Chapter 43: Harvest Feast
Wei Ji, Li Niu, and the other villagers were all paying close attention to the battle situation.
They personally witnessed the Fourth Calamity Army engaging in close combat with the Undead People, then saw the Fourth Calamity Army turn from defense to offense, charging into the dense forest, and subsequently, the brave soldiers’ auras vanished one after another.
It was too crazy!
Everyone had cast aside thoughts of life and death.
This style of fighting could no longer be described as reckless.
It was simply a matter of preferring to sacrifice three thousand of their own to kill three hundred enemies.
Wei Ji had never seen such a crazy and fierce, fearless army.
He did not know why the Lord could revive his subordinates, nor did he know the enormous price needed during this process, but even so, death itself was a double torment on the body and mind.
Yet now, for the sake of protecting the village, not a single soldier of the Fourth Calamity Army retreated.
If before this, the villagers of Hexi Village still harbored doubts, at this moment, seeing the territorial troops sacrificing themselves fearlessly to protect the village, they finally let go of the last trace of suspicion, leaving only deep shock and emotion.
"Lord!"
"Let us join the battle too!"
"We can't let your subordinates sacrifice in vain!"
"We are willing to fight side by side with the Fourth Calamity Army warriors!"
Li Niu and many hot-blooded young villagers could not help but come forward to request to fight.
"It is not yet time for you to act. The Fourth Calamity Army has its own honor and pride. Please respect these soldiers who are prepared and fearless of death!"
"But..."
"No more words!"
The villagers had to shut their mouths.
Hang Yu remained calm outwardly but was blooming with joy inside.
He had a premonition that there would definitely be not just one big harvest coming!
The ferocity of the Players!
It was beyond imagination!
Even Hang Yu himself felt a bit confused.
Why could each and every Player be so fierce?
Although the game’s pain sense could be freely adjusted from 1-100%, was there no instinctive resistance or fear towards the brutal scenes and the process of injury and death on the battlefield?
After Xiao Ba learned of his master's confusion,
it immediately and considerately explained, "The Heavenly Dao Cube possesses multiple psychological protection mechanisms, which can reduce the mental negative losses and damages, for example, applying an unnoticeable mental hypnosis on Players to reduce the discomfort caused by overly gory sounds and images."
In plain terms, every Player was playing the game while wearing a mental filter.
Players themselves could not perceive the existence of the filter; when they saw flying flesh and blood and organs scattered everywhere, they would at most marvel at the shocking realism of the visuals. Even if they felt some physical discomfort, it would be limited within a certain range.
Because no matter how gory the scenes or how real the death experience was, the Heavenly Dao Cube would influence their subconscious and tell them: this was just a game. Even if it was 100% realistic, it was still just a game. Don’t think too much; just shout "awesome" and "666"!
How should this feeling be described?
Hang Yu recalled a TV series he had watched before his transmigration called "Hannibal".
The show had many scenes of using humans as ingredients for gourmet dishes, and also a lot of bloody scenes. Yet Hang Yu had watched it with great interest without the slightest sense of disgust, even finding it elegant, interesting, and somewhat artistic!
Of course, he was no potential cannibal or psychopath; it was just his subconscious at work. Even if the visuals were real, he knew they were fake, coupled with the filming techniques and filters, which prevented excessive discomfort.
On the contrary, if Hang Yu were to watch a real forensic dissection video, based on his psychological endurance back then, he would not have been able to eat meat for several days, simply because of the lack of such subtle psychological suggestions.
There was no need to worry about the Players' mental health!
They were extremely resilient!
You could push them even harder!
They were not easily broken!
【Player Little Bell has died, Essence +600...】
【Player Lone Boat has died, Essence +900...】
【Player Human Cannon has died, Essence +250...】
【……】
Thirty-six Players.
In no time at all, they were completely wiped out.
Among them were five Level 5 Players, twelve Level 4 Players, seventeen Level 3 Players, and six Level 2 Players!
Each Level 5 Player’s death would generate 900 Essence Points.
Level 4 Players would generate 600 Essence Points.
Level 3 Players would generate 400 Essence Points.
Level 2 Players would generate 250 Essence Points.
Level 1 Players would generate 150 Essence Points.
The gains from this group wipeout, added up to exactly 20,000 Essence Points!
Facing the madly increasing Essence reserves, Hang Yu felt a near absurd sense of fantasy, as many Lords would go white-haired worrying about collecting Essence, cherishing every bit like a precious treasure because the cost of earning Essence was simply too high!
Although it was not difficult to hunt for Essence itself, due to constant casualties and losses during the process, the net income of Essence was often very thin, and sometimes there would even be a net loss.
Hang Yu had never had such concerns.
The worst outcome for a Player’s death was merely a level drop.
This time, after successive batches, a total of 22,750 Essence Points had been collected, with minimal losses and costs, almost entirely pure net income for the territory—a figure that would be significant for any new Lord!
However.
It was not over yet.
This was just the beginning.
One teleportation light after another appeared near the core of Hexi Village.
Fifty Players returned one after another, each with faces full of fighting spirit. They had not been discouraged by the defeat; instead, they were even prouder and more determined!
"Brothers and sisters!"
"Everyone did a great job!"
"We successfully consumed a large amount of the enemy’s living forces!"
"Even when ambushed and sneak attacked, we still managed to take down six Headless Soldiers."
"Now the enemy only has fourteen left. What is there to fear? The final victory will surely belong to the Fourth Calamity Army!"
"……"
All members regrouped!
It was time to go for revenge!
Fifty Players, their morale sky-high, re-entered the battlefield.
This time, they were attacked by the Headless Soldiers even before reaching the dense forest.
The Players knew very well that the most troublesome ability of the Headless Soldiers was their stealthy ambush attacks. At this point, some lower-level Players volunteered to act as bait, rushing to the front to draw enemy fire and force the Headless Fiend Soldiers to reveal themselves one by one.
"Good job!"
"Everyone hold steady!"
"This time we can win!"
After paying the price of ten low-level Players' deaths, the positions of the fourteen Yellow Turban Headless Fiend Soldiers were successfully confirmed.
Because of the previous experience, the Players were much more composed this time. They had plans to either contain or surround the elite monsters, and through teamwork, they managed to take down several Headless Soldiers in no time.
There was actually another force?
Xu Feng was still observing from the shadows.
The appearance of a second troop surprised him greatly.
Although Xu Feng was a native born at the end of the Han dynasty, he had completely submitted to the Will of the Abyss and, through continuous descent into the Abyss, had gained much knowledge and wisdom from beyond the world.
He simply thought he had encountered a rich and well-resourced Lord, hence the recruited forces were more than expected, but that Lord’s level should not be high, and the limited numerical advantage was not enough to make up for the absolute strength gap.
"No!"
"This is not a second troop!"
"This is the same troop as before!"
Xu Feng was greatly astonished when he realized this.
This troop had clearly been wiped out, so why did they appear on the battlefield again in the blink of an eye?
In fact, upon careful observation, it was not hard to recognize that a few of them were the small fries who had broken into He Ting a few days ago and were casually killed by him.
Could it be some kind of resurrection method?
Undying and indestructible was a power of the Abyssal citizens.
However, even Abyssal citizens could not revive immediately after being killed; they had to wait for a new cycle of Nightmare Reincarnation to be reborn.
It was absolutely impossible to die and reappear on the battlefield within a few minutes.
Although the Abyss could grant immortality to the fallen, such power was not without cost.
Each death would deepen the demonic corruption and mutation, eventually erasing memory and personality, turning the individual into a chaotic Abyssal monster.
The Stars also had resurrection methods.
But either the cost was extremely high, or the price was too great.
Judging from this, this Stars' Lord was not simple.
He either had extremely deep backing or some special abilities or treasures.
However, it was impossible that these Stars' lackeys could be truly undying.
The Lord behind them must have exhausted massive resources to revive such a weak troop to continue fighting, which in a sense proved that he was not powerful enough; otherwise, there would be no need for such posturing and waste.
The Headless Soldiers fell one by one.
The Stars' Lord was determined to hunker down.
Xu Feng realized that he had to take action himself.