Chapter 26: Lan Pao Zi and the Bloodthirsty Technique

  In the depths of winter, the forest was completely covered in snow. John, a mouse-like creature, was running frantically through the snow-covered ground, but the soft snow hindered his progress. One misstep and he would tumble to the ground. But John seemed to be experiencing something terrifying, for after each fall, he quickly scrambled to his feet and continued running without pause, occasionally glancing back as if something was chasing him. When he looked back again and saw nothing behind him, he let out a slight sigh of relief and prepared to look ahead at the path in front of him.

  John, who had just turned around, felt himself bump into something soft and fluffy. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell backwards onto the snowy ground.

  John took a closer look and saw that a blue-skinned fat man was staring at him, who had just bumped into his belly. This blue fat man held a large wooden stick in his left hand, covered with tattoos all over his body, and wore only a few animal hides in the icy snow, but moved as usual. However, what made him most special was that there were two heads on his shoulders.

  "Ah", after seeing what he had crashed into, John's face showed extreme fear, and he backed away from it on the snowy ground with his legs.

  This blue fat man had a few smiles on his face, just like the smile of a hunter when he catches his prey, but with a few more cruel feelings. The last thing John saw was the blue fat man's left hand swinging a large wooden stick heavily towards him, and his speed was too fast for John to completely avoid.

  "Boom!" John lost consciousness at this.

  In another snowy area, Mouseman Hus stumbled forward, his body already having multiple wounds and being covered in blood. In the icy snow, with massive blood loss, he was feeling dizzy but still persisted in moving forward, his brother Johan had risked his life to lure away those terrifying man-eating demons, giving him a chance to survive, he couldn't give up like this. Now he was only two small hills away from the campsite, and he felt that his children were waving at him.

  "Hus" let out a cry as he fell into the snow, this wasn't the first time, but this time he felt like he didn't have the strength to get back up, his limbs were gradually losing sensation, and he really wanted to just fall asleep. At that moment, an arctic hare appeared in front of him, a creature he usually hunted, but now he was completely helpless.

  A golden light pierced through the air, strongly penetrating the body of the corner rabbit, nailing it firmly to the snowy ground. Hus saw a black figure running towards him from afar, he wanted to shout but had no strength to open his mouth.

  Liu Yu's mood was originally good, and he could hunt a horned rabbit just a few hundred meters away from the campsite. In this cold winter, it was almost like winning a big prize. But when he approached the horned rabbit, he saw that next to it on the snowy ground lay a mouse-like creature whose body had stained the surrounding snow red. His expression instantly turned iron-gray.

  "It's happened again." In the camp, looking at the dead mouse man Hus on the ground, Marlan clenched his fist. A large group of mouse people and Bimon surrounded him, with Liu Yu among them.

  "Go and invite General Duwei." Ma Lan gave orders to the warrior beside him.

  "It's all right." Ptolemy was standing in the crowd without anyone knowing when he got there.

  "Sir, allow me to lead a team out of the camp to search for these man-eating demons. I guarantee that we will bring back their heads." Malan bowed his head and asked Tolomei for orders.

  "Wait till you're gone, they'll be long gone. Pass down the order that no mouse is allowed to leave the campsite. From now on, you and Galin will take turns leading the hunting team. Every two days, all mice will have one less meal, including Bameng and me, every three days, one less meal. Everything else can wait till after the Beast God Festival."

  "Sir, I..." Marlan still wanted to argue something, but Ptolemy didn't give him the chance to speak, directly turning around and leaving.

  Liu Yu in the crowd looked at Ma Lan, who was somewhat emotionally agitated, and shook his head slightly before turning to leave. After entering deep winter, a large number of magical beasts entered hibernation or reduced their activity frequency. This greatly reduced the prey for predators, and the Food People, the strongest intelligent species in the Desa Mountains except for the Mongols, constantly raided the mouse people's hunting teams that entered the forest to supplement their winter food after deep winter.

  Today, a hunting party of 50 mouse people was ambushed by cannibals again. Except for the one mouse person Liu Yu carried back from the snowy ground, no other mouse people have been seen escaping. The cannibal tribe eats everything except their own kind, and they treat mouse people as prey, killing them and bringing them back to their tribe as food for the winter. A few of the escaped mouse people reported that the leader of the cannibals is a blue-skinned cannibal, also known as a cannibal magician.

  Facing this situation, Ptolemy was also at a loss. Last time, in order to assist the Dalu tribe and their mouse people's tribe, he reserved the food in the camp to the minimum limit, and planned to supplement the insufficient parts by hunting.

  The camp's mouse population had grown to around 10,000, and the food shortage exceeded Ptolemy's expectations. As a result, large numbers of mice were organized for larger-scale hunting, and these weak mice naturally became prey in the eyes of the man-eating demons. Just before winter, Ptolemy sent most of his main forces to the other three camps, leaving him with only 100 Bimon warriors. It was impossible to send them all to protect the mice, sending too few would be tantamount to sending them to their deaths.

  He could only let the mouse people shrink their hunting range again, and today's hunting team was actually only a few miles away from the camp. Unexpectedly, these man-eating demons became more and more arrogant, directly operating under their noses, which made Ma Lan, who was in charge of the daily affairs of the camp, lose face and eager to take revenge on the man-eating demons.

  "Let's join forces, add the remaining warriors, and send a team of mouse people as bait to ambush the man-eating demons." Liu Yu said his strategy while looking at Ptolemy who was observing the simple map of the Desa Mountains.

  "No, if one of you were to die here, His Majesty the King would not let me off first. The kingdom has its own laws. You can all die on the battlefield after joining the army as adults, but my purpose for being here is to protect you and ensure your safe enlistment, which is more important than anything else. So don't mention this kind of thing again." Ptolemy flatly refused Liu Yu's proposal, leaving no room for maneuvering.

  Liu Yu had already made this proposal, but Ptolemy never agreed.

  "Don't worry, Your Majesty's determination to develop the Desa Mountains is very firm. After the 10th division assembles here next spring, we will thoroughly eliminate the man-eating demon tribe and I will personally behead that man-eating mage." Seeing Liu Yu's disappointment, Tolomei leaked a piece of information to comfort him.

  "Can the remaining battalion be mobilized?" Ptolemy was the lieutenant of the 10th Division, and in the Beastman Kingdom, each division had two battalions, with one battalion consisting of 500 warriors. However, Lieutenant Ptolemy felt somewhat stifled, as one of his battalions had been left behind to serve as a garrison at Fort Terra Flame and could not be mobilized, leaving him with only one battalion under his command for the past few years.

  "Hmm, the Desa mountain range stretches for over 400 miles, and if fully developed, can provide food for several hundred thousand people. Last year when we first thought of developing this place, the front line became tense and it was impossible to bring in the second battalion. Now that the front line is relatively stable, the kingdom has finally been able to withdraw its troops, and all we need to do now is wait for support."

  A mighty roar shook the mountains, a lone Earthshaker Tiger stood at the foot of a hill with its back against the mountain body, it had no way to retreat. In front of it, hundreds of strong and muscular Ogre warriors surrounded it, led by a blue-skinned Ogre mage. The trees around them were tilted and twisted, the ground was cracked with many large ravines, and the air was filled with intense elemental fluctuations, clearly indicating that some powerful being had just cast high-level Earth magic here.

  This giant armored tiger is four meters tall and about eight meters long, with elemental armor condensed from its head to its tail. In front of its massive body, the man-eating demons look very small. And the breath it emits, along with its purple royal pattern, prove its identity as an eighth-tier demon beast, an absolutely powerful existence among the demon beasts within hundreds of miles.

  Normally, no one dared to provoke it, but the hunger of deep winter made the man-eating demon overcome fear, they actively attacked it, and through traps seriously injured this armored tiger, now this armored tiger has at least seven or eight bleeding wounds on its body.

  Feeling his life force ebbing away, and having just used up a lot of magic to escape with his life, he was now almost out of magical energy. The highly intelligent Armored Tiger knew that if it didn't think of a way to escape soon, it would undoubtedly die.

  Another earth-shaking tiger's roar, the armored tiger pounced on the man-eating demons in front of him. With a swipe of its tail, dozens of man-eating demons were swept away, and those who were caught were crushed into pulp. The surrounding man-eating demons were stunned by the tiger's desperate blow and retreated in all directions.

  At this time, Jianjia Tiger suddenly felt a wave of elemental fluctuations coming from behind, the cannibalistic magician clenched his right fist and pushed it towards Jianjia Tiger, a red glow floating above his fist.

  A loud "boom" shook the air, and the head of the heavily armored tiger suddenly exploded. The massive body of the tiger fell backwards, almost crashing to the ground. After the explosion, the armor on the tiger's head was completely shattered and fell to the ground, its scalp blown into a bloody pulp. However, this eighth-tier magical beast would not fall so easily.

  The ground beneath the feet of the "Pounce" man-eating demon warriors suddenly appeared with hundreds of sharp spikes condensed from the earth, reflecting the unprepared man-eating demons being pierced through and dozens of them fell down. However, the man-eating demon mages easily dodged when they felt the elemental fluctuations.

  He clenched his right fist again, and the same red glow appeared. This time, he pushed it towards the nearest dozens of ghouls around him. A circle of red light appeared on these ghouls, their bodies quickly grew larger by one circle, and the red light disappeared from their bodies. They, who had started to retreat, surrounded Jian Linghu again.

  The cannibalistic mage pointed his wooden stick at the heavily armored tiger, and these enlarged cannibal warriors all rushed towards the beast like madmen. At the same time, he released a red glow to the farther cannibal warriors, and soon all of them grew bigger, fearlessly rushing towards the heavily armored tiger.

  A wave of earth and stone shook the ground, and the scattered earth armor on the body of the armored tiger re-condensed, covering its head and wounds. After doing this, the armored tiger let out a sorrowful roar from its mouth, and with its magic exhausted, it had no ability to release any more spells and could only choose to engage in close combat with these small creatures. After a fierce battle, it was submerged by layers of ghouls.