Chapter 26

(Thank you to 0风雪夜归人0 and other brothers for your support, thank you very much—don't forget to vote and add to your favorites. From this chapter onward, the real plot will begin, and the first female lead will appear; sweat, the initial setup was indeed a bit long...)

Chen Xun bid farewell to Grandpa, walked out of the stone house, and found that it was already dark. Several bonfires were burning in front of the stone hall, and he saw Nanliao, Zongsang, and the others still lingering in the square, guarding the pile of armor and weapons.

"Uncle Zongsang, Uncle Nanliao, why are you still here?" Chen Xun asked.

"Well, well," Zongsang scratched his head, pointing to the pile of armor and weapons on the ground, stammering, "There's no one to carry these things for you yet. Where do you want to take them? Uncle will help you."

Chen Xun couldn't help but laugh. He really wanted to help them move this pile of armor and weapons to their huts, and there would be no need to wait until now, nor would Zongsang and Nanliao, the only remaining upper-level barbarian warriors, have to stay here.

Chen Xun had a heavy spear, picked a black-sheathed saber, a longbow, ten quivers of iron arrows, and a set of scale armor. He held them in his hands and pointed to the remaining armor and weapons, saying, "The rest can be considered my protection fee for the village!"

"Protection fee?" Zongsang was confused. What kind of thing is a protection fee?

"The people from the Black Mountain tribe bullied me, Uncle Zongsang, you have to help me," Chen Xun said.

"Uh, uh," Zongsang understood and nodded quickly, thumping his chest, "That scoundrel Guhu, if he dares to bully you again, Uncle will smash his balls."

Excited and unable to hide it, Zongsang called out to the clan members hiding around to come and help.

"Brats, don't hide anymore. Chen Xun said these weapons are the protection fee for the village. Come out and help move them to the stone hall. We'll discuss how to divide them tonight..."

Zongsang couldn't wait to divide the spoils.

Nanliao's face turned red, and he coughed a few times, trying to cover up his embarrassment. But the clan members rushed over, surrounding Chen Xun and praising him: "Chen Xun is a good kid, always thinking of the village. Uncle didn't misjudge you."

"If the Black Mountain tribe dares to bully you again, tell Uncle. The children of the Black Python tribe can only be beaten by their own family, not by outsiders."

"Even if you beat your own kids, can you beat Chen Xun? That arrogant Gulei from the Black Mountain tribe was killed by Chen Xun. Can you be more arrogant than Gulei?"

Seeing the group of people eagerly picking up the bows, spears, and armor from the ground, Nanliao could only chuckle awkwardly.

Thirty heavy spears, thirty black-sheathed sabers, and twenty middle-level barbarian warriors in the village, each could have one spear and one saber, with some left over.

The iron-bow with a draw weight of a thousand pounds was a powerful weapon that the Black Python tribe had never had before.

For mountain hunting, the scale armor wasn't very useful, but in tribal battles?

With this batch of armor and weapons, no surrounding tribes would dare to bully the Black Python tribe. They would surely be crushed.

Zongsang couldn't wait to pick up a heavy spear, waving it a few times. The heavy spear's shadow revealed a black divine aura, as if it were substantial, pressing down on the surrounding barbarian warriors, making them almost unable to breathe, and they all retreated.

"Damn, it feels so good!" Zongsang shouted excitedly, putting down the heavy spear and picking up the iron-bow, testing its draw weight.

When he released the string, a thunderous sound echoed, leaving no doubt that if there were an arrow on the string, it would definitely cause the earth to crack and mountains to collapse.

Chen Xun ignored Zongsang's childlike excitement. He held the armor and silk books and walked back to his hut.

He drew the black-sheathed saber, a three-foot-long blade with a green edge, reflecting a cold light in the moonlight that seeped through the cracks in the hut's walls.

Made from an unknown type of iron, the black-sheathed saber was not at all clumsy in shape. The blade was straight and smooth, weighing about thirty to forty pounds. Even the hard iron oak wood could be chopped through easily.

Chen Xun secretly thought that if he had such a black-sheathed saber in hand during his mountain trip, he wouldn't have been so狼狈 when fighting the green-eyed eagle.

The iron-bow required a draw weight of a thousand pounds.

Chen Xun could now draw the iron-bow without any problem, but when the string was fully drawn, he felt the muscles in his back being stretched to the limit. He realized that the saying "drawing the bow to train muscles and strength" was not just a saying.

Chen Xun now had the strength of two to three thousand pounds in his arms, but after drawing the iron-bow to full draw five or six times in a row, his muscles felt sore and he couldn't continue. He thought that probably only upper-level barbarian warriors like Zongsang and Nanliao could continuously shoot a full quiver of iron arrows in the shortest time without any restrictions.

It was fortunate that the pure blood meat of the black-scaled fox, consumed during the soul sacrifice feast, greatly increased the strength of the village's barbarian warriors. Otherwise, there wouldn't be enough people to use these iron-bows.

However, what Chen Xun cherished even more than these weapons was the ten volumes of "Canglan Miscellaneous Records" he had traded for.

"Canglan Miscellaneous Records" was not a mysterious secret manual. It recorded the geography and customs of the Canglan region west of Mount Tushan.

Chen Xun, brought to this world by the six-armed giant demon, had never been able to venture beyond a hundred miles.

Although the Black Python tribe had some animal skin books, the barbarian script was very rudimentary, and even the knowledgeable shaman Zongtu's knowledge was limited to the area around Python Tooth Ridge.

It was only after obtaining the "Residual Interpretation of Dao" written by Greenwood Daoist and combining it with the previous silk book "Western Wasteland Classic" that Chen Xun had a general understanding of this world.

However, the "Residual Interpretation of Dao" mainly recorded Greenwood Daoist's notes on discussions with Cloud Continent cultivators about the foundation of cultivation. The descriptions of Cloud Continent, the Western Wasteland, and Canglan were only brief.

These ten volumes of "Canglan Miscellaneous Records" provided a more detailed introduction to the geography, tribes, cities, hunting, farming, and even the various martial arts practiced by the tribes, almost like a simplified encyclopedia of Canglan.

For Chen Xun, who ultimately wanted to leave Python Tooth Ridge and gain a deeper understanding of this world, the "Canglan Miscellaneous Records" was extremely valuable.

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North of Python Tooth Ridge, there were about fifty to sixty tribes of various sizes.

The smaller ones had about a thousand clan members, while the larger ones had over ten thousand.

No tribe had the strength to dominate the northern mountains and make the other tribes submit.

Without the emergence of a heavenly barbarian, the key to a tribe's strength, besides the number of clan members, was the number of middle and upper-level barbarian warriors who had awakened their barbarian souls.

The Black Mountain tribe, with over five thousand clan members, was already a large tribe in the northern mountains of Python Tooth Ridge. However, including Guchen and Guhu, there were only twenty middle and upper-level barbarian warriors who had awakened their barbarian souls.

The battle in the deep mountain valley resulted in the death of one and the severe injury of another middle-level peak barbarian warrior, which was a heavy blow that the Black Mountain tribe found hard to accept.

Especially Gulei, whose barbarian soul had reached the stage of external manifestation. If he hadn't died in the valley, with another two to three years of cultivation, he would have advanced to the upper-level barbarian warrior, becoming a new force for the Black Mountain tribe to suppress the Black Python and dominate the surrounding mountains.

During the soul sacrifice feast, the Black Python tribe's barbarian warriors and children consumed the life essence-rich black-scaled fox meat, which the Su family considered a rare treasure. Not only did the core barbarian warriors like Zongsang and Nanliao gain significant strength, but within three months, four more barbarian warriors awakened their barbarian souls, an unprecedented event in the Black Python tribe's recent thirty years.

Trading for this batch of weapons from the Su family further enhanced the Black Python tribe's strength.

Although the Black Python tribe, in terms of clan members, was a small tribe in the northern mountains of Python Tooth Ridge, in terms of absolute barbarian warrior strength, it could be considered first-class in the northern mountains of Python Tooth Ridge.

After Su Qingfeng left, the Black Mountain tribe no longer mentioned the deaths and injuries of the two middle-level barbarian warriors. Even after the autumn, the Black Mountain hunting teams no longer appeared on the south bank of Wild Horse Creek, effectively ceding the nearly twenty-mile-deep valley south of Wild Horse Creek.

For the Black Python tribe, expanding their hunting area by nearly twenty miles into the outer regions of Python Tooth Ridge was of great significance.

Although the deep mountains of Python Tooth Ridge were home to fierce birds and beasts whose flesh contained pure life essence, which was a great supplement for barbarian warriors' cultivation, hunting these fierce birds and beasts also meant greater danger.

The Black Python tribe had over a hundred barbarian warriors, but only twenty had awakened their barbarian souls, and they couldn't afford to lose any.

The deep mountain valley where the green-eyed eagle's stone nest was located, Zongsang, Nanliao, and others had the strength to lead a hunting team into, but for the sake of the village, they rarely ventured so deep into the mountains, fearing they would encounter formidable wild beasts and suffer irreparable losses.

Even if one of Zongsang or Nanliao had an accident, the balance of power between the Black Python and Black Mountain tribes would be broken.

The outer regions of Python Tooth Ridge to the south of the Black Python stone village, although there were not many fierce birds and beasts with pure life essence, were relatively safer. Ordinary barbarian warriors could lead teams to fish, hunt, gather wild fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

During the flood season, Wild Horse Creek would flood, making the low-lying valley unsuitable for habitation. However, after the flood receded, the black soil left behind was very fertile, with lush vegetation and many wild grains that could be collected in the fall as winter food storage. It would also attract many birds and beasts to nest and breed in the valley.

Controlling this valley completely would ensure that the Black Python tribe's over a thousand clan members would have no problem with winter food storage.

Hunting and gathering tasks were left to ordinary barbarian warriors, while in the fall, the twenty middle and upper-level barbarian warriors of the Black Python tribe were divided into two teams.

One team stayed in the village, responsible for barbarian warrior training, organizing defense, and guarding against attacks from fierce birds and beasts and other tribes. The other team formed a more elite hunting team, entering the deep mountains of Python Tooth Ridge to specifically hunt fierce birds and beasts with pure life essence and search for medicinal herbs in the deep mountains and wilds for the tribe's barbarian warriors' cultivation.

The smaller children in the village were gathered to train in barbarian martial arts and learn to read barbarian script.

During this period, Chen Xun no longer went into the mountains every day to search for herbs but went with the hunting team every three to five days, spending more time training in the village.

His internal blood and qi were now much purer, and his training speed had increased significantly. He had officially advanced to the fifth level of barbarian martial arts, but to fully temper his bones to the peak of being as hard as iron, he still needed time.

Training his barbarian soul, imagining the Great Peng Fist was easy, but imagining the Nine Abyss Barbarian Soul was still a bit challenging. One session of imagination could drain all the blood and qi in his body.

The Reverse Scale Strike was truly fierce, leaving no room for retreat.

Once he acted, it would either be the enemy's death or his own.

Whether he went into the mountains with the hunting team or stayed in the village to train, Chen Xun, besides practicing archery, also spent a lot of time reading the "Canglan Miscellaneous Records."

Although the characters of the Cloud Continent and barbarian script were both pictographic and ideographic, the Cloud Continent characters were much more complex.

Chen Xun, through practicing the Great Peng Secret Fist, translated the Cloud Continent characters into barbarian script by reverse-engineering the techniques. This was more about using the barbarian script to write down his experiences with mental focus, breathing, blood and qi circulation, and qi strength, rather than strictly translating the Cloud Continent characters.

However, the first volume of the ten volumes of "Canglan Miscellaneous Records" was largely similar to the "Western Wasteland Classic," providing Chen Xun with a "dictionary" for translating between Cloud Continent characters and barbarian script.

In the two to three months after the fall, Chen Xun repeatedly studied and compared the ten volumes of "Canglan Miscellaneous Records," finally reading through them.

However, Zongsang, Nanliao, and the others didn't know about Chen Xun's hard work, thinking that he naturally recognized these Cloud Continent characters after gradually recovering his memory.

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