Chapter 70: Chapter 70

Fortunately, the cost of javelins wasn’t too high; otherwise, it would indeed be difficult for the Sis Territory to equip every Knight with a readily replenishable supply of javelins.

In wild encounters like this, thrown javelins basically had no chance of being recovered. If they were genuinely thrown at the enemy, then it didn’t matter, as it could be considered making the most of the item.

If they were thrown at nothing, even if they could be replenished upon returning, Garrick and the others would still feel distressed.

After all, each and every one of these javelins was forged by the territory’s blacksmiths, and many of those blacksmiths were people they were familiar with, or even relatives.

Having witnessed the forging process with their own eyes, they naturally understood the shame of wasting them.

Regarding the doubts of Garrick and the others, Morris didn’t explain directly. Instead, he just said, “Follow me,” and then swung the longsword in his hand, carving out a path through the tangled branches.

After stepping past a boundary, Morris didn’t even need to speak; the others also smelled the scent of blood wafting from ahead.

Mixed with the scent of decaying matter in the forest, this smell wasn’t particularly obvious, but it was the scent of blood, after all. The Knights present were extremely sensitive to this odor, and they reacted almost the instant they smelled it.

“Captain, there’s a scent of blood!”

“Yeah, I hit an enemy just now, but his corpse is gone. He must have been taken away by his companions.”

Morris’s perception range was limited. When the enemy left just now, he only sensed their general direction, but he couldn’t continue tracking them afterward.

Just as he planned to step forward and carefully inspect the source of the blood, he suddenly felt a bout of palpitations. This unprovoked sensation gave rise to intense vigilance in his heart, and he immediately ordered everyone:

“Wait, all of you step back a bit first. I suspect the enemy has left traps up ahead.”

“Captain!”

Because they had personally smelled the scent of blood wafting from ahead, Garrick and the others no longer doubted the enemy’s existence. But hearing Morris’s words, it was obvious he intended to go forward alone to investigate, which made them feel extremely worried.

After all, the enemy was very likely the cultists who had killed the Territory Guard’s scout squad earlier. The fact that they could annihilate a scout squad in a short amount of time, with almost no news getting out, was enough to prove the enemy’s strength.

If all seven members of their squad were present, they might still have the strength to fight. But if it was just Morris, once he encountered an enemy ambush, he probably wouldn’t even have the slightest room to resist.

Thinking of this, Garrick and the others exchanged glances and stubbornly refused to leave. “Captain, let us go with you! With more people, we can watch each other’s backs.”

“No, you guys step back first!”

Morris’s attitude was very resolute. At this moment, he could still feel the palpitations, which was enough to show that this feeling wasn’t an illusion, but rather his Transcendent Perception truly detecting danger.

Moreover, it was danger lethal enough to kill him.

He possessed Transcendent Perception, so as long as he was careful, he should be able to avoid the danger. But his companions did not. How could he possibly let his completely oblivious companions get involved!

Furthermore, he had no guarantee of protecting the others. Under these circumstances, having his companions temporarily retreat was the wise choice.

As for whether he himself needed to temporarily evade, this was a question he hadn’t considered at all. Not to mention the fact that Waynes had already issued a strict order to kill all the cultists, if only for his own sake, he didn’t want to leave such an unknown hidden danger lurking near the territory.

“Obey the order, fall back!”

Seeing Morris using his authority as captain to order them, Garrick and the others ultimately complied. However, during the retreat, Garrick still deliberately dawdled a couple of times.

After all, he had already sent out an enemy situation signal to the Qiumu Sentry Post. Given Waynes’s attitude toward the cultists, reinforcements from the watchtower should arrive very soon.

…

By the time Garrick and the others had retreated about twenty steps back, almost reaching the edge of Morris’s perception range, the sense of panic in Morris’s heart finally eased somewhat, though it remained intense enough.

This indicated that the traps ahead could still cost him his life.

But Morris didn’t hesitate. He was already a Senior Knight now. If even he couldn’t shoulder this responsibility, was he supposed to let the territory send more people to explore with their lives?

Taking a few steps forward, Morris revealed a bewildered expression. Just now, in his perception, he had clearly felt the branches here being parted to both sides, but now he couldn’t find any traces of changes in the branches at all.

Thinking of the scene of the enemy fleeing just now, Morris fell into deep suspicion. “Could someone really control these plants?”

“But then how do I explain the ground?”

Morris crouched on the ground, carefully observing the marks on the surface ahead. Logically speaking, even if the enemy could control plants, they should still leave some traces when walking, right?

One must know that the floor of the forest was, in most cases, a layer of decaying matter. A single step would sink a finger deep into it. Let alone the fact that the Sis Territory had just had snow a while ago, and the Qiumu Forest had also been somewhat affected, with a thin layer of snow still remaining on the ground even now.

But right now, Morris could clearly see that the layer of snow on the ground ahead, so thin as to be transparent, lacked the slightest trace of being trampled.

“How is this possible?!” Morris plunged into even greater suspicion.

He had clearly perceived four or five figures here just now, and the scent of blood that hadn’t yet dissipated at this moment also proved this point. But why, when there were clearly people here, were there no traces left behind?

If they could achieve this level of camouflage, then why were they discovered by him just now?

“Why?”

At this moment, Morris’s mind was full of whys. He truly couldn’t figure it out. He had clearly perceived the enemy, and even perceived the process of their departure. Yet, upon conducting an on-site investigation, he couldn’t find any traces of the enemy’s existence.

Except for that hint of blood scent that had already begun to gradually fade.

“No, no, no, there must be an enemy!”

Although Morris had only acquired Transcendent Perception not long ago, his trust in it felt as though it were innate. He absolutely refused to believe that what he had just perceived was a hallucination.

“What exactly happened?”

Reviewing everything that had just happened, Morris continuously deduced within the cognitively reconstructed small world in his mind, and quickly found the crux of the matter:

“Where are the javelins we threw? Where are the traces left by the javelins?”

If there were no enemies here, then this place should at least bear the traces of the javelins. Given the speed at which he had thrown the javelins just now, even if they perfectly passed through these tangled branches, they would still inflict damage on the branches situated close to their flight path.

He just needed to look for that damage!

Morris told himself in his heart. However, this time, he didn’t rush to search among the Qiumu branches in the real world. Instead, utilizing the cognitively reconstructed small world, he deduced the scene of the branches being parted and then closing back together.

“Barring any surprises, the traces of the javelins’ passage should be over there!”

Morris abruptly looked toward a direction. The branches there towered and intertwined, clearly not in the trajectory of his thrown javelins. But what if these trees had indeed twisted and deformed earlier?

With a clear goal in mind, Morris quickly found the evidence:

It was a small scuff mark on the surface of a branch located in his current blind spot. It shouldn’t have been a scuff from the javelin itself, but rather an abrasion caused by the air current stirred up by the javelin.

It was just a tiny trace, but this was already enough.

In a normal, untraveled forest, such an obvious unnatural mark could never appear!

“There was indeed an enemy here just now, and they truly used some method to part the blocking, tangled branches!”

As for the scent of blood, Morris couldn’t assert with certainty that an enemy had died, but an injury was definite; otherwise, why would the scent of blood be left behind.