A quarter of an hour later, a terrified cry rang out from within the bamboo forest Dao:

"Damn it! Captain! We’re still going in circles!!"

However, before the middle-aged man could speak, the others watched as a comrade suddenly dismounted his horse. With a crazed look in his eyes, he charged toward a nearby bamboo stalk and embraced it, kissing it frantically while laughing aloud and saying:

"Hahaha, my beauty! Don’t you worry, I’ll be sure to take you home and dote on you!"

The next moment, the group watched as their surroundings were suddenly enveloped in a thick, gray mist.

As the gray mist swirled, the comrade who had been frantically kissing the bamboo stalk vanished without a trace.

Witnessing this scene, the men felt not anger, but shock. They were utterly horrified.

"Everyone, stick together! Don’t move!" Cold sweat beaded on the middle-aged man’s forehead.

’In all his years, he’d never seen anything so bizarre and terrifying! Everything was fine on the way here, but now something this strange was happening on the way back!’

’What is this gray mist? Why did it appear so suddenly?’

’The only possibility is that the people of Da Liang have set an ambush!’

’They’re using some method we’ve never seen before to confuse us!’

"Xu Xing, you bastard! I’ve finally found you! Today, I’ll get my revenge!"

Suddenly, another man in the group, his eyes wide with fury, turned to the comrade beside him and swung his blade.

Seeing that another had fallen victim, the comrade he attacked yelled in growing terror, "Tu Liu, wake the fuck up! It’s me, An Fu!!"

As he yelled, he raised his own blade to parry the frenzied assault, and the two slowly broke away from the group, disappearing into the gray mist.

The rest of the men wanted to intervene, but their captain stopped them. They then heard him command:

"Everyone, close your eyes and clear your minds! Link arms and move in one direction—"

But before the captain could finish speaking, another man in the group began to scream in terror:

"Stay back! Don’t come any closer! I didn’t kill your family, it wasn’t me! The one who killed them all was Chen Tulu! Go find him, he said there was... Aah—stay back..."

Another man tore himself away from the group and, though seemingly chased by nothing, plunged headlong into the gray mist and vanished.

"Damn it!!"

The middle-aged man let out a furious growl. He knew they were in danger, but there was nothing he could do.

’This gray mist is just too bizarre, and there’s no way to disperse it!’

"Listen to me, everyone, head... Ugh!"

Suddenly, the air whistled. The next instant, an Iron Arrow pierced the leader’s heart, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

The man stared down at the fletching of the arrow protruding from his chest, his eyes filled with disbelief.

’He never imagined that he, a Seventh Grade Martial Artist, would not fall on the battlefield, but instead die such a pathetic death in a place like this!’

’And without even knowing who killed him.’

His strength left him, his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground, his breathing ceased.

"Ca-Captain!"

The remaining seven men stared in terror as their strongest member, their captain, was suddenly killed by an arrow that seemed to come from nowhere.

"Who is it!? If you have any guts, come out and fight us face-to-face! What kind of coward attacks from the shadows!"

But their only answer was a volley of Iron Arrows.

As men fell one after another, struck by arrows, the survivors completely lost their will to fight and began to run about like madmen.

Beside the Soul Gathering Stele, Cheng Zongyang put away his Hundred-Forged Bow and looked calmly toward the official Dao.

Of the twelve men in the group, seven were down. The remaining five were trapped within a radius of a dozen meters, running in circles because of the Ghost Wall, all while screaming and begging for mercy.

The terror in their eyes was something they would likely never forget for the rest of their lives.

Cheng Zongyang patted the Soul Gathering Stele beside him, sighing with admiration.

’With the Soul Gathering Stele’s help, this is as easy as slaughtering chickens.’

’When they were all huddled together, they were no different from sitting ducks. If he hadn’t wanted to observe the effects of the Illusion at first, he would have struck long ago.’

On the other side, however, the thirty able-bodied men hired as laborers had all fallen prey to the Illusion.

Their willpower was weaker than that of the Martial Artists, and their inner desires, fears, and greed had all been magnified, causing them to run around frantically as well.

Cheng Zongyang drew his Tang Blade and walked toward the five remaining Martial Artists.

Without any surprises, he finished them off smoothly.

He’d thought he would need to fight them properly, but his spur-of-the-moment decision to test the Soul Gathering Stele had proven to be unimaginably effective. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Next, Cheng Zongyang looked at the thirty laborers and frowned.

After a moment of thought, he knocked them all unconscious.

’While under the Illusion, they can’t see me, much less know that these Martial Artists of the Foreign Race have been killed.’

’When they wake up, they’ll just think they had a dream.’ Cheng Zongyang wasn’t worried about being discovered by them.

Next was to clean up the battlefield.

The grain, the carts, the horses, the corpses, the bloodstains—everything was dealt with cleanly. The scene was restored to more or less its original state.

As for the thirty remaining men, Cheng Zongyang paid them no mind. He retrieved the Soul Gathering Stele and turned to hurry back to the County Town.

’Even when these thirty men wake up, all they’ll see are empty surroundings. They might think those Outsiders left by themselves, but they’d never imagine they were all dead.’

Cheng Zongyang wasn’t worried about them leaking any secrets after they returned to town. Once they were back, he would arrange a place for them.

’Kill thirty ordinary people who know nothing, for no reason? No, it wouldn’t come to that.’

’He just needed to give them a little push, have them move out of the County Town and into Tiantuan Village, and that would solve the immediate problem.’

As for when the third group would arrive, or how many there would be, he wasn’t concerned. ’There was a long gap between the first and second groups,’ he reasoned, ’so the third will probably take a while, too.’