I reached out and patted him on the shoulder: "That's all in the past. And thanks to the information you accumulated through repeated strategies, we've managed to overcome those difficulties. There are very few injured people."
"Oh dear, brother..."
Sheng looked at me with emotion, and soon, she patted her cheeks hard with both hands and cheered herself up: "I've decided to observe the situation further and go down when it's appropriate."
Appropriate timing of intervention can skillfully resolve problems, whether in the root cause or the conclusion.
Holding our breath, we reconfirmed the details of the argument between the two parties.
Then, the story outline woven from the arguments carried by the wind was just as we had guessed before:
Those who had been led back by Yama and his companions, claiming to be lost travelers, noticed the rain had stopped. A handsome elf, harboring malicious intent, deliberately lured them with wild fruit he had picked, then knocked them to the ground. Meanwhile, Yama and his group, who had also confirmed the rain had stopped, noticed the group's suspicious behavior while walking nearby. Confused, they tried to question them, but were met with hostility. A disagreement even arose regarding the unconscious elf.
"Ha, what an old-fashioned plot."
Somewhat exhausted, Sheng loosened the weight on his shoulders, shook his head and sighed: "When I was trying to conquer them before, I heard similar news. It seems that some guys who have completely adapted to this kind of life have set their sights on the beauty of these suddenly appearing alien races and have started to smuggle and sell them, including merfolk and elves."
"I thought it was just something fictional, but I never expected that it would actually happen to me in real life."
After carefully recalling the image of the mermaid race, most of them are indeed quite eye-catching, with their beautiful and mysterious appearances matching the imagined human body and fish tail. Their sudden appearance and rarity make it easy for people to have ulterior motives. In addition, they are not the type to be overly wary of people by nature, so they are easy for some guys who don't care about how they live their lives afterward to use them as decorations to vent their madness or to increase their status.
Similarly, the fact that most of them were handsome and beautiful elves meant the same thing to those guys.
Rarity means huge profits, even if it comes with certain risks.
Suddenly, I recalled the spirit I had encountered in the basement earlier, whose mind had been tormented to the point of collapse. I wondered if she had secretly escaped and hidden away in a safe place after we left.
Putting aside my distracting thoughts, I asked Sheng some more questions about the details: "You've played through the game so many times, haven't you ever seen a similar situation before?"
Sheng scratched his cheek somewhat awkwardly: "Uh... no, never. After all, you know what kind of personality the Sword Demon has. Usually when he encounters someone who is easy to block his way, his basic response is to slash at them with his sword first, without intending to listen to what they are going to say, so it won't trigger a similar plot."
I stared at him silently.
Honestly, this approach is a bit too extreme.
However, since things have come to this point, let's first resolve the current dispute.
Whether from a logical or emotional perspective, we should stand on Shan's side. We are utterly disgusted by their current nonsensical sophistry and wish we could express the same obvious anger as Shan and his group and draw our weapons to confront them.
In fact, even though we haven't officially intervened yet, the current situation has already escalated to the point of near-conflict.
Shan, standing in front and behind, raised the shield on his wrist and the baseball bat in his hand. Xiaoxi, half-hidden behind Shan, quietly drew an arrow and nocked it on the crossbow string. The Shadow Butterfly had already slipped into the nearby grove of trees without anyone noticing, as if melting into the shadows. Its figure, barely visible to the naked eye, repeatedly leaped and darted about. After glancing at us, it quietly approached the still unaware group from behind.
The lost souls who were rescued pulled out daggers, supposedly for self-defense. Some of them, standing at the back, even took out straight swords carefully wrapped in strips of cloth from under their robes, grinning maliciously as they pointed them at themselves, or simply held them to the necks of the unconscious elves on the ground.
“The butterfly has spotted us,” Sheng said. “She doesn’t seem to want us to make a move.”
I shrugged: "It doesn't look like we need to step in."
To appear as harmless as possible, those who had gotten lost didn't carry many weapons. Besides the ones they had just taken out, they also had a few bottles of poison hidden in their waistbands.
Nevertheless, I still believe that this is not difficult for the Shadow Butterfly to flank and prepare to be assassinated. It is simply a matter of dodging the unsuspecting enemy ranks, taking something from them while assassinating them. With an attractive target in front, it is just a piece of cake.
"However, can we make things go a little smoother? Although we're still in the safe zone for now, it would be troublesome if the fighting got too big and attracted other beings."
I pondered it and made a suggestion.
Sheng nodded repeatedly, his eyes shining as well.
And so, this one-sided battle began and ended in the blink of an eye.
It's quite simple to summarize.
As those lost souls, attempting to steal the elves' goods, charged forward, vines suddenly sprang up from under the feet of the first few, tripping them up one after another. Shadow Butterfly simultaneously struck from behind, knocking away the straight knife that the last person had placed against the elf's neck, and then pinned down and stabbed the other person on the other side. Meanwhile, Xiaoxi's arrows, which were responsible for rappelling, landed on the back of the necks of two people in the middle row. After engaging the enemy, Shan swung his club and smashed it directly into the second-front row, who was in poor condition.
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