"These 3 are part of the guards I hired. There are 18 guards for this trip. Usually, it would be around 10, but since the beast attacks, all merchants have increased the guard count," Zhang Xie said.
"There are 5 in the front carriage and 10 in the final 2 carriages. Since this is the 2nd carriage, you should be relatively safe, little brother. Although I hope you will fight when the time comes," he said.
"Don't worry, senior Xie. I won't be a freeloader," Alex said.
"You hear that old man?" Zhang Xie said. "You can't be a freeloader either. You've promised to fight beasts and bandits in case we are attacked, we will leave you behind if you coward out of the fight."
The old man simply glared at Zhang Xie and Alex for a while and nodded in affirmation. The old man had gray hair and a mostly hobo look from what Alex could tell. His clothes were pretty dirty and it looked like he was out of money.
'No wonder needs to ride the caravan like that,' Alex thought. He got up and introduced himself to the group in the caravan.
The men and woman smiled but didn't seem to be in a mood for conversation. The old man glared at Alex and tried to avert his eyes when he was greeted.
Alex understood that he didn't want to talk either. The caravan was ready to move, so Luo Mei came next to the window.
"Have a safe journey, junior brother. Also, don't worry about the Prime disciple problem once you go back. It's my burden to bear, not yours. You just have fun, you'll get there someday," Luo Mei said.
Alex nodded and said his final goodbye before the caravan left for the east. It was going to take about 2 days before he reached Scarlet city, and seeing as though nobody wanted to talk, he felt like it was going to be a very boring time.
The 3 men and women spoke to each other, but Alex didn't get into the conversation. He could tell that they were good friends, so it didn't feel right to butt in.
The old man also kept looking towards him from time to time, and Alex wondered if he wanted to talk or something. But since the old man never said anything, Alex didn't talk either.
Seeing as though he had nothing more to do, he decided to close his eyes and think about the different kinds of stuff.
One of the things he had always wanted to see is if he could make recipes for pills using the ingredients he was familiar with. He was sure he would likely never reach the same level of accuracy as when he did it practically, but he had time to waste, and from the looks of it, he couldn't go anywhere for now.
The sun went down and the night started doing its job. However, it was not at all quiet. The people in the caravan sang and danced along the way as the group moved forward.
"Hey you two, get ready. The bandits will be here any moment," the woman told Alex and the old man.
The old man say anything and simply nodded with an eye that burned with anticipation.
"Do bandits usually attack this area?" Alex asked.
"Yeah, and nighttime is what they like the most. The bandits move all over the southern forest, so we can't tell exactly where they will show up, but given how loud these people are, they will know where we are and will attack us," the lady said.
Alex nodded. "I keep wondering, why do bandits even attack? They should know by now that the merchants hire strong guards. It sort of doesn't make sense," Alex said.
"Not all merchants can afford us. Most can barely get self-tempering realm cultivators, people weaker than you. So, they attack, hoping they got the right one," the woman said.
"It must be terrible for those merchants. I can only imagine how many people die to those horrible people," Alex said.
"Most of the time, the bandits aren't really bad. They are just thieves that want your possessions. As long as you hand it over, they won't hurt you."
"But once in a while when the merchant struggles or a particularly bad character turns into a bandit, there are problems."
"Still, bandits don't attack that many times. Maybe once in a week, some even once in a month. However, recently since the beast attacks, they are terrified of coming out of their caves for while"
"Also given that most merchants have stopped traveling, their supplies must be ending. So… I assume we will meet a lot of bandits this trip," the woman said.
Alex nodded as he thought of something and asked, "how strong are the bandits?"
"Some are weaker than you. No, most are weaker than you. Some are close to you in strength and very few come close to us in strength. However, that doesn't mean that there are people stronger than us."
"Don't worry. The strong ones hate doing the work themselves so even if their groups do come, it's usually the lower-level thugs. We should be fine with those," the woman said.
The group went along without any hitch for a few more hours until it was midnight. Alex wondered if anything was going to even happen, and that was when he heard the shout.
"BANDITS!"
"Let's go!" the woman shouted. But before she could even stand up, the old man had already opened the carriage door on his side and walked out.
Alex quickly opened the door on his side after hearing the woman and walked out as he took out his steel sword too.
'Try not to use Sword Intent,' he told himself. He didn't want to reveal something like that in front of the strangers here.
"Haah!" a bandit shouted as he charged towards him. He held a sword in his hands and swung it directly at Alex.
'So weak,' Alex thought when he saw the man's high Organ Tempering realm cultivation base.
Alex didn't even dodge and directly hit the incoming sword. The bandit's sword bent in half and flew out of the bandit's arms. The bandit himself fell onto the ground with fear creeping up in his eyes.
He tried to get back up, but his hands kept slipping on the dried leaves on the ground. Finally, he got a grip and managed to turn around and run back into the forest.
Alex looked around and saw that the bandits were being beaten up left and right. This was a very weak bandit group and was definitely out of luck.
On the other side of the caravan, Alex could hear shouted of agony as screams rang out from time to time.
Another man jumped at Alex, but he was kicked directly on the ribs and sent flying away.
Alex then looked around and saw that there were no other bandits here.
He looked at the two men who had the bandits with broken limbs, laid sprawling on the ground.
"Do we leave them like this?" Alex asked.
"What? You want to help them?" they asked mockingly.
Alex didn't say anything and looked at the bandits with a little shocked expression.
'The ones from the princess' caravan always killed people no matter what though,' he thought.
The caravan was starting to move so he got onto the carriage. As soon as he entered, he was assaulted with a heavy smell of blood.
He looked at the old man, whose body was mostly covered in blood.
"Damn it old man, You don't need to kill them. You could've just broken their bones and left them. Why did you have to go on a bloody massacre?" the woman asked while incredibly annoyed.
"Hmph," the old man said and minded his own business.
"Dammit," the woman turned around, not wanting to face the bloody old man.
"Sigh, you didn't go psycho on the bandits, right?" she asked Alex.
"No," Alex said as he shook his head. "But I'm quite surprised that you guys leave the bandits alive. The caravan I was in about a month ago didn't do that. Every bandit group they came across, they would kill them all," Alex said.
"Killing all bandits? That must be either the Royal Fu merchant group who don't hire anybody and instead uses national guards as their guard."
"Or it could be the Victorious Snow merchant group. They are known to have ruthless guards all the time," the woman said.
"We on the other hand don't do that. For one, we don't like killing people a lot. Secondly, you don't want to be known as the bandit-killing merchant group."
"That only draws out the worst in every bandit you meet and they end up attacking you with the intention to kill even when you can't fight them," she said.
"I see," Alex said. "The merchant group came from the capital so it must have been the Royal Fu merchant group. Yeah, they killed every single one of the bandits."
"Alright, let me know if you are injured. If you're not, rest up. There will be more of such fights throughout the night," the woman said.
Alex nodded and closed his eyes to wait for the time to pass. He desperately wished that he could log out and go get something to eat, but it didn't seem like he could get any chance now.
He just had to wait until he was back in the city.
A few hours passed, and the people shouted outside once more.
"BANDITS!"
