Chapter 673: Chapter 486, Preparing for War_1
Fang Hao’s brows furrowed.
He quickly grabbed Rebecca’s hand that was reaching for the teacup.
Rebecca was startled, thinking he was going to play a prank again.
She coquettishly said, “What are you doing!”
There was no complaint in her tone, rather it had a teasing feel to it.
However, Fang Hao was not in the mood to indulge in such playfulness at the moment.
His brows were still furrowed.
He said coldly, “There’s something wrong with this tea, don’t drink it!”
Jack-o’-lantern!
Fang Hao had seen Jack-o’-lantern being sold in the channel.
It’s the size of a pumpkin and eerily resembles a human head with distorted features.
The appearance is uncanny.
The characteristic of this vegetable is that it is tasteless, colorless, and contains certain toxicity. After consumption, the person gradually weakens and fully loses their combat capability within a few minutes.
This poison, while not potent, doesn’t have much effect on heroes or those with Poison Resistance.
But it’s deadly enough for regular soldiers.
Previously, lords who had crossed over here were fond of buying Jack-o’-lantern for a long time,
They mixed the flesh of Jack-o’-lantern into the food of the wild beasts to clear off the beasts and monsters around their territories.
Who would’ve thought that today their own group had ended up like the targeted beasts.
He looked again at the cold tea in his hand, which gave off a cool feeling and emitted a light fragrance.
Still holding her hand, Rebecca’s expression instantly turned serious.
“What’s going on?”
“This tea has been mixed with Jack-o’-lantern, it causes loss of mobility after consumption.” Fang Hao spoke in a deep tone.
Rebecca instantly looked grave.
She remembered vividly the incident with the Life-taker last time, now it’s happening again.
What’s going on this year? They keep running into such incidents on the road.
“Don’t worry, it hasn’t reached the worst point yet.” Fang Hao continued.
Meanwhile, he cracked the window a bit and peered outside.
Everything seemed normal at the tea stall. A few plainly dressed villagers with anxious looks were preparing cold tea for the soldiers.
Even though they looked like villagers, they had pretty high ranks.
[Human Warrior (Eighth Rank)]
[Human Archer (Sixth Rank)]
[….]
With such high ranks, they could be the leader of bandits in the mountains.
Here, within the range of Silver Wing City, they should be mercenaries.
At the tea stall, some soldiers started to pour out all the water from their water bottles, planning to replace it all with this cold tea.
Fang Hao took another look around.
The roads on both sides were flat, with no hiding places for an ambush.
The poison from the Jack-o’-lantern acts slowly, it will start to take effect gradually.
This place should only be where the poison was laced, the real attack would come later when the poison starts to affect everyone in the team.
He gently tapped on the round hip of Rebecca and asked her to sit aside.
He called Demitrija and Aseti over through a window opening.
The two men bent down and came to the window, listening to Fang Hao’s instructions.
Afterward.
Both nodded their heads and split, heading toward the front and the rear of the team respectively.
Soon, Demitrija could be seen taking some soldiers and approaching the tea stall, taking control of the villagers.
The sudden action caught them off guard.
They were directly pinned to the ground.
Then came a clanging noise. The tea stall was violently searched.
A few weapons were found and thrown in front of the villagers.
They explained in low voices.
Soon, Demitrija returned.
He spoke softly, “Sir, we’ve found out that they’re mercenaries. Someone hired them to run this stall here and sell tea to the passersby.”
“Who hired them, did you find out?” Fang Hao continued asking.
“They said they didn’t know, they met them when they were drinking at a tavern, they might be able to recognize them by sight.”
Fang Hao’s brow furrowed. He felt that these men were not telling the truth.
“They didn’t tell the truth, did they?”
“It’s hard to say. But judging by the situation, they wouldn’t hide it if they knew.” Demitrija continued.
There was no way to detect lies in the team.
Black Thorn could interrogate corpses, but it was currently back at their territory.
“Alright, have those who drank the tea take Detox Potions, take a rest, then we continue to leave.” Fang Hao ordered.
Demitrija nodded and asked softly, “Sir, should we keep these tea sellers with us?”
“Kill them all, bury the corpses. It would be harder to explain if we keep them and bump into patrolling soldiers.”
“Understood.”
Demitrija left.
Soon, cries of begging for mercy came from nearby.
One by one, heads were rolling. The corpses were dragged off into the distance and buried in dug pits.
The team then took a short rest.
Those who had drunk the tea took the detox potion.
The accompanying mercenaries, holding the potion, hesitated to drink it.
Even though it was distributed to them.
But such a cheap serving of cold tea led to wasting a whole bottle of detox potion.
They had no choice as they were greedy.
After a short break, the team set off again.
Before leaving, they smashed the large water tanks filled with cold tea.
To prevent it from causing harm to others.
…
The team continued to march towards Silver Wing City.
Due to the possibility of enemies being ahead.
More scouts were arranged to pace the road ahead.
Fang Hao and Rebecca did not continue their intimacy.
They changed their carriage, to avoid being attacked.
Perhaps the enemies, seeing no effects from the Jack-o’-lantern, did not surface till they reached a village to camp, no enemies were seen.
After the rooms were allocated.
Fang Hao returned from outside, and as soon as he entered the room, he saw Anjia and Lorrey playing a game of Go on the table.
“Hey! That’s not right, this move is wrong.” Lorrey touched the piece he had just placed, wanting to take it back.