The trees here were more towering than normal.
The emerald layers of branches and leaves nearly covered the sky.
Zhen Jin led a group of people here; however, he did not penetrate deep into the forest. Because he knew that there was a group of bat monkeys there.
Zhen Jin and the others entered the fringe of the bat monkey group’s territory, and soon stopped.
“Start.” With Zhen Jin’s order, Bai Ya led the group in putting the firewood and other things on their backs into several piles, then they crowded around them.
A number of them took out some spark stones and struck them together to create sparks. The sparks dropped onto the fluffy sawdust and quickly ignited them. Afterwards the team members put the sawdust onto the piled firewood, igniting them. The flames gradually roared, and many large bonfires smoothly formed.
Zhen Jin fished out some paper bags and gave them to everyone.
The others went to the bonfires, taking advantage of the fires’ small size to get close, they then opened the paper bags and exposed the brown medicinal powder in them.
As they sprinkled the medicinal powder on the fires, the smoke of the fires quickly changed color.
The thick smoke rapidly expanded, it did not circulate upwards with the heat, rather it remained on the ground, enveloping the group, and expanding out to the surrounding area.
A screech seemed to sound out in the distance, as if a bat monkey had discovered something odd.
Zhen Jin had an arrow quiver on his back, he now took out one arrow.
This arrow was specially crafted by Mu Ban personally, it had a hollow arrow shaft, a hole in the arrowhead, and holes in the arrow shaft——it was a whistling arrow.
Zhen Jin also grabbed a crossbow off of his back.
He had three crossbows, two rapid fire crossbows and one waist crossbow.
Aside from magic crossbows, there were three types of ordinary crossbows that could be wound with manpower. They were arm crossbows, foot lever crossbows, and waist crossbows.
As the name implies, the bowstring of arm crossbows used arms.
Foot lever crossbows used leg strength to wind itself.
Waist crossbows have waist hooks, when a crossbowman sits on the ground and winds it, they step on the crossbow with both feet and use the waist hooks to wind the bowstring. When winding it, the crossbowman not only uses their leg strength to step on it as much as possible, they also use their back and arms to wind the crossbow.
Human leg strength typically surpassed human arm strength.
As a result, there were more waist crossbows than foot lever crossbows, and more foot lever than arm crossbows.
Zhen Jin now held a waist crossbow, the three crossbows he had were the best the camp had to offer.
When the waist crossbow was placed on the ground, it was taller than Zhen Jin’s waist. The crossbow was also wider than Zhen Jin’s body.
But Zhen Jin did not have any waist hooks, he directly reached out to pull the bow string, while simultaneously using the crossbow pedal.
Afterwards, he used his arm strength to pull the waist crossbow taut.
His every movement was watched by the others, and after seeing Zhen Jin easily tighten the crossbow, the surrounding peoples’ eyes shined with excitement and admiration.
Zhen Jin placed the whistling arrow on the crossbow, then he easily lifted it like it was a rice straw.
This movement also made everyone’s’ heart exclaim in admiration.
Zhen Jin lightly pulled the trigger and the whistling arrow shot out at a diagonal angle.
The whistling arrow cut a parabola through the air, sharpy whistling as it flew into the depths of the bat monkey group’s territory.
Bat monkeys were very susceptible to sound.
The forest quickly became thoroughly agitated. Most of the bat monkeys flew into the sky, and upon discovering Zhen Jin and the others, they immediately attacked.
Zhen Jin lifted the waist crossbow and shot several iron arrows, almost none missed as he immediately annihilated three iron level bat monkeys.
The two remaining iron level bat monkeys promptly hid in the forest, their constant shrieking made the bronze level bat monkeys the leaders of the attack.
As the distance closed, Bai Ya and the others were constantly returning fire with their crossbows.
Bat monkeys were constantly dying from arrows and falling to the ground enroute.
When three tenths of the bat monkeys finally reached Bai Ya and the others, they smelled the thick smoke’s odor.
This odor attacked their sense of smell, no, to be more accurate, it destroyed their sense of smell!
The bat monkeys’ charge was eliminated, and their formation soon became disorganized. Some of them were circling in the air, some were running on the ground, and some were jumping in the undergrowth, they were not enough.
The thick smoke made the bat monkeys step back.
This was a compound Zi Di had mixed, once it had bought time when the blue dog fox wolf attacked the camp, and one could say that it had saved the camp.
The same thing happened here, with the bat monkeys incapable of breaking through the smoke while Zhen Jin and the others were turning the bat monkeys into living targets for a firing exercise.
The hunt quickly stopped.
All of the surrounding bat monkeys were corpses.
Zhen Jin commanded everyone to move deeper into the bat monkey group’s territory after finding that the two iron level bat monkeys had already disappeared without a trace.
Zhen Jin and the others were not surprised.
This was not their first fight with bat monkeys, bat monkeys had an extremely nimble temperament, and if a battle were going poorly, it was very likely that they would choose to flee.
And when the bat monkeys fled, outside of shooting them, there was nothing Zhen Jin and the others could do.
They were not stronger than this beast group, rather they used the thick smoke as a clever method.
Meanwhile on a hillside, as Zhen Jin was cleaning the battlefield,
Tripleblade was wildly running as he escaped out of a cave.
Behind him, was a pursuing monkey bear.
The bear’s stout body was deceiving and was very fast when it charged. The bear could double the speed of any creature of equal life level.
Tripleblade was only at the iron level while the monkey tail brown bear was a silver level magic beast.
As the distance between both closed with Tripleblade soon being overtaken, the ground under the monkey tail brown bear collapsed.
The monkey tail brown bear fell into a pitfall.
The pitfall was very deep and had many sharp wooden spears in it.
After the monkey tail brown bear fell it, it loudly roared with anger.
The wooden spears did not cause it great harm, and after many spears punctured the bear’s skin, they snapped under the heavy weight.
The monkey tail brown bear looked up and saw a group of people covering the pitfall.
“Not bad Tripleblade.” Zong Ge praised.
Tripleblade wiped the sweat off his head, gasped for breath, and gave a rare nonreply. His heart was still beating, he had just sensed the aura of death.
Of course, the pitfall was arduously dug by Zong Ge and the others. It was very deep, even if the monkey beat stood up, it could not even reach half the pitfall’s depth.
“Shoot.” Zong Ge waved, the surrounding team members took out their crossbows and shot the monkey tail brown bear.
For a moment, the monkey tail brown bear seemed to suffer a downpour.
In the end, the monkey tail brown bear was a silver level magic beast and suffering through a rain of arrows made it indignant. Its orangutan palms changed, its iron cast like fingertips became a burning red, they looked as if they were taken out of a railroad.
The monkey tail brown bear inserted its fingertips into the wall while simultaneously using its strong leg muscles to quickly climb up the wall.
However, just when it emerged from the pitfall, a massive white bone hammer ruthlessly beat its head!
The dull bang made the hearts and livers of the surrounding people tremble.
The powerful attack threw the monkey tail brown bear into the pitfall again.
Its head swayed, and after dispersing its dizziness, it stood up ready to fight as it angrily roared at the main culprit, Zong Ge.
The response it got was another rain of arrows.
Thus, the monkey tail brown bear's continuous attempts to climb out were met by Zong Ge constantly knocking it back into the pitfall.
With endless sullenness and hatred, the silver level magic beast collapsed into a pool of its own blood.
As the setting sun’s afterglow illuminated the horizon, Zhen Jin’s group returned to camp first.
They returned with a great quantity of bat monkey corpses; it was clear that their main target today was a bat monkey group.
Among the dozen iron level bat monkeys, two to three of them had been dismembered by Zhen Jin’s rapier.
The thick smoke was not a big deterrence to iron level bat monkeys, and if an iron level bat monkey were sufficiently angry, they would charge into the smoke to kill.
However, all of the iron level bat monkeys that tried this died by Zhen Jin’s hand.
From this, one could also see that the nature of beasts was certainly enigmatic.
Zhen Jin’s victorious return made the camp cheer.
When Zhen Jin’s group was eating dinner, Zong Ge’s group returned.
Xi Suo blocked them as he guarded the camp gate.
After reporting to and getting Zhen Jin’s consent, Zong Ge’s group was able to enter the camp.
They returned with no less than three monkey tail brown bear corpses!
The people in camp were greatly shocked.
After all these were three silver level magic beasts.
As Zong Ge gave Mu Ban the bone hammer on his back for repairs, the people’s vision straightened somewhat. Because they discovered the bone hammer’s wooden handle had already snapped from the ferocious force applied to it.
Zong Ge’s dauntlessness frightened the people’s hearts.
Zong Ge looked around and saw Zhen Jin sitting next to a distant bonfire, then he looked at Mu Ban: “Can you repair it?”
Mu Ban gave a supercilious look and put his hands together: “In this case, repairing it is an arduous and thankless task, it would be better to build a new wooden handle. This will happen with how you use it, unless you exchange a wooden handle for an iron one.”
Zong Ge shook his head: “Just improvise. Iron had better be used for arrowheads, wooden arrow heads cannot be used, and bone arrowheads are barely effective.
Zi Di walked over at this time: “Although my potions can dissolve and purify iron, it wears and tears it greatly. Only with a great quantity of iron ore can we make enough iron arrowheads. Perhaps you can lead some people to go mining Zong Ge.”
Zong Ge shook his head, he was not interested in mining.
But then Zi Di gave him a list of items.
Zong Ge glanced at the list of items, his complexion changing slightly: “One silver level brown bear can either be exchanged for ten foot lever crossbows, two waist crossbows, or twenty newly made arm crossbows. What is this pricing? Some insignificant crossbows need to be exchanged?”
“When all is said and done, we are not an army Zong Ge.” Zi Di smiled, “I believe this is fair.”
Zong Ge was just about to sneer when Zhen Jin also walked over, the young knight then said: “I use my reputation to swear that I will also act in accordance with the established exchange. This is a fair competition.”
Zong Ge looked at the waist crossbow on his back: “Templar knight, what did you exchange for that crossbow? Today was bat monkeys? This list of items doesn’t say you can buy or sell on credit.”
Zhen Jin shrugged his shoulders: “Of course don't forget that in a previous fight, I killed a blue dog fox wolf.”
Zong Ge slightly raised his eyebrows, he thought of the crocodile head hammer tail boa he had killed.
But Zi Di then said: “Your battle result has already been exchanged Zong Ge, don’t forget, you took crossbows from our camp already.”
Zong Ge and the others: ……
Notes
Zong Ge and his bros were quite busy today playing whack a mole, well at least Zong Ge was. Gravity, like in so many video games, is the true bane of anyone stuck in a disadvantageous situation that demands platforming. This chapter also marks the glorious return of the contribution list, previously seen periodically throughout
Reverend Insanity
. It is quite helpful in times where money is unavailable or the goods being offered can only be traded for something equally useful. Considering Zhen Jin’s group has all the means of production, it gives him plenty of sway over how things operate.