Lin Mu eventually discovered that the more the targets moved, the more difficult it got to control the skill. But their movement also made it so that they moved their detached parts further away.
The bandits were all screaming in terror at seeing their body parts detaching. Some of them even tried to pull on them and found that they could actually still be moved. One of the bandits who had his hand detached tried to put it back and found that even while detached he could move it.
The bandits felt like they were in some nightmare and could not get out of it. A couple of them directly fainted due to fear while some collapsed due to the fatigue and shock.
~huu~
"This should be enough." Lin Mu muttered before deactivating the skill.
~Thud~ Thud~ Thud ~thud~
~Splatter~ splatter~
~slick~
A cacophony sounds were heard as all the bandits took their final breaths. Various body parts and entire bodies were scattered around now, dressing the earth in various shades of red.
The bandit who had a part of his waist attached was at Lin Mu's side and Lin Mu saw a kidney and a fragment of rib along with some skin lying there. Evidently, this was the part of his waist that had been detached.
This part included a good chunk of arteries so the man died rather quickly due to blood loss.
Lin Mu looked around and realized that except for the ones that were decapitated or severed half from the waist, the common cause of death was blood loss. Though he reckoned that the shock and terror had probably contributed to it as well.
Lin Mu took one last look at the dead bandits and scanned the camp with his spirit sense to see if he could find any clue.
"Nothing here… better head to the next one…" Lin Mu said before blinking away.
A few minutes later, the same scene was seen at a different bandit camp and cleanly dismembered bodies were lying all around. This camp also did not have any people that had been captured, so Lin Mu did not spend much time here.
In the next camp though, there were a few women that had been captured. They were shackled and put in metal cages. Lin Mu looked at the bandits and saw that these ones were better equipped than the previous ones.
Not wanting to risk hurting the women with Meld, Lin Mu swiftly dealt with the bandits. Leaving only one of them alive for asking questions. This bandit was their leader and was likely to know more than others.
~Crack~
Lin Mu stepped on the leg of the bandit, shattering it while ignoring his pain filled cry.
"Speak… where are the other bandits and who do you sell these people to." Lin Mu ordered.
"I'll speak, I'll speak! Please don't kill me!" The bandit leader pleaded.
~Crack~
Lin Mu shattered his other leg bone and prodded him to speak again.
"There… there are four more bandits camps. We have a map you can see on there. As for the slavers, they are from outside the kingdom. They buy slaves from us and sell them to different parts of the empire." The bandit leader uttered hurriedly.
~splat~
"I see…" Lin Mu replied before stepping on the head of the bandit, crushing it like a watermelon.
He freed the women that were unconscious and fed them the healing pills as well. He could see many signs of abuse on them, including deep scars and cuts. Lin Mu had a cold expression on his face as he took out the jade slip and reported his location to Wu Hei.
"They have found the children and are taking them to a safe place now." Wu Hei Spoke.
"Good. Come to this place now. There are women here." Lin Mu said, before rushing to his next target.
One by one, Lin Mu went to each of the Bandit camps and eradicated all of them. He ended up freeing over twenty people, which included men, women and children along with a couple of beasts as well.
Lin Mu looked at these beasts that looked like a mix between a turtle and a duck. He recognized them to be rare beasts that were prized for their shells and were often sold for them. They were at the early stage of the Qi refining realm and were not of much use to Lin Mu so he freed them as well.
Lin Mu had gotten a little bit more practice with the bandits, but it was still not enough for him to say that he had sufficient control over Meld. He hadn't been able to use it more due to there being captured people in the camps.
Though the one thing that was common was the herb they used to tranquilize the people. All of them used the same herb, and it was not native to this region. Lin Mu learned that this drug was provided by those slavers so that it made the task of the bandits easier.
"Damned monsters! they are worse than beasts!" Lin Mu said, flames of rage visible in his eyes.
After having taken care of all the bandit camps, Lin Mu called for Little Shrubby and went on his way to the Tri Cauldron peony sect. But he had not forgotten about those slavers and was going to kill them too if he encountered them.
Lin Mu knew that the border of the Shuang Qian kingdom was only at a day's distance from this place, so it was likely the slavers were located somewhere outside it. But since there were military outposts and checkpoints at the routes that went in from the border, they were likely to be using some other secret path.
Finding this path would have been like finding a needle in a haystack and thus he just told Wu Hei to watch the locations where the bandit camps were, so that when the slavers approach they are able to capture them.
