu Niang had read information about this. The battlefield was where these unclean things appeared most easily!
This was common knowledge known to every ordinary person, and it was extremely widespread.
It was only because these blacksmiths had not grown up in this world that they found it astonishing.
Ghosts, aberrations, embers—there were many names for them.
Humans were like candles. After burning out, they would always leave behind some residual flame.
Ning Jiaojiao, and all the people of the Spirit Manor, were also embers formed from the obsessions of the dead.
But those had been produced through special spells cast by the Demon People.
Now, some of the elders and villagers of the Mountain Villa, having gone too long without flesh and blood to fill them, were left with only empty spirit bodies.
Not everyone was like Ning Jiaojiao, with someone feeding her and frequent meat to maintain the fair-skinned, fresh, delicate young girl's form she had possessed while alive.
For a weak crow life-form like the one before them, the chance of producing an ember was already low.
Even if one did appear, it would not exist for long and would soon dissipate.
Ordinary people were also accustomed to seeing such things.
Some would even keep an ember of a family member at home and live alongside it after their relative's death. After a while, the family member's obsession would gradually fade away on its own.
Of course, if someone was dissatisfied with a family member's ember, they could also invite a cultivator to perform a ritual and kill it outright, eliminating the problem at its roots.
After hearing Su Yu Niang's explanation, everyone was rather amazed.
"So this is what the outside world's setting is like? Even ordinary people are used to it."
"What a pity we can't go down the mountain."
"Then how should this crow's ember be dealt with?"
Hearing everyone's heated discussion, Su Yu Niang thought for a moment before saying, "An ember follows the behavioral logic it had in life, but it has no self-awareness. It may not even realize that it has already died. Just ignore it. Treat it like an ordinary crow and retaliate normally. It will disappear after a few days."
Everyone found it fascinating.
Embers.
When people died, their lamps went out, occasionally leaving behind the embers of the flame.
"Does it not even realize that it has died?" A trace of horror kindled in many people's hearts, accompanied by an inexplicable sadness.
Embers were merely the final hope of the lonely living beings in this world.
At that moment, a corner of the mysterious world's prologue was being lifted. Some people could no longer restrain their imaginations about what the magnificent towns outside the Mountain Villa might look like.
In the wilderness, headless corpses crossed town after town, searching everywhere for new heads.
Before mourning halls, ordinary people embraced and wept over the shadows of their departed loved ones' embers.
Outside the towns, Demon Cultivators secretly hunted cultivators, using their flesh, blood, and Spiritual Roots to reassemble dead-body demonic artifacts.
And this Sword Forging Manor outside Pingchang City on Xinyi Continent would send the weapons it forged to towns everywhere, where they would compose all kinds of stories in the hands of the people.
"The game's prologue, the opening battle—this is already a solemn epic that can be touched."
Someone spoke softly. "With the letter system, although we live high atop the Mountain Villa, isolated from the world, we can communicate with our customers down the mountain, forge weapons and armor, and intervene in the journeys of their lives."
"What a pity."
"It is a pity. We cannot personally go outside and see this world."
Before you continue