Frilian: Starting by inheriting the title of the Southern Hero

Chapter 61 The Old Man Disappears

The winds on the northern plateau were as cold as ever.

Lynn and his three companions spent the night wrapped in sleeping bags in a cave.

The campfire had long since died out, leaving only a pile of gray embers.

Awakened by the cold wind, Lynn quickly opened his eyes and glanced at the spot where Cromwell had been lying.

empty.

"This old man..."

Lynn rubbed her temples and sat up.

Laofen woke up too, rubbing her sleepy eyes. "Did the old man go for his morning exercise again?"

"I wish I could do morning exercises."

Lynn untied his sleeping bag and got up. "I'm afraid he's relapsed into his old habits and is acting like a lone wolf again."

Since leaving North City, the old man's memory has been getting worse and worse, and he has even forgotten Lynn and the other two several times when he turned around.

After Isa crawled out of her sleeping bag, she went outside the cave and carefully examined the footprints on the ground that stretched into the depths of the forest: "These footprints are still fresh. The old man must have gone into the forest."

Without delay, the three quickly packed their belongings, and Laofen drove the carriage along the footprints into the forest path.

The light in the woods was dim, and a thick layer of dead branches and leaves covered the ground.

The deeper Lynn went, the more his brow furrowed.

Numerous messy trampling marks began to appear around them.

Ahead was a narrow pass.

"stop."

Lynn raised his hand as a warning.

Raofen immediately pulled on the reins, and the carriage stopped.

Almost simultaneously, more than a dozen whooshing sounds rang out.

shhhhhh!

More than a dozen arrows were embedded in the soil at their feet, their fletchings still humming and vibrating.

"You've got a quick reaction, kid."

Playful laughter came from the earthen slopes on both sides.

The bushes rustled, and more than thirty ragged men with menacing faces emerged.

They carried all sorts of weapons: rusty iron swords, chipped axes, and even agricultural pitchforks.

The burly man at the head of the group carried a large knife. His gaze first swept over Isa and Laopen before finally settling on the carriage.

"This carriage is nice, and the horses are strong."

The burly man licked his lips. "Leave the car and the woman, and the men get lost."

"Hahaha!"

The surrounding bandits burst into laughter.

Lynn took two steps forward, looking at the rabble with a blank expression.

"If Yubel were here, you would all be a pile of minced meat by now."

Lynn muttered something under his breath, then raised his eyelids and scanned the crowd: "Who's the boss? Show yourself."

"That's me!"

A burly, bald man squeezed out from the back of the crowd.

He was a head taller than the people around him, with bulging muscles all over his body, and he was carrying a heavy-looking axe.

Clang!

Suddenly, a very faint sword rang out.

Something seemed to flash by in the air.

The bald boss's movements came to an abrupt halt.

The next second, a line of blood appeared on his neck.

puff!

A column of blood shot skyward!

The bald head then fell to the ground.

The headless corpse swayed and then collapsed to the ground.

Lynn stood beside the bald man's corpse, his longsword pointing diagonally at the ground, a drop of blood slowly sliding down its tip.

Instantly, the laughing bandits turned deathly pale.

Immediately afterwards, the group of robbers who usually acted arrogantly and domineeringly collapsed and fled into the woods in a panic.

"Keeping it is just asking for trouble."

Lynn was no merciful person either; he instantly stepped forward and killed them all with a single sword strike.

In the blink of an eye, the pass was littered with corpses.

Lynn wiped the blood off his sword and sheathed it.

He turned around and met Isa's slightly dilated pupils.

The mature and elegant magician's gaze was complex at this moment.

"Little Lynn..."

Isa glanced at the headless corpse on the ground, her tone heavy, "Can you really be so ruthless when it comes to killing humans?"

"You think they shouldn't have died?"

"I think we should give them a chance to reform."

"Would they give those they killed a chance to come back to life?"

After Lynn finished speaking, he stepped over the corpse. "Let's go. If we wait any longer, the old man will have run far away."

Isa looked at Lynn's tall, straight back, remained silent for two seconds, and then sighed deeply.

She disagreed with this ruthless approach, but she couldn't refute Lynn's rhetorical question.

The headless corpse on the ground gradually grew cold, and its blood stained the withered yellow leaves. Several carrion-eating crows circled down and landed on the ownerless machete.

……

Cromwell had no idea how long he had been walking.

He was just walking, walking aimlessly.

He quickly raised his head, his eyes fixed on the rising column of smoke ahead.

There seems to be a village there.

He quickened his pace.

Upon arriving at the village entrance, we saw black smoke still billowing from the rooftops of several houses.

A woman knelt on the ground, holding a person covered with a straw mat in her arms, her body swaying slightly back and forth, sobbing silently.

Cromwell stopped and looked at everything in front of him, his eyes somewhat blank.

He felt like he had seen this scene somewhere before.

An elderly man with gray hair walked over, leaning on a cane, and warily eyed the uninvited guest and the menacing weapon in his hand.

"Who are you? Are you here to rob us too?" the old man asked warily.

Cromwell didn't answer, his gaze falling on a pool of dark red blood seeping from the edge of the straw mat. He asked, "Was it done by demons?"

"No, it was the robbers who did it."

The old man followed his gaze, his voice filled with anger, "They stole our winter food and killed the two strongest young men in the village."

Cromwell remained silent, walked over, and reached out to lift a corner of the straw mat.

A young face was exposed to the air, with a deep knife wound on his neck.

"Ugh."

Cromwell sighed and covered the straw mat back up.

He suddenly found it somewhat ridiculous.

It turns out that humans are sometimes no different from demons.

He stood up and asked the old man, "Which way did those robbers go?"

The old man pointed to a mountain: "They're stationed on that mountain."

Cromwell nodded and walked toward the mountain with a cold expression.

……

Raofen's carriage soon arrived at the village entrance.

When the villagers saw the carriage, their faces initially showed fear, but after seeing the people inside, they became numb.

Lynn jumped out of the car, his gaze sweeping over the rooftops billowing black smoke and the two corpses on the ground, and he couldn't help but frown.

Is this a demonic attack?

But the demons shouldn't leave any survivors.

At that moment, an elderly man leaning on a cane came out and looked Lynn and his companions up and down: "Who are you?"

"Adventurer".

Lynn replied, "Have you seen an old man come here? An old man with a spiked club."

"Are you his companions?"

"Yes."

"He just left; he went that way."

The old man pointed towards the back of the mountain. "He asked about the whereabouts of the bandits who destroyed the village. I think they went to deal with them."

……

Cromwell was walking in the mountains when he suddenly stopped.

He remembered that he seemed to be going to kill some people.

Some damn people.

Why kill them?

He forgot.

But that doesn't matter. All he needs to know is that those people deserve to die.