"Clip-clop, clip-clop."
Rhythmic hoofbeats rang out at the village entrance. Along the stone-paved street, a man and a horse approached at a leisurely pace, like a knight passing through.
His expression was exaggeratedly astonished, because what he saw before him was indeed astonishing beyond words.
The entire village—including the lord, his men, the farmers, the farmwives, and the elderly and children—lay unconscious on the ground. Only wisps of smoke still curled from the pitch-black stone platform in the very center. A blue-haired girl knelt upon it, wearing an equally strange expression.
"May I understand that all of this was your doing?"
Zhang Yang sat upright on his horse. In the end, he had chosen to make his entrance this way. For that, he had been forced to rummage a shabby suit of armor out of the Fat Pig's home, drag away a thin, feeble old horse, and casually twist a wooden spear into a lance, disguising himself as a down-and-out knight passing through.
The blue-haired girl, still shaken out of her wits, looked up at Zhang Yang and hurriedly shook her head. But after only a second, she nodded heavily again, her face shining with a resolute, holy light.
"It was my Lord's divine might. These fools blasphemed against my Lord."
The girl's voice was crisp. She had sounded rather uncertain at first, but by the end she was brimming with confidence. A fanatical believer, huh?
She already possessed every quality needed to become one.
But Zhang Yang's Soul Force Field told him that the girl's devotion had received no response from her deity. So this was still a stupid evil god—stupid enough to reject benefits delivered right to its doorstep?
Zhang Yang began to worry about their future cooperation.
"By the King above, I have no interest in any