Chapter 64: Encountering the Ghost Fairy Again
The ritual’s tracking range was about five hundred meters in radius. If Li Wen found nothing beyond this distance, she would pretend she hadn’t seen anything.
But fate seemed insistent on her involvement.
Li Wen hadn’t walked too far before making a new discovery.
They had entered the forest area, surrounded by towering spruce trees.
And behind a peculiar crooked tree, a brand-new corpse lay face down.
Based on its build, the deceased was female, with a wound on her back so deep it exposed bone. For an ordinary person, such a wound would be fatal from blood loss alone.
However, when Li Wen got closer to check for a pulse, she discovered the person was still breathing?
Li Wen pondered, an ordinary person with such a wound walking from the village entrance to this spot, and after more than ten hours still maintaining a breath…
Almost instantly, Li Wen retreated, putting distance between herself and the person, while raising her bone knife, ready to enchant it.
But a second passed… ten seconds passed… and a full minute passed, and the person on the ground showed no sign of movement.
Was she being too cautious?
Just as Li Wen was thinking this, a sharp, hoarse voice came from above.
“If you wait any longer, she’ll really be dead.”
Li Wen looked up alertly, seeing a withered, thin figure standing on a branch in the darkness, its eyes glowing like two dim candlelight. She was certain there was no one there moments ago.
“You helped her?” Li Wen’s voice was full of confusion. Even more confusing was that she recognized the person on the tree – it was Grandma Martha, the Ghost Fairy from the Fairy Market.
Why was this Ghost Fairy, who should be in her fairy market, appearing here?
Grandma Martha let out a hoarse caw like a crow, “Help? Of course, isn’t it obvious? Good Grandma Martha stumbled upon a dying girl and used fairy magic to sustain her life, just like the fairy tales written by the Maevians, heh heh heh heh…”
Li Wen frowned. She didn’t believe the other party was truly kind. Like most fairies, Ghost Fairies were capricious, always acting on their whims, reveling in tragedies and calamities. Their so-called kindness was as worthless as the dirt under fingernails to them.
To prevent this person, possibly the sole survivor, from perishing, Li Wen, despite her doubts, cast a Prayer on her. It was a bit of a stretch for preserving life, but Prayer could dispel a certain degree of bleeding, making it sufficient, at least removing the immediate threat to life.
Bright light shone on the person, and her wounds began to close rapidly, but she remained unconscious.
“Do you know who did what happened in that village ahead?”
The Ghost Fairy licked her sharp claws, a glint of joy and greed in her predatory gaze, “A beautiful slaughter, but what does it have to do with me? Gak gak gak gak…”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Better to ask her than me.”
The Ghost Fairy rubbed her nails, scattering a layer of gray powder. The powder fell on the girl, who then slowly woke up.
At first, the girl sat up with a blank expression, then, as if returning to her senses, she cried out in terror, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”
“Calm down, no one here will kill you.”
Li Wen directly lifted the hood of her Emerald Star Cloak, signaling she meant no harm.
“Re-really?”
The girl was about seventeen or eighteen years old, with brown hair and faint freckles on her face, dressed in simple village-girl attire.
Her face was pale, possibly from blood loss or shock. In any case, after the brief period of panic during her awakening, and upon confirming that the pretty young girl Li Wen would not hurt her, she gradually calmed down.
“Do you know what happened in the village ahead?” Li Wen asked directly upon seeing this.
Hearing this, the village girl froze, then said fearfully, “I don’t know! They killed everyone they saw, blood splashed everywhere, I could only run… Why? Why did this happen?”
The girl began to cry as she spoke.
“Please, please save my dad and mom! And my little brother, he’s only six years old…”
“They are all dead.” Grandma Martha’s grating voice echoed from above, as if she had witnessed the entire event, stating with certainty, “Only you are alive, lucky one, or perhaps unlucky one?”
The girl looked up at the grotesque Ghost Fairy, who looked like a specter, and was completely stunned.
“You’re not dead all thanks to her.” Li Wen felt a headache. She just wanted to get information about what happened here from this woman.
“Th-thank you…” the girl mumbled dazedly, “My mom and dad, are they really all dead? And Grandpa Village Chief, Uncle Regan, and Aunt Penny too…”
Li Wen was taken aback. She seemed to hear familiar names and quickly pressed, “What is the full name of the Uncle Regan you mentioned? Is your village called Jinshi Village?”
Hearing this, the girl nodded blankly and helplessly.
Li Wen’s heart tightened. She remembered Mr. and Mrs. Regan she met when she first entered the game. They were simple and kind, willing to help Li Wen, who was penniless and unknown to them. Even when they parted ways, Mrs. Regan enthusiastically invited her to visit and said she would prepare delicious oatmeal cakes for her.
Now, all of that was gone. Not all kindness is rewarded, and often cruel reality just blindly shatters all hopes.
Li Wen took a deep breath, pulled the girl up, her expression calm but her tone leaving no room for refusal, “Tell me everything you experienced, word for word.”
*
The girl’s name was Mochi, the eldest daughter of the village hunter.
On this day, Mochi was helping with household chores when she heard noisy shouts and cries from outside.
Curiously, she walked out of her house and saw her village chief, who had treated her like his own granddaughter, lying in a pool of blood. Her father, a seasoned hunter who often boasted to outsiders about hunting grizzly bears, was now dying with a longsword stuck in the ground, only able to signal with his eyes for her to escape quickly…
“They are a group of cold-blooded demons! They kill for pleasure, they don’t want money, they just kill every living person they see…”
According to Mochi, those people wore sturdy plate and chain armor, equipped with swords, bows, crossbows, and spears. Their equipment was even better than the guards in the nearby towns. Mochi had never seen the lord’s army, but perhaps these people were similar to soldiers, yet more barbaric and terrifying than bandits and goblins.
“They are mercenaries,” Li Wen said coldly.
