When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Perched on the ground in an odd posture, Horne could feel alternating waves of heat and cold coursing through his flesh. The muscle soreness and shortness of breath from his earlier workout had completely vanished.

Gently exhaling a breath of stale air, the alternating sensations of heat and cold gradually dissipated. Horne opened his eyes, only to feel his stomach rumble incessantly.

He quickly tossed a few berries and jerky into his mouth to temporarily appease it.

The Knight's Breathing Technique had high demands for food, requiring not only sufficient intake of meat and fat daily, but also rice and noodles.

This meant that for an ordinary person to practice the breathing technique, they either needed to be exceptionally gifted like Jeanne, gaining weight even from eating dung, or they had to have three meals a day with meat and vegetables and time to practice.

This was why the Knight's Breathing Technique's practice methods were widely disseminated, yet the vast majority of practitioners were from the armed farmers upwards in social class.

Ordinary people couldn't afford such high grain consumption.

However, since the end of the Hundred Years' War, the wage levels of laborers and artisans had risen sharply, leading to the emergence of first and second stage breathing technique practitioners even among ordinary laborers and vagrants, and the mercenary industry subsequently arose.

The Imperial Noble Council hurriedly issued two laws, the "Fugitive Slave Act" and the "Labor Act," to restrict this group of lower classes from mastering extraordinary power, fearing that they would grasp violence and thus power.

In this world, extraordinary power equated to violence, which equated to power.

After finishing the last two bites of coarse wheat bread, washing it down with water, Horne burped, exhaling a good amount of foul-smelling sour gas.

Closing his eyes, Horne slowly recalled the previous sensation.

According to Jeanne, the sign of the first stage of the breathing technique was being able to activate this sensation at will.

At that time, the body's endurance would be greatly enhanced.

"Great-Grandson Master..."

Horne opened his eyes, and Jeshka's wrinkled face popped up.

"Is everyone here? If they are, let's set off." Horne thought Jeshka was there to urge him to go to the forest.

But Jeshka shook his head with a bitter face: "Not everyone's here. When collecting the cages this morning, two members of the hunting team went missing."

"Missing? Did they get lost? Have you looked for them?"

"We only found one, but he had already fainted. We just carried him to Father Coze. Hopefully, Father Coze's blessing can awaken him."

Just as Jeshka finished speaking, Horne heard a crisp and loud sound of a slap not far away, followed by a cry-like wail and the villagers' repeated exclamations.

Tucking his handkerchief into his belt, Horne stood up and walked towards the open space where the villagers were gathered.

Halfway there, he saw seventeen or eighteen villagers, surrounding Father Coze, with two young men sandwiching a teenager as they walked this way.

The teenager's nose was crooked, tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, and there was a high, swollen, blood-red palm print on his right cheek.

"Tell me carefully, what happened?" Horne walked up to the teenager who had been stunned by Coze's slap.

"I don't know what happened. My brother and I were in the forest collecting cages for trapping prey, and then, then I felt dizzy. As I was dizzy, I heard the sound of a flute, and then I didn't know anything."

Before the teenager could finish speaking, Father Coze, who was standing beside him, murmured with a pale face, "The Green-Clad Pied Piper, it must be the Green-Clad Pied Piper."

Whether it was Jeshka, or the other villagers who had rushed over from the other side, or even Jeanne, who feared nothing, their faces changed drastically.

The Green-Clad Pied Piper?

Based on this keyword, Horne quickly searched for relevant memories in his mind and soon found them.

The Green-Clad Pied Piper was similar to the "child abductor" legends from Horne's hometown.

Legend has it that when the ancestors of the Thousand River Valley people migrated from Kush River in Bear Fort to Thousand River Valley, they were once besieged by a group of giant rats.

The chieftain of the Thousand River Valley people hired a green-clad piper for one hundred pounds of silver to lead the rats away.

The piper accepted the chieftain's request and led the giant rats away by playing the flute.

But the chieftain did not fulfill his promise, so every few years, the angry piper would raise a mist, play the flute to lure children, and push them off the cliff.

In Horne's hometown, such legends were nothing more than a way to scare disobedient children.

But in this world called Middle-earth, it was actually real, and a bunch of unlucky people suffered every few years.

Whenever there was foggy weather, children under the age of twelve would be locked at home, forbidden from going out.

However, considering that Thousand River Valley was the second most active region for secret societies and cult groups in the entire empire, Horne could easily guess the origins of these "Pied Pipers."

Thinking of this, Horne's gaze couldn't help but fall on Coze.

He remembered that Father Coze's twin daughters, Anna and Lina, had been abducted by the Pied Piper in this way.

The usually indecisive, fence-sitting Father Coze was staring fixedly at Horne, making Horne feel a little unnerved.

How could a witch and a monster pop up one after another? Horne really didn't expect that such a small Red Mill Village could give birth to so many crouching dragons and phoenix chicks.

Now that there was already little food to be obtained from the forest, would anyone dare to enter the forest if the news spread?

If people's hearts were scattered, the team would be difficult to lead.

Rubbing his philtrum with his thumb, Horne pondered for a while. When he looked up, he found everyone staring at him expectantly.

No one said anything; they were all waiting for his decision.

He couldn't hesitate any longer. Horne drew the sword hanging at his waist, pointed it high towards the forest, and said in a solemn tone: "This is no ordinary demon anymore; we must strike hard! Each group of ten gatherers will temporarily stop gathering. The leader of each group of ten will immediately select strong young men to serve as meat... escorts and follow me to eliminate the demons!"

Several bold young men immediately began to cheer.

Horne had a confident smile on his face.

Anyway, no matter what kind of ghosts or monsters you are, in front of a witch, you are just a small demon seeing a big demon.

In countless stories of demon hunters and adventure poems, a very prominent characteristic of witches is that they can suppress or even drive some demons.

The gold content, the gold content of Messala the enemy leader!

After some preparation, Horne, Jeanne, and thirty young men each took fishing nets, pitchforks, flails, axes, and torches and set off.

The latest novel is first published on the 6/9 Shūbā!

The usually risk-averse and neutral old Coze didn't avoid it this time. He actually picked up the pig-slaughtering knife that he hadn't used for a long time and entered the forest together.

The sky was gloomy, it wasn't raining, and occasionally a few drops of water passed through the blazing torches, stirring up bursts of green smoke.

Traversing through the black pine forest in the dappled morning mist, all that could be heard besides the crows' annoying mocking cries was the slippery sound of shoes treading on the slick ground.

It was as if a sticky tongue was licking someone's ear, and Horne felt that way at the moment.

He put on the Knight Master's leather vest and walked in the second row with his long sword.

Beside him, Jeanne, holding a long stick sharpened and blackened at the front, wearing a waist-cinching leather armor, looked around and walked silently.

"Great-Grandson Master, look, they fainted here." Jeshka pointed to a simple wooden cage trap.

Following the direction Jeshka pointed, one could see that it was a beech tree.

Stepping forward, Horne poked his head around and looked around, using his hand and sword to push aside a patch of grass. A clear footprint was submerged in the mud.

"Go!"

Following the direction the footprints extended, Horne and the others set off again, holding up torches.

As Horne and the others advanced, there were more weeds and shrubs, and the fog also became thicker.

The chaotic footsteps stopped from time to time, and Horne and the others had to frequently stop to cut out a path, or jump over streams, ditches, and mossy fallen trees.

Reaching out and holding Jeanne's hand, Horne pulled her across a stream.

Jeanne's face visibly reddened, but she didn't break free. Instead, she tightened her grip on Horne's hand.

"Stay close to me." It was safer for Horne to keep a weapon of mass destruction like the witch in his own hands.

The sound of crows in his ears disappeared at some point, and even the sound of insects began to become distant. The footprints on the ground were still deep and shallow.

Following the footprints, Horne and his party stopped by a small stream. The footprints disappeared here.

Did they jump into the stream?

Anyone who has watched horror movies knows that dividing the troops is a big taboo in this situation. Horne frowned. He was about to call out and let the young men go upstream.

But suddenly, he felt his earlobe was a little wet, and a gust of wind struck from nowhere, causing the leaves and grass to rustle.

"Buzz—"

What was that? In the whistling wind in his ears, Horne seemed to hear a strange sound, like a window that was not tightly closed on a hurricane night.

No, it's the sound of a flute.

This flute sound was soft and melodious, quietly drifting into people's eardrums.

After the gust of wind, Horne felt like it was quiet, even the sound of footsteps stopped, let alone the sound of the young men talking to each other.

In the faint sound of the flute, Horne turned his head, but his hair stood on end.

He saw that all the young men present had somehow fallen into stagnation. Their faces were dazed, and they swayed slightly in the wind as if sleepwalking.

It was as if thirty suddenly stuck robots had stopped all their movements, remaining motionless in their original postures.

After the wind, the air suddenly became quiet, so quiet that it was even a little creepy.

The faint sound of the flute disappeared into the distance. Horne swallowed. No, are you serious?