A Few Too Many Bandits

"Did someone beat us here and kill all the bandits on Mingai Mountain?"

Chen Wu could hardly believe it.

At his words,

the others' expressions shifted slightly as well.

They had walked for so long without encountering a single bandit. That alone was out of the ordinary.

Now that Chen Wu had voiced his suspicion, they felt even more uneasy.

Liu Qinghong shook his head, his expression composed. "That shouldn't be possible. There shouldn't be any team that strong in the Novice Village yet."

His team ranked among the top ten in Novice Village No. 23012.

At the Fourth Level of Martial Entry, Liu Qinghong himself was also one of the village's top players.

He did not think he was the only one who had received the quest.

But to claim someone had wiped out an entire bandit faction,

Liu Qinghong refused to believe it.

"Something must have happened to the bandits on Mingai Mountain. Let's keep going and take a look."

After carefully examining the traces around them, Liu Qinghong immediately headed forward.

Zhang Quan and the others promptly followed.

Among the team,

Chen Wu kept walking, but his gaze involuntarily strayed toward the broken trees.

The marks looked as though the trees had been smashed apart by brute force, stirring a faint sense of danger within him.

But Liu Qinghong had already made up his mind to continue.

The others in the team said nothing either.

So he could hardly say much more without upsetting them.

The deeper they ventured into Mingai Mountain, the graver their expressions became.

If what they had seen earlier could be dismissed as a coincidence,

then the countless signs of fighting along the way could not.

Aside from the absence of bodies, the buildings and trees caught up in the fighting had all suffered severe damage.

As for why there were no bodies,

that was because bodies despawned.

"Brother Liu, did some players really beat us here and wipe out all the bandits on Mingai Mountain?" Zhang Quan could not help raising the question now.

Otherwise,

it was hard to explain the scene before them.

Liu Qinghong's expression darkened, but his steps never faltered. "Keep going."

They had spent so much time reaching Mingai Mountain. Returning empty-handed now was something he absolutely could not accept.

For players in the early stages,

every second counted.

Wasting nearly half a day was no small loss.

Not to mention,

he had paid a considerable price to prepare for dealing with the bandits on Mingai Mountain.

Zhang Quan and the others exchanged glances, none daring to say anything more.

Even Liu Qingqing remained silent.

She, too, was afraid of Liu Qinghong when he was angry.

As he continued forward,

Liu Qinghong's expression grew increasingly gloomy, while questions arose in his mind.

Who could have cleared the entire Mingai Mountain dungeon?

Fu Moyan, or Wen Feng?

Several names flashed through his mind in succession.

They were all top-ten players in Novice Village No. 23012. None was below the Fourth Level of Martial Entry, and a few had even reached the Martial Entry Fifth Level.

But that did not make sense either.

After all, clearing the Mingai Mountain dungeon would require a considerable number of players.

If that had really happened, there was no way word would not have gotten out.

With these suspicions in mind, Liu Qinghong and the others continued upward.

Their view, previously blocked by the dense forest, suddenly opened up.

"Brother Liu, look! Bandits!" Zhang Quan pointed ahead and cried out excitedly.

At that moment, he could not be bothered to keep his voice down.

They had trekked across most of Mingai Mountain and thought all the bandits had already been killed.

Now, suddenly seeing bandits was enough to lift their spirits.

It was not just Zhang Quan.

Even Liu Qinghong and the others gave a slight start.

Then they looked in the direction Zhang Quan was pointing, smiles involuntarily appearing on their faces.

Except—

before those smiles could fully form, they abruptly froze.

There were indeed bandits ahead.

But there were far too many of them.

At a rough glance, Liu Qinghong and the others saw at least forty or fifty bandits gathered there.

Two of them looked like leaders and gave off a particularly oppressive presence.

Zhang Quan also took in the situation, and the smile on his face gradually froze.

"These are... players?"

Qin Shujian looked at Liu Qinghong and the others, a little dumbfounded.

He had not expected this either.

He had just ordered Niu Feng to gather all the bandits on Mingai Mountain and was about to lead them in an attack on the Cloud River Stronghold when a group of players stumbled right in front of him.

Qin Shujian looked at Liu Qinghong and the others.

Liu Qinghong and the others looked back at them.

For a moment, everything fell silent.

"Outlanders!" an enraged voice rang out.

Qin Shujian turned his head and saw Niu Feng's furious face.

Noticing Qin Shujian's gaze, Niu Feng barely suppressed his anger and said in a low voice, "Stronghold chief, these outlanders constantly harass us on Mingai Mountain. They've killed quite a few of our brothers, too.

"Now that they're here, we absolutely cannot let them off easily."

At this,

Qin Shujian understood.

The Rubble Forest was unlike the Liangshan Stronghold, where he had wiped out all the players before they even had a chance to show their strength.

The player forces in the Rubble Forest were now developing well, posing a considerable threat to native NPCs like Niu Feng.

Otherwise,

Mingai Mountain would not have shown signs of joining forces with the Cloud River Stronghold and Chaotic Gold Mountain.

But that had only been the case before.

Now that Mingai Mountain had been incorporated into the Liangshan Stronghold, it no longer needed to ally with the other two factions.

"Brother Liu, what do we do now?" Chen Wu came up beside Liu Qinghong and asked quietly.

If there had been fewer bandits before them, things might have been manageable.

But there were forty or fifty, and two of them even looked like bosses.

That multiplied the difficulty several times over.

Liu Qinghong quietly took a deep breath and said without betraying his feelings, "Get ready to retreat!"

They had no choice.

With so many bandits, a single mistake could get the entire team wiped out.

None of them could afford the loss of everyone dropping a level.

Just as Liu Qinghong and the others were looking for a chance to withdraw, another series of footsteps came from behind them.

Hearing the movement,

Liu Qinghong and the others immediately turned to look.

"Fu Moyan?"

At the sight of the handsome young man with a longsword hanging at his waist, Liu Qinghong's gloomy expression eased somewhat.

Then he looked at the twenty-odd players behind Fu Moyan.

Under normal circumstances,

Liu Qinghong would never have greeted Fu Moyan with a friendly face.

But given the current situation, the arrival of Fu Moyan and his group gave him a different idea.

He had noticed them, and naturally, they had noticed him too.

Fu Moyan smiled and cupped his hands. "What a coincidence, running into you here, Brother Liu."

As he spoke, his gaze shifted toward the bandits of Mingai Mountain, and a hint of gravity entered his eyes.

"From the looks of things, are you here for these bandits too, Brother Liu?"