"Who's killing prisoners? Do you have a death wish?"
A voice rang out among the Great Qian soldiers, and Squad Leader Liu soon pushed his way through the crowd.
"Who's killing prisoners?"
Squad Leader Liu swept a cold gaze over them as he demanded an answer.
The next instant, everyone turned to look at Li Dao.
"What's your name?"
Squad Leader Liu looked at Li Dao.
Li Dao casually tossed away the saber in his hand and said evenly, "Nine Five Two Seven."
Nine Five Two Seven?
Squad Leader Liu froze, then abruptly jerked his head up. "You're from the Death Row Camp?"
At the mention of the Death Row Camp, everyone present froze, including the Northern Barbarian soldiers.
Li Dao did not deny being a condemned prisoner. Something like that would never withstand an investigation, so he nodded in acknowledgment.
A sharp hiss!
Everyone inwardly sucked in a breath of cold air at his admission.
Most condemned prisoners they had seen on the battlefield either went to their deaths or hid somewhere deserted, trembling in fear.
But for many of them, this was their first time seeing a condemned prisoner who had fought on the front lines with two sabers and survived.
He was rarer than a national treasure.
Squad Leader Liu steadied himself and looked up to ask, "Why did you kill the prisoners?"
Li Dao said, "My hand slipped."
Squad Leader Liu said, "Your hand slipped twice?"
Li Dao said, "The first time was my left hand. The second was my right. They're different."
Squad Leader Liu: "???"
The Northern Barbarian soldiers: "******"
Whoosh!
A saber suddenly sprang up from the ground and pierced straight through the Northern Barbarian soldier who had been cursing the most viciously.
In an instant, silence fell over the entire scene again.
Squad Leader Liu's face flushed with anger. "Nine Five Two Seven, what excuse do you have for this?"
Li Dao said, "Sorry. This time, my left foot slipped."
Squad Leader Liu laughed in sheer fury. "Then is your right foot going to slip next?"
Li Dao shrugged. "Who knows?"
The Northern Barbarian soldiers were stunned into silence. Not only had a condemned prisoner from the Death Row Camp beaten them into surrender, they were still being killed after surrendering, and now he was threatening them too. They truly had no rights whatsoever.
Seeing Li Dao act like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water, Squad Leader Liu instantly lost his temper for arguing.
After all, what could he hold against a condemned prisoner?
Punish him under military law?
Condemned prisoners were not soldiers.
Kill him?
He was already a condemned prisoner who was supposed to die.
Besides, killing him in secret earlier would have been one thing, but how could Squad Leader Liu do it now?
This condemned prisoner, Nine Five Two Seven, deserved a large share of the credit for the night raid's success.
Furthermore, the stronger a condemned prisoner was, the more useful he would be on the battlefield, and the fewer casualties their soldiers would suffer.
That made him even more reluctant to kill Li Dao.
In the end, Squad Leader Liu could only settle the matter with a light punishment.
Little did he know, Li Dao dared to kill prisoners so brazenly precisely because he had reached the same conclusions.
As far as Li Dao was concerned, he was already on death row. What else was there to fear?
Could they sentence him to death a second time?
"Nine Five Two Seven, because you killed prisoners, you won't receive any merit for this mission."
"Does the merit for killing enemies still count?"
"Killing enemies? How many did you kill?"
Without a word, Li Dao took a bloodstained cloth bundle from inside his clothes. When he opened it, it was filled with the left ears of Northern Barbarian soldiers.
After a rough count, he looked up and said, "Eighteen in total."
"Counting the three on the ground, that makes twenty-one."
Squad Leader Liu's face darkened as he looked at the three dead prisoners on the ground. "Those three don't count."
If killing prisoners counted as killing enemies, Li Dao would not have been the only one doing it.
Li Dao did not argue. He said evenly, "Then eighteen."
He had already received the attribute points anyway. He could do without the ears.
Yet even those eighteen kills left every Great Qian soldier present astonished.
Great Qian and the Northern Barbarians had fought for over a hundred years, with victories and defeats on both sides. Their casualty ratio generally stayed at one to a little over one.
In other words, one Great Qian soldier's life could generally buy only one Northern Barbarian soldier's life.
Tonight's surprise raid might have skewed that ratio, but at most it would be one to two: one Great Qian soldier's life for two Northern Barbarian soldiers.
Yet this Nine Five Two Seven had killed eighteen Northern Barbarian soldiers single-handedly.
That was more than most of the regular Great Qian soldiers present would kill in their entire lives.
Squad Leader Liu had not expected him to kill eighteen Northern Barbarian soldiers either.
Looking at the ears offered to him, Squad Leader Liu drew a deep breath before speaking. "As punishment for killing prisoners, you'll forfeit the base merit for this mission. If it happens again, you'll lose the merit for your enemy kills too."
At that, Li Dao smiled. "Thank you, Squad Leader."
Having experienced the benefits of attribute points, he no longer cared quite so much about military merit.
Once he grew stronger, military merit would be his for the taking anyway.
Squad Leader Liu snorted coldly. "Although I don't know why you ended up in the Death Row Camp, if you have talent, treasure it. Don't get too arrogant, and don't entertain any other ideas."
"Understood."
Li Dao knew what Squad Leader Liu meant.
He was warning him not to think his fighting ability meant he could escape.
In fact, Li Dao knew perfectly well that he could have escaped earlier if he had wanted to.
But what would happen after he escaped?
Upon entering the Death Row Camp, all records of his life had been erased. In other words, he had become an unregistered person.
An unregistered person would face rejection and hostility wherever he went. If the authorities caught him, they might even treat him as a wanted criminal.
The same would hold true even if he fled the Great Qian Dynasty and entered another dynasty.
Having no identity in this world was like having no identity card in his previous life.
He would be fine as long as nobody checked, but if anyone did, he would find it impossible to take a single step.
Thus, Li Dao had never entertained the idea.
He intended to fight his way out of the Death Row Camp openly and earn a new identity.
And there was one more, most important reason for doing so.
He still had family in this life.
If he wanted to return to them, he needed a clean identity.
The Northern Barbarian soldiers had surrendered. All that remained was to clean up the battlefield.
Normally, once the fighting ended, the condemned prisoners would be locked up separately. They still had to be taken back, after all.
Perhaps because Li Dao had performed so exceptionally earlier and saved quite a few Great Qian soldiers, nobody brought it up.
Moreover, after taking a count, everyone discovered that of the twenty condemned prisoners brought along, Nine Five Two Seven alone had survived. That gave them even less reason to say anything.
Li Dao glanced around and walked over to a campfire.
A roast leg of lamb was still suspended over it.
Without standing on ceremony, he picked it up and began gnawing at it, abandoning all table manners.
After his first bite, Li Dao let out a long breath as he tasted a flavor he had not enjoyed in ages.
While eating the lamb, Li Dao silently said to himself, Panel.
The next instant, the panel appeared before him.
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 3.16] [Available attribute points: 1.24]
After the initial fighting, his physique had already reached more than three times that of an ordinary person.
Later, the fighting had grown too fierce for him to allocate his points, allowing him to accumulate quite a few more.
As he ate the roast lamb, he silently used his mind to assign all his points to physique.
In an instant, a warm current surged through his body.
Perhaps strengthening his body placed a certain strain on it, for an even fiercer hunger arose.
Crunch!
Li Dao bit down, tearing away a mouthful of roast lamb along with the bone inside.
With a physique three times that of an ordinary person, his teeth were exceptionally strong. He crushed the bone in his mouth as well and swallowed it.
A dozen or so breaths later.
The warmth faded, and Li Dao's bodily strength climbed to another level.
[Master: Li Dao] [Physique: 4.40] [Available attribute points: 0]
His physique was more than four times that of an ordinary person.
Li Dao felt that even with the Tetanus Blade he had started with, he could cleave someone in two with a single stroke.
Had he possessed his current strength earlier, he would not have needed to be so cautious at the beginning. He could simply have charged into the Northern Barbarian soldiers and slaughtered them.
After all, a physique four times that of an ordinary person was an overall enhancement.
Four times the strength, four times the stamina, four times the recovery, along with speed and reflexes beyond those of ordinary people.
(P.S. In reality, speed and reflexes do not multiply as physique doubles. They only increase gradually.)
Any one of these alone might not create an overwhelming deterrent.
But stacked together, their effect would be terrifying.
With four times the strength, even an iron rod could become an unstoppable weapon.
With four times the stamina, he was practically a perpetual-motion machine. Even swinging a saber all night would not tire him.
With extraordinary speed, every attack would kill. No ordinary soldier could dodge an attack he initiated.
With extraordinary reflexes, ordinary people's movements looked slow to him. He could react swiftly and counterattack in time.
Especially on an ancient battlefield fought with cold steel, his combat prowess would be magnified without limit.
And this was only the beginning.
After all, only a week had passed since he obtained the system, and he had fought in just one battle.
As he continued to develop, his strength would only grow like a snowball rolling larger and larger.
The battlefield was cleared quickly. This was only a small Northern Barbarian force, after all, with no important supplies.
Meanwhile, Li Dao had eaten and drunk his fill to his heart's content.
Although the flavors were not as complex as the barbecued meat of his previous life, compared with the food in the Death Row Camp, this roast meat was a heavenly delicacy.
"Nine Five Two Seven!"
A voice suddenly sounded beside him.
He turned and found that Squad Leader Liu had come up beside him at some point, leading a chestnut horse.
"Can you ride?"
Squad Leader Liu patted the horse as he asked.
"Yes."
How could Li Dao not know how to ride?
The earldom he had inherited was a third-rank title awarded for military merit, and specially appointed examiners had tested his riding, archery, and martial skills when he inherited it.
Although he had ultimately passed by paying bribes and pulling strings, he still knew how to ride a horse.
Squad Leader Liu nodded at his answer. "Then ride back with us."
"One final reminder: with your abilities, it's possible for you to walk out of the Death Row Camp openly and honorably. Don't make the wrong decision."
"Understood."
They had come on foot under cover of darkness, but returned on horseback, so Li Dao soon arrived back in Changgu Town with Squad Leader Liu's troops.
This was where the army was stationed on the frontier.
"Put these on."
As soon as Li Dao dismounted, Squad Leader Liu approached and handed him a set of manacles and leg irons.
Seeing the familiar restraints, Li Dao calmly accepted them and put them on himself.
These things had once been shackles that bound him. Now, to him, the manacles and leg irons were merely a temporary stage. Sooner or later, he would cast them aside.
Before long, Li Dao returned once more to that familiar place.
The Death Row Camp's prison.
As soon as the door opened, the condemned prisoners inside froze in unison at the sight of Li Dao.
They hadn't expected Li Dao to come back alive.
When they saw that he alone had returned, the people in the cell became even more certain that he was not someone to be trifled with.
Li Dao paid no attention to their reactions and simply picked a corner to sit down in.
After the frenzied fighting earlier, his excitement had faded, leaving him with nothing but drowsiness.
Before he knew it, he drifted off to sleep.
This time, he held no wooden spike.
He had already gained power far greater than a wooden spike could offer.
As for anyone launching a sneak attack on him, he wasn't worried.
His physique, four times that of an ordinary person, gave him such keen senses that he could detect an ordinary person drawing even slightly closer.
Naturally, that left him with no reason to worry about it.
Before you continue